Politics and Protest: Manchester and the fight for freedom

Manchester Friends Meeting House photography by Janette Martin, September 2020

1. Introduction
2. List of themes
3. Additional Reading
4. Discussion Points

Introduction

For centuries Mancunians have been at the forefront of social and political reform campaigns. From the Peterloo Massacre, the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Suffrage campaigns of the nineteenth century to Black Lives Matter today, the city has been at the centre of successive protest movements and pressure groups. Many of these campaigns are captured in the special collections held in the University of Manchester Library. Of particular interest is the Student ephemera collection in the Archives of the University of Manchester which show us the causes that have fired up Manchester students across the years. Other rich sources for twentieth century and contemporary political history can be found at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre. What political movements are you passionate about?

Manchester Student Union General Secretary, John Anzani, makes a plea by megaphone for the Union Council not to impose a threatened spending limit on the University Heath Centre, date unknown, c. 1970s

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List of themes

We are constantly developing new teaching collections and will be adding them regularly, so please bookmark the main page and keep checking back. In the meantime take a look at our Peterloo resource which documents a key political moment in the city’s history that still resonates today.

Peterloo: Documenting a Massacre

Samuel Bamford: poet, weaver and chronicler of Peterloo

Why was the 1945 Pan-African Congress held in Manchester? | Race Archive

• Animal rights, vegetarianism and veganism
• Anti-colonialism (including the Pan African Congress held in 1945 in Manchester)
• Anti-slavery campaign (nineteenth century)
• Chartism
• Communist Party of Great Britain
• Environmentalism and national parks
• LGBTIQ+ activism
• The Labour Party and Ramsay MacDonald
• Peace Movements (Crimean War, Boer War, First World War & CND)
• Student Activism
• Women’s Suffrage Movement

What political movements are you passionate about?

Three Years of War: Women’s Peace Crusade leaflet; 5, 1917

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Additional Reading

There are some excellent blogs on the city’s radical and grassroots history by Manchester Radical History Collective.

Discussion Points

What do we mean by ‘radical’?

Why has Manchester’s spirit of independence and resistance endured down the years?

Illustration of a Joan of Arc like figure, holding a Woman’s Franchise flag, 1918

Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library. All images used on this page are licenced via CC-BY-NC-SA, for further information about each image, please follow the link in the caption description.

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