Councillor Bev Craig

Caitlin Morrissey

Why don’t we start with the big question which is what really makes Manchester unique from your point of view? And what is it that makes Manchester Manchester?

Cllr Bev Craig

So I suppose this is a question that we get asked a lot. I think every city is keen to say that there’s only one of their cities, but I think the thing that’s probably quite special for me is I guess how Manchester leans into its past without being defined by it and has the ability I think to take the best bits from its past. So particularly kind of social justice, kind of passion for equity, you know a city that sort of really blends together but is always reinventing itself and always pushing forward to do something different. A lot of places can just be defined by their past and can just talk about the glory days gone by, whereas I think in Manchester there is a real energy. I guess it’s easy to say, but the civic pride in Manchester, is something that doesn’t happen by accident and is cultivated, of course, but the very notion of Mancunians, of 'why can’t Manchester do that?' really sums up the attitudes that the city has.

Caitlin Morrissey

Where do think some of those traits have come from? Where do we look to in Manchester’s history to first see some of those characteristics?

Cllr Bev Craig

For me if you think about the diversity of the city, you think about the mixture of people that have been born and grown up in the city versus those – I suppose a bit like myself – adopted Mancunians that find our place and find our home here. Leaning back into those kind of equality movements of the past, you know, the role that Manchester’s played from the trade union movement through to feminism or LGBT rights, or the fact that we’re a city that is at ease with itself when it speaks 192 languages. I think that does allow people to really thrive in that space.

I think when you’ve had big things in your history that helps you understand that you can do big things in your future. I think Manchester’s story that it tells itself in many ways becomes its self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s dead easy, isn’t it? You say civic pride, you say everyone loves the place, but there is something quite unique in terms of how people will take the best bits from their past as a driver to do something with it in the future. We use our past as a call to action for what we’re going to do next.

Caitlin Morrissey

So well put, thank you so much. And so how many Manchesters are there? Is there one Manchester or are there many? And what is the tapestry that holds together the city?

Cllr Bev Craig

So I mean I think there is only one place that is Manchester. But I think having such a diverse population and having so many different perspectives on it mean that different people will experience it differently. You know there are, like any places, kind of contradictions. You know, you can be the fastest growing economy in Europe, but you can still be the sixth most deprived local authority in England. You know you can see Manchester’s growing fintech or life sciences or digital and cyber economies and then you can see some of real challenges of intergenerational poverty just outside of our boundary. So I think people do still experience the city differently. And I think one of the things that back to that point around civic prize, you know, when I go on a national and international stage, Mancunians don’t want me to stand up and say how terrible life can be. So everyone’s really poor, life’s really hard, we don’t have enough, we want to have more money, we want to do this, we want to that. Kind of, Mancunians wouldn’t respect me for doing that. They want me as their leader to put the best case forward for what their city is. So I think sure there’ll be different perspectives, there’ll be different experiences, but there is a sense of commonality I think in terms of what Manchester is and what it wants to be.

Caitlin Morrissey

That leads us really nicely on to the third question we had for you, which is what does the world need to understand about Manchester or what is the story that you do tell when you’re on the international stage talking about the city?

Cllr Bev Craig

When you go across the world, there’s a lot of brand recognition that comes with Manchester. We’ve done a lot of work over the years around recognising where the strength in our brand comes from. From the city's music, culture, football.; all of the obvious things. I guess for me though there are some misconceptions. If you’d only visited Manchester in 1992 or you’d only visited Manchester in 2007, the city changes really quickly. I talk a lot to even people in the UK that visited a couple of years ago and they’ve come back, and they see significant change. So I think the fact that it is fast-paced, fast-moving and there’s always something happening. That means that the story is even more important.

I think if you want to get to the heart of how Manchester tells its story, it describes itself and I describe it, as a city that did great things in the past, was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution but like most of Britain and many of Europe’s great industrial cities struggled in that post-industrial decline. It had a period in the ‘70s, ‘80s, the ‘90s where we were known for our music, we were known for what could often have been construed as slightly depressed lads with a guitar singing some epic songs, but we weren’t known for what our economic future would look like. If you take that post-industrial decline city and you think about where its trajectory should be, actually it was discarded to sit on the heap and to further wither.

So that self-confidence in The DNA of Manchester comes a little bit from pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. If I think about the role that my predecessors have played in that, if you think about the role that Howard and Richard collectively played in that, to take a post-industrial city with no real economic strengths and no sense of direction into a city now that’s really developing its economy across a number of key tenants. Our growing life sciences cluster that’s becoming more and more internationally significant by the day, the £8 billion GVA added from our advanced materials and manufacturing industry, the work we’ve done around financial and professional services over the years, the digital and creative sector that’s worth over £5 billion GVA, the largest creative industry sector in Europe after London. All of those things happened, I suppose, with economic intentionality, learning also from the mistakes of the past where if you’re a place that defines yourself just in one industry, then you open yourself up to kind of the hot and the cold nature of boom and bust when it comes to industry. It’s easy, isn’t it, for politicians to say the word ecosystem. It feels like we say it all the time. But you need to have strengths in your economy that help you pivot into the next new thing. Nobody would have thought fintech would have been a Manchester strength, but if we hadn’t have majored in financial and professional services and our digital economy, then we wouldn’t be in financial e-commerce.

So I think for me, it’s telling a story of an economy that’s changed, a place that’s changed, that kind of culture- and sports-led regeneration piece that we’ve done. The role that Factory International and Aviva Studios play, the largest public sector intervention in the arts in Tate Modern. That was in Manchester, not London. The work we’ve been doing around some of our internationally significant cultural offer. A city centre that’s changed beyond recognition where you had 800 to 1,000 people living in the city centre 20 years ago, it’s a population that’ll soon exceed 100,000 in the city centre alone. We’re one of the youngest cities in the UK where over 50% of graduates from both universities stay and a city that speaks almost 200 languages both in terms of population that grows up here but international talent that we attract from across the globe. So you say all of that and suddenly the Manchester that you visited in 1997 feels a little bit different.

So I think there’s something for me of the Manchester today demonstrating that it can live up to the hype. I think we’ve always taken an approach in the city that’s almost been a little bit like 'fake it til you make it.' So when we talk about becoming a globally significant or a world-class city, you know, we were hoping that the Barcelonas, the Lyons – our European comparators so to speak – would come knocking, rather than us going to them for our own collaboration. It feels that we’re in that moment. So in September, we’ve been invited to Barcelona to be their guest city at La Mercè, the cultural Catalan gem that they have every single year. Lyon's speaking to us around how we’re growing our life sciences rather than the other way around. The Marketing Manchester team has got no end of economists, New York Times, Lonely Planet and all sorts of people in touch.

So I think for me it’s recognising there is a bit of a moment around Manchester and whilst we’re good at talking ourselves up, we’re not just about the hype and when you set out some of those strengths, be it around industry, be it around population, skills and talent, it’s not all hot air. There’s something to evidence what you’re doing along the way.

Caitlin Morrissey

Completely. But where is Manchester going next? What is its future? And how will The DNA of Manchester and everything that we’ve just been talking about shape that?

Cllr Bev Craig

So I think that Manchester, whilst talking a lot about its development and seeing a lot in the changes of the visible skyline, Manchester’s been trying to do something else alongside of that. So I think we’ll continue to see a strong economic growth. We’ll continue to see a city that builds in size. If you go back to the 1990s and you look at those aerial shots of Manchester, it was a city that was littered in many ways by surface car parks in the centre and derelict mill and office and industrial wasteland around the sides. There’s still a lot of room for Manchester to grow without experiencing some of the difficulties, particularly around gentrification, that other places have seen where they’ve grown but people have been displaced. Whereas actually in Manchester, the fact that there is so much empty land to go at, I think, tells a different story.

But I think alongside that economic growth and population growth. We’ve been trying to do something else and that speaks to what we’re about as a city. That’s around making sure that our current and future generations genuinely do get to benefit from those opportunities. Because we all know the challenge, we all know the driving mission of Manchester and needing both homegrown talent as well as international talent. So, I think you’ll see in Manchester over the next 10 to 15 years the interventions that we are making come to fruition around how we help Mancunians actually access that opportunity. If you think about it in waves where we’ve had to bring opportunity to the city to show everyone that it’s possible, but behind the scenes we’ve done a lot of quiet work on early years transformation, primary school transformation and secondary school transformation. The easiest way to describe that is actually what we do in our GCSE attainment levels at the minute. If you think about Manchester’s story with schools – I think this shows just where things could start to change. We’ve not been known for good schools over the years. Many inner cities have struggled with the same problem. We would often reach a point where residents 10, 15 years ago, as their kids started to grow up, would leave the City of Manchester. They would go to Stockport, they’d go to Trafford, they’d go to Cheshire, based on the quality of our schools. We’ve now got more good and outstanding schools than ever before, over 90% in secondary and 93% in primary. For the first time ever in Manchester’s history, we’ve got what we can now call a statistical trend where for more than two years our kids have achieved at or above the national average for GCSE. Now that might not sound like a lot, but to do that without the capital, the revenue and the structural intervention that London witnessed through the London Challenge programme, to do that simply through better reforming of public services, integrated whole family neighbourhood-based approaches, school readiness in early years, keeping Sure Start going, helping fund the transition from primary into secondary like we’re doing. To see that societal flip shows that there’s something else going on as well.

When you combine that with what we’ve done around social value, what we’ve done around job creation, any big major partner that we work with in the city, we expect off them not just to do their social value procurement commitment but to be part of what we’re trying to achieve. We saw that with our economic strategy, where actually the businesses in Manchester, the big players and the small ones, were really hungry for the city to be building affordable housing, for the city to be talking about post-school, post-college transition and for the city to be talking about how they can connect their opportunities into what they do.

So I think hopefully the key thing that people will take away is that there’s more to Manchester’s story. It’s not just economic transformation. It’s not just physical transformation. But there’s a real hunger behind the social transformation that needs to also happen to keep our place successful, but to make sure that we’re reducing poverty, getting people into opportunity. Ultimately, when many big businesses move to Manchester, if I think particularly in cyber, they’re coming because they’re really interested in our population. It’s our job to make sure that we push them forward and get them into the right place. So yeah, economic, physical and social.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you so much, Councillor Craig.

Greg Clark

So you said that you’ve adopted Manchester but what was it about Manchester that drew you to the city and ultimately, of course, to become its Leader?

Cllr Bev Craig

Well, I got bit in trouble once with Nancy Rothwell for not saying it was the quality of the educational institution that brought me to Manchester. But look, I’ve been really honest about this. I grew up in Belfast, working class council estate, nobody in my family had finished GCSEs, never mind gone to university, didn’t really know what university was other than the fact I’d seen it on the TV, and was really drawn to Manchester. I was a football fan but for me, really importantly, I saw Queer as Folk on the TV and thought that this could be a city that I’d have a place. So, arrogantly picked the top five unis outside of Oxbridge, ticked the boxes, saw who I could get into, but was really drawn to the city.

When I came here, I stayed. I felt for the first time in my life that I fitted in and it was a place that somebody like me could do well, both in terms of my class, but also in terms of my sexuality. Stuck around when everyone graduated, wasn’t party political at the time. Got involved in the Labour Party in 2009. Probably just as everyone else was leaving, I arrived. Actually, it was as Nick Griffin was standing for the BNP in the regional seat for the European elections that made me think 'it’s probably time to put my money where my mouth is.' Got elected in 2011 as the youngest councillor at the time, 25 or 26. Joined the Cabinet in 2017, oversaw all of the health, wellbeing and social care stuff including through the pandemic. So when Richard thought he was going to retire, I thought 'well I may as well have a crack at that.' They’ve been stuck with me ever since 2003.

Greg Clark

I think they’re very grateful to have you. Bev, you talked a little bit earlier on about things that make Manchester different and how the world sees Manchester and how that’s changing. But is there anything that the world thinks about Manchester that you think is wrong? Are there any myths that are unhelpful or untrue?

Cllr Bev Craig

I think that there is a perception at times of Manchester that we’re still the Manchester of 10 to 15 years ago. If we’re trying to change anything, it’s that we are a modern, diverse, confident city with a strong economy and nice places to live. People have got a 15 to 20 year old version of Manchester that might have been defined by Oasis, it might have been defined by their music of that generation, but there’s a lot more to us than that.

Greg Clark

Right, really clear. One of the things we were talking about just when you came on and we said hello is that of course in many cities around the world but particularly in Manchester there have been some shocks, terrorist incidents at concerts, obviously an IRA bomb that you will have thought about in great depth. How does Manchester respond to shocks in a way that shows you the kind of the true nature of the city?

Cllr Bev Craig

I think how a place responds to adversity really defines it. I remember I was nowhere near the Ariana Grande concert that night, but I remember almost watching scenes unfold on what was Twitter at the time. At the same time as you saw that horror, you also saw hundreds of taxi drivers putting on the internet that they’ll get anybody home to anywhere they need to go if they just get in touch. I think when people see the best of their fellow neighbours at the worst of times, I think that really strengthens not just cohesion, but how people feel about a place.

One of the most powerful days of my life was the next day when we all got together in Albert Square for a big, massive event that was like a solidarity event where people just came together. So I think there’s something about how you care for your neighbour and you look out for them that I think strengthens a place and I think it’s one of the reasons perhaps that we don’t have the same racial tensions for example as other places do. When you live alongside each other you get to see the best as well as the worst of what humanity’s got to throw at you. So I think it’s all always been a place that doesn’t accept a setback. Even some of the worst atrocities I think have been a good example of that.

Greg Clark

Thank you, Bev. Manchester’s got an amazing reputation for the partnership work that it’s done, especially working with private capital. Two examples are obviously the Airport Group, where you as a city built up the Airport Group and then sold half the shares and then were able to reinvest those. Another one might be the Manchester Life company partnership that’s enabled you to bring in money from the Middle East to invest in the regeneration process. It seems that Manchester is quite good at that kind of partnership too. Why is that? Is that something that you aim to continue? Is that important in the next stage of Manchester’s development?

Cllr Bev Craig

Yes, so I’d say two things. The first is that I think we’re ultimate pragmatists and really focused on getting stuff done. If you think about Manchester’s growth over the last 15 years there were some interventions from government through George Osborne and devolution that were helpful but much of what’s happened in Manchester has been without government support. If government aren’t going to pay for it, somebody needs to pay for it. There’s a pragmatic view that we don’t let the government’s approach of the day, whatever colour that may be, stand in the way of the economic and social progress we want to see.

The second is also the sense that I am a public sector leader, I lead a place. I’m not an expert in building houses and I’m not an expert in the development of commercial Grade A office space, but I have hell of a lot of experts in my city that are very good at doing this. So I think we’re good at partnerships but we’re selective about partners: in it for the long term, committed to our long-term values and prepared to put something in if they want to get something out. That’s a defining relationship and something over the last three years under my leadership has continued to bear a lot of fruit, I think.

Greg Clark

Thank you very much. Then lastly, obviously the city of Manchester has lent its name to Greater Manchester that now also exists as an entity of nine local authorities working together in a collaboration, a combined authority with an elected mayor. What does the world need to understand about how Manchester’s gone about that? What would you say overall the progress is with having those arrangements?

Cllr Bev Craig

I think good. I think it remains the case that the UK is still the most centralised country of the OECD countries. With our little bit of devolution in places like Greater Manchester we still aren’t decentralised. We’re still not there yet. So I think devolution is definitely a journey. I suppose in terms of understanding, probably say three things.

The first that we asked for it. We actually wanted it, and we wanted the ability to work together to be able to do this. The second is that actually the model that we have is a really collaborative and participative one. I don’t just act as the leader of the City of Manchester, I lead on all of the economic, business and international issues for the entirety of Greater Manchester. So the combined authority model is a good one. I often describe Andy [Burnham] as the captain of a football team not the single tennis player who’s got his own game, so that model actually helps. The third is normal people don’t see the world in bureaucratic electoral boundaries in the way I do. Most normal people, as long as their bins are emptied and they get the services they need, don’t spend much time thinking about who their local authority is. My residents in north Manchester, some of the most deprived in the country need Middleton, Rochdale and Oldham to be doing just as well as they need the city centre. So actually, in terms of having an area that is a functional economic geography, it’s also a place that people live in and I think the future will be cross-boundary collaboration and models like GM let us do that.

Caitlin Morrissey

The final question is, is there anything that you haven’t said that we haven’t prompted from you and that you’d want to add?

Cllr Bev Craig

The final thing I’d say is that the question people don’t always ask me enough about Manchester is 'what next?' There is a perception that we’re done. There’s a perception that people look at our city centre, they look at what we’ve achieved in terms of economic growth, and they don’t realise that actually we’re only part way on our journey. I will say, you know, peak Manchester will come in another 10 to 15 years. Actually, there’s a hell of a lot of work still to be done over the next decade. We still underperform in comparison to other non-capital cities. There’s a lot coming out of Manchester and if you think about the next decade, you’ll see our population grow, our economy increase and hopefully some movement on social progress as well. I think there’s a lot of excitement about the future of Manchester.

Greg Clark

Thank you very much, Bev.