Andy Burnham has said more needs to be done to tell the story of how transatlantic slavery shaped Manchester and highlight the contributions by leading black individuals in the city.
The Greater Manchester mayor, who was elected in 2017 before being re-elected for a second term in May 2021, made the comments after the Guardian launched its Cotton Capital editorial project, which explores how slavery shaped the Guardian, Britain, and the rest of the world.
The project stems from an independent investigation into the Guardian founder John Edward Taylor’s and the paper’s early financial backers’ own links to slavery, which was commissioned by the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian. The study found that Taylor and nine of the 11 early financial backers had links to slavery, principally through the textile industry.
In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Burnham wrote of his pride that cotton workers in Manchester had refused to use enslaved-picked cotton during the American civil war. “161 years ago, humble cotton workers from Manchester sent a clear message to the rest of the world: black lives matter.”
But, he added: “I can’t rewrite history, nor should I sanitise it. Back in the 1860s, I can’t pretend that other voices in Manchester were not clouding the clarity of the cotton workers’ message – not least its most prominent newspaper.”
Burnham pointed to an essay by the Guardian journalist Lanre Bakare – The struggle for a black history of Manchester – as a clear sign that “more needs to be done to tell the story of how slavery shaped the city as well as spotlight more recent black Mancunian history”.
Burnham highlighted the story of Len Johnson, a communist antiracist activist and professional boxing champion in the 1920s, who was denied the chance to compete for the British title because of racist laws. The region’s mayor has previously backed a local campaign to get a statue of Johnson, who protested against the colour bar, erected in the city.
“I like to think that the cotton workers would have approved of the Cotton Capital project, although they might be a little surprised at how long it has taken to come about. It is finally addressing this ambivalence head on. What makes it stand out, in our gesture-rich social media age, is the fact that it meets the suffragettes’ test of ‘deeds not words,’” he wrote.
Burnham also highlighted the shocking case of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died from exposure to mould in a poorly maintained home in Rochdale. Burnham described the Housing Ombudsman for England findings of “othering” of residents by social landlords as a “stark reminder of just how much there is still to do”.
It comes alongside new wide-ranging analysis that found just 4.6% of people in prominent public positions in Manchester were black, a significant underrepresentation of the city’s black population, which stands at 14.8%.
Overall, the representation of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME) in Manchester’s prominent public positions was higher, at 18.7%, but still significantly out of proportion. Manchester’s BAME population is 43.2% of the city’s inhabitants.
Burnham wrote that Manchester had established a race equality panel and a leadership and partnered with Operation Black Vote on a mentoring programme in response to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
He added: “‘Justice demands for the black, no less than for the white, the protection of law,’ wrote Manchester’s cotton workers to President Lincoln. Sadly, their words are as relevant in 2023 as they were in 1862. But we must live in hope that the next 160 years will bring more human progress than the last.”
