Manchester Blues: Tories coming to town
Article published: Friday, October 2nd 2009
Another year, another Annual Party Conference sets up camp in Manchester. The draped banners are not the red we’ve come to expect, however, and this time the selection of Manchester as host is itself politically significant. The Conservatives are coming up North and are seeking to destroy Labour’s last remaining strongholds in the urban centres of the north.
After a string of disastrous local elections for Labour, the UK electoral map has become a sea of blue with the Conservatives dominating local government in all but a few areas – particularly Manchester. It has been over 20 years since a Conservative last represented the city as an MP in Westminster, and over fifteen years since they won a City Council seat.
In fact, the Tories have only recently glimpsed inside the Town Hall debating chamber through a defection to their Party, by former Liberal Democrat Councillor for Whalley Range, Faraz Bhatti. At full Council meetings he sits between the Labour and Lib Dem blocks like the unpopular child at school. It’s a fitting reflection of the city as a whole – the Conservatives just aren’t popular here. An instinctive hatred for them seems to coarse through Manchester’s collective consciousness. On his 2007 visit David Cameron was greeted by a crowd that cheered only when a hooded youth made gun motions at him. (The ‘hoodie’ was not, unsurprisingly, offered a hug in return).
That same year the Conservatives released a damning indictment of the Labour council’s record in power. “A teenage pregnancy rate double the English average; the second-highest level of men admitted to hospital due to alcohol, and fewer than one in three teenagers receiving five or more good GCSE passes.”
The report also found Manchester to be “the second-worst council for truancy; only one school leaver in four goes to university and two in five families with children are headed by a lone parent, compared with an average of one in five. Greater Manchester also has the highest number of antisocial behaviour orders in the UK, and there are seven gun-related incidents every day”.
Former Party Leader Iain Duncan Smith told the Guardian: “We almost have two Manchesters – one that is forging ahead, creating jobs, wealth and regeneration of rundown areas, and another mired in a deepening spiral of social breakdown.”
The report read as just another manifestation of the party’s traditional loathing of the poor, here being used to score political points among the aspirant middle classes. Few read into it a sincere desire to end social inequalities. Two years later MP Chris Grayling confirmed the impression with his oafish comparison of Moss Side with TV show The Wire. ‘Urban war’? Hardly.
Despite these recent reasons enough, Manchester Tory-phobia is a result of historical residue. The city’s legacy of working class radicalism and struggles for equality represents everything the Conservatives, the party of wealthy elites, big business and the gentry, have always been set against.
Many here can still trace the wounds inflicted on the region by Thatcher’s government, which set out to smash the organised working class, and remodel the British economy around financial services. That legacy is clear for all to see. As industries were forced into closure one by one, Manchester switched from a thriving city to a post-industrial wasteland. The birth-place of modern industry became its graveyard.
Under a ‘new’ Conservative government, we can expect more of the same cuts and closures. The Tories lead the charge of the main Parties seeking to make public services foot the bill for the bank bailouts. The economy in the North relies heavily on public sector employment and, as the Party is well aware, public sector cuts will hit here far harder than in the South. While the Tories pull out the stops to charm Mancunians for a week in October, the policies will remain firmly aimed to protect their own heartlands.
It seems that Manchester will not be fooled, however. At least two independent protests against the Conference are expected. The first, headed by Manchester No Borders, will demonstrate outside the Party-Police fringe event ‘How do we build public confidence in policing?’ on Sunday 4th, reminding all inside of police repression from the miners to the G20 and, a No Borders spokesperson explains, “why we will never have confidence in either the Tories or the police!” The Conference Pride event, to be held in Manchester’s famous gay village on the evening of Tuesday 6th, will be picketed by a range of groups led by Reclaim the Scene (for more on them, pick up our new print edition out next week). Their aim is to expose the cynicism behind the event, a limp effort to disguise the Conservatives abject failure to back any pro-LGBT equality legislation. Local club Poptastic is also sticking it to the Conservatives with its ‘Tory Shame’ special, held on the same night.
So have the Conservatives really got a chance here? David Cameron has long made it clear that he wants to crack labour dominance in Manchester. Achieving that aim at the next election, due before June 2010, would be a potently symbolic gain. But if they do manage to sneak in it will more likely be a result of voter despondency and disillusionment. A mass defection along policy lines is unlikely, although it is undoubtedly a sign of how similar the main Parties have become that the only positive thing left to say about Labour is, “at least they’re not the Tories”.
Siobhan McGuirk and Andrew Bowman
More: Manchester, Opinion
Comments
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They might be surging ahead in the polls, but i still think they’re kidding themselves if they think they’ll win in manchester.
Comment by paddy on October 2, 2009 at 6:52 pm
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