Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  It was the twin forces of human invention and rugged determination that lay at the core of Manchester’s dramatic rise.

  Water power, the first steam-engines, the spinning jenny, the mule and the power loom, all of these revolutionised Manchester’s cotton industry; made it, in fact, the first British industry to be fully mechanised.

  To achieve such a vision, the people behind these changes had to be a dynamic breed. They had to be strong-willed and utterly single-minded in their pursuit of the new world that they had visualised, a new age which they, and only they, could define and make their own.

  The architects of this vision were young, powerful Mancunian businessmen, determined to build Jerusalem on England’s green and pleasant land, and so be acknowledged as the saviours of the country.

  Their first move was to sweep away the old feudal system. Under this arrangement a Lord would give his workers land to farm, dwellings to live in and a wage, which was swiftly returned to him through rent charges.

  In Manchester’s case, the ruling power was the Moseley family. Their power was supposedly absolute, but to the new Mancunian it was spurious. The Moseleys were perceived as weak masters, ditherers who had no firm grip or vision. Manchester had no municipal infrastructure and very little in the way of administrative organisation. It laid the way open for change. In other words, if you wanted to build a factory and you had the money, power and vision, then it was yours to build. No one could stand in your way.

  Unfettered by local laws or government, the new Mancunians zealously went to work, building huge factories and filling them with all the new machinery. They deliberately began a campaign to create a climate of enterprises, an ‘every man for himself’ ethos which rivalled Thatcherism in its brazen fanaticism.

  As a speaker put it at the Manchester Mechanics organisation, ‘Man must be the architect of his own fame.’ The message was clear: it was everyone for themselves.

  For many of the newly arrived Irish hand-loom weavers this was an unexpected development. By the time they had settled in, they literally had been displaced by machines and forced into factories. For these country dwellers who had fought and loved nature all their lives, it was hell on earth.

  First of all, their rural lifestyle hadn’t prepared them for city life. It was noted that many of them walked the streets barefooted, while their obvious Catholic fervour did little to impress their new Protestant neighbours. Furthermore, their willingness to accept such small wages (yet double their paypacket back home) intensely annoyed those organisations that had sprung up in an attempt to reform the city’s work conditions. For these concerned cabals, run by middle-class liberals, the factories symbolised all that was evil in this brave new world. It wasn’t hard to see why.

  Ugly, filthy and dangerous, these factories had no ventilation, no heat in the winter. The workers were forced to work nineteen hour shifts for wages of just four shillings a week. And most of that went on rent and food.

  Furthermore, their accommodation provided no respite from these conditions. The Irish squeezed into minute cottages, most of which had walls which were only one brick thick. In wintertime they huddled together against the biting winds that would howl through their small rooms and extinguish their fires. There was no ventilation and few sanitary amenities.

  The Irish and their children were being crushed and, by severe poverty and disease, sacrificed to the new Mancunian’s greed and inhumanity. Many children, some as young as seven years old, worked in factories; often they died before their years reached double figures. Many babies died through the administration of sleeping medicines, given to them by desperate mothers who simply didn’t have the time to tend to them. These mothers were forced into the factories and away from their babies’ side; the alternative meant they would all starve to death.

  Cholera festered in the water and indiscriminately struck down whole families. So too did the cyclical nature of capitalism, where a boom-time is always followed by a slump.

  As Manchester expanded, so it became a schizophrenic city with two strikingly different realities. The first was the one the businessmen were keen to promote: that is, Manchester as the world’s first industrialised city. Its fame was worldwide, and observers came from many continents to study this civic success. Unfortunately, often they returned home depressed and shocked by the second reality, the atrocious living conditions from which they couldn’t avert their eyes.

  Henry Coleman, a visiting American, described the poor of Manchester as ‘wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying in bleeding fragments all over the face of society’.

  Frederick Engels arrived from Germany. He had been sent over by his rich industrial father to look after the family interests in some local cotton mills. Engels spent the next twenty-three years in the city and in 1845 he published his famous treatise, The Condition Of The Working Class In England. In it he devoted a whole chapter to Manchester, using the experiences of Mary and Lizzie Burns, two daughters of Irish immigrants with whom he lived for many years.

  He described the city’s poor as ‘A physically degenerate race robbed of all humanity’. Engels and Coleman weren’t alone in their disgust.

  Yet the new Mancunian proved impervious to such conditions or the pleas for compassion that they were eliciting. Of far more concern to them were the issues of the day; and none more so than the introduction of the Com Laws, first passed by Parliament in 1815, and which were met with first incredulity and then anger. Effectively the Com Laws imposed a heavy tariff on foreign corn, which kept the price of bread, a staple element in the workers’ diet, artificially high, and also pushed up the workers’ wages.

  Manchester and other Northern towns saw this law as a deliberate attempt by the government to protect the big Southern grain farmers, a jealous South stifling the new Mancunians’ progress.

  The Manchester man fervently believed that by his city’s example so England could prosper. He believed that while the rulers in the South, with their dandy clothes and fineries, flounced around passing stupid laws, it was his kind of person, the real man, who made up the backbone of the country, whose vision and graft was the future.

  ‘What London does with one sovereign, Manchester does with none,’ was a favoured saying among Manchester’s business community.

  And now, with the Corn Laws, London had moved the goalposts, out of sheer envy. Well, fuck them, we’ll show them. And they did.

  Firstly they let their contempt be known by stealing some of London’s most famous names, Piccadilly and Oxford Street, and planting them in their own city. Then they formed the Anti-Corn-Law League. For the next thirty-one years they vigorously campaigned against this restrictive law, and in doing so they set the tone for a North-South divide that has never been satisfactorily resolved. When, in 1846, the Com Law was repealed, victory had never tasted sweeter. Through their own political muscle, the Mancunian had humiliated the South, and broken the government, forcing it to back down. They had rebelled and they had won.

  Now they would go further in realising their destiny, now they would show the South a bit of real class. As they toasted their success, one of them might well have said, ‘You see? Has-beens should never take on the Going-to-be’s.’

  In 1846 Ireland was struck by a famine that was so unforgiving in its nature the repercussions linger even to this day. The famine persisted for five years by which time a million people had emigrated and a million people had died.

  Many of the Irish headed either for Liverpool or Manchester. When this second wave of Irish arrived they found in Manchester a city now taking note of some of the stinging criticisms levelled at it about its overriding obsession with money.

  To counter these accusations, a small group of businessmen travelled to France in 1850. There, they asked the Charles Halle Orchestra to decamp from Paris and settle in Manchester. Halle agreed, no doubt swayed by the large amounts of money placed before him. Manchester now had its own orchestra. Just like London.


  In 1853 the completion of the Cathedral gave Manchester permanent and official status as a city. In 1856 the Free Trade Hall was opened, built on the site of the infamous Peterloo massacre, where eleven people were killed and 400 injured, demanding the right to vote. The new building was a snub for the proles, but the message was clear – the new Mancunian was coming into his own.

  The following year saw the opening of a huge arts exhibition, the largest display yet of private arts treasures. Such was its prestige that Queen Victoria, her Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales made the journey up to visit.

  The exhibition was also opened to the public, another step towards giving the city a refined cultural depth, another way of attacking the perceived image of Manchester as a city built on slum dwellings and factory exploitation.

  Certainly, this activity seemed to work. The Illustrated London News wrote that the exhibition ‘now hurls back upon her detractors the charge that she [Manchester] is too deeply absorbed in the pursuit of material wealth to devote her energies to the finer arts’.

  Other improvements came along. Better sanitary conditions, the creation of the city’s own police force, the designing and creation of parks, and the building of Manchester Victoria University, which still stands today.

  In 1894, the Manchester Ship Canal was opened, a major development in establishing once and for all a system of transport which avoided harbour fees at Liverpool, and which closely linked Manchester to its overseas suppliers and customers.

  In the same year a significant football match took place. It was in Division Two of the Football League, and Manchester City, then known as Ardwick FC, played Newton Heath, later to become Manchester United.

  In their first-ever derby, Ardwick FC lost 5-2 at home to Newton Heath. Later the first derby game at their new ground, Maine Road, in 1923 would end in a 1-1 draw. One loss, one draw. Already a pattern was being set by City.

  Yet, across the water in Europe darker clouds were gathering on the horizon. In the first half of the 20th century, Western Europe would be embroiled in two world wars. Millions of people would lose their lives and whole countries would be decimated.

  But these wars would actually sustain Manchester economically. They were good for business, wars. And Manchester’s new metal and engineering economy saw a brisk trade in weapons, ammunition and aircraft.

  She walks into the small coffee shop in Mayo and, as she sits down, she lets out a sigh. It is seven in the evening and her bones ache and her mind is tired. It has been another long day cleaning and tending to the children of the O’Hara house, and Peggy Sweeney is now waiting for her mother to arrive.

  When she does, Peggy will hand over her week’s wages: one pound. Depending on the family’s needs that week, Peggy will receive a tiny sum of it back. Maybe half-a-crown if she is lucky.

  By her side is the small transistor radio that she has been able to save up for. Peggy loves the radio because it gives her music and sometimes listening to music is just like reading; you can disappear from yourself. More crucially, it allows you to lose for a while that cruel inner-voice which taunts every son and daughter of the Catholic Church.

  Peggy’s inner-voice will not stay quiet. Strict religions always produce major worries. Believers fret all their lives. And no one is harder on Catholics than themselves. It isn’t a happy religion nor is it shaped to fill you with confidence and huge self-esteem. Rather it threatens you with damnation, tries to cut you down to size.

  How can you not worry when hell is just a sin away, and every day you fight yourself over impulses, desires and thoughts that appear from nowhere to tease and torment you? You go to confession on Saturday and for that night your soul feels cleansed. You can sense purity. By Monday afternoon, you are at war with yourself again. But music, this Irish music that Peggy listens to, talks to her, it sets her free.

  Sometimes the radio plays the saddest song in the universe. Then, the fiddles and the guitars and the penny-whistles start up, and there will be a rousing song to help you on your way. The Dubliners, Big Tom, Dicky Rock, The Miami Show Band, Peggy knew the names and music of all the major performers and she was always thrilled when the disc jockey announced one of their tunes.

  The door of the café opens and Peggy expectantly looks up. But it isn’t her mum. It is the local policeman. She instinctively looks away, hoping she hasn’t been noticed, not because she has anything to hide but because she is fearfully shy.

  She hates crowds, her temperament is ill-suited to them. Instead, she loves quiet, peace and quiet. A lot of the time, all she wants is to be on her own. Even in company, when relatives visit or she is with friends, there are always the moments when she drifts away.

  It’s why she doesn’t mind her job so much. The O’Haras, who run a successful confectionery business, are good to her. A lot of the time, it is just Peggy and the O’Hara children in the house, and that suits her fine. The rest of the time she is at home. There’s not a lot to do in County Mayo and even if there were, local dances and the like, Peggy would rather stay indoors, reading or listening to her beloved radio.

  Near where she works there is a cinema but films don’t really interest her. Plus it would mean spending money that could be better used elsewhere.

  Her life is one of routine and ritual, hard work, and solitude when she can grab it. She wouldn’t really have it any other way.

  After the First World War, the Americans arrived and cars and clothes took over as Manchester’s main products. By the 1930s there were over 200 American firms in the city. The famous Ford Motor Car Company opened its first plant at Trafford Park. It was there that the Model-T car, the cheapest in Britain, was mass manufactured.

  In the clothes sector there was a similar upsurge. Charles Macintosh had started his raincoat business in 1824 and 110 years later, thanks to a proliferation of sweatshops, the rainwear business now flourished.

  The advent of the Second World War suspended normal business activities. Once more Manchester found out that wars are great for trade.

  For a time the textile and engineering industries flourished. Thousands of Mancunian men joined the forces, while thousands of women took their places in the factories. But in 1940 the city, severely blitzed by German bombers, lost many of its historic buildings.

  In the 1950s, the food and chemical industries •moved in as Manchester became the North’s major distribution centre for supplies, aided by its railway and canal system.

  The post-War British government also became major employers. It sent out notices to the Caribbean to entice workers over to rebuild Britain. The same offer was extended to the Irish. Soon thousands upon thousands of immigrants were arriving to experience the British way of life.

  Yet by the 1960s, despite all efforts, another cycle was ending. Manchester’s population began to fall. And fall. And fall. The city couldn’t halt its decline, and the reason was simple. Work was becoming increasingly hard to find. The Manchester Ship Canal was too small to hold the new container ships, and the advent of motorways signalled the end of canals and railways as a major means of transportation. And crucially, Manchester’s manufacturing industry was hit badly by the local economy shifting into the service sector. From 1961 to 1983 over 150,000 manufacturing jobs would be lost.

  The print industry also went into decline, its end symbolised by the Manchester Guardian moving South to the city that Manchester had grown to despise and which would grab all the attention in the 1960s. The capital would become Swinging London and no one would speak of Manchester. The new Mancunian turned in his grave. And his sons and daughters planned their revenge.

  At the hospital, they assured Peggy that her mum would be fine.

  All she had to do was rest, get some peace and quiet.

  It had been like this for a few months now and Peggy was starting to realise that her mum was getting old, and that the years of hardship, both physically and within the mind, were starting to take their toll.

  Because of Margaret’s fr
equent illnesses, Peggy had been forced to quit her job with the O’Haras to look after her brothers and sisters. Paddy, John and Bridie would be looked upon to supply money for food. Soon her mum would return and Peggy knew that when that happened, the day she had been dreading all her life would arrive.

  It was time, her mum would tell her, for Peggy to leave County Mayo. There really was nothing to hold on for.

  ‘You have to go, Peggy,’ Margaret Sweeney said, ‘and there’s the end of it.’ But where, and with whom? Nearby, the Macintyre family lived, near enough to be considered neighbours.

  Peggy had become friendly with their daughter Angela, and they hung out together. Peggy didn’t have many friends but Angela she could count on.

  Loyalty was very important to Peggy. It took her a long time to trust anyone bar her family. One day over coffee Peggy told Angela of her mum’s wishes.

  Angela had just returned from her holidays in Manchester, staying with her older sister, Teresa. Pretty soon Angela would be returning to Manchester for good, so why didn’t Peggy come along? She was sure her sister wouldn’t mind putting up Peggy until she settled in.

  There was work aplenty there. Why, Angela enthused, you could start a job in the morning, quit it at lunchtime and be in work again by eventide. And getting a place to live in shouldn’t be a problem. Come on now, Peggy, what do you say?

  Margaret approved of the plan. She trusted the Maclntyres. But, as she spoke to her mother, Peggy’s heart was breaking inside her. I don’t want to go, she kept telling her mum, I don’t want to leave you; I know there’s nothing here but it doesn’t matter, I’ll stay.

  But Margaret, toughened by life and all its terrible blows, would have none of it. It would be better in the long run for her to leave, of that she hadn’t one doubt. Then Margaret would walk into the kitchen, and pretend to bake some bread and sing loudly to hide her own tears.