The Manchester Bee

Bees across the feed, buzzing over the news; Manchester is making its stand again. Yesterday, Hannah and I went on a rare trip to our city centre for a (COVID-safe) visit to the cinema, passing not far from the place where our proud and industrious mayor had just delivered his press conference. Andy Burnham and pals are not happy because, as of Friday, Greater Manchester will be forced into Tier 3 lockdown by Whitehall with a measly £22m to support our most needy. I have a suspicion (and hope) that the negotiations will resume and a better deal will be reached over the next couple of days, but its fair to say, like everything else during this crisis, the government have totally fucked it. 

Ten days ago, I was unsure as to whether Burnham was doing the right thing - I very much thought a return to full lockdown was the most important and needed thing as the figures of the second peak climbed ever upwards. But you can see the exasperation on Burnham's face, echoed across the faces of the other Greater Manchester mayors alongside him; much of this is clearly borne from the disdain that Whitehall have shown towards local leaders. All we've seen from Boris and co. are wooden expressions of faux concern, alongside hollow assurances that they've 'done everything' and handled this whole situation without any hint of misstep. Burnham, in contrast, seems to wear the pandemic on his shoulders on behalf the city he leads and as a result is grasping its complexity better than most. The people of Manchester stand with him, as do I. This appears to be a Moment for the north.

I've called this city my home for fifteen years now and have loved the place from day one. As a Preston lad, Manchester always loomed tall as the big city just up the road, and when I reached gig-going age, it was right there waiting for me. It always felt warmer and cozier than London, despite the rain, and it wears its rich history in nooks and crannies rather than screaming them through adverts aimed at tourists. It still feels, for the most part, like a place for the people, made by the people. The principled stand of Burnham and the other majors feels natural for this city and gives us an exciting glimpse of how the wider country itself could be differently governed in the future. Signs are appearing on dual carriageway bridges just a five minute drive from my house: End London Rule Northern Republic Now! While such a sentiment might be fantasy, the principle of it says an awful lot about this awful government.

The worker bee is the symbol of Manchester. In recent years, in contrast to the decline numbers of the actual insects, the symbolic bee has become a veritable swarm in the city centre. Where it once was firmly tied to the 'worker bees' of the industrial revolution, and hence is proudly embedded in the floor tiles of the Town Hall, it has latterly shifted to become a broader emblem of modern-day Mancunian pride and identity. Like the fur on the back of the bumble bee, the associations are fuzzy. I'm not sure quite how much 'pride' I can muster for the industrial revolution, given how it was fueled by the slave trade on the one ugly hand and free child labour on the other, but the growth of the symbol's popularity lately feels more intimately connected with hive-like collaboration and the ever-present climate crisis. The bee is more socialist red and environmentalist green than industrial black-and-yellow, perhaps. When we most needed our city-wide solidarity recently, after the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena, it was the bee that emerged as the symbol of connection. I know a fair few people who had it tattooed in response, and there were many murals of the creatures erected in remembrance.

Having said that, the bee is also bandied around by seemingly every shiny new bar or cafe in the trendier bits of the city. In truth, the proliferation of the use of the word 'Hive', as well as the iconography of the honeycomb hexagon, has become a little trying of late - less an endearing play on a theme, and more a slightly cynical and unimaginative marketing ploy. Manchester is deep within a flux at the moment which doesn't feel wholly positive. As documented in the recent BBC series Manctopia, there has been a sharp boom in luxury properties flying up in the city centre. Whereas once we had a single skyscraper rising up like an angry middle finger at London, we now have quite a cluster, with more planned, beckoning those Londoners northwards to take advantage of lower rents and new possibilities. What this means for current Mancunians remains to be seen, but we still have some serious issues around homelessness and gentrification to address. Meanwhile, the HS2 rail link makes its steady progress towards us, felling important and significant trees with abandon, and I worry it brings an ugly juggernaut that this city doesn't quite need.

But while Manchester has become shinier, slicker and, perhaps, less Manchester over the last decade, it does still feel like it has a sting in its tail. The bee, when it appears, is rarely cutesy or softened; the reproductions of the symbol usually opt for realism, and it is rarely depicted alone. It is a strong emblem for a city that seems to have an instinct for solidarity and socialist values. I am glad, for the moment, that we have a majoral contingent who seem to get this. London might be eyeing us as its Northern outlet, and that fate might at times feel inevitable, but our history lurks beneath it all, and defiance is embedded in the gaps between the cobbles.