Friedrich Engels gets a taste of the high life

Dear readers — Manchester is pretty good at taking its past and flipping it for profit. See: the Warehouse Project, the Chanel fashion show, the Joy Division-themed bar called Disorder. This civic quirk reached new heights over the weekend (if you’ll pardon the pun), when someone noticed one of Deansgate Square’s penthouses was named after Friedrich Engels. You know, the communist philosopher? Right-hand man to Marx? Yeah, it doesn't feel like the most intuitive match to most other people either. That’s below. 

Over the weekend, we published a beautifully evocative piece by Alec Herron, who wrote about his old estate — Grey Mare Lane. 124 homes on the estate are set to be demolished as part of a new masterplan to regenerate the area, and many residents feel on the verge of displacement. “Important article,” commented Bernadette Hyland. “It is the people who breathe life into an area and make it a community. I am from Clayton, a bit further up the road, but again a community destroyed by the policies of the Manchester Labour Council over the years.”

Last week, members got pieces about the time BBC camera crews followed Manchester’s students around in exchange for free rent, and we took a trip to leafy Hazel Grove, where local general election candidates are expecting a rare three-way marginal between the Lib Dems, Conservatives and Labour. Hit the subscribe button below to read those, plus our vast back catalogue of long reads, features and interviews.

Pride in Nature at RHS Garden Bridgewater

From today’s sponsor: On the 30th June, celebrate Pride in the most gorgeous of surroundings at RHS Garden Bridgewater. Now in its third year, Pride In Nature 2024 looks to build on the success of previous events and celebrate all things LGBTQIA+ in a stunning natural environment. There will be a range of activities, including panels, a banner making workshop and Drag Queen Gardeners Question Time, before finishing up with the very first Pride In Nature parade.

Entrance is free for RHS members, and you can catch the X50 bus direct to the garden from the city centre. For more details about the event, and to book your slot, click here.

🌦️This week’s weather

Our forecast is from local weatherman Martin Miles, who says things will be “tturning milder later this week thanks to a change in air mass, but low pressure will keep our weather unsettled.” We’re understanding that to mean: don’t get the Aperol out yet.

Tuesday 🌦️ Plenty of sunny spells during the morning, but a scattering of heavy showers will make the afternoon and evening more mixed. Max 15°c.

Wednesday ⛅️ Dry with large amounts of cloud and occasional sunshine. Feeling mild in shelter from a cool, westerly wind. Max 15°c.

Thursday 🌦️ Fine at first with bright spells and light winds but conditions will deteriorate after lunchtime as rain moves in from the west. Max 16°c.

Friday 🌧️ Mild and muggy with outbreaks of heavy rain. Max 18°c.

Weekend 🌦️ Low pressure will dominate to bring showers and longer spells of rain at times. Feeling pleasant between the rain thanks to southerly winds. Temperatures will be around average between 18-20°c.

The big story: Friedrich Engels gets a taste of the high life

Top line: Irony’s twitching carcass was hoisted to the top of a Mancunian skyscraper this weekend, before being unceremoniously chucked off the edge when a penthouse apartment in Deansgate Square was named after Communist thinker Friedrich Engels. The news was first shared by the geographer Jon Silver, and The Guardian later reported it was the “latest example of Manchester repurposing its radical history for profit”.

Context: Engels first visited Manchester in 1842, spending 20 years here and drawing on his experiences in The Conditions of the Working Class in England, his hugely influential work that documented life in the city’s industrial-era slums. Engels visited parts of the city that are now synonymous with million-pound flats, commenting on the miserable conditions workers lived in. 

“The Engels”: The two-storey penthouse at the top of Deansgate Square’s east tower is nearly 300 square metres. It has three ensuite bedrooms, two walk-in wardrobes and an open-plan living and dining area, all at 518ft. It has been listed for £2.5 million, although it is currently described as a show home on the development’s website.

• It’s one of two penthouses at the top of the tower. The other is named after Alan Turing.

Cool to be communist: This isn’t the first time Engels has been used to brand new housing, though it is perhaps the most egregious. There’s already a mid-rise block of flats called Engels House in Ancoats.

The naming of the penthouse has gone down about as well as you would expect. “‘I know, let's name this £2,500,000 apartment after the man who looked at Manchester slums and was so appalled that he wrote a book about it,’” said one person on Reddit, imagining the developer’s decision-making process.

• As another person pointed out: “You'd need parents with a multinational textiles business to afford” the flat. Which, to be fair, Engels did.

• One, quite wryly, said: “It’s what he would have wanted.”

Isaac Rose, who wrote The Rentier City, about Manchester’s affordable housing crisis and its neoliberal bent — and couldn’t have hoped for a better illustration of it than The Engels — told the Guardian: “It’s just another iteration of that thing that Manchester’s been very good at doing, which is reabsorbing radical elements of its history into a brand.”

Bottom line: Given Manchester’s current housing crisis, in which thousands of families are living in temporary accommodation to stave off homelessness, it feels a bit on the nose to have a luxury penthouse named after Engels looming over the city. But as his collaborator Karl Marx said: “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”. 

Your Mill briefing

🔶 The Lib Dem candidate for Rochdale, Andy Kelly, has raised eyebrows by accepting the endorsement of Paul Rowen. Rowen — who was a Lib Dem councillor, council leader and eventually MP in Rochdale over a span of about 25 years — is controversial because as leader of the council, he recommended disgraced Liberal MP Cyril Smith be appointed as a governor of Knowl View School. 

At the time of Smith’s appointment, Rowen was already aware of allegations of child sexual abuse against Smith in the Rochdale Alternative Press, but made the recommendation anyway because “given the passage of time, denial and lack of further information, it was not on my radar when I suggested his appointment”. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse concluded that Rowen, at best, didn’t ask enough questions of what was going on at Knowl View. And, at worst, it said he “turned a blind eye to the very serious problems that were in his judgement low down on the priority list.” (The school was described as a ​​“sweet shop for paedophiles” by a former pupil, and was shut down in 1996.)

“I just find it astonishing,” says local Labour councillor John Blundell. “Why do the local Liberal Democrats think it’s okay for this person to A. hold an executive position, and B. endorse their candidate in, of all places, the town of Rochdale?” When The Mill called Kelly to ask why he was accepting Rowen’s nomination, he said: “Paul recommended Cyril before those things came out.” When reminded of what the inquiry found, he said: “I can’t really comment on that, Paul is still a member of the Rochdale Lib Dem executive, and he’s still a member of the party, and he’s respected by a lot of people. So we can go back over old ground, but it's about moving forward.” When we called Rowen for a comment, he didn’t pick up.

🗳 Elsewhere in general election news: 

• The New Statesman’s Commons Confidential diary reports that veteran MP for Blackley and Broughton Graham Stringer declined to give up his seat for a peerage in the House of Lords. Apparently, Josh Simons, the Starmerite think-tank director, was originally eyeing up Stringer’s seat before being parachuted into Makerfield instead. 

• Conservative candidate for Stockport Oliver Johnstone apologised for jokes he made about the date-rape drug Rohypnol on social media in 2012, when he was 21 years old. “It was wrong then and it’s wrong now,” he told BBC Politics North West.

🧑‍⚖️ The case of Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse found guilty of multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in relation to 13 babies last summer, returned to court today for a retrial over one of her attempted murder convictions. The trial is expected to last four weeks at Manchester Crown Court. The retrial comes about a month after a controversial piece in the New Yorker tried to examine whether Letby was actually guilty of the crimes. It isn’t available to read in the UK for legal reasons. 

🚨 A 20-year-old man died after becoming “unwell” at Hidden, a nightclub in Cheetham Hill, over the weekend. There has been no further information shared regarding the cause of death, though some have speculated that impure drugs were involved. The Manchester Drug Analysis and Knowledge Exchange at Manchester Metropolitan University released a warning last week that ketamine circulating in Manchester was adulterated with xylazine, a potentially lethal tranquiliser.

🎻 Finally: there’s a special concert taking place at Manchester Cathedral next Saturday, featuring Purcell's Suite from 'The Fairy Queen' and Handel's 'The Arrival of The Queen of Sheba'. It’s being performed by Manchester Baroque, and you can order your tickets with a special 25% Millers’ discount — just use the code MILLERS TRIAL OFFER when you book here.

Home of the week

This four storey semi-detached house in Levenshulme has five double bedrooms, two bathrooms, original features and a spacious garden. It’s on the market for £500,000. 

Our favourite reads

Zoned out and frozen on a busy Manchester morning — The Manchester Evening News

The MEN takes a look at the possible re-emergence of Spice in the city’s homeless community. The synthetic cannabinoid, infamous for the catatonic state it leaves people in, made headlines in 2017 when it infested the city. Some suggest that police crackdowns on Bury New Road, where other favoured drugs like pregabalin and diazepams were sold, is pushing people back towards Spice. 

The man who turned his home into a homeless shelter — The Guardian

Stuart Potts, a former crack-addict who has been in and out of prison and on and off the streets, has been housing homeless people in his one-bed flat in Middleton since April 2020. Looking back on his first guest, Stephen Bolton, who Potts met outside a Tesco near his flat, he can’t recall exactly why he offered him a place to stay. Samira Shackle writes: “‘I’ve always done stuff like that,’ he said, then tailed off. ‘Love of people I guess.’ He can’t explain why he did it, and can’t understand why other people find it strange.”

Southport's decline has been stark. Labour are licking their lips — The Post

This great report from Southport by our sister paper The Post finds a seaside town trapped in a rut, battered by austerity and on the verge of electing its first Labour MP ever. “The seaside shtick isn’t enough,” writes Jack Walton. “Young people have been leaving in droves; the population is ageing. Local Lib Dem councillor Gareth Lloyd-Johnson believes the current MP, Tory Damien Moore, has been sitting on his hands, while Southport desperately needs renewal — a new identity, even. ‘You just can’t run a local economy based only on being a Victorian seaside town.’”

Our to do list

Tuesday

☕️ There’s a coffee tasting workshop at Coffee fix in Gately, hosted by local roastery Heart and Graft. You’ll be guided through tastings of four coffees and learn about their origins. Book here.

🎻 Classical music fans should be sure to get down to this talk at the Anthony Burgess Centre on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It’s hosted by the Manchester Lit and Phil, with conductor, writer and lecturer Michael Downes exploring Beethoven’s most famous work. Book here.

Wednesday

📚 The Manchester Festival of Libraries, hosted by Manchester City of Literature, will include talks from Maxine Peake, Christopher Ecclestone and children's author Joseph Coelho. More info here. 

🧘‍♀️ There’s a vinyasa yoga class at Whitworth Locke, with meditation and breathing practice thrown in. Open to beginners. More info here.

Thursday

🥟 Platzki, a Polish restaurant on Deansgate, is hosting its own pierogi festival until Friday. There will be six different varieties to choose from, and you can get five with a drink for £8. More info here.

🎨 Paint Monet’s Le Grand Canal at this pop-up painting event in Worsley. All art supplies — paint brushes, canvas and apron — are provided. Tickets here.