
Political Manchester
Friedrich Engels’s Manchester
Next walk: Probably during the 2023 Manchester International Festival. Details soon. Meet: Friedrich Engels Statue, outside HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Gaythorn, time tbc. Booking: Soon! *** Follow in the footsteps of Friedrich Engels, the German cotton merchant and secret revolutionary who spent his working life in Manchester making capitalist money so that he could …
Continue reading
Formidable Women of Manchester
Next tour: New date to be announced soon. Meet: Emmeline Pankhurst statue, St Peter’s Square, time tbc. Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite. These women and more… * Annie Horniman, who established Britain’s first repertory theatre company. * Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote Mary Barton, one of the classic “condition of England” novels in 1848. …
Continue reading
Left-Wing Manchester – From German Fred to Red Ed
Next tours: This tour has now been subsumed into the Marx & Engels, Pankhursts and Peterloo tours. Bring: A copy of Clause IV. More apt than Mao’s Little Red Book. How apt that the People’s History museum is located in Manchester on the left bank (sic) of the River Irwell. But why are there more …
Continue reading
Political Villains of Manchester
Next tour: No dates yet. Meet: People’s History Museum, Bridge Street, time tbc. There have been some bad people in charge of Manchester and Salford over the years – and you, the good people of the twin cities, have been bossed about by them and sometimes even voted for them! We’re talking about Oswald Mosley, leader …
Continue reading
Political Heroes of Manchester
Next walk: No dates yet. Meet: People’s History Museum, Bridge Street. You want heroes? Heroes that transcend party politicking and partisanship? Difficult one. Maybe Richard Cobden, Friedrich Engels, Wiliam Gladstone, Sylvia Pankhurst and Paul Robeson. Them and the usual crowd of assorted Trots, liberals and free-thinkers.
Churchill vs. Mosley
Next tours. No public dates. Meet: tbc. One was a maverick who served time in jail; the other was the Labour Party’s greatest hope for socialism. One deployed poison gas against the Iraqis; the other was supported by Nye Bevan, architect of the National Health Service. Who would have believed back in the mid-1920s that Winston …
Continue reading
Tory Manchester
Next tour: Maybe to kick-off the 2023 Tory conference in Manchester. Meet: Booking: George the Chancellor said on Wednesday 3 December 2014: “Our ambition is to build a northern powerhouse as a complement to the strength of our capital city, where we bring together our great cities of the North.” Has he kept …
Continue reading
Suffragette City/The Pankhursts
The next Pankhurst walking tours are FREE but please book on Eventbrite so that we can regulate numbers: Next Free Tour: Sat 1 July 2023, 10.30am. Meet: Emmeline Pankhurst statue, St Peter’s Square. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. It is now just over a hundred and three years (1 December 1919) since …
Continue reading
Slavery, Colonialism & Anti-Apartheid in Manchester
Next tour: Hope to have a new tour during the 2023 Manchester International Festival. Meet: Victoria Station wallmap. Booking: Manchester might have prospered from the horrors of slavery for much of the 18th century, but the growing town was soon leading the campaign for its abolition. The turning point was a …
Continue reading
