The continuing tradition of civic pride: municipal culture in post-war Manchester

Abstract

It has been argued that civic pride declined after its heyday in the Victorian period but Peter Shapely contests this view, illustrating how in Manchester, a combination of civic pride, social reform and policy rooted in the Victorian period were re-defined over the twentieth-century, albeit retaining a ‘boosterish’ emphasis on the city’s image and reputation, particularly in the 1960s. Postwar planners aimed to construct their own version of a modern cityscape in Manchester delivered through a programme of ambitious building projects whose civic ambitions would have been familiar to their Victorian predecessors. When these aspirations faltered during Manchester’s industrial decline between the mid-1970s and late-1980s, civic pride was maintained by the ambitions of the local press, politicians and prominent figures and eventually harnessed to new regeneration projects, as Manchester’s image was re-invented through high-profile re-development schemes and festivals based on sport and the arts. There were, as Shapely argues, continuities in how governing elites and institutions defined the contours of Manchester’s civic pride and reputation, a cultural hegemony that persisted across two centuries. This was, however, distinct from the sense of civic pride which many ordinary local residents experienced with different kinds of local attachment and identity.