Manchesterism

What a coincidentally apt place the great City of Manchester is for this year’s Party Conference. We know the City today for its regeneration, glut of apartments, nearby Coronation Street, and a vague notion of an industrial glory built upon mills and factories long since passed. But Manchester is also a place of political importance – not for its swing seats or memorable televised election moments but a breed of capitalism which became known as Manchesterism. How many cities can boast of having their own ideological –ism?

Most of us in the South associate “the North” politically as a left-leaning Labour heartland, but the history of Manchesterism serves to remind us that this was not always the case. There was a time when free trade and capitalism were the cause of the disadvantaged and working class, the theories of Adam Smith et al articulated in a way that emphasises the wealth creation and spreading of prosperity, the power of capitalism as a rising tide to lift all [willing/able] ships. This is Manchesterism.

Free trade liberalism, from an obscurity discussed only in the fringe of academic circles by men such as John Mill – a fact not aided by John Mill’s choice of title for his 1805 book on the subject, “An Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exploration of Grain” – went on to become the dominant force and prevailing view, enabling Britain’s rapid industrial growth, economic development and social progress under the reign of Victoria. To paraphrase Churchill, who was coincidentally elected as Liberal MP for Manchester Northwest in 1908 on the free trade, it became the healthy horse pulling a sturdy wagon.

Manchesterism came about from the economic crisis exasperated by the Corn Laws, and having been through the recent economic crisis the central principles of the old Manchesterism – free trade, minimal state, individual liberty – are vital once more to our recovery.

The rise of “Manchesterism” in the 19th Century shows that the right vision of liberal capitalism – at the right time – can cause a realignment of generational scale. So whilst in Manchester take a walk to Peter Street where the Anti-Corn Law League first met on the site of the magnificent Free Trade Hall – now a hotel – which I understand is the only public building in Britain named after a principle rather than a person or place. We need to rearticulate liberal-conservatism just as those same principles were rearticulated here nearly two centuries ago, so we’ve come to the right place…

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I unfortunately won’t be at what is set to become the most important Party Conference in a generation, but I would like to wish all my CH CentreRight readers attending the event a very happy conference.