A SADDLEWORTH-BASED writer hopes to be booking in for more success with his latest title.
And Brian Groom has learned from putting together Made in Manchester: A People’s History of the City that Shaped the Modern World how the city can impact this area.
The former journalist – who became editor of The Scotsman and assistant editor of the Financial Times newspapers – has narrowed his focus for his second work after Northerners: A History from the Ice Age to the Present Day proved a hit.
It takes on subjects like the suffrage movement, which started at a hillside meeting in Lydgate, music – which is much more than guitar-based bands and sport – much more than Manchester United and City.
Now during his research and writing, he has learned plenty about Saddleworth’s past and future relationship with the growing metropolis on its doorstep.
Brian, who lives on Chew Valley Road in Greenfield, said: “Boundary sensitivities and identities around the Manchester area are quite considerable.
“If you think there’s tension between Yorkshire and Lancashire, the tension between say Bolton and Manchester is quite something.
“It’s a complicated thing. I was born in Stretford but we lived just over the boundary in Whalley Range. Then we moved to Stretford then Sale, which was in Cheshire and is now part of Trafford.
“I went away for a couple of decades before coming to Greenfield, which is in the historic West Riding of Yorkshire and is now part of Oldham and Greater Manchester – and a lot of people don’t like that.
“I understand why they feel so strongly and I try to give due respect to that. For my own part, all I can say is I think people have multiple layers of identity.
“Personally, I feel I’m a Stretfordian, a Mancunian, a Lancastrian and a Northerner. They all mean something to me.
“But I respect how people feel about these things. I don’t get much worked up about local government boundaries, but I understand why some people do.
“Annie Kenney came from Springhead, she features quite big – there’s a whole chapter on women’s suffrage and the fight for women’s votes, which is such a big part of Manchester’s story.
“But the question of whether that wealth is permeating beyond the city centre? I think it’s yet to be shown. You see it in some areas, whether you see it in Saddleworth yet is hard to tell.
“I’m very conscious living here that things would’ve felt completely different 40 years ago. It would have been mostly local people working in the mills.
“Pennine towns generally had a reputation for being very enclosed but it’s not now, there are lots of Manchester commuters.
“It’s changed dramatically from what it would’ve looked and felt like at that time but the working from home boom ought, in theory, to encourage more work here.
“There are jobs where you can work here on most days, maybe going into Manchester one day or something. It’s a much nicer area too!”
Brian took about a year to research and write his latest work, which goes on sale on Thursday, May 23.
And as a journalist of some repute, he found this subject matter great to work on – he also found out things people would not assume about Manchester.
He added: “I’m a Mancunian, so I know the outline of the story and did some of it in researching Northerners, so it was case of going more deeply inti the same subject matter.
“One thing I loved about the history of Manchester was there’s a real story arc about it. It rises from being a tiny village in the Hundred of Salfordshire, almost from nothing to being the shock city of the Industrial Revolution.
“The world was beating a path to its door. Nobody had seen anything like the industrial city before.
“Then we had the bug period of decline in the late 20th century, people wondered whether the city was dying in that period, and it’s had a pretty amazing recovery since then.
“It’s almost a test case for how people live in cities in the 21st century.
“Is it all going to be in tower blocks in city centres? What jobs are we going to do? What’s the relationship between the city and its surrounding regions going to be like? How do you spread the wealth?
“That’s the fascinating thing about Manchester now, it’s a real international test case for the way we go.
“When I was researching Northerners, one of the things that surprised me was the extent of Lancashire’s Conservative working class voting habit in the past. That comes out in the Manchester story as well.
“People think of Manchester as a radical city – home of the Suffragettes, Chartism and Peterloo – and it is all those things, but it’s also had two long periods of Conservative dominance. It’s a more complicated picture than people may think.”
Despite celebrating the release of his second title, 69-year-old Brian admits he is already working on book number three.
He told Saddleworth Independent: “It’s another broader book and I enjoy the researching and the writing, particularly the writing.
“That’s where the journalism experience helps, I treat each chapter as if it’s a feature and I need enough reliable facts to fill it at the beginning, middle and end.”
* MADE IN Manchester: A People’s History of the City that Shaped the Modern World is published by HarperCollins and is released on Thursday, May 23, priced £18.99 at Amazon and Waterstone’s.
Curious about this “Then we had the bug period of decline in the late 20th century”. Was this Manchester’s response to the Beetles?. Maybe Midge Ure or Ant and Dec were involved. More details please.
I’d strongly recommend, Travels in Lancashire, (compiled by William Roscoe 1753-1831,) a collection of essays, non fiction and poems by various people starting with the Roman Period and covering most of the periods and topics described above.
I really enjoyed it.
This, (along with many other interesting titles,) be downloaded as an audio book, free from Librivox.