Manchester SOS: Save Our Ship

Manchester SOS: Save Our Ship

This week The Guardian published an article which claimed Manchester’s football clubs should remove the famous ship from their badges. The ship – which also features on the council’s Coat of Arms – was labelled as a symbol of slavery by journalist Simon Hattenstone. It shouldn’t be surprising The Guardian has managed to find something to be offended by when examining Mancunian symbols, it appears their job is to create issues where they don’t exist.

Not that slavery didn’t exist back when the ship symbol was adopted, nor an attempt to marginalise the effects of an abhorrent trade. Any suggestion that slavery should be celebrated or held aloft would rightly be condemned. But the Cult of Virtue Signalling has run into the problem all conspiracy theorists face: they only take the pieces of evidence which fit their narrative, discarding the rest.

This means everything presented lacks context. In the delicate case of slavery mentioned here, which happened in the nineteenth century, there should be consideration given to judging people by the standards of the day. A previously written piece on this site recalled how there were calls to remove several of Sir Robert Peel’s statues because his family profited from the slave trade. At the time, his father was breaking no recognised laws. By the standards of his day, there wouldn’t have been many complaints.

However, his son – Sir Robert – voted for its abolition. Yes, it can be argued he benefitted from the slave trade but the resulting power and influence helped bring about its end. He’s also the creator of the modern day police force, and brought in the Factory Act to minimise the working hours of women and children and introduced basic safety standards.

So, a pretty mixed bag, that’s impossible to reach a conclusion by wiping him from history. In comparison, the Manchester ship debacle created by The Guardian is easier to decipher.

Slavery had already been abolished when the ship was introduced as a city symbol. There is the misconception its existence is to mark the Manchester Ship Canal, but this isn’t the case. It was representing free trade. Manchester famously became the worker bees of the Industrial Revolution. Sadly, it’s less known just how prominent those workers were in ending slavery abroad.

Hattenstone would have you believe a booming Manchester was created off the backs of cotton slaves in the United States. This is false on two accounts. Firstly, Britain had also been using cotton from within its own empire, namely India. More importantly, Mancunian workers took a strong stance against the American Confederates. Liverpool had already been seduced by the wealth from “slave trade money” as the University of Manchester explains.

It was in Manchester where workers supported Lincoln and the American slaves and refused to conform to Confederate pressures. This even led to riots. The strength of character and principles cannot be overstated here. These were people who risked their very existence, struggling through a cotton famine, in order to enact a change for the better. A change that was on the other side of the Atlantic.

Are we to believe that workers who risked their livelihood to oppose slavery, later raised no objection to the city using a symbol celebrating the act? Or is it plausible that the ship’s inclusion was about free trade all along?

It would be ignorant to say Manchester – and Britain as a whole – didn’t at various points in history benefit from slavery. Where possible, appropriate reparations should take place. But The Guardian can’t pick a tiny snapshot of a situation, and make a large sweeping statement.

The Cult of Virtue Signalling should stop looking for extraneous links in an attempt to remove historical symbols and put some effort into preventing modern day issues. 

Why isn’t Hattenstone demanding Manchester City council close all the Nike stores in the area? His paper, The Guardian, wrote in 2001 that Nike couldn’t guarantee its products wouldn’t be made using child labour. Does anyone recall a twenty-year campaign from The Guardian to end child labour? Is it too far away from these shores to take an interest in? Because distance didn’t stop the ship symbol wearing workers of Manchester taking a personal stand against an issue on the other side of the world.

Do we excuse The Guardian because it’s socially acceptable to wear Nike trainers in spite of the links to child labour? On this issue, it must be okay to pass judgement based on the premise: we can only judge people based on the times they live in. This seems like double-standards.

Instead of trying to reinforce questionable links to slavery in Mancunian symbols, why isn’t The Guardian combating modern day slavery? There were 5,144 recorded offences in the year ending 2019. It’s safe to assume the real numbers dwarf this as organised crime makes it difficult for victims to escape.

Energy should be spent on real issues instead of creating strawman arguments where people in authority are too scared of opposing the view in case its weaponised against them politically.

Wouldn’t it be better to educate the people of today how we benefitted from slavery, acknowledge that evil, then explain how it was abolished and ultimately opposed in Manchester on behalf of those on another continent? That Manchester’s Ship is now a symbol of free trade, open shores — an open world, where every person is equal.

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Centurions

Centurions

Before 2017 was even over, pundits and fans started to ask: Is the current Manchester City side the best the Premier League has ever seen?

By April, the mere suggestion had morphed into serious debate. It seemed the crown was to be contested by Pep’s latest side, and this season’s Premier League champions, Arsenal’s Invincibles, and Manchester United’s treble winning team of ’99.

All had merits that were difficult to argue against. Arsenal hold one of the few records that the current City team didn’t break. It was of course, the honour of going a full 38 games without tasting defeat.

Nothing should take away from that feat – one which may never be beaten – but the table never lies (we’ll keep coming back to that cliché). This season, the Citizens won an incredible 32 games; the Invincibles drew 12 in their unbeaten campaign.

If Mayweather gets criticised for winning without being exciting, the old chants of “Boring, boring, Arsenal” can be shoehorned (if a little unfairly) into this debate. Arsenal took a great singular achievement – going undefeated – and have traded on it ever since. It kept Arsène Wenger in a job for a decade longer than necessary.

The United team from 1999 is remembered as an all-time great because of how it captured the perfect treble: league title, FA Cup, European Cup. The injury time heroics against Bayern Munich helped give the season a Hollywood ending, almost on a par with that Agüero moment.

But the table from that year paints a different picture. They edged out Arsenal by a solitary point, tying with them on most wins that year – 22. It was actually Leeds United that held the record for consecutive victories with seven.

It hardly reeks of domestic dominance.

By comparison, this season City smashed records for most away wins in a season (16); most goals scored in a season (106); best goal difference (79); and one that will stand the test of time like Arsenal’s Invincible record – breaking the 100 point barrier.

City were head and shoulders above the rest of the league during the 2017/18 campaign. Detractors can’t say the league isn’t as competitive as it was in 1999. Back then the traditional Big Four played without fear of failing to qualify for Europe. Nowadays there is a strong top six, and anyone outside it can win any given match.

The results, week-after-week, promote unpredictability. The only certainty, the season defining constant, was Pep’s men would continue to march onward.

The competitiveness and response to it was best summed up in the home game against Southampton. A team that would avoid relegation by three points managed to hold the Blues until the fifth minute of injury time.

Then along came Raheem Sterling, he linked up with Kevin De Bruyne with a quick return pass, and curled the ball into the net, and was probably this writer’s favourite goal of the 106 scored all season.

It kept the winning streak going, making it 19 on the bounce.

That defiance and determination to keep excelling propelled City to unimaginable heights. Guardiola’s style of football, which had faced doubters the season before, was now controlling the English game.

Armchair experts – whose simple solution to Pep’s possession-based attacking football was simply to press City into submission – had to sit stunned as the Blues steamrolled every team they faced. They made the Premier League look like the top-flight North of the border.

Unfortunately, the seven days of destiny became a week of despair as City lost to Liverpool in the Champions League twice and missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clinch the title at home by beating arch-rivals United.

In a way, it had to be this way. A strand of “Typical City” will always exist in the club’s DNA. If there’s a hard way to do something, that places untold strain on the hearts of supporters, City will find it.

But this time, it was a blip rather than a prolonged period of pain. It acts as a slight taint on an otherwise perfect league campaign. No one remembers the three teams that beat United in the league back in 1999, or the 12 times The Invincibles dropped two points as they went unbeaten.

City’s slight imperfections make for more dramatic stories.

But they shouldn’t be the story or cloud judgement. Remember, the table really doesn’t ever lie. After 38 games the only story that matters is told by points acquired, goals scored, goals conceded, and the gap created by these in relation to other teams.

If those damning statistics aren’t enough, remember how City achieved such a massive gulf. It was by playing the sort of football that turns drunks into poets. It’s more than just possession football; the ball isn’t kept for the sake of keeping it away from the opposition, it is kept to create dreamlike sequences.

No team’s highlight reel from any era is a such a pleasurable viewing experience.

Pep’s team are the first Centurions, this alone makes them deserving of being named best team the Premier League has ever seen. The manner in which they achieved it just underlines the point.

The scary thought: they are only going to get better.

(Photo credit: http://www.mancity.com)

Mourinho’s Mindless Moanings

Mourinho’s Mindless Moanings

Mind games have been in a Premier League manager’s toolbox for a long time now. Sir Alex was lauded as a master, making Keegan and Benítez crack with it all caught on camera. Since then, every manager has, to some degree or another, attempted to manipulate the psychology of rival managers, players, even match officials.

A young José Mourinho pitched up at Chelsea, full of confidence that wasn’t quite arrogant due to its outlandishness and the cheeky glint in his eye. It undoubtedly was a form of mind games, the sort that only works if it delivers immediate success. Otherwise it makes the user appear ridiculous.

Any style of mind game needs to change over time. José knows this, even if he doesn’t believe on-field tactics need to evolve from one decade to the next. That blossoming young coach turned into a dour old man, who feels the world is against him and any team he manages.

To facilitate this belief, he relies on a heavy sprinkling of hypocrisy.

Take injuries. He famously said: “I never speak about injuries. Other managers, they cry, they cry, they cry when some player is injured. I don’t cry.”

Okay, he doesn’t literally cry, but no other manager this season has enjoyed talking about injuries more than Mourinho. It’s gotten to the point his stock remarks about his injuries have been exhausted so he’s taken to calling other managers liars when they announce an injury.

“But if I want to moan and cry like the others, I can cry for the next five minutes.”

The others aren’t crying and he’s the only one moaning. For a guy so convinced and obsessed he’s judged by different standards to the rest of planet Earth, it’s amazing he dared call out the honesty of fellow professionals. Surely that deserves some form of punishment?

He not so subtly alludes to this when concluding he wouldn’t have been allowed to make a public protest like Pep Guardiola regarding a political issue. This reveals the void of values within the man. Public figures have a duty to speak up when they see something wrong in the world.

Pep has stuck his head above the parapet to defend justice, free speech and democracy. The sort of values José likes to use and abuse.

However, you can’t expect a guy without morals to understand the need for ethical choices. He’d only ever make a modern-day equivalent of a “Free Nelson Mandela” speech if it got him off a touchline ban.

Mourinho can’t be invested in something like the Catalonia issue because it doesn’t involve him and therefore doesn’t really exist at all.

Heading into the Manchester Derby he moved onto lighter issues. After begrudgingly acknowledging City’s strengths, he added: “A little bit of wind and they fall.”

His remarks are transparent – and like his style of football – they’re boring. Clearly designed to plant a seed in the referee’s head, if there’s any justice (grab a dictionary, José), the officials will favour the City attackers to prevent accusations of playing to Mourinho’s tune.

What makes the remark more laughable (Ashley Flung aside) is how it comes on the back of Arsène Wenger being universally reprimanded for suggesting Raheem Sterling dives.

What José Mourinho requires is less in the way of mind games and a good dose of reality. It could be argued articles such as this means he’s doing something right. But he’s not getting under the skin of opposing teams anymore: he’s losing credibility.

He can’t even keep his own dressing rooms on-side, let alone disrupt others.

The biggest mind game he’s ever played and won has been on himself. He made José Mourinho think the world was against him, and keeps delivering faux evidence to plunge him deeper into an obvious depression.