Manchester 50 years ago is is a lost era. And yet the fifties is where the new Manchester began. It was also the last decade of the old Manchester, preserved war-damaged but largely intact from Victorian times. Much of it would be destroyed in the 60s.
Eye On Manchester 50 years ago dips into life in Manchester five decades back and attempts to recapture the atmosphere of that time, and to feel ‘at home’ there.
The concept is not quite the same as ‘On This Day’ type news features, which can be interesting, though because they select randomly from different years, they still give us a ‘chrono-centric’ view of the past, i.e. one that views the past from our point of view today and according to our prejudices.
Using the ’50 Years Ago’ concept I attempt to view things from the perspective that time. It’s difficult to imagine a world without supermarkets, the Beatles, or PCs, but if you can think yourself back into those times, you begin to think differently about the present, which after all is only the past-in-waiting.
‘Why bother?’, some might ask? ‘The past is history’. Actually, the past isn’t history, the past is all around us today, history is all around us, everywhere, though many people are blind to it. Cities develop over decades and centuries. If you want to understand a city like Manchester, you have to take the long view, and the immediate post war period is a key period. Much of what we see around us today was planned during that time. Many plans never came to fruition. Many mistakes were made during that time, and many opportunities lost. Many good things we enjoy today originated in that time too.
Our view of the past is often cliched and misinformed. I’ve read many times how the 50s was a dreary decade, how Manchester was a dull, grey, drizzly, ugly backwater – it wasn’t. Manchester 50 years ago was a surprising place, with many assets, amenities, strengths, which could have been retained and enhanced, but were squandered in later years.
Academic history is mainly about political events, international cataclysms, famous people, important dates. Local history, focusing on the ordinary but fascinating details of the day to day life of ‘ordinary’ people, is often neglected. The war years in Manchester are well documented, but the years that followed are largely forgotten.
Manchester 50 years ago isn’t really a lost world. With a bit of imagination and intuition, with the aid of old photos, newspapers on microfilm, and peoples’ accounts of that time, it can easily be conjured up. We can be ‘time tourists’ and visit Manchester 50 years ago.
According to some theories of time, eras are ‘synchronous’, they exist concurrently but in a different space. Like Australia. We know it’s there – on the other side of the world. Though we can’t see it, we know it exists because we’ve heard about it, seen images of it on tv, magazines and books, and met people who’ve been there or are from there, and talk to people there on the phone or by e-mail. Manchester 50 years ago is ‘there’ too, but we can’t travel there, or communicate with it, except in our imagination.
Eye On Manchester will be taking ‘day trips’ back to Manchester 50 years ago, and selected dates up to then. Photos from that time, and before, will be included whereever possible. One source of images is the Francis Frith Collection. Photos can be purchased from the Francis Frith Collection website. As an affiliate, Eye On Manchester will receive a share of the revenue.
This isn’t nostalgia, this is rediscovering a lost reality that has the key to understanding Manchester in the present. It allows us to understand the mistakes that were made in the past, the same ones that are being repeated today. It allows us to see what was, and what might have been and may even allow us to see into the future.