Manchester: A New Century

Politics, Manufacturing, Immigration and War: The War Series part 3

A Cultural Melting Pot

By the early 1900’s immigration had radically changed the demographic make-up of Manchester. Workers travelled from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Russia and other European countries to work in the busy cotton industry.

Little Ireland in Manchester was said to be the ‘most disgusting spot of all’ by Engels, author of the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, in his work ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ (1845). It was so overcrowded there was little room for incomers escaping the potato famine that struck Ireland from 1845 to 1852. The Irish community had settled in the Ancoats area around the Cotton factories. Many of them worked as navvies building the Manchester Ship Canal, some 5000 of them from Ireland, with another 12,000 from Scotland, Wales, the local area and the South West. Some died during the construction. They were happy, given working pay was worse in Ireland at the time, to accept lower wages than locals and would be used by Industrialists to break strikes. This caused friction between communities.

Members of the Manchester Irish community started what became known as the English Orange Order in the 1800’s, an offshoot of the Loyal Orange Institution stemming from Ulster Protestantism. Their headquarters eventually moved to London.

About one quarter of German settlers were Jewish, the community further expanding in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s due to immigration of Russian Jews. This community came from the Pale of Settlement, an area stretching from the Black Sea to Poland, within which Jewish traders were allowed to operate and live after their displacement due to the partitioning of Poland. Their presence in the Black Sea littoral, secured lands for Russia that had been acquired from the Ottomans, but within this agreement the Jews were not permitted to trade nor live in Russia without special dispensation. Many travelled to the ‘New World’ and Britain in search of a less restrictive life.

Pale of Settlement Percentages of Jewish population - WikiCommons

The Russian Jews and Ukrainians settled in an area north of the River Irwell specifically designed by Victorian architects as the ‘Red Bank’ in Manchester. It was cramped and squalid but a hive of industry. Engels described it as ‘utterly uninhabitable’. Many from the Red Bank community had improved their lot by the beginning of the 20^th Century, moving in to Cheetham Hill and other more wealthy areas of the City. The flight of approximately 300,000 Jewish immigrants to Britain, with a large number settling in Manchester, applied pressure to the existing Jewish community and British politicians alike, which is evident from political decision making.

Preparations for war

As the 20^th century dawned, the influential Cross Street Chapel peaked in its popularity with the Unitarian, industrialist and dissenting middle classes of Manchester. Many of them moved out of the city of Manchester, converting their large homes into warehouses. In the Manchester Corporation Improvement Bill of 1914, the proposal to tear down this historic part of the Collegiate Church was passed. Trustees had planned to rebuild it elsewhere but within weeks World War I was upon them. The timing of the passing of this Bill, that had been talked of for two years previously, should not be ignored. Cross Street Chapel was known for being, together with the Portico Library and Little Circle, a place where industrialists would gather to progress both political and business aims. The Great Reform Act of 1832, gaining Manchester full Parliamentary representation, being one of their successful campaigns. Perhaps the funding to carry out such widespread improvements across the city was an effort to lay the ground work for the cooperation of local businessmen and politicians before war broke out.

Whilst the old radical industrialist groups waned in popularity, Richard and Emilline Pankhurst would return from London to Manchester. Richard Pankhurst was a Barrister and known for his support of the Women’s Suffrage movement. Together they would be instrumental in setting up the Manchester Branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The Labour Party proper had been formed by Lanarkshire born Keir Hardie. By 1910 there were 40 Labour members of Parliament, one of whom was JR Clynes, who held the seat for Manchester North East (now Manchester Platting) until 1918. Interestly Clynes and the ILP faction within the Labour Party were supporters of the war, where other factions were opposed.

Trafford Park, the land purchased by Hooley in 1896, sandwiched between the Bridgewater and Manchester canals, was managed by Marshall Stevens, who the fraudster Hooley had recruited from The Manchester Ship Canal Company. There is very little written about him, including how he managed to encourage some of the industrial giants from the US to use Trafford Park for their first British manufacturing facilities. It is possible these connections were made through the extensive western Freemasonry network. Stevens secured the first big tenant, British Westinghouse Electrical Company, in 1899. This was the British branch of the American firm, set up by George Westinghouse (the Westinghausen family were from Germany, settling in New York) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, dedicated to the electrification industry. They made turbines, generators, motors and electricity transmission equipment. The Park made it’s first profit by 1909, and by 1933 there were nearly 300 American companies in business.

This period saw the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and coronation of King Edward VII (House Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duchy), who reigned until his death in 1910. During this time King Edward helped Britain secure relations with France (8 April 1904), Italy and the Russian Empire (1908). France was already a Republic, and Italy had a fledgling monarchy formed under the Italian Unification of 1861. Given the increasing dominance of both the German and the Austrian/Hungarian empires on the continent, the British Government and the French Republic signed agreements representing the ‘Entente Cordiale’, ending nearly 1000 years of intermittent warring between the two nations, remaining in place today. Arthur Balfour, who was Prime Minister between 1902 to 1905 and the Member of Parliament for Manchester East, was instrumental in the negotiations with France.

Liberal Manchester and Churchill

Leading in to the second decade of the 1900’s a very liberal and radical government, under the auspices of Prime Minister Asquith, (PM from 1908-1916) was attempting to pass the ‘People’s budget’, a reform budget intended to improve general social welfare through taxes on land and income, in effect the first social welfare budget. It was passed by the House of Commons in 1909 but rejected by the House of Lords. It was finally passed in 1910.

David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented the bill in parliament referring to it as the ‘War budget’ against poverty, though this term is not referred to in Hansard nor in the hand written notes he used as a prompt. He does write about it, however, in 1910 in ‘Better Times’, specifically using the wording ‘This is a War Budget’, which is then followed by the explanation ‘It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness’. Thank you Seb! We see a similar play on words during today’s ‘battle’ and ‘war’ against Covid-19. Perhaps this budget was as much to raise funds for a pending war as for the emerging British welfare state.

Both Winston Churchill and Lloyd George championed this bill. Lloyd George had Manchester connections having been born there, moving as a child to Wales after his father’s death. Winston Churchill had been the Liberal MP for Oldham from 1900 until 1906, then for North West Manchester until April 1908. He was also a supporter of Imperialism and was President of the Board of Trade under Asquith from April 1908 to February 1910, though a by-election ousted him from his seat in North West Manchester. Churchill went on to become Home Secretary until October 1911. He also stood against the Aliens Act of 1905 designed to curb Jewish immigration, particularly from the Pale of Settlement on the western flank of Russia. In these two positions Churchill championed a variety of other bills designed to secure the good will of the working class including the prevention of exploitation of workers and the 8 hour bill for miners.

Less than a year after the ‘People’s Budget’, Marshall Stevens leveraged his US connections yet again, and the Ford Motor Company Ltd, headquartered in Detroit, acquired an old carriage making factory on Westinghouse Road in the Trafford Park Estate. The site incorporated the first mechanised production line for vehicles, starting production in 1911. Undoubtedly as President of the Board of Trade, Churchill would have welcomed the US car manufacturer to Britain’s industrial capital.

Henry Ford was apparently fiercely anti-semitic. His father was from Cork in Ireland, and his mother Mary Litogot was a foster child of Irish parents. It was thought Churchill almost certainly would not have entertained a collaboration with a fierce anti-semite, though later a document surfaced implying that Churchill thought the difficulties the Jewish community had, were sometimes brought upon themselves. It transpired that Churchill’s script writer Adam Marshall Diston had typed the document, though for what purpose it is still unclear. In addition in the book ‘Bolsheviks and British Jews’ by Sharma Kadish 1992 (link above), some Jewish leaders felt that whilst Churchill wanted to ‘smother’ Bolshevism, he did not promote public protest on the Progrom atrocities carried out in the late 19^th /early 20^th centuries.

Interestingly when Churchill’s North West Manchester seat was put up for a by-election due to his new position as President of the board of trade, he was unseated by William Joynson Hicks from the Conservative party. Reports suggest said that Jix, as he was known, used the Aliens Act of 1905 to discriminate against the Jewish population, but he was reported as saying the following upon the publication of the Balfour Declaration: “I consider that one of the greatest outcomes of this terrible war will be the rescue of Palestine from Turkish government, and I will do all in my power to forward the views of the Zionists, in order to enable the Jews once more to take possession of their own land” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, published on the announcement of his death in 1932).

War triggered

The Black Hand secret Serbian organisation planned and carried out the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28^th June, 1914. They were said to carry out terrorist attacks in order to secure Serbia’s independence from both the Austria-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires.

A month lapses and Austria-Hungary fires the starting gun by waging war on Serbia. Then follows a stream of declarations of war by Germany in support of their ally, on Russia, Belgium and France. Britain is the first of the allies to declare war on Germany on the 4^th August 1914. By the close of 1915 Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Italy and Bulgaria join in hostilities. The Ottoman Empire pushing up from Turkey, Germany and Austria-Hungary applying pressure both to the east and western fronts. The declarations by the Allies seemed designed to address these creeping threats on all fronts.

Charles P Scott, the editor and recent new owner of the liberal and radical Manchester Guardian, was persistent in calling for Britain to remain neutral through a series of targeted articles. On the declaration of war, which historian AJP Taylor suggested came primarily from Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray with little or no consultation even with Prime Minister Asquith at the time, the Manchester Guardian planned how they would provide detailed coverage. These editions were to be later bound in to volumes of the ‘Manchester Guardian History of the War’.

He noted that in the grand scheme of things, given the relative lack of bond between Belgrade and Manchester (aka Britain), it seemed highly risky to put the relationships built with European nations at risk. ‘We care as little for Belgrade as Belgrade does for Manchester’. It seemed however, that Scott was unaware of, or failed to acknowledge, the reported territorial ambitions of the German and Austria-Hungarian Empires, the Ottoman Empire, and the relative instability of the Pale of Settlement/Russian Empire.

Within one of The History of the War editions is a curious mnemonic, that of a hand labelled with all the different areas of the western front (see above link). Was it referencing the Black Hand, the ‘secret’ organisation by which the War had been triggered?

The first battalion of the Manchester Regiment shipped out from India in August 1914 as Britain entered the war, arriving in France in September, remaining on the Western front until December 1915. The battalion was then called to Mesopotamia (now Iraq) to fight against the Ottoman Turks. British and Indian troops took Baghdad in March 1917.

The Manchester Regiment formed another 38 battalions in addition to the two regular battalions. Manchester PALS were preparing soldiers for battle in Heaton Park, north of Cheetham Hill. Many local men signed up to serve. In April 1915 families gathered in a crowd of some 20,000 for a sports day. The battalions then moved out for further training in Manchester, Lincolnshire and finally to Salisbury before shipping to France to take part in the Battle of the Somme. According to Forces War Records 13,770 soldiers from the Manchester Regiment Batallions were lost during World War I.

Manchester Moles

Trench warfare in Northern France was hampered by mud and the inability to move positions swiftly during winter months. The Germans had developed tunneling methods to creep underneath British positions and set off charges. Major John Norton-Griffiths owned the company Griffiths & Co, that had worked on the sewerage tunneling system for the Manchester Corporation. It took until 12 February 1915, and after heavy losses, for him to persuade Kitchener to take on a team of ‘Clay Kickers’, who would use sharp bladed cutters to silently remove sections of clay to form tunnels.

The Manchester Mole recruits were sent to the front lines where they proceeded to tunnel nearly four times faster than the Germans could achieve. When chambers were formed underneath enemy positions, charges would be set and the blasts would leave craters where the enemy trenches had been. A successful pilot involving 18 men who had worked on the Manchester tunneling project was followed by Kitchener asking for 10,000 men. Those numbers would rise to 25,000 men recruited undoubtedly from all over Britain by the middle of 1916. The tunnelers had a vast support network of soldiers who helped clear out the clay spits.

Shells Crisis – War Time Manufacturing

Reports suggest that neither Ford nor British Westinghouse were involved in producing weaponry or military vehicles. America did not officially join the war until 1917. Westinghouse continued to produce equipment for electrification across Britain, and Ford continued to produce vehicles, including tractors. It was only one year after the Ford Motor Company started production, however, that construction began on a large warehouse 165 ft long by 35 ft wide and 45 feet tall on Westinghouse Road in Trafford Park (1912). The warehouse was divided in to nine fire proof sections with fire dampening divisions. These were known as ‘Safes’. They were apparently designed with a sprinkler system and reduced the level of fire insurance for cotton storage with Lloyds of London to a fifth of the original fire insurance rate, though there is little evidence they were actually used for cotton storage. The facility may have been designed to store munitions.

The 1917 sale of American owned Westinghouse shares to a British-formed company under Metropolitan Vickers, might also suggest that Westinghouse wished to, or was indeed already manufacturing for the British War effort The share sale may have been an attempt to legitimise any existing and/or future involvement.

In 1915 the British side were running low on munitions in what was known as the Shells Crisis. Lloyd George was appointed Munitions Minister to recruit manufacturing facilities to increase production. The company Mather and Platt Ltd had started a new factory called the Park Works in Newton Heath, to the north east of Manchester in 1900. In 1915 the works were fully requisitioned by the Government for the production of munitions in response to the crisis.

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti was an electrical engineer who put forward the idea of electrical transmission through a high voltage transmission cabling network or grid (National Grid). He was chief engineer at the age of 22 for construction of the largest Power Station in the country in Deptford, 1887. His family factory Ferranti & Co produced electric metres and transformers in Hollinwood, Oldham. In 1915 they switched to making 18-pounder shells and fuses, employing a 3,000 strong workforce, 1,000 of whom were women.

Thornton Pickard, based in Altrincham to the south west of Manchester, were specialists in camera equipment. They produced military camera equipment for use during World War I including the Mark III Hythe gun camera. It was styled in the shape of a machine gun, capturing an image every time the trigger was pulled. The photos developed from the camera were used to assess the gunning accuracy of airmen in air-to-air combat. They could also have been used for aerial surveillance of enemy territory.

The Gorton works of Beyer, Peacock and Co, Ltd. were situated between Manchester and Ashton-under-Lyne. They produced steam engines for the railway but switched to making anti-aircraft gun carriages and bomb throwers for the navy.

Shifting Battle Lines

As the issue of munitions supply was resolved, the Battle of the Somme began in July 1916. Asquith was replaced by David Lloyd George as Prime Minister, who brought in a war time coalition government. Manchester Pals joined the bloodiest of battles as documented here in reports by Albert Andrews. It would be during Lloyd George’s premiership, in April 1917 that Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, would give the green light for the US to enter the war. Reasons given included the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and more cargo ship sinkings in 1916 and early 1917.

The official lines were the Germans sank the ships to try to prevent the US from entering the war, yet it is unlikely this approach would have been anything other than antagonistic. It is of course possible that the United States were already supplying weaponry and other materials to be used in battle under cover of merchant cargo, or that Germany at least suspected it.

Furthermore, with heavy investment, American banks would want Britain and her allies to win the war. Jacob Schiff, a prominent financier, was accused unjustly (Kadish, 1992) of German sympathy prior to the US joining the war. Warburg and other financiers were accused by some newspaper commentaries of helping to sure up a Germany, Bolshevik and Jewish move against the Russian Empire.

On January 16^th 1917, the German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmerman reportedly sent a coded telegram to the German minister in Mexico. Its contents were interpreted as proposing the continuation of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in order to prevent the United States from joining the war. If they failed they would join forces with Mexico to enable them to reclaim the US states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. This interpretation is somewhat expansive from the original decoded message seen below.

The Zimmermann Telegram - Encyclopedia Britannica

Nevertheless, details of the note and interpretation ended up on the front pages of every single newspaper in the United States. Quite who leaked the telegram is unclear but it seemed to have the desired effect for those who wanted the US to join the war. When Germany’s peace terms were delivered to President Wilson on January 31^st 1917, together with the impending plans for Germany submarine warfare, he was left with little room for maneouvre.

Barely one month later on 22^nd February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar), the tension in Petrograd grew. Metal workers were striking, women protesting about lack of food, and when the Tsar’s troops were ordered to take action. The soldiers delivered an ultimatum by refusing. This lead to military and political leaders calling for the removal of the Tsar, and he duly abdicated.

In the book ‘Bolsheviks and British Jews’ by Sharma Kadish 1992, the author quotes I. Wassilevsky of the Jewish Refugees and Military Service, Manchester, 1916 ‘The sentiments towards England entertained by the Russian Jew in England are not as deeply-rooted as are his sentiments towards his fellow-Jews in Russia; nor can they be expected to be...’. The restrictions imposed on the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement would be lifted with this Revolution, and must have instilled great hope in the Russian Jews settled in Manchester, London and other areas of Britain, of being able to finally return home.

This is reflected by the report from Manchester Guardian at the end of March 1917 when 2,000 people gathered in Kingsway Hall in one of many meetings celebrating the events in Russia. “There was a strong Jewish element, for there are many Jews who call Russia home.” (Page 185) By August 1917 approximately 7,500 applications for Russian Jews to return to Russia had been received, including 180 from Manchester. The restrictive Aliens Act of 1905, and categorisation of immigrant Russian Jews in to enemy, friendly and neutral when it came to conscription for the war effort, must have spurred many on in their efforts to repatriate to Russia.

The unfortunate side effect of this enthusiasm, the inclusion of some Russian Jews in Lenin’s Bolshevik October 1917 revolution and government, and the communist-based ideology Karl Marx had nurtured during his visits with Frederich Engels who lived in Manchester for nearly 30 years, was that British and Russian Jews were accused of being one of, if not the driving force, behind the October Bolshevik (communist) Revolution.

Spanish Flu

As if in response, on November 2^nd 1917 the Balfour Declaration was drafted and signed by Arthur Balfour, who had earlier been Member of Parliament for Manchester East, in cooperation with Lord Rothschild, Leo Amery and Lord Milner. In it he expressed that the British Government and Crown supported the formation of a home for the Jewish people in the state of Palestine. The position of a new state of Israel in this region would also have the effect of bolstering defenses against any remaining adversaries from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman’s had lost the 1^st Balkan War in 1912-1913, with Ottoman armies and displaced Muslims fleeing not only from advancing troops but outbreaks of Cholera. One has to wonder what role Cholera played in the eventual defeat.

Indeed, Lloyd George arrived in Manchester in September 1918 for a ceremony in which he would have been handed the keys to the City. Within hours of his arrival he was struck down by ‘Spanish influenza’ and was forced to recuperate in the Town Hall for 11 days, with physicians and respirators at hand. However, for the benefit of war time propaganda, he was reported to only have a cold. If we compare this with the dramatic hospitalisation of Boris Johnson, there seems to almost certainly be a play at hand. Whilst Boris was unwell and Dominic Cummings was in Barnard Castle checking his eyesight, Marcus Sedwill, head of the Civil Service and Military at that point, attempted to extend the Brexit agreement deadline, whilst Dominic Raab stood and watched. One might almost believe the later was all set up.

It seems most peculiar that, whilst the war continued on the continent, a deadly fever would somehow appear in Britain’s cities. Whilst Lloyd George was perfectly well when he stepped on to the train carriage for his journey, within hours of arriving in the industrial heart of the north, he should be struck down so severely and in such a similar way to Covid-19. At the time James Niven was the Chief Medical Officer for Manchester, managing the influenza by isolating patients and shutting schools and businesses. The epidemic peaked in perfect time, towards the end of November 1918, around three weeks after the end of the war. Just three years after he left his post in 1922 to give lectures on public health on the Isle of Man, he committed suicide.