Enclosed at the face; A covering for all; A covering in part; Worn as a disguise; “I am Batman!” This one is to amuse.
Industrial melanism in evolution; From one code of darkness to natural selection; Pollution and solution across generations; Soot deposits and sulphur dioxide making way; But, in better times it did not stay.
The fibre, the gauze, the fitting; Bringing laughter, applause and teeth-gritting; The wearer or a surgeon, or that of the patient; Bedragglednon-conformity latent; Attitudes infect and vendettas follow; Collaborate via masking tape bridging the hollow.
A shield used to frighten; This veil; The shaped false face; Fancy dress? The vizard. The visor.
Bound together, hidden from all; Abducted and placed up against a wall; The collector hidden, concealed and camouflaged from sight; Lovell’s telescope uncloaking the night.
Turing screening the enshrouded Enigma; Overlooked by figures with their stigma; How did the cell know what to do? Sent messages of Morphogenesis vertigo.
There’s a financial crisis, then there is austerity, the Grenfell Tower disaster, then a global pandemic, and recessions, and environmental disasters, and climate change, before race battles and financial meltdowns and worries. Oh, there are worries. So many worries. A book written and translated in the 1880s is as ever-relating now as it ever was. We have the translation skills of Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky to thank. Following the 1848 revolutions, Friedrich Engels moved to Manchester for around two decades. Through capitalism he was afforded the luxury of revolutionary ideas.
Friedrich Engels dated Irish immigrant Mary Burns. After Mary’s death, his love passed to her sister Fenian (Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)) Lizzie. They married on her deathbed. In ways he had a Clark Kent and Superman lifestyle. Between riding in hunts in Cheshire, chasing foxes for fixes, he was slipping money out of his accounts to revolutionaries. This Bruce Wayne on one hand, Batman on the other existence was a huge contradiction. Part knight in shining armour and protector to part capitalist imperialist pig. A life beautiful and ugly in the reflection of contradictions.
“social murder” – Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
Artist Phil Collins gave Friedrich Engels a home next to HOME in Tony Wilson Place. What was all that about? Our Friedrich Engels was an honorary Manc back in the day. He lived in and around the area for many years. He observed industry at its most brutal and gathered his thoughts in and around the city. The statue of German Friedrich Engels stands outside HOME, an arts and entertainment complex in the heart of the city of Manchester. Phil Colins gave Manchester a piece of its history that is well-documented in paper form, but little seen in the day to day tapestry of the city’s vast structures.
“The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.” – Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
Whereas Engles came from Barmen, Kingdom of Prussia, the artist Phil Collins moved to Berlin, from Britain. Back in 2017, a 3.5 metre monster of a stone statue, fractured and left for ruin was moved from the eastern Ukrainian village of Mala Pereshchepina to Manchester. As part of the Manchester International Festival, it was unveiled as part of a show called Ceremony, featuring songs and dance, with a ditty by the Super Furry Animals’ frontman Gruff Rhys. In an unassuming carpark, the procession moved over to Tony Wilson Place and all around newbuilds sat and towered above old mills, relics of the Industrial Revolution, and people sipped coffee from Starbucks cups and held Tesco carrier bags. The statue passed by Engels’s birthplace in Barmen, Berlin and was subject to great interest.
“The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.” – Principles of Communism (1847)
Like Christ, Mohammed and many other Gods, their words have been responsible for countless deaths through misinterpretation or abuse. They have been used by the powerful to suppress or enhance those who choose to use them. Think Trump with Twitter, or Elliot Carver (actor Jonathan Pryce) in the 1997 instalment of James Bond, Tomorrow Never Dies. So, having a legacy or words and ideas, a multifaceted figure arrived to Mancunian soil. A now-outlawed sign of communism may now be outlawed in the Ukraine, but in Manchester this statue of Engels symbolises the then, the now and the future. The scar where the statue was severed in half of the waist is clear. The artist Phil Collins had negotiated the statue as a gift from one community to another. Its journey was documented – with a video commissioned.
The writer of The Condition of the Working Class in England, in sculpture form fits in with the spirit of Manchester. A radical, against the establishment and for the people. The concrete structure looms over the paving slabs below, featuring patches of lichens and a broad beard. The very city he once developed his philosophies in has changed much but many social issues remain. The horrific conditions of workhouses have gone, but in the COVID-19 days of capitalism and struggle, new challenges are present. I’m lucky, as are many Mancs, that we grew up later in better times. Our Engels though, he was here when misery and suffering were commonplace.
“Manchester is a meeting point. It represents both the birth of capitalism and the factory system and the magic of capitalism, the magic of surplus value.” – Phil Collins, The Guardian, to writer Charlotte Higgins (30/6/2017).
Engels had such an influence on what would happen in the 20th century that even today, his relevance and legacy is present. This German philosopher, historian, communist, social scientist, sociologist, journalist and businessman understood Dialectical materialism and Continental philosophy whilst remaining a keen advocate of solutions to class struggle. So, on July the 16th 2017, Engels came home and Manchester had a bash to mark the occasion.
As per the ideas of Collins, he shifted a statue from one space to another, and an idea from one place that once embraced communism to one that in all fairness skirts closer to Labour and Socialism than the media would have you think. Now in 2020, we’re seeing statues of slavers, Romans, imperial figures and all under deep scrutiny. Just as Saddam Hussein and Colonel Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi fell, so to, are the busts of Sir Winston Curchill and co. It’s like a historical hunt in the manner of Operation Yew Tree, but without BBC stars. Just like some of the childhood stars of old, even the big guns of history are there to be torn at with our claws. #BlackLivesMatter is opening a whole range of debates and dialogue.
“That the Materialistic Socialists will improve H. [History] for the poor. Their best writer, Engels, made known the errors and the horrors of our Factory System.” – Lord Acton, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), pp. 181–82
It has been around three years since we could dress up like Engels, make banners or talk with academics in the then named Engels Exchange at Tony Wilson Place. The statue still stands. The beauty of history is that it has happened. Now we’re in an era when more and more history is being questioned. That’s good. That’s evolution in action. We have to be careful what we do with our history. Some statues remind us of different times and give us a voice for that period. They don’t always need to be celebrated and respected. They stand as a reminder of progress. All symbols must be questioned. It is our right and instinct as a species to want to be better. History shows us that Marx was more celebrated than Engels. As Engels slaved away writing Marx’s notes and supporting the Marx family, Marx had already departed this world. Engels may have come from a wealthy cotton-mill owning family but his time from 1842 to 1844 was profound.
In memory of those who have died in the workhouses and during this modern austerity.
“Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.” – Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story
Suffragette City by David Bowie was a song released in 1972. It was a B-side. That is to say that it wasn’t the focus of the single release. Starman, had that honour. Later it would appear on several albums, compilations and even other singles. Bowie had offered this song, written by himself and co-produced with Ken Scott to band Mott the Hoople. They politely said no thanks but accepted a song called All The Young Dudes. This piece of glam rock has a history before it was even recorded. It even references the movie A Clockwork Orange.
Suffragette City has wonderful rousing lyrics, great guitar work and power. An Occasional Dream, Heroes, and John, I’m Only Dancing are some of my favourite choices of David Bowie music. However, Suffragette City has an aura like no other. These tighter two-semitone gaps (F-G-A) really drive the song. That dummy ending, “wham bam, thank you, ma’am!” fires you back into an encore of chorus. It’s such a great track and one fitting for the growing theatrical rock and swagger of the 1970s.
Manchester though, should be the Suffragette City itself. The sometimes-called ‘powerhouse of the north’ was of course the birthplace of the Suffragette Movement. Our very own Mancunian superhero, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters battled hard against money and power, for the people and for the women of the world.
“Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.” – Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story
Emmeline Pankhurst’s former residence is today a museum and home to Manchester Women’s Aid (against domestic violence). The Pankhurst Centre, a pair of Victorian Villas, was once home to Emmeline and her three daughters Sybil, Christabel and Adela. They were all immensely political. Between 1891 and 1907, they lived together under those roofs and flew the flag of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The small house that is a museum features banners and sashes of the original purple and white colours.
“I want to say right here, that those well-meaning friends on the outside who say that we have suffered these horrors of prison, of hunger strikes and forcible feeding, because we desired to martyrise ourselves for the cause, are absolutely and entirely mistaken. We never went to prison in order to be martyrs. We went there in order that we might obtain the rights of citizenship. We were willing to break laws that we might force men to give us the right to make laws.” – Emmeline Pankhurst
Against the backdrop of cheap labour and a lavish textile industry, the city prospered as the spine of the industrial revolution. Here Socialism was birthed and Labour Unions formed. Community values were thrown at the establishment in their droves. So, with class division and heated change, up popped widow Emmeline Pankhurst. Her late husband Dr. Richard Pankhurst had been a barrister and sympathiser to the cause. There was immense risk to all for taking on the Edwardian overlords. Many were killed, many imprisoned and other atrocities committed towards them.
“Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend.” – Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story
Manchester’s Free Trade Hall now replaced by the Radisson Blu Edwardian Manchester, was built in 1853. It was a place central to Manchester’s progressive and radical history. The Corn Laws were repealed, and this building was a celebration of that. The building also stands on the site of the infamous Peterloo Massacre. Here, at St Peter’s Field, in 1819, 15 people were killed by the government’s cavalry and police. Over 700 people were injured. Like some of today’s global protests over the late George Floyd, these peaceful protestors were met with disproportionate aggression. At the Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, during 1905, suffragettes Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst pushed to fight for votes for women. Watching in the wings was a future prime minister, and then Liberal Party member, Winston Churchill. He offered to pay their bail but was refused. Five years later as Home Secretary, Winston Churchill would direct the uncompromising Police against Emmeline Pankhurst’s protest march of 300 women to Parliament Square. Politicians do like a good U-turn.
“The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics.” – Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story
Manchester has embraced pride in Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragette Movement. On St. Peter’s Square, just to the side of the Metrolink tramline, stands a proud Emmeline Pankhurst statue. Artist Hazel Reeves opted for Emmeline on a chair, a nod to her speech, “Rise up, women.” Some of her original and other Suffragette pieces can be found down the road, at the People’s History Museum. There are telegrams by Emmeline Pankhurst. The collection is a pure conservation to the history of working people in the UK. If you’re a student or an interested historian, this is the place to go for interpretation and study material relating to Suffragettes. It is all wrapped inside Henry Price’s former hydraulic pumping station. The Museum of Science and Industry and Quarry Bank Mill provide further atmospheric links to different times.
“My conduct in the Free Trade Hall and outside was meant as a protest against the legal position of women today. We cannot make any orderly protest because we have not the means whereby citizens may do such a thing; we have not a vote; and so long as we have not votes we must be disorderly. There is no other way whereby we can put forward our claims to political justice. When we have that you will not see us at the police courts; but so long as we have not votes this will happen.” – Christabel Pankhurst
Influenced by her mother, Sophia Craine, Emmeline Pankhurst passed on her strong character to her daughters. On the 14th June 1928 died in a nursing home in Hampstead. She was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London. Her legacy is well-known.
“The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.” – Lucretia Mott, U.S. Quaker, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and social reformer.
Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst, DBE, born of Old Trafford (22nd September 1880), and was laid to rest in Santa Monica, California, U.S.A. in 1958, the day before Valentine’s Day. She had spent two years exiled in France during 1912-13 and directed the militant action of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle had an airport named after him for his exile in World War 2. Christabel Pankhurst was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her dedication to public and social services. Of course, being British, and like many Suffragettes she had several blue plaques placed at places she frequented, mostly in Notting Hill.
“Mothers came to me with their wasted little ones. I saw starvation look at me from patient eyes. I knew that I should never return to my art” – Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst(5 May 1882 – 27 September 1960) was part of the alma maters of both the Manchester School of Art and the Royal College of Art. In 1956, she moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with her son Richard at the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie. Her social and healthcare work there earned her a state funeral. She died as an honorary Ethiopian. She is buried as the only foreigner with patriots of the Italian War, alongside the Holy Trinity Cathedral. Her son, Richard Keir Pethick Pankhurst OBE was a British academic and founding member of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.
“The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world. I am like a snowball – the further I am rolled the more I gain.” – Susan B. Anthony, American social reformer and women’s rights activist
Adela Constantia Mary Pankhurst Walsh (19 June 1885-23 May 1961) would move to Australia, far from her birthplace in Chorlton Upon Medlock. She would be the co-founder of both the far-left Communist Party of Australia and the far-right Fascist Australia First Movement. She spent some time in a Japan, before returning to Australia to face prison for her advocacy of peace with Japan.
“Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.” – Lucy Stone, suffragist and abolitionist.
Today the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst, Helen Pankhurst CBE is an international development and women’s rights activist and writer, as well as a Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her brother Alula Pankhurst (Manchester University PhD: Social Anthropology) is a social development consultant. His focus is Ethiopian studies and the Young Lives multidisciplinary, longitudinal study, multinational study. Like Alula, Helen Pankhurst CBE has two children and remains heavily connected to her Eithiopian heritage through CARE International.
“I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I said.” – Ida B. Wells, prominent journalist, activist, and researcher.
There are huge parallels to what’s happening in America and the world right now, with regards to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Much can be learnt from the Suffragette movement and their struggles. Let’s look at the Minneapolis City Council who have decided to disband and break-up the Minneapolis Police Department. They have formally committed to forming a community-led Police system. The system was broke, and many should – and hopefully will have the right to fix it. By the people, for the people.
“Time spent among trees is never time wasted.” – Anonymous
你好/ Ní hǎo / Nín hǎo / Hello / How do / S’mae / Namaste
Carbon emissions are one thing. The ozone layer and its depletion seemed to be the theme of the 1990s. But what about the other crap that we fling upwards into our atmosphere? As a species we have used our intelligence to create and combine a wealth of chemical knowledge to form so many new things. Earth had the basics and we adapted everything from nature into manmade conceptions. Our creativity spawned new fabrications and handiworks and we didn’t know their effects upon the natural world. Or, did we turn a blind eye?
So, where did this all begin? Manchester, of course. Well, not just my hometown, but pretty much all of Great Britain. Steam power, textiles, iron making and the inventors having a field day making new tools kicked off the Industrial Revolution. As fast as the spinning mule could spin, the revolution spread across Europe and to North America. As long as the cotton made on a loom could stretch, the methods of fast industry shout outwards across the world. Waters in rivers ran with colours and toxins unregulated. Skies turned black. Farming fields and forestry secumbed to the Cottonopolis that was Manchester. Coal demand shot up. Steam billowed upwards into the sky alongside toxic soot. The raw materials needed moving. Bridges such as Iron Bridge in England’s Shropshire set a new level of industrial infrastructure. Sir Richard Arkwright, Robert Peel, John Rylands and a whole host of blokes became rich, powerful and industrial very fast.
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.” – Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer
Yorkshire, Lancashire, Salford, Cheshire and Manchester became central to many movements. Even today, Quarry Bank Mill, in Styal operates to show visitors of life back then. Alongside this, there are UNESCO sites in Derbyshire dedicated to Arkwright’s work and so on. The effect of the Industrial Revolution demanded true innovation and architects met the call willingly. Up popped Bradshaw Gass & Hope, David Bellhouse, Philip Sidney Stott, and others to build for the new era. With that power needed generating and John Musgrave & Sons, amongst other stepped up to the glorious age of steam and engine power. One such company, Mather & Plattstill exist today in South Africa. Their 1817 origin by Peter Mather in Salford to John Platt taking over Salfird Iron Works in 1837 has been a diverse ride. They did their bit to enhance safety in cotton mills, distributing an automatic sprinkler; they expanded rapidly; they shipped the Machinery Annexe of the Paris Exhibition from France, up the Manchester Ship Canal and rebuilt it in Newton Heath by 1900. They expanded into Pune (India) before an Australian company purchased the company in 1978. After this Thailand, a German-takeover and still operate to this day. How many other companies from the Industrial Revolution era have gone on to become industrial powerhouses?
As a teenager I’d pass Houldsworth Mill, built by a design of Stott and Sons. The red brick mill had seen many cleaning jobs and now is housing accommodation fit for the rich and wealthy of today. Little did I know that at the time of passing that mill, I was passing a sister mill of ones found in Oldham’s Chadderton – not far from my Gran’s house. The factory system had given capitalism a huge kick up the backside. Like modern day China factory bosses, many factory owners back then in Britain became very rich, very fast. Some invested heavily in urbanisation for their workers. Healthcare, education and opportunity developed suddenly. A demand for better quality and fresher food followed. The standard of living improved. Did the working classes still feel the exploitation of heavy industry? Did each technological enhancement drown shances of a good swim the employment pool? Did they notice the smog building up?
“Environmentally friendly cars will soon cease to be an option … they will become a necessity.” – Fujio Cho, Honorary Chairman of Toyota Motors
Soon enough people got wise. Socialism and Marxism were born. People like Welshman Robert Owen influenced social care and reformation of working practices. Owenism became a movement, long before England centre-forward Michael Owen became a young mover of the footballing game. People were starting to see that the skies weren’t perfect. Something that has maintained to this day in the like of Greenpeace and others who don’t like too many airplanes in the sky.
“Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest.” – Robert Owen, philanthropic capitalist and social reformer.
Convicted terrorist and former University of Michigan mathematics Professor, Theodore Kaczynski was quoted as saying, and writing,“The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” In many ways, this is an agreeable statement. The western world gained considerable wealth and dominated the globe. Pollution, such as the legendary London smogs, the discolouration of tree barks, and the deaths of many aquatic species became general knowledge. The world’s population started a huge upwards trend. Natural resource depletion had begun. Chemical warfare on nature was now in full swing, battling against fresh air, clean seas and green habitats. The fossil fuels were now unlocked and ready to go.
“I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.” – Mother Teresa
As conditions improved generally for people, the speed of growth was unsustainable. Many became left behind. Poor working and living conditions, lack of education and healthcare and low wages alongside child labour amongst a whole host of problems arose. The world around humanity had fundamentally changed from a largely agricultural civilisation to one of machinery and motion. Even now, agriculture advanced with new machinery. Land could be used faster. Railways spread and communities grew ever closer. Dust tracks became lanes that became roads that became highways than became lane after lane of traffic. Sanitation had to catch up. Some countries dug drains and found ways to get those little poohs we do from the bowl to further along the water cycle, like the sea.
“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it’s not really there.” – Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
Disease occurrence escalated. We spotted new illnesses and cancers. Before we’d found the cures or ailments, more came along. And the more. And more. Still more pop up. Some were found to be linked to toxins, metals and exposure to manmade materials or chemicals. And today, our air is saturated with gases that reduce the protective layers of ozone (O3) needed to keep the Earth cool. Big hitters, of the fume world, chlorine and bromine atoms do huge damage. Just once chlorine atom smashes 100,000 ozone molecules out of the park. Wham. Gone! There are other similar ozone-destructive gases. This doesn’t take into account the gases that don’t reach the stratosphere. Some are too heavy to rise and end up in smoggy conditions or absorbed into our waterways.
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
One single rocket launch by NASA or whoever fancies a spot of space exploration, releases enough soot and aluminium oxide to deplete the ozone in a quantity far higher than global CFC emissions (chloroflurocarbon chemicals). So, expect to experience a few more UVB rays… and an added bonus of skin cancer might be swinging your way, unless by the year 2075 we can return the ozone hole to the levels noted before 1980. The 46-state signatories of the Montreal Protocol are likely to help. Especially, seeing as trump card Trump hasn’t exited it – but has yet to ratify the recent Kigali Amendment. Well he needs to concentrate on piping sales first. Trump’s record of science denial is alarming. His expected eradication of P.O.T.U.S.A. Obama’s Clean Power Plan is slowly gathering momentum, turning a nation that was slowly ridding itself of coal into a nation that once again will depend on coal. Please the fossil fuel industry. Fuck the world. The Affordable Clean Energy Rule is weak, at best. One mammoth nation does as a Twitter handle with a wig pleases.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw, Irish Playwright
Another gargantuan and colossal nation ploughs on with sweeping environmental policies. Public image pleasing, a sense of responsibility and a duty to the planet seem to be groing in China. China has undertook the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution at a lightning pace. It became the world’s manufacturing base practically overnight and maintained business as usual for a few decades. Since 2014, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment the People’s Republic of China has evolved. Headed by Li Ganjie (李干杰;). Steps have been small and steady but China’s eco-friendly energy generation is increasing. On top of this technology and environmental projects are under way left, right and centre. Qingdao will soon have an Eden Project – one of three in China. Laws, standards and regulations are being felt nationally. Shanghai has implemented strict recycling rules. Dongguan in South China’s Guangdong has many factories closing its doors because they cannot satisfy environmental protection laws. Policing is improving and implementation is going from lax to structured. Mega projects continue and this adds to the huge biodiversity loss of a nation that is suffering from significant environmental sustainability problems. Rapid urbanisation, energy demand and population growth won’t help – but some could debate China is doing more than the developed US of A. Resource demand shows no slowing as of this year… Much like the rest of the world – especially nations still developing.
“The Earth is what we all have in common.” – Wendell Berry, Poet
ACTON28: AGAINST THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC 