The regeneration of east Manchester: A political analysis

By Georgina Blakeley and Brendan Evans

East Manchester has been the site of one of the most substantial regeneration projects internationally. The initiative in east Manchester confirmed the tag that the city is the ‘regeneration capital’ of the United Kingdom.

While the book focuses on a single project, it has wider relevance to national and international regeneration initiatives. The book assesses the outcomes of the regeneration, although it demonstrates the difficulties in producing a definitive evaluation. It has a political focus and illuminates and challenges many assumptions underpinning three major current academic debates: governance, participatory democracy and ideology.

The book is relevant to students of politics, geography, sociology, public administration and recent history but will also interest practitioners, academics and general readers interested in urban regeneration. Mancunians will also be fascinated by the rapidly changing face and character of their city as will those with an interest in Manchester’s football, the Commonwealth Games and Sportcity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781526102881

Georgina Blakeley

Brendan Evans is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Huddersfield

Book preview

1

Introduction

The regeneration of east Manchester is one of the largest projects of urban regeneration internationally. It provides one of the best possibilities for examining the character of Area Based Initiatives (ABIs) for addressing urban decline and the related social and economic problems. We examine the specific case study of east Manchester in depth. While each such initiative is sui generis, neither is regeneration entirely localist but is set in the context of a wider political economy.

The purpose of this case study is to examine the east Manchester initiative which it has been argued is the most ‘policy thick’ area in Britain (Ward, 2003: 123). The narrative of how east Manchester became such an extreme case of deprivation, and of the various attempts to respond to the problem, is itself a purpose of the book and we describe the way in which the initiative emerged and explain how it developed. The revival of a substantial area of a great city, which began in a major way with the new Labour Government after 1997, is a task that is never completed. The global recession, the election of the Coalition Government and subsequent cuts in public spending significantly altered the course and extent of regeneration, but some projects continue.

Urban regeneration in Britain has always been broadly defined and included physical, economic and social regeneration. It has tended to combine an attack on decline together with a vision of an urban renaissance, although in practice there is a gap between the two. Problems of urban decline were first acted upon in Britain with the urban programme of 1968 but since then ABIs have proliferated both nationally and internationally. Yet the problems in Britain were more marked by the 1970s than in comparable countries and the term ‘urban regeneration’ appears to have developed from British metropolitan planning. The oil crisis of 1973 advanced economic decline and similar policy responses have emerged internationally. Since many of the forces which have created urban problems are themselves international in character, and many of the policies are similar, it is tempting to describe urban regeneration as global. Yet there are varying local approaches and adaptations in response to specific circumstances. In some cases urban regeneration is about adapting the existing built environment while in others this combines with an attention to social problems, with varying degrees of state direction. The case of east Manchester is distinguished by its holistic approach, which seeks to cover economic, social and cultural regeneration.

It is important to describe the regeneration of east Manchester, but the narrative itself is insufficient without attempting to evaluate its success. There is no attempt here to offer a definitive evaluation of the initiative and still less to offer one of the success of ABIs in general. Instead, we present the results of some specific evaluations which have been undertaken, as well as considering the pitfalls in the evaluation process itself. Despite the difficulties of presenting an overall assessment, we suggest a number of achievements and limitations in the case of east Manchester.

Yet our purpose goes beyond simply describing, analysing and evaluating the regeneration of east Manchester since 1997. While we do describe the actors involved, and offer an overview of what they have accomplished, we consider further relevant issues. The agencies and structures which are involved in the process form a complex and diverse network. This raises the question of whether the project can be regarded as one of traditional government, or whether it is rather a case of fragmented governance. Also, given the extent to which a complicated partnership has been engaged in regeneration, it is necessary to enquire how far there has been a successful co-ordination of the project. The inclusion of a diverse range of statutory and non-statutory bodies in the initiative has been an advantage by virtue of the range of interests it expresses, while potentially posing a problem because of the resulting managerial challenge.

The regeneration of this particular area, its selection as a problematical segment of British urban life, the aims which have been established for it and the methods adopted are not value-free. It is necessary to interrogate the motives and intentions of policy-makers and to elicit the ideology, implicit or explicit, which underpinned the project under New Labour and led to its weakening under the Coalition Government. This relates closely to the debate about who have been the beneficiaries. Much is made by the proponents of the aim of engaging residents and responding to their aspirations in the process and outcome of regeneration. We investigate what has actually happened towards fulfilling this aim and seek to determine the extent and nature of resident participation in the project.

We are sensitive to the actual realities of the context of east Manchester and so aim to present an account which appreciates the experiences of people who are trying to conduct their lives in often trying circumstances. Equally, while we criticise the work undertaken by the institutions involved in the regeneration project we also note that many individuals have strained every sinew to make the project a success in order to improve the prospects for an impoverished part of Manchester. Accordingly, we pay attention to agency.

The specificities of time as well as of place are crucial in analysing a major urban regeneration programme. While we note that urban regeneration is a ubiquitous activity we address a specific spatial question, that of the particular needs and solutions which have emerged in east Manchester. If there are common issues confronting cities across the world, and even similar pressure resulting from the trend towards globalisation, we argue that the interactions between global economic pressures, national political forces and specifically local issues are particularly important.

Of equal importance to the spatial specificities of east Manchester is the temporal dimension. Whether the issue is how the project is governed, how policy is made and implemented, its ideological imperatives or the degree to which genuine participation has been accomplished, the answer is not static in character. Specific ‘snapshots’ of these issues at various stages between 1997 and 2012 will yield quite different responses. Over the duration of the initiative, governing arrangements have altered, central government’s involvement has varied, policies have been tried and abandoned, objectives have been modified and participation has been spasmodic, so a time-sensitive perspective is required.

There are sociological, cultural, geographical and economic aspects in the case of east Manchester, but the primary focus here is political. Ultimately, the establishment, maintenance and survival of this type of initiative is a political issue regardless of the social, cultural and economic impacts of the programme. It remains a political project despite the role of private monies, and public money has a major role to play. Governance, ideology and participation are political concepts but politics is vital in two other respects. First, the analysis here explores the policies of the Thatcher and Major Governments, and focuses especially on the impact of New Labour and the election of the Coalition Government in 2010, which have been major landmarks in the manner in which urban regeneration has been taken forward. We analyse the public policies involved in the programme which highlights the fact that a temporal perspective is essential. There are continuities, but also discontinuities in policy, when central governments change. Second, we are critical of the idea of there being a single public interest. Political decisions benefit some and harm others. ‘Power’ here is understood as a zero-sum game. In the judgements that we advance, therefore, we recognise that some people have gained and others have lost, or perceive themselves to have gained or lost. In other words the various stakeholders in the east Manchester initiative will have different views about the overall efficacy of the programme.

We have avoided the word ‘community’ thus far. The term is plagued by a multiplicity of definitions, some of which are normative and even romantic in nature, and others simply geographical descriptions. Further, the dispersed nature of east Manchester raises serious doubts about the possibility of cohesiveness at either a descriptive level or in terms of a common identity. Nor can the area be described as a single neighbourhood, but rather as an agglomeration of neighbourhoods which are sometimes in competition with each other for attention and the deployment of resources. Where the term ‘community’ is used in the book it is to reflect the language of those actors who use the term as both a passive and an active entity. The term ‘community’ is also used because it has an ideological resonance for some of the participants in the regeneration process.

The focus of this book goes beyond a detailed case study of regeneration in east Manchester to have wider relevance by using practice to analyse a series of theoretical topics. The first part of the book describes and evaluates various aspects of the initiative. We begin with a brief historical introduction which emphasises the importance of the temporal and highlights change and continuity in urban regeneration. A description of the structures engaged, either temporarily or permanently, in the regeneration of east Manchester is provided in Chapter 3. They range from formal structures with an elite genesis such as MCC, NEM, New Deal for Communities (NDC/Beacons), Regional Government Office (GO), North West Development Agency (NWDA), and English Partnerships (EP), now renamed as the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), through voluntary bodies such as Four Communities Together (4CT) to groups of local activists such as Communities for Stability (C4S). Some of these bodies have a sole focus on the regeneration of east Manchester while others have it as only a part of their functions. Chapter 4 provides a description of the key projects which comprised the regeneration initiative and also suggests a periodisation of the process which demonstrates the significance of temporality. While our objective is not to provide a definitive evaluation of the initiative’s success, in Chapter 5, we discuss the major evaluation reports which have been produced and highlight positive and negative elements of the initiative.

The second part of the book uses practice in east Manchester to analyse a series of theoretical topics. While the first part of the book began with the historical context of urban regeneration and of Manchester’s experience in this area, we provide context for the second part of the book with an analysis of the ideological roots of regeneration policy with a view to examining how national and local ideology interact. Since we argue that policy decisions are rooted in political values, Chapter 6 seeks to tease out the ideological principles behind New Labour’s establishment of the initiative and its future under the Coalition Government.

Chapter 7 addresses the the co-ordination of these diverse institutions and uses this evidence to interrogate the concept of governance. This chapter on governing arrangements provides a corrective to recent publications which diminish the role of local government and is wary of replacing existing approaches to local politics with imported interpretations from such different political and economic systems as the United States. We argue on the basis of east Manchester that the idea of traditional government with a powerful central and local state still carries validity. Finally, one of the recurring themes in the analysis of urban regeneration is the extent to which residents have been involved in the process. Chapter 8 evaluates resident participation against the specific circumstances of east Manchester rather than against any normative ideal of what constitutes ‘genuine’ participation. In the Conclusion, we reiterate the book’s main arguments (Figure 1.1, 1.2).

1.1 Map of east Manchester’s regeneration area with ward boundaries

1.2 Map of east Manchester’s regeneration area with Beacons, NEM and MCC boundaries

2

The past and present of east Manchester

An appreciation of contemporary urban issues requires an understanding of the historical context. Historical amnesia is to be avoided. It is easy to discard the ahistorical claim that the present situation is not comparable with anything from the past because many of the ‘underlying problems’ continue. As Marcus argues, however (1974: 253), there is scope to debate what those ‘underlying problems’ actually are. Yet the view of MCC leader Richard Leese is understandable from the perspective of improving east Manchester’s image. He asserted the need ‘to draw a line on using the history of east Manchester when describing the area’ because he believed a focus on its history was unhelpful (NEM Board Minutes, 30/11/2004). Yet many of those involved in the regeneration of the area emphasise the historical roots of east Manchester’s contemporary problems in describing ‘the basket case’ that it had become by the late 1990s. A historical focus also demonstrates the importance of a temporal approach to understanding urban regeneration.

The comparability of aspects of the past in Manchester with the current situation is suggested by the aspiration of those presently engaged in east Manchester’s regeneration to return the area to the position which it occupied in the nineteenth century as the wealth-generating part of the city. In the nineteenth century wealth was created by the mining, textiles and engineering industries and while currently the aim is to create the city’s wealth through different means, the comparison between the two eras is apparent (Interviews, 30/03/2010). A historical understanding also assists an appreciation of the problems and possible solutions to the malaise of east Manchester and guards against the error of thinking that everything which is occurring is novel.

The issues of economic change, social deprivation, the spatial and socially dispersed nature of the population, the initiatives undertaken by local elites to improve the quality of life, the interventionist tradition of the local Council, the styles of popular culture and particularly the focus on housing problems have long resonated in the city, and particularly in the eastern neighbourhoods. Nor is the importance of understanding the processes of change and continuity confined to the distant past. To understand the emergence of the focus on regenerating east Manchester it is vital to understand the politics and economics of Manchester from the 1970s to the arrival of the New Labour Government of 1997. The deprivation inflicted upon the working classes by the rapidity of nineteenth-century industrialisation was reflected in the consequences of the equally rapid deindustrialisation of east Manchester after the 1970s. Temporal issues also surface when we consider that the deprivation of east Manchester ‘is also the result of the United Kingdom being the first industrial nation [so] that its infrastructure has become more outworn than that of other countries which have also engaged in regeneration in recent years’ (Crouch, Fraser and Percy, 2003: 1).

Parallels in history

The activities of the ‘Manchester men’ in the nineteenth century have their counterparts in the individuals who seek to address contemporary problems. Alongside the new exploitative mill and factory owners of the Industrial Revolution were men, or in the case of the novelist Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell, a woman, who sought improvements. These individuals described the social conditions of the working classes. Dr James Kay, for example, who worked at the Ancoats Dispensary in a shoddy building in an area of factories and tenements, wrote a report on sanitary conditions which confirmed the link between ill health and a squalid environment (Messinger, 1985: 37). In the novels of Mrs Gaskell, the divergence between rich and poor was a central theme. One of her fictional characters refers to the gulf between the classes by asking, ‘why are they so separate, so distinct, when God has made them? …Whose doing is it?’ (Hunt, 2010: 55). Reform movements resulted, therefore, from the activities of civic-minded individuals, and individual agency remains important today. Responding to Dr Kay, and to other commentators, the Manchester Improvement Committee set up in 1844 led to the Borough Police Act of 1844 and the Sanitary Improvement Act of 1845, which were examples of Manchester giving a lead to other large towns in the country (Briggs, 1963: 107). The efforts of one reformer, the Liberal MP Mark Philips, led to the creation of A Committee for Securing Open Spaces for Recreation and then to the establishment of the first large public park in an English city in 1846 (Briggs, 1963: 132). Philips Park in the Bradford neighbourhood provides recreational space to this day. The temperance mission and the university settlement charity were set up in Ancoats in the 1890s (Kidd, 2006: 152). Similarly, Manchester business leaders in the 1980s and 1990s were active in urging the regeneration of the city (Cochrane, Peck and Tickell, 1996; Peck and Ward, 2002: 9). MCC has long had an activist tradition with growing civic responsibility, and by the 1890s it was ‘one of the strongest and most effective civic authorities ever known’ (Kidd, 2006: 156). In the late Victorian era civic identity accompanied commercial viability and, in a similar way, the partnership between business and MCC since the 1980s has aimed at reviving the city’s economy. Neither set of individuals in either period were entire paragons of altruism and were as much motivated by a desire to improve the quality of the life in the city generally as to focus on the greatest need, the situation faced by the poorest people in society.

The specific origins of the localities of east Manchester can be traced back to the hamlets of Openshaw, Gorton and Ancoats in the fourteenth century but the final city boundary was determined only in 1938 and included Gorton, West Gorton, Openshaw and Newton Heath which were all included in 1890, and Bradford which was attached in 1889 with the remainder of Gorton joining in 1890 (Kidd, 2006: 202). The Manchester Plan, issued in 1995 by MCC, defined east Manchester as being bounded by the Oldham Road and the Hyde Road and following a wedge extending from the city centre (Great Ancoats Street) to the city boundary with Oldham and Tameside. It defined the problems of Gorton as dense housing, a poor environment and a lack of space; of Bradford as dereliction and decay; of Ancoats as the decline of business and employment and, for the area as a whole, of a trend since the 1960s towards unemployment, decline, the rise of vacant and derelict land and under-utilised buildings (MCC, 1995).

It was the coming of the Industrial Revolution which led to the rapid growth of the city to such an extent that Asa Briggs memorably described Manchester as the ‘shock city’ of the 1840s (Briggs, 1963: 108). Industrialisation and urbanisation proceeded hand in hand between 1850 and 1910 (Waller, 1991: 69). As early as 1731 Ashton Old Road opened as a turnpike road with toll gates, including one at Grey Mare Lane where the headquarters of NEM is currently based, and in 1740 John Seddon bought the mines and coal veins from Sir Oswald Mosley to develop coal mines in Bradford (Grant, 2010: 20). The construction of the Ashton Canal in 1792 and the Rochdale Canal in 1804 ensured that the eastern part of the city would develop commercially and industrially. Such major mills as those in Ancoats, for example, in Redhill Street and Jersey Street, date from the 1790s, and mills overshadowed everything in Pollard Street (Franck, 1994: 17–18). The canals were used to process coal, and raw and processed cotton. At present, such mills are acquiring a new role in the regeneration process as hotels and apartments and the canals are being transformed to become aesthetic and environmental assets. Coal was also transported to Manchester by the Bridgewater Canal from 1741 (Glinert, 2009: 11) and coal mining in Bradford in east Manchester drove forward the manufacture of steel and cotton (Grant, 2010: 180).

These developments led to the emergence of a ‘poverty belt’ around the city centre as the profits generated by the mills and factories were transported outside the area to more extravagant dwellings where the new entrepreneurial class lived. This new wealthy class built houses in order to escape the dreadful living conditions experienced by those housed in the inner ring of the city. Only currently, with the demolition of houses in the regeneration neighbourhoods of north and east Manchester, might there be a challenge to the residential pattern which was in place by the 1850s; that of concentric circles with the poorest living in an inner ring, surrounded by a solid mass of working-class terraces, and then an outer ring of middle-class suburban villas.

The factories in Ancoats, nearby Holt Town and Beswick grew up together with very dense working-class housing for the employees (Kidd, 2006: 160). Regeneration officers in east Manchester still refer to the ‘doughnut’ shape of the city, recognising that in relative terms the position of class-based residential segregation remains unchanged, although their purpose is to develop mixed housing in order to alter it. It remains a challenge (Interview, 30/03/2010). By the time of the 1841 Census, therefore, the city of Manchester had emerged and was recognised as a great urban centre. It was simultaneously renowned for unleashing appalling social and economic conditions for the new working class. The squalor of the conditions was widely commented upon by contemporaries, and as Paris in the 1900s or London in the 1960s, Manchester was as much visited and written about as it is today. While the poverty and squalor have clearly been reduced in absolute terms since the nineteenth century, the problems of social and economic deprivation have a long history. Manchester suffered dreadful slums, frightening epidemics, appalling mortality rates and enormous inequalities (Platt, 2005: xiv). De Tocqueville described a city of ‘a few great capitalists, thousands of poor workmen and a little middle class’ (Kidd, 2006: 18). He referred to the lack of control over pollution and to the daily emissions enveloping the city in a blanket of smoke. He foresaw ‘bloody division and social conflict between the privileged few and the disadvantaged many’ (Platt, 2005: 4). The French journalist, Léon Faucher viewed Manchester as ‘an unnatural grotesque outgrowth’ and as a ‘monstrous agglomeration’ of suburbs (Faucher, 1969: 16). Most famously, Engels, through his long-term direct contact with the workers of Manchester, described the horrors of urban industrial life. He graphically referred to ‘women made unfit for childbearing, children deformed, men enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie’ (Hunt, 2010: 108). While the problems of pollution were fewer by the late 1990s, the social conditions and the inequalities suffered by the residents of the inner ring of the city were still apparent before the regeneration of east Manchester commenced at the end of the decade. Gradually, since the 1970s, and according to many residents and regeneration officials, exacerbated by the years of Thatcherism, an area which was an economic and industrial giant had deteriorated into ghost neighbourhoods (Interviews, 1/09/2004 to 26/05/2010). Periods of sharp decline, however, also have historical precedents with, for example, the recurrent cotton crises of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s and the inter-war slump (Kidd, 2006: 102).

Political movements emerged during the nineteenth century, as a response to the condition of class-based inequality. On the one hand, representing the cosmopolitan merchant class was the middle-class politics of the Liberal Party, the free trade campaign and the Anti-Corn Law League which originated in the city in 1839 (Kidd, 2006: 149). These political movements drew their support from middle-class suburbs such as Victoria Park and Cheetham Hill (Kidd, 2006: 40). The owners of the large mills and factories were geographically detached from their workers, and this further facilitated a divergence between the political movements of the new middle-class and the new working classes. Middle-class and mainly Liberal Party politics were countered, however, by a history of protest, generated by the poor living standards and exploitation experienced by the new working class. These protests led on one occasion to violent riots at New Cross, where Oldham Road and Great Ancoats Street meet, which spiralled into the infamous Peterloo massacre of 1819 which has captured the imagination of later generations (Kidd, 2006: 76).

The protests not only took the form of violent upsurges, however, but also led to the formation of such organised structures as Chartism, Trade Unionism and the Suffragettes. Beswick also accomplished the election of the first-ever Independent Labour Party (ILP) candidate in 1894, and other electoral breakthroughs followed in Bradford and Openshaw (Kidd, 2006: 175). This early flowering of Labour political activity led indirectly to the growing domination of the Labour Party in post-Second World War Manchester politics, apart from a brief interlude in opposition from 1968 to 1971, so that by the time of the launch of the regeneration initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s there was an apparently permanent Labour control of the City Council which could ensure a consistently developing set of policies untrammelled by effective political opposition. The MCC leader after 1997, Sir Richard Leese, ensured the continuity of policy established by Graham Stringer from 1987 (Grant, 2010: 7). The main electoral change during the twentieth century was the replacement of the nineteenth-century Liberal influence, initially by a strong Conservative opposition to Labour, and later the disappearance of the Conservatives from both the City Council and Parliamentary representation, and only recently has there been the limited reappearance of the Liberal Democrats. By the twentyfirst century, it is a strong Labour domination challenged by a minority of Liberal Democratic councillors which characterises Manchester politics. It is notable, however, that while the Liberals in the nineteenth century embedded middle-class privilege (Platt, 2005: 70), they combined in the early years of the twentyfirst century an electoral base in the outer suburbs and inroads in deprived parts of east Manchester, with a claim to be upholding the interests of residents there against an unsympathetic and bureaucratic Labour Council (Interviews and C4S meeting, 04/11/2008). Demographic change, suburbanisation and working-class domination of the population within the city boundaries explain the political character of the city. In east Manchester the parliamentary representation is exclusively Labour but no longer does the Labour Party control all of the wards, as the Liberal Democrats have infiltrated such areas as Gorton and Newton Heath. Any ascendancy, however, remains contingent. In the 2011 local elections, the Liberal Democrats lost seats in east Manchester.

East Manchester’s neighbourhoods

There are also historical precedents with reference to particular neighbourhoods. Ancoats has always been identified as a problem neighbourhood and was a part of the ‘doughnut’ ring of squalor on the north eastern side of the city centre. Originally, a small rural hamlet, and in 1790 an area in which nature predominated, it was replaced by mills and machines and by the erection of crowded dwellings; described as ‘jerry built hovels’ (Platt, 2005: 51). The environmental injustice endured by this part of east Manchester led to ‘the bitter cry of Ancoats’ becoming a ‘chorus of support for social and environmental justice’ (Gilbert, 2001: 325). From being the world’s first heavily industrialised suburb it became the place where half the local children died before they were five years old (Glinert, 2009: 141). Yet the legacy of the mills, such as the line of cotton mills which runs alongside the Rochdale canal near to Great Ancoats Street, has left buildings which can either be incorporated into the revival of the neighbourhood or can be demolished to make way for new apartments.

Bradford was an economically active neighbourhood until 1968, consisting of a coal mine, the Stuart Street power station, huge gasometers and a number of engineering works (Glinert, 2009: 151). There was much enforced re-housing in the 1960s and 1970s, which some residents have compared unfavourably with the more sympathetic relocation process which has taken place since 1999 (Interview, 31/07/2007). Fort Beswick was a notorious housing project constructed in 1969. Its deck-access flats and maisonettes were attached to an unattractive building which led to serious structural problems and ultimate demolition in 1982 (Grant, 2010: 27). Residents were particularly aggrieved as they claimed that their warnings that the housing was built on a local coal seam had been ignored (Figure 2.1). It is the creation of Sportcity, and the investments which could flow from the developments linked with MCFC, which is now central to the regeneration prospects of the Bradford and Beswick neighbourhoods (Interview, 30/03/2010).

Clayton remains a working-class area but it has also lost most of its industry, and as recently as 2008 the Clayton Aniline Company, which was the largest manufacturing plant in Manchester specialising in lubricants, printing inks and plastics, closed down. It had characterised the industrial strength of the area in the inter-war years when, despite the slump, it had continued and secured a reputation as a good employer (Davies, 1963: 218).

Gorton was featured in the television drama Shameless, which displayed its impoverished character. Its decline was precipitated by the closure of Beyer, Peacock in 1966, despite the company having produced over 8,000 railway engines in the previous century, as a result of the switch from steam to diesel in the 1950s (Grant, 2010: 26). Gorton’s image has been improved by the restoration of the Monastery building from the derelict structure into which this Pugin building had declined to its current utilisation as a community centre.

2.1 Fort Beswick

Beer consumption was an important element of recreation in east Manchester through breweries such as