Our Badge

[BamberBridgeBlue]

It was the slaver statue in Brighton?

I don't really care what goes on in America anymore, they've gone even more nuts than usual.

It was the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol.

When we’ve done tearing down statues, is anyone up for burning books?

 

[sir baconface]

When we’ve done tearing down statues, is anyone up for burning books?

Yes please. I’ll start…

 

[Jazzyblue]

There is no campaign to remove the badge.

It was just a run of the mill Guardian article about the history of the badge/Manchester coat of arms, unfortunately with a provocative headline and now it's gone viral with the Mail and pierce fucking morgan sayings its woke gone mad, etc, etc.

Do people not realise just how much they're being manipulated by such false headlines?

The whole thing is an exercise in manipulation full stop. Guardian is just cynical as the Mail and Piers Morgan - the only difference is that their brand is 'being nice' - but they are hardnosed as fuck.

What's happened here is that the Guardian has found out/decided to admit it has actually directly profited from slavery. This is not a surprise because it has NEVER been as ethical as it pretends to be. But they had to launch a damage limitation exercise. So what they did was get the news out there on day one, and then bury it with day after day of critique of Manchester. The MEN had already reported in a sensible and comprehensive way how Manchester fought and profited from slavery, and to anyone with any local history knowledge it was no secret. It was a dirty period in history full stop, but Manchester came out of it with something to be proud of because of the abolitionist movement, which sits alongside Peterloo, gay rights, the co-operative movement and the suffragettes in a proud civil rights history.

But the Guardian needed to share around its guilt to deflect from its own original sin - so it has singled out Manchester as a city, and its institutions, as LongsightM13 has said on this thread.

From their perspective it's a win- win - they get to bury news harmful to their brand, they get to shore up their fake radical credentials, they get the page views and the publicity, they get to pretend they care about a city they walked away from 65 years ago. And they've done it all without upsetting anyone in London or the US, which are the places they really care about.

City hasn't profited from the transatlantic slave trade, and all the emotion raking over the past in this way has - the Guardian has. So for me the sensible thing to do is ignore them the same way I ignore the Daily Mail (two cheeks of the same arse) and get on with on enjoying our team.

 

[malg]

It was the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol.

When we’ve done tearing down statues, is anyone up for burning books?

That's started. A group of eedjits have been burning Harry Potter books. Fair play to them though, they started with The Deathly Hallows which was shite.

 

[manclad]

Wind-up, yes? Sure you really know it's recalling the legend of Rome's foundation by the two baby brothers suckled by a she-wolf, "lupa" in Latin, though a truer version might be that lupa was also Roman slang for a prostitute who found and raised the youngsters.

Romulus and Remus were their names,if I remember my Roman history correctly.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

One of the most historically illiterate and idiotic articles I have ever read from that fucking sad excuse for a newspaper.

There is a reason why we have a statue of Lincoln and not Bedford Forrest founder of the KKK. It is because the mill workers of Manchester refused to use the cotton brought into the country by Liverpudlian profiteers who broke the Unions blockade of the Confederate states in order to bring cotton back to the UK. At that time Liverpool was a conservative bedrock very different to our Mancunian radicalism and they were after money and didnt care that they broke blockades in order to profit. Mancunian mill workers went hungry rather than work with scouse imported cotton.

It is also worth mentioning that the British government of the time had military attaches attached to the Confederate army, one a Colonel of I think the household cavalry was killed at Gettysburg, so if the British government was so anti slavery what the fuck where they thinking at the time.

It is also worth considering that for many the civil war was not about slavery, that was an afterthought of Lincoln's who was in electoral trouble at the time and introduced the emancipation declaration. For many Confederate states it was about states rights and they considered Lincoln to be what we would consider a fascist. The case that it was about state rights is backed up by the battle of Shiloh where Irish brigades from the Union and the Confederacy actually fought against each other.

The Guardian which was once the Manchester Guardian is in my opinion trying to distance itself from its roots and is doing so by using this liberal bullshit, they should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

It also shouldn't ever be forgotten that Manchester's position at the forefront of abolitionist movement very much predates Lincoln's birth, let alone his political achievements. The rise in antislavery sentiment in this country can be traced back to Thomas Clarkson with his speech at the collegiate church in Manchester (now Manchester Cathedral) in 28 October 1787 which very much galvanised the anti-slavery campaign in the city. As you highlighted, Manchester was very much in marked contrast with Liverpool where Clarkson was not only attacked, but a gang of sailors were actually paid to murder him (luckily they were called Jota and Nunez, so they missed….).

 

[Fiftyyearsandcounting]

Back in the 60's, I worked for the Manchester Ship Canal Company. During my job interview, a director told me that one of the most important reasons for creating the canal, and enabling ships to sail straight into Manchester for unloading, was to stop Liverpool dockers from stealing.
Not saying Manchester stevedores were totally honest, but they were our stevedores!

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Lincoln's great debt to Manchester​

In 1863, The US President wrote to the 'working men of Manchester' thanking them for their anti-slavery stance

Headline from……
The Guardian in 2013

Full story if you’d rather not click on the link at the bottom, which is much better than the nonsense they’re coming out with about the ship.

When cotton was king, Manchester's busy textile mills dressed the world. Because of this, great fortunes were made and ordinary families were fed. But in 1862, Lancashire mill workers, at great personal sacrifice, took a principled stand by refusing to touch raw cotton picked by US slaves.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Lincoln's Northern Union was waging war against a breakaway of southern states. Having already linked the south with the institution of slavery, Lincoln persuaded European importers that his blockade of slave picked cotton was a legitimate tool in defeating the Confederacy and restoring the union.

A year into the civil war, the effects of the cotton embargo really began to bite. Lancashire, which had imported three quarters of all cotton grown on southern plantations (1.3 billion lbs), found that 60% of it spindles and looms lay idle, leaving many out of work, thanks mainly to the blockade.

Whilst the British government loosely supported Lincoln, many mill and shipping companies wanted the Royal Navy to smash the blockade, allowing the precious cotton back into Europe. In Liverpool, a city made wealthy by cotton imports, it was said that there were more Confederate flags flying along the banks of the Mersey than in Virginia.

With the 'cotton famine' now taking a firm grip even the Manchester Guardian instructed the mill hands that they were better off dropping their support for the embargo. However, at a noisy meeting at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1862, in a historic show of solidarity against slavery, the workers agreed to keep supporting Lincoln's embargo.

Although an extraordinary gesture, the vote would be costly to the mill workers as more of them faced starvation and destitution. Disorder had already broken out in some northern towns, with the army having to read out the Riot Act.

With the cotton industry on its knees, Lincoln acknowledged the self-sacrifice of the 'working men of Manchester' in a letter he sent them in 1863. Lincoln's words - later inscribed on the pedestal of his statue that can still be found in Lincoln Square, Manchester - praised the workers for their selfless act of "sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country."

These words were followed by the arrival of US relief ships packed with provisions sent by grateful Americans as an act of brotherhood between the Union states and Lancashire.

In January 1865 - only a matter of months before Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth - Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the United States. Just as the US Constitution was being rewritten, the Confederate states, already stricken by the embargo, were being defeated by Union forces. By the time the South surrendered, Manchester had dusted down its disused mills and workshops so it could begin the difficult task of recapturing its lost industrial might.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguar...b/04/lincoln-oscars-manchester-cotton-abraham

 

[argyle]

The whole thing is an exercise in manipulation full stop. Guardian is just cynical as the Mail and Piers Morgan - the only difference is that their brand is 'being nice' - but they are hardnosed as fuck.

What's happened here is that the Guardian has found out it has actually directly profited from slavery. This is not a surprise because it has NEVER been as ethical as it pretends to be. But they had to launch a damage limitation exercise. So what they did was get the news out there on days one, and then bury it with day after day of critique of Manchester. The MEN had already reported in a sensible and comprehensive way how Manchester fought and profited from slavery, and to anyone with any local history knowledge it was no secret. It was a dirty period in history full stop, but Manchester came out of it with something to proud of because of the abolitionist movement, which sits alongside Peterloo, gay rights, the co-operative movement and the suffragettes in a proud civil rights history.

But the Guardian needed to share around its guilt to deflect from its own original sin - so it has singled out Manchester as a city, and its institutions, as LongsightM13 has said on this thread.

From their perspective it's a win- win - they get to bury news harmful to their brand, they get to shore up their fake radical credentials, they get the page views and the publicity, they get pretend they care about a city they walked away from 65 years ago. And they've done it all without upsetting anyone in London or the US, which are the places they really care about.

City hasn't profited from the transatlantic slave trade, and all the emotion raking over the past in this way has - the Guardian has. So for me the sensible thing to do is ignore them the same way I ignore the Daily Mail (two cheeks of the same arse) and get on with on enjoying our team.

completely agree. the guardian are the flip side of the same coin.

 

[Edghill OG]

This is getting serious. It hit today’s Jeremy Vine show, no less.

So we remove the ship, change street names, edit works of literature, etc. Do we now have a happier, more harmonious society?

Or is the net effect - unintended or maybe otherwise - to increase ethnic, social and political divisions?

My thoughts exactly. Lets saddle a load of people with guilt for something they weren't even apart of and give others a chip on their shoulder.

Anybody would think it was only ourselves that ever had an Empire. Even the Dutch and Belgians were at it for goodness sakes. It seems imperialism only became toxic when the British were involved.

Yes, we've committed some horrific acts in the past but which country doesn't have any blood on their hands? Removing a ship on a badge isn't going to change anything. Nobody other than the author linked slavery to an innocent ship being on our club crest.