Like the Guardian, Manchester is reckoning with its historical links to slavery

‘Abraham Lincoln wrote to Manchester cotton workers in response to a statement they sent to him in 1862.’ Lincoln Square in Manchester. Photograph: Gordon Marino/Alamy

On the day that the Guardian launched its powerful Cotton Capital project, the city of the paper’s birth was hosting a visit from the US ambassador that, intentionally and unintentionally, exposed Manchester’s complicated relationship with slavery.

It began with a lunch meeting in a former bank in the city’s old financial district, which was built with cotton capital and, uncomfortably, has a depiction of slavery on a stained-glass window.