Next 2012 tours: Wed 8 Feb, Sun 6 May, Tue 19 June.
Meet: People’s History Museum, Bridge Street, 2.30pm.
Bring: A copy of Clause IV and Mao’s Little Red Book.
End: Manning the barricades (if you can find any).

No political revolution has ever been successful in Manchester. No charismatic political leader has emerged to seize power, confidently expecting to tell the masses, like Napoleon did to the French in 1799, “The Revolution is over. I am the Revolution” – well, not unless you count Graham Stringer becoming leader of Manchester City council in 1984.

Manchester might not do revolution, but its history is coloured red. After all, Manchester was where the single most dramatic political demonstration in English history – Peterloo – took place in 1819. Manchester was a major centre of Chartism, stamping ground of Marx and Engels, home of the early trades union movement, and the city where the suffragette movement was founded.

How apt that it is in Manchester that the superb new People’s History museum is located, reopened early in 2010 on the left bank (sic) of the river Irwell.

So why then are there more statues of Tories – Wellington and Peel – than socialists within its boundaries? That’s why we do a Tory Manchester walk as well as a Red Manchester one.