Accountability for the Mayor of Greater Manchester: participatory governance in the 21st century

Guest article from Steady State Manchester: It has been over a year since Greater Manchester elected its first Mayor. Since then, Mayor Andy Burnham has worked to build the Mayor’s office as an institution almost from scratch and within the confines of the devolution agreement with central government. This is no small feat, and the Mayor’s […]

The Addy land squat:  a missed opportunity for Hulme?

When masked bailiffs arrived to clear the North Hulme Adventure Playground of a group of squatters and dismantle the homes they had built there, it marked the end of the most recent in a series of occupations, and eventual evictions, of non-residential buildings across Manchester. The site’s residents spent three months clearing, building and planning […]

Manchester 1, Tories 0: Take Back Manchester Festival outperforms conference in the rainy city

“Get off your arse and do something..” sang the Commoners Choir on Saturday night, at a Partisan pre-protest party entitled ‘Fuck the Tories’. The following day, an estimated 50,000 people got off their collective arse to demonstrate outside the 2017 Conservative Party Conference, under shared slogans of ‘No More Austerity’, ‘Scrap the Pay Cap’ and […]

‘The Uprising of Dignity’: film screening and book presentation by Manchester Zapatista Collective this week

This Thursday evening, Manchester Zapatista Collective are hosting a public documentary screening and book presentation in solidarity with the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. The event, taking place on Thursday 19th January at Manchester’s Green Fish Resource Centre, will be an opportunity for attendees to learn more about the movement and indigenous communities’ struggle for […]