Manchester Reunited

Overshadowed by big cousin London to its south, Manchester has put a lot of effort into stamping its mark on history and the map, writes JAN CORBETT.

In the centre of Manchester's new, central shopping district, outside the world's largest Marks & Spencer, stands a quaintly old-fashioned red postbox. It is a monument to one of the most devastating acts of terrorism that the IRA perpetuated on the British mainland. This was Manchester's ground zero.

In the summer of 1996, a white van packed with explosives pulled up alongside this post box. In the way of the IRA, a warning was phoned through 45 minutes before detonation - enough time for police to clear the area.

Although there were no fatalities or serious injuries, the explosion was large enough to demolish the Arndale shopping centre and blow the windows out of buildings several blocks away. The postbox sustained several scratches.

Traumatic though the bomb was, in some ways it has been the making of Manchester, and it certainly spawned a boom for glaziers. It gave the old city a rare opportunity to redesign its heart, and rescued it from the travesties of 1960s architecture that still blight many English cities - even 800-year-old pubs were able to be moved to more convenient locations.

The result is a pedestrian-friendly, modern yet character-filled downtown that seems to work.

It is perhaps inevitable that flying into Manchester on a typically drizzly day, as the clouds part to reveal the expected rows of red-brick terraced housing the theme to Coronation Street starts running spontaneously through my head - in a nice way.

But after years of hosting pilgrimages from antipodean fans desperate to claim they have had a pint in the Rovers, the Granada Studios are now closed to the public: tourism was interfering with filming.

And you get the strong impression that the people who promote Manchester are quietly relieved about that. Coronation Street is not the image the city wants to project. Its award-winning performing arts centre, the Lowry Centre, is more its style now.

Tourism has never really been Manchester's thing, which is probably why it has only just got its first five-star hotel, the Lowry. The Midland hotel, by contrast, is comfortable with its old-worldly, gracious charm and will forever be pointed out as the place where Rolls met Royce.

Neighbouring Liverpool might have the Beatles, but Manchester has spawned a stable of music stars in its time, and that is something Mancunians like to talk about. There's a by-no-means exhaustive list, which includes the Hollies, the Bee Gees, 10cc, Oasis, Simply Red, the Smiths and New Order. In the local vernacular, they were all "genius".

And that is where England's northern cities, such as Manchester, whose economic fortunes have been buffeted by the changing vogues in manufacturing and more recently by New Right economics, share much in common with New Zealand.

Always overshadowed by London, in the way we are by Australia, Mancunians are ever-anxious to trumpet "first" and "biggest", putting their city on the map as modern and progressive, and boosting income and employment. Its cheeky bid to secure the Olympics and its success at gaining this year's Commonwealth Games are testimony to that.

The list of "firsts" and "biggests" does make interesting reading. Manchester's place in history is secured as Britain's first industrial city, founded on cotton. Its damp climate made it ideal for spinning, its entrepreneurial flair made it ideal for trading. The raw material was traded in a room in central Manchester described as the world's biggest room. It is now a theatre.

Industrialisation led inevitably to political agitation. (Mancunians have always had a tendency to the radical. They were one of the few groups to support Cromwell during the Civil War.)

It became on the one hand the birthplace of trade unions, on the other a nursery for the philosophies of the free-marketeers - the Manchester School - who rallied against the 19th-century corn laws, which guaranteed prices to landowners so that after a bad harvest the poor could not afford corn. Ironically, nearly two centuries later the free market would almost destroy Manchester when the Thatcher Government removed the tariffs that protected its industries.

Manchester was also the birthplace of the British women's suffrage movement. First with Lydia Becker, who founded the Society for Women's Suffrage in 1867, followed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, who founded the Suffragettes in her home in Nelson St. The house is now a museum of the movement and admission is free.

Another first for Manchester was vegetarianism, in 1809. It is typical of Mancunians' sense of humour that they add it was started by a man named Cowherd. Typical, too, that it boasts its most recent first - the world's first UFO landing ground. Don't ask. And of course, as the home of the world's most popular soccer team Manchester United .

Manchester is also the gay capital of the north, with its own canal-side gay village of clubs and restaurants and hosts Britain's biggest gay and lesbian festival - It's Queer Up North - every second year.

The city also claims a place in the rise of communism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels spent many a happy hour in the Chetham's Library - barely a block from that largest Marks & Spencer - studying and philosophising on a new world order "whilst the first city of capitalism pulsed all around them, utterly careless of their thoughts", says the Manchester guidebook.

The square table in the bay window where they worked has been preserved - and admission to view it, the list of books they borrowed and the letter Mark left for Engels, are free.

It was here that Engels wrote Condition of the Working Class in England, published in 1844. It isn't hard to imagine in those early years of industrialisation how grim those conditions would have been.

Grim enough that nearer Liverpool, at Port Sunlight, William Lever, the original maker of sunlight soap and founder of Unilever, the company that still makes your soap powder, built a model village for his workers, to lift them out of the squalor that was their lot in industrial Manchester.

Lever may have been well ahead of his time in caring about the lifestyle of his workers. But by today's standards he would be labelled a control-freak. Reportedly, he used to walk around the village to check the curtains were open in the morning and his workers weren't sleeping in - even when they weren't required at the factory.

These days the houses in Port Sunlight - surprisingly large, tudor-style dwellings - are freehold. But there is still a creepy sense that someone is always watching you. In the way of modern gated communities, owners still have to conform to rules about what they can and cannot do on their properties.

Still, Port Sunlight stands as testimony to the idea that in the northwest of England they give a lot of thought to trying to make things better for people.

Which is also what securing the Commonwealth Games has been about. The stadium is smack in the middle of east Manchester, an economically deprived area that could not attract industry or jobs. Not only has building the sporting venues provided construction jobs, but it is hoped that running the venues after the games will also provide employment.

The stadium is destined to become the home of Manchester City football team and the canal that links the stadium to the city is being lined with new, canal-side homes.

Should the promise of the Commonwealth Games prove hollow for Manchester after the athletes have left, one thing is certain. Manchester will do what it always does - go out and find a new, ambitious, maybe slightly controversial, idea with which to reinvent itself.

* Jan Corbett travelled to Manchester courtesy of the British Tourist Authority.

Case notes

Things to see

* The Lowry is one of Greater Manchester's newer attractions on the north side at Salford Quays.

A theatre and art gallery complex in striking glass and steel, it is named after Manchester's most famous artist, Lawrence Stephen Lowry, whose stick-figure paintings reflected the lives of the working classes. It houses more than 350 of Lowry's works. Opened in 2000, it was the flagship for the regeneration project for Salford, one of the poorest areas in Britain.

* A footbridge walk away from The Lowry is the new Imperial War Museum North, which will be open in time for the Commonwealth Games, with displays revealing how war shaped our lives in the 20th century. The building is designed by Daniel Libeskind, who was responsible for the Jewish museum in Berlin.

* The Pumphouse: People's History Museum, is the only British museum dedicated to the rise of social and political thoughts that shaped ordinary people's lives. It starts with the cotton industry, moves through radicalism and socialism and ends, of course, with football.

Getting there

Cathay Pacific flies daily from Auckland to London, with onward connections to Manchester. Return economy class fares start at $2399.

Visit Britain

The Lowry