Manchester

Manchester. Sited where natural routes crossed and bridges could be maintained, the Roman military station Mamucium or Mancunium controlled the Brigantes, while acting as a supply base. In medieval times it was a dependency of the capital manor of Salford, becoming a trading centre within an agricultural community, and during the Civil War was strongly parliamentarian, although some prominent local families remained stubbornly catholic. Encouraged by the moist atmosphere, soft water, and nearby coal supplies, local textile industries so flourished that Manchester became their chief commercial centre as well as a manufacturing and finishing site. New production methods and transport facilities (e. g. Bridgwater canal) greatly increased output, and the merchants and manufacturers began to organize a factory system. Population expansion from immigrants attracted by employment opportunities resulted in social and political problems because of the conflict between a still feudally run market town (enfranchised only in 1832) and a burgeoning industrial centre. Crowded, makeshift dwellings and dangerous sanitary conditions underlay a strong working-class radical movement and the so-called ‘Peterloo massacre’ (1819), but unemployment and Luddism were tempered by the rise of trade unionism and methodism. Belief in free trade prompted Cobden and Bright to push for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the city's political temper began to harden into Liberalism. Prosperous, confident, and progressive, the merchant princes of Victorian Manchester invested in bricks and mortar, railways, and the ship canal, but the smoke pushed residents into the suburbs; its commercialization attracted accusations of philistinism, and poverty and squalor persisted. Home of the Manchester Guardian, Victoria University, and the Hallé Orchestra, it was a city of enormous vitality in its cultural and intellectual life. After the decline of cotton, the huge variety of engineering projects and distributive trades helped maintain it as a regional and metropolitan centre, with less air pollution, but service industries are replacing these in their turn, and it remains a city in transition. The metropolitan area as a whole has become a magnet for Commonwealth immigrants into Britain.

A. S. Hargreaves