Conference
Walking Gallery
Power and Resistance in Manchester – with a little Discourse.
Friday 21 April 2006
2.00pm – 4.00pm
Manchester is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and scene of important demonstrations of both power and resistance ever since. This ‘walking gallery’ event offers a chance to visit by coach, with commentary, the sites of key moments in Manchester’s history, from the Peterloo Massacre to the Strangeways Prison Riot, as well as cotton-workers’ solidarity with anti-slavery struggles in America, the first conference of the Trades Union Congress, the early suffrage movement, and the first Pan-African Congress conference in 1945.
It culminates in a guided walking tour of the late-medieval Chetham’s Library, a jewel of a building which dates from 1421, and is the oldest free public library in Britain. It was here that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels met, researched and wrote their world-changing works. The library still has a record of the books they read. Sat at Marx’s favourite table with eyes closed, it is possible to imagine the pair thrashing out their ideas of the new world order while the first city of capitalism pulsed all around them.
Numbers for the tour are strictly limited to 30 due to tour capacity at Chetham’s.
To book a place on the tour, email Pauline Brooke at p.brooke@mmu.ac.uk at your very earliest convenience as there are only 30 places available on the coach.
The coach will depart the conference venue at 2pm sharp and return in time for afternoon tea before the next session of paper presentations.