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Mark Nelson, Northern Powerhouse Artist
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“The bloody scene is bloody sad.
The bloody news is bloody bad.”
The bloody news is bloody bad.”
Manchester poet John Cooper Clarke this morning as the death toll rises. 22 with 58 in grave/critical condition.
Philip Collins writing in The Times reminds us:
- Disraeli called Manchester ‘the philosophical capital of the world.’
- The Manchester school advocated free trade and democracy.
- The City stood, and stands, wholly in opposition to Monday’s nihilism.
- On June 15, 1996 the IRA exploded the largest ever bomb exploded in Britain, complete with 1,000 foot mushroom cloud. 212 people injured.
- The City completely regenerated following this atrocity. From a failed industrial city into a cosmopolitan open inclusive metropolis.
- Manchester was the home of Free Speech. From John Bright the Quaker, to suffragette Christabel Pankhurst in 1904 to Bob Dylan’s electric guitar in 1966 (this Judas moment!).
- Manchester has the highest Jewish population outside London, vast Irish contingent, and the 4 percent of the City who are Muslim have been welcomed as good Mancunians.
- Shelley said – after the St Peter’s Field Massacre in August 1819, with 11 killed and 600 injured by cavalry charging the 60,000 assembled arguing for parliamentary representation, the people of Manchester “Rise like Lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number.”
