Royal visits to Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

and the surrounding areas in the nineteenth century signify important achievements in the city’s history and offer an insight into the development of the area during this period. Moreover, Manchester’s response to such visits, the preparations and public displays of loyalty to the crown, challenge the perceived political history of Victorian Manchester, which was famed for its Liberalist notions, Free Trade

Free trade

Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...

 and the radical position of parties such as the Chartists.

Social and political change

Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 was a turbulent time for Manchester, as it had been in the previous century; however a number of changes prompted a more favourable outlook of the British Monarchy

British monarchy

The monarchy of the United Kingdom is the constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The present monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, has reigned since 6 February 1952. She and her immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial and representational duties...

 to slowly emerge among the town’s working classes. Manchester had historically been divided politically and the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

 had created new men at all levels, including the lower social orders and dissatisfaction with the 1832 Reform Act had provoked widespread agitation among the working classes. As Victoria came to the throne, so Chartism

Chartism

Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...

 came to the masses and in Manchester this manifested itself in the Manchester Political Union who sponsored a massive rally at Kersal Moor

Kersal Moor

Kersal Moor is a recreation area in Kersal, within the City of Salford, in Greater Manchester, England, consisting of eight hectares of moorland, bounded by Moor Lane, Heathlands Road, St...

 in Salford. The party, solely concerned with the working people, supported the general strikes of 1842, known as Plug Plot, in which thousands of mill workers protested against wage cuts, but shortly afterwards the Chartist movement declined. At the same time the town’s cultural diversity had continued to widen, as an influx of Irish immigrants had entered the town and later, in the 1880s, Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 also settled in Manchester. Both nationalities were representative of everything the English working man, at this time, was not, a point emphasised by Tory

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 politics, which, whilst not openly advocating extreme sectarian attitudes, maintained that the Monarch and the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 were at the heart of the Englishman’s national identity. Furthermore, attitudes towards the Monarchy were improving, as the public saw Queen Victoria as a better example of the constitutional monarch, not involving herself in politics, which, when combined with Prince Albert

Prince Albert

Prince Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria.Prince Albert may also refer to:-Royalty:*Prince Albert Edward or Edward VII of the United Kingdom , son of Albert and Victoria...

’s philanthropic activities, in the late 1840s, with education and housing for the poor, resulted in a shift in public opinion and the popularity of the Royal family increased. Finally, the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 had enabled many working men to vote, from which "popular Toryism" emerged and needless to say the party’s ethos of constitution, Queen and Church attracted the working classes, which despite nineteenth-century England’s shift towards a secularised state manifested itself in open displays of loyalty to the Crown.

1851

This was the first visit of a monarch to the region for a century and a half and both Manchester and Salford went to great lengths to host a memorable event. The escort for the royal party included a Guard of Honour of the Yeoman Cavalry who accompanied them as far as Cross lane, the boundary between Pendleton and Salford. However, at this point, the cavalry were dismissed "for fear of disturbances, as Peterloo

Peterloo Massacre

The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 that had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation....

 was still fresh in the minds of the people." 1851 had already been a significant year for Prince Albert with the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, an event with which he had direct involvement and one which celebrated industry and technology, an important connection with Manchester. They stayed at Worsley Hall as guests of the Earl of Ellesmere

Earl of Ellesmere

Earl of Ellesmere, of Ellesmere in the County of Shropshire , is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1846 for the Conservative politician Lord Francis Egerton. He was granted the courtesy title of Viscount Brackley, of Brackley in the County of Northampton, at the same...

. On October 10 the Queen and Prince Albert left Worsley Hall and the procession took them through Salford to Peel Park

Peel Park, Salford

Peel Park is a public urban park in Salford, Greater Manchester, England located on the flood plain of the River Irwell below Salford Crescent and adjacent to the University of Salford...

, where a suggested 80,000 Sunday school children performed the National Anthem

National anthem

A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...

, a moment which was argued as the most celebrated of the visit for its mass public appeal, as well as religious and educational significance:

"One of the great moral features of Manchester –
of the manufacturing districts generally – is the extent
to which the Sunday-School system is carried…
educating thousands who would otherwise have grown
up in utter and deplorable ignorance"

The Queen responded with an address in which she expressed her ‘great pleasure…seeing the attention that was paid to the education of the rising generation in Manchester and Salford’. From Peel Park the royal procession continued into Manchester and the combined spectator figure recorded for both boroughs was 800, 000, which the Times described as, ‘a population new on the soil, very mixed, very laborious, accustomed to hear all sides of political questions and to decide them on Utilitarian principles’. This practical, down-to-earth stereotype of the people of Manchester was, by the 1850s visible as the warehouse, representative of the town’s trading success, appeared and the advances of industry and technology, close to the heart of Prince Albert, were at the centre of the its achievements.

1857

In May 1857 Prince Albert arrived in Manchester, one month before the Queen, to open the Art Treasures Exhibition and also inaugurate one of the first portrait statues to be erected of Queen Victoria during her reign. The statue in Peel Park commemorated the Royal visit to Salford in 1851 and the aforementioned success of the 80, 000 strong, Sunday schools’ performance of the National Anthem. Like 1851 the visit attracted large crowds and Manchester was awash with colour, as the Standard and Royal Arms flags decorating the majestic Watts Warehouse

Watts Warehouse

Watts Warehouse is a large, ornate Victorian Grade II* listed building which stands on Portland Street in the centre of Manchester, United Kingdom. It opened in 1856 as a textile warehouse for the wholesale drapery business S & J Watts, and at the time it was the largest single-occupancy textile...

 celebrated the city's civic pride and dedication to the crown; a scene which would be replicated on a much grander scale in 1894.

1894

On 21 May the Queen visited to perform the official opening of the Manchester Ship Canal

Manchester Ship Canal

The Manchester Ship Canal is a river navigation 36 miles long in the North West of England. Starting at the Mersey Estuary near Liverpool, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Several sets of locks lift...

. The Ship Canal took seven years to build and stretched for 35 miles, creating the city’s link to the open sea and independent shipping. The Queen knighted the mayor of Salford, William Henry Bailey and the lord mayor of Manchester, Anthony Marshall at the opening of the Canal.

In the run up to the visit, the city had experienced periods of both hardship and prosperity, with the depression of the 1870s and the continuing cycle of the cotton trade, thus the ship canal symbolised the future of not only cotton, but also trade in general for Manchester:

"The strain of purely joyous sentiment suggestive of youth
and high hope and bright anticipation, scarcely perhaps to
be looked for in those more recent years".

The Manchester Guardian hailed the importance and success of the visit, in which the Queen saw a Manchester that ‘did not exist in 1851 or 1857’ and quoted the Morning Post’s claims that the ceremony was one of ‘exceptional interest and importance’. Not only did the Queen officially open the canal, which represented technological and engineering advances, but she also viewed a city changed in appearance since her last visit. The Queen rode past the stately warehouses, like that of Messrs. Watt on Portland Street

Portland Street

Portland Street is a popular street in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The street is known for its business and retailing skyscraper complex Langham Place, numerous restaurants and its famous red-light district.-Geography:...

, the newly built Manchester Town Hall

Manchester Town Hall

Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian-era, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. The building functions as the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments....

 (1877), with the Albert Memorial, in Albert Square

Albert Square

Albert Square is the fictional location of the BBC soap opera EastEnders. It is ostensibly located in the equally fictional London borough of Walford in London's East End. The square's design was based on the real life Fassett Square in Hackney, and was given the name Albert Square after the real...

, Manchester's tribute to her late husband and finally the emerging commercial buildings epitomised in Lewis's

Lewis's

Lewis's was a large department store in Liverpool city centre. It was formerly the flagship of a chain of department stores under the Lewis's name, that operated from 1856 to 1991, when the company went into administration. Several stores in the chain were bought by the company Owen Owen and...

 Department store, all of which shaped the Manchester still visible to today’s citizens and visitors. Moreover, as Sir Bosdin Leech commented, in the Leech Family Diaries, the crowd was vast and represented a city emerging out of the uncertainty of the third quarter of the century. The ship canal, the changing city and the cheering crowds signified a Manchester built on determination and innovation, both symbolic of the values of Queen Victoria and her late husband.

Historical significance

Although for its celebration of engineering achievement and vast attendance 1894 was arguably the most significant of royal visits to the region, the position of Manchester as a modern city and the plight of the working man during the nineteenth century reveals all three occasions to be of equal historical importance. As the Times's comments in 1851 emphasised, Manchester was new and built largely on industrious principles, which was in direct conflict with the traditions and ancient history of the Monarchy; therefore, the town’s response and public support of the visits may be argued as surprising. However, it is clear from the social and political changes, which occurred between the Queen's ascension to the throne and her first visit to the town that Chartism and forms of Republican politics had failed to provoke significant anti-royalist feelings. Moreover, the failure of Chartism to instigate change had forced the proletariat to reconsider his political stance, which ultimately led to his shift towards that of the Anglican Tory. This, when coupled with underlying tensions towards the Irish Catholics saw the emergence of a new working class man, who, in the second half of the century, subconsciously reinstated the Head of the Church of England as the symbol of Englishness and displayed his national pride through a revived loyalty to the crown. A notion summed up by the Manchester Guardian, reporting on the visit of 1857 and hailing the, "proud spectacle for everyone rejoicing in the name and character of Englishmen".

Books and Additional Sources

1. Manchester Guardian Archive Online, http://archive.guardian.co.uk/Default/Skins/DigitalArchive/Client.asp?Skin=DigitalArchive&enter=true?CMP=KNC-DAPPC&HBX_PK=manchester%20guardian%20archive&HBX_OU=50&AppName=2&gclid=COKZt8aYoZICFSBWMAodlR50MA&AW=1206205206309
2. Hartwell, C., Manchester (London: Penguin, 2001)
3. Hill, M. and Waghorn, T. (eds.), Royal Manchester: From Victoria to Diana, A Pictorial History of the Royal Families Visits to Greater Manchester (Manchester: Diverse Media Limited, 1998
4. Hunt, T. and Whitfield, V., Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 years on (Manchester: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2007)
5. Williams, R., The Contentious Crown: Public Discussion of the British Monarchy in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1997)
6. Wyke, T. and Cook, H., Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004)