As the run-up to the 2024 UK general election begins in earnest, it is likely that we will see a rapid increase in hysteria surrounding Chinese and Russian interference in Britain’s electoral process. However, there is no doubt that the majority of this discourse will fail to connect this meddling with Britain’s own historical involvement in election interference, military interventions, and assassinations, in its attempt to preserve commercial and ideological interests abroad.
160 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln sent a letter to the ‘working men of Manchester’, acknowledging their ‘sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country’. These words are now memorialised at the foot of the Lincoln statue, sculpted by George Grey Bernard, which stands in recently-remodelled Lincoln Square just off Deansgate. The historic link between Manchester and the American North is lesser known, but was a hugely significant moment in the US Civil War.
Today, Manchester’s Market Street boasts dozens of busy high-street retailers and restaurants. But once upon a time, the site was home to the Clarion Café, a powerful institution for social activists.
The Woodhead Tunnels were a collection of three train tunnels located in Woodhead, the Peak District. Built in 1837 and 1853, these tunnels connected Manchester to other cities on the opposite side of the Peaks. At the time of its construction it was the longest tunnel in the world, reaching in at more than 3 miles long (4.8km).
Manchester as a city holds its own colonial past, its construction and industrialisation reliant upon wealth from enslaved labour and the triangular trade. The museum is one of the University of Manchester’s ‘cultural assets’, and thus these narratives both come from and are reflected on the university. The colonial narratives integrated into the city and its institutions are slowly unraveling, but the confrontation of colonial pasts is the first step on a long journey.
