The Mancunian Way: A city ahead of its time

Keep up to date with all the big stories from across Greater Manchester in the daily Mancunian Way newsletter.

You can receive the newsletter direct to your inbox every weekday by signing up right here.

Here is today's Mancunian Way:

by BETH ABBIT - Mon Aug 8, 2022

Hello,

I hope you all had a good weekend? It’s going to be lovely for the next few days with wall-to-wall sunshine predicted by the Met Office and temperatures set to reach 29C. I refuse to call anything below 30C a ‘heatwave’. So for now at least, let’s just call it ‘summer’.

In today’s newsletter we’re looking at the huge towers that are changing the face of the city centre; the people struggling to get a doctor’s appointment and the history of LGBT+ activism in Manchester.

A fusion of gay pride and metropolitan pride is what made Manchester ahead of its time when it came to the fight for LGBTQ rights. According to academic Matt Cook, the city council’s support for gay and lesbian rights in the 1980s and 90s was fundamental

.

“If you think about that very long history of radicalism in Manchester. From Peterloo through to the suffrage movement and the very strong industrial heritage and workers union rights, there’s this idea of a kind of solidarity amongst working class communities historically in Manchester in particular, but also in terms of anti-racism and so on.”

Prof Cook, who is co-author of the book Queer Beyond London, told The Northern Agenda podcast there has been ‘a series of battles being fought in the city’, not least against the pernicious police regime led by former chief constable James Anderton.

He says Anderton's force 'really established that policy of pinpointing and arresting queer, but also black, people in the city and really,