Len Johnson, boxer from Clayton

This Friday marks the start of Manchester Histories Festival – a massive programme of events celebrating the unique history of our gorgeous city.

The programme is incredible – full of informative, interactive and interesting ideas which open a new door into Manchester’s past. There is just so much stuff – I’ve done a wee highlight of the events which concern the north and east of the city here.

Inevitably, though, I haven’t had anywhere near enough space to do the festival justice – it really is worth having a read through the website and picking out any events that take your fancy.

The ones that I might go to are the Witness to Peterloo workshops at the John Rylands Library this Saturday, a talk on those fateful events of 1819.  I might also nip down to the Football Pub tour – admittedly, I know only a scant amount about football, but I know a lot about pubs. There’s also a talk about Len Johnson, who I’ve run a few stories on in the past.

I’m blogging about this because I really do feel that our history is important and we should learn all we can from events of the past. Life 200 years ago often seems remote and irrelevant to life today – but the successes of Manchester as the world’s first industrial city has shaped the city we see today.

Manchester (and Salford) led the world in the fight against slavery, sparked a massive change in the British democratic system in 1819 at Peterloo and stood as the bastion of co-operation and industry throughout the late 18th and 19th Centuries. Our city is still innovating – our scientists have just discovered graphene – much too technical for me, but altogether a good thing.

We must celebrate our past so that we can concentrate on our future. As Benjamin Disraeli said: “What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow.”