SQUINT, and the People’s History Museum in Manchester could be a church. Vast trade-union banners rich with symbols—masonic eyes, spanners, linked hands—hang like ecclesiastical tapestries from the walls and ceilings. Bibelots nestle in their showcases like saints’ bones in their reliquaries: a handkerchief commemorating the Peterloo massacre, an Edwardian membership certificate for the old dyers’ union (motto: “We dye to live”), a docker’s hook belonging to a protagonist of the London port strike of 1972. The galleries echo to sermons by tribunes of the left: Nye Bevan hailing universal health care, Earnest Jones urging the crowds in Manchester to reject the “gospel of the rich”. The light is low—the better to preserve the treasures of this, Britain’s only museum to the struggles of the common folk.
Like many churches, the museum is also near-empty of a Sunday. Bagehot shared it with perhaps a dozen other visitors. Outside, central Manchester teemed with life. Drinkers spilled out of pubs and bars. The Arndale Centre writhed with shoppers. Canal Street, in the gay village, fizzed with the music and colour of Pride weekend. Out in...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, The land that Labour forgot
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