Sir Richard Leese

Caitlin Morrissey 

I'll start with the first question then, which is to ask you, Richard, what is the DNA of Manchester?

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, I'm going to transpose the question because I'm going to refer to some work commissioned by Manchester City Council back in 2003 which was looking at brand value. Now this wasn't brand work in terms of creating a brand. It was recognising that the brand was Manchester and trying to understand what the brand was. I think the nearest out of that that would probably relate to the question about DNA was the very final part of that work when it talked about the brand values of Manchester. And this was research-based, not a creative sat somewhere thinking about what it might be. It came out with three big things. One was that the self-belief that Manchester had a certain attitude, a certain amount of edge. It believed it could do things and I certainly always hold the view that cities that believe that they can do things are more likely to do things than other places. I think the second element of it was the live and let live. It's an inclusive city, a welcoming city. I think Tristram Hunt referred to this about Victorian Manchester, that one reason that Manchester became the pre-eminent industrial city was its willingness to welcome people who came to the city to do things. The third element is that although Manchester respects its history, it is a forward-looking city, not a backward-looking city. We don't dwell on what we did last year. We're more interested in what we're going to do this year as a city. And I think those are things that, for me, I would describe as really being the DNA of the city. Obviously, sometimes they are interpreted differently outside the city than inside. So what I would describe as Manchester attitude, some people outside would describe as Manchester arrogance. They're the same thing and they have the same impact.

Greg Clark 

Richard, in that work when it was done, did they trace back where these attributes have come from? The self-belief, the live and let live, the kind of forward-looking. Was there particular points in history or particular moments in the city that gave rise to this attitude? Or was it just the kind of founding mothers and fathers who did those things?

Sir Richard Leese 

I don't think the research did that and the research was rather more based on talking to people both within the city and outside the city about perceptions and what their understanding was. But I think that clearly that change did come about Manchester becoming an industrial city. It's pretty much a bit of a backwater until the Industrial Revolution. But it's really that late 18th Century, 19th Century history of the city that I think led to what we've become.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Richard. And so what makes Manchester, Manchester, as you see it? And are there different Manchester’s? And if so, along what sort of lines can we differentiate Manchester?

Sir Richard Leese 

I think first of all that the city is an incredibly diverse place. And even 10 years ago, I think we identified over 200 first languages being spoken in our schools. So there is an enormous diversity. People, I suppose, they will perceive, they will have an impact on them in their lives from the city that differs. However, I'd say there is only one Manchester because Manchester is the commonality that brings all of those people together. It gives people an identity that whatever their background, wherever they’ve come from, wherever their families have come from, they can identify with the city.

As somebody who is himself an immigrant to the city quite a long time ago now, 45 years ago. Manchester is a place that if you come and you adopt Manchester's values, you become a Mancunian day one. There is no settling in period. But of course, there was an ‘if’ there. If you adopt Manchester's values, you become a Mancunian day one. If you go around the city, are there differences between East Manchester and Didsbury? Well, there are certainly class differences. There are deprivation differences. Yes, there are, but there is a commonality as well.

Greg Clark 

Richard, if I may, just follow up there. Obviously, there are a number of cities around the world that have the literal name Manchester in different parts of the world, in Australia, North America, Canada, etc. But there are also some cities who call themselves the Manchester of, you know, Barcelona is the Manchester of the Mediterranean, or Chicago is the Manchester of North America. I don't know whether you've heard all of that many times before. But do you think that there's something that those cities are alluding to when they call themselves the Manchester of their country or their region? Is that something that you have a reflection on?

Sir Richard Leese 

Oh yeah, you can add Tampere is the Manchester of Finland, Faisalabad is the Manchester of Pakistan, Melbourne is the Manchester of Australia. And of course, Australia in their stores, I think they still call a range of cotton goods ‘Manchester’ in their stores as well. So yes, I think we're very familiar with that. And this does come back to what we describe as Manchester being one of the cities that shook the world and in the Industrial Revolution, it did. A lot of those cities really modelled themselves as industrial cities on the Manchester of the 19th Century.

Caitlin Morrissey 

I want to ask you now, Richard, about the geological and geographical features that have played a role in Manchester's evolution. So how its geography and environment and its topography has shaped the city over time, as you see it?

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, you could go back to, I suppose, to Roman Manchester where the Roman camp was built there because there was a little hill next to where they could cross the River Irwell. So going back to the early origins the topography had an impact on that. If you look at more modern Manchester, what are the predominant features? You've got the Pennines and the West Pennines to the east and the north of the city, you have actually a very large flat area, Cheshire Plain, Lancashire Plain to the south and east, a lot of that is actually peat bog originally. So all of that. And the predominant winds are south-westerlies coming off the Atlantic and the Irish Sea that tend to carry moisture. What happens is that as that wind approaches Manchester and it starts to hit the Pennines, it starts to rise, and it creates damp air and that damp air is why the cotton industry thrived in all those mill towns to the north of Manchester. And I can't remember the exact difference, but there is a difference in the things that were done predominantly in East Lancashire, so Blackburn, Burnley, places like that as against Bolton and Oldham and Rochdale. The difference between north of the West Pennines and south of the West Pennines. One it’s to do with damp air, and I think the others to do with rain. But I can't remember which way round. But that's a pretty significant factor in why we became Cottonopolis all those years ago. So I think that's probably the most dominant impact of where we are.

I suppose, where from where Manchester is now, modern Manchester, having grown as the industrial city, we lie pretty much at the middle of an urban conglomeration, particularly if you take the Pennines away. But that's 6 million people. So we're equidistant between Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, an enormous population there, and Manchester's central point there is, I think, and being major route focus for all of those places is part of what has supported the city to grow.

Greg Clark 

And Richard, any particular thoughts about how significant the Manchester Canal was? Because that's obviously a man-made feature, and Caitlin was asking about natural features. But it seems to us, from what we've heard already, that the canal was a very important catalyst.

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, it was but I'm going to pick another canal if you don't mind because another feature of the area around Manchester, particularly to the west, is coal. And so I'm going to pick the Bridgewater Canal which was first built in order to bring coal from the Duke of Bridgewater's mines out in Worsley, out in what's now Salford into the city and to feed the mills. So I'd say the Bridgewater Canal was probably slightly more important than the Manchester Ship Canal because the Ship Canal, actually, came quite late in Manchester's industrial history. So yes, it was a very significant piece of infrastructure but with a relatively short useful life. So if I compare that to the West Coast Main Line railway, where the oldest bit of the West Coast Main Line is pre-Victorian, never mind the Victorian, and I think the Ship Canal only just about-- no, I don't think the Ship Canal is largely post-Victorian. And probably, certainly by 1980 its usage had shrunk very, very significantly.

Caitlin Morrissey 

And is there anything else you'd like to say about sort of Manchester's relationship to, well, Greater Manchester, but also Manchester's relationships in the north of England to the other cities in relationship to rail and rail infrastructures as we ask, what are the sort of role in these physical features and shaping the city?

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, I think you've already indicated that the towns around Manchester, at its industrial height, were where a lot of the factories were, a lot of the mills were, a lot of the production was. So there has been that symbiotic relationship between those towns and the city that go back a very long way indeed. In terms of a modern economy, where one of the big drivers of the modern economy is availability of the skilled workforce, so the number of people who live within a travel to work area, the relationship with those towns continues because certainly that is a lot of where that skill workforce live and developments like, certainly the railways initially, but things like the light rail network that Manchester have mean that in terms of proximity, travel time, that a lot of those people are able to travel into or around the city to be able to support the growth of the economy.

In terms of the other cities within the north, Manchester recognised a very long time ago the relationship with those cities ought to be complementary, not a competitive one. Not that the city shouldn't be competitive, but competitiveness should be measured on a global measure, not on a local measure. And that's the way the cities look forward. I talked about us being inclusive and once you put things like football on one side, which has a necessary tribal element to it, Manchester has always sought to cooperate with its neighbours rather than compete with its neighbours.

Caitlin Morrissey 

And so there's an obvious follow-up to that, which is to ask you about the place of football in shaping Manchester, and where we see Manchester's DNA in its football or vice versa?

Sir Richard Leese 

I’d probably take sport and culture together if that's okay. Because these are part of the elements of why would anybody want to live in Manchester? I think when we opened HOME, the art centre just south of the Civic Quarter within the city, I said, ‘who wants to live in a city without culture?’ The answer is nobody really wants to live in a city without culture. And I think sport needs to be looked at within that context. Going back, culture has always been an important part of the city's life. It's the home to the first professional permanent orchestra in the country. It was home to the first repertory theatre in the country. There is a long history of the investment there. The first professional football league was founded in Manchester as well. So, turning back to football, this is where what we've got now really started with the first professional football league. The two football clubs, certainly, they have a global audience. It means that they are, in lots of parts of the world, the reason they have heard of Manchester. So they give us a global identity around the world. They bring enormous numbers of people to the city. They are significant employers. So yeah, football is important, but a city cannot live on football alone. I think there’s a lot more. We have international cricket here. We have the National Cycling Centre. We have top class tennis and athletics facilities. We have a Premier League rugby club based in Salford. So I think if you look at the totality of sport, it is well-rounded and all of that goes down into grassroots clubs supporting all of that activity as well.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you very much, Richard. And from your point of view, what are Manchester's most world-changing inventions, innovations or discoveries? And obviously, there are quite a few to choose from. Don't feel limited to one, but what are your thoughts on those?

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, you're right. You can do a podcast on Manchester's discoveries all on their own, if you wanted. But let's try and be a little bit selective. You could pick John Dalton because the whole of modern chemistry is based on John Dalton's work. Or Joule and the Laws of Thermodynamics, which I think were largely because he is a brewer and he wanted to improve his beer, but the Law of Thermodynamics.

There are some things that might seem quite minor, but actually were world-changing. So the Whitworth screw. The first threaded screw made in the world. Think how many millions of those have been made ever since. They also made Whitworth, who was the engineer, a very rich person indeed. I think probably if you turn to the 20th Century, I'll pick three from the 20th Century as well. One beginning, middle and end. So one might argue whether it's good or a bad thing but splitting the atom. You can still go and see the laboratory where Rutherford worked at the University of Manchester. If you come to the middle of the century, the first ‘Baby’, the first programmable computer. There's a replica in the Science Museum in Manchester. And if you come to the end of the century, discovery of graphene. So two-dimensional materials, which now there was one, and now there are hundreds of two-dimensional materials with all sorts of applications. So they're just a selection of some of the things that were all in their way, world-changing discoveries.

Caitlin Morrissey 

I felt that was an excellent comment to make about the different scales, the screw being relatively perhaps taken for granted, but obviously having such a world-changing effect. And just sort of build on that, you've mentioned a few names there, but to ask you about who you see as being Manchester's leaders who having shaped the character of the city? These can be from any sphere that you wish to talk about.

Sir Richard Leese 

Oh, I find that a very, very difficult question. We tend to remember, say a lot, of the 19th Century industrialists by the ones who were also philanthropists. So their names happen to be in the Whitworth Art Gallery or they're in other institutions around the city.

I always think Manchester is very much a collective endeavour rather than one that comes down to individual people. And if you look at some of the things that shape the country, if not the world, but all the social movements that originated in Manchester going back the Chartists, the Free Trade Movement. I think it's the only city that has a branch or a school of economy named after it, the Manchester Economic School. The Suffragettes, the first gay rights movement started in the city and the Trade Union Congress had its first meeting in the city. All of this describes, I think, a very collective approach to how we work. So, I don't think I really want to pick out individuals. And if you go back to your DNA question about Manchester, one thing about Manchester is we do things together.

Greg Clark 

Richard, we can't have this interview without asking you to reflect on your own experience as Leader of the city and accepting what you've just said, that it's a city that does things together. Many people would also say that your period as leader of the city was a very significant period. So could you just reflect a little bit on what the leadership sort of task and challenge is when you've got a city that likes to do things together, how do you lead that and what are you particularly proud of from the period that you were leader?

Sir Richard Leese 

I'm going to answer the last bit first because I talked about the self-belief as part of the DNA of the city. If you go back to say, late ‘70s, early ‘80s, when what was left of Manchester’s traditional industries was being pretty much destroyed. You had the job losses in East Manchester, I think something like 70,000 out of 110,000 jobs went in just a couple of years. I think there's a period in the ‘80s where the city had lost its self-belief. That attitude had maybe got just a little bit depressed. I think probably the biggest difference I made in the period of time I was in a leading role is the city got its self-belief back. Cities are about people. Yes, bricks and mortar are visible but they are essentially about people. It's where people come together. And I think giving the city its self-belief back is the biggest difference we made.

It's also the way of working as well. That way of working really was about building teams for projects and quite often, just letting people get on with it as well. The city was never, it's never centralised, it's never particularly top down. Very clear of what it wanted to do, but then again, empowered people to do it. If I take an example from culture, the Manchester International Festival, which I think we’ll have the 10th version of that next year, which in itself was a world-changing arts festival because there had never been one like it and got real profile. The City Council decided to have it but didn't try to run it. And it got people who could run festivals and that's the way that the city is often done things.

Greg Clark 

And from the point of view of the leadership requirement then, you're initiating, you’re leading teams, you're reminding people of their self-confidence, does that require a different skill set in the leader from in other cities?

Sir Richard Leese 

It doesn't require a different skill set but I think it is the case that Manchester has approached the issues it faces in a different way to many other cities. So I think at the heart of this is you need a plan, you need a strategy, and you need a vision for the city. One of the things that Manchester has done consistently is have very clear vision, very clear strategy, which people in the city understand and have bought into. And the reason they bought into it, I think the term we will now use is coproduction or codesign. We didn't have that terminology when we first started doing it. But basically, our strategies were written by all the stakeholders within the city. There was a real ownership there. Ministers and other people used to come to Manchester and talk to people, a range of people, and they couldn't get their heads around, why everybody they met said the same thing.

Greg Clark 

Great achievement.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Richard. We'd like to ask you now about myths that are told about the city and sort of the essence that they are trying to capture about Manchester, whether that's songs or stories.

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, there is one very obvious myth, which is reflected in an occasional nickname for the city which is the rainy city. Because going back to when I was talking about why the cotton industry settled in Manchester, in the area to the north, whilst it might rain quite a lot 10 to 15 miles north of Manchester it doesn't actually rain that often in the city at all. Although it is often cloudy. There is quite often cloud cover. So now a very typical Manchester day is if you're up at 6:00am in summer, it's bright and sunny, by about 11 o'clock it's clouded over. But the rainy bit really is a myth and the numbers show that it's not actually even the rainiest city. Can't remember which one is, but it’s not even the rainiest place, certainly not in England. So that's our big myth, that we sometimes use to our advantage.

Greg Clark 

And Richard, are there any ways in which Manchester is really misunderstood, and people say things commonly about Manchester that you and others in the city know not to be true? Are there, you know, gross misinterpretations of the city?

Sir Richard Leese 

Yeah, there are. This is not in the mythology but it's in the history. It’s that there are, particularly in other parts of the world and going back to what I said about all the Manchester’s of wherever around the world, there is still an imagination of Manchester as the sort of Lowry picture with factories and chimneys and smoke and dirt and all of that. So, I think that's true in other parts of England and the UK as well. I know the first time we started having party political conferences in Manchester we had people coming and, particularly when the Tories came from the leafy shires, they were rather shocked to find the modern dynamic city and not this smokestack city. So that's something that I think has been perpetuated. It's something we've clearly tried to change that image and have been, I think to a certain extent, successful in changing that image because that's clearly not what Manchester is like today.

Caitlin Morrissey 

And so thinking about Manchester's long history, what would you identify as Manchester's notable shocks or traumas, and how would you say that the city has responded to those shocks? And what can we learn about its DNA from its responses to some of those?

Sir Richard Leese 

I'm going to pick two from the time I was Leader of Manchester City Council and they're fairly obvious examples, really. The first was the IRA bomb in 1996 which was not actually the first IRA bomb in the city but it was I think the biggest peacetime bomb ever detonated in the UK. Over 200 people injured, a large part of the city centre if not destroyed, heavily damaged, I think over 600 businesses weren't able to function. It showed, I think, a lot of things. First of all, it showed the extent to which Manchester could act in the collective way because there was a unified response to that within the city. There was certainly a determination not to be beaten by an act of terrorism. So there was almost a positivity of response to something that was pretty-- over 200 people injured, some with life-changing injuries, quite a lot of people traumatised for life by that event. The city said, as every city says or every place says when they suffer a trauma of that sort, we're going to build back better. But Manchester actually intuitively knew how to build back better. I only learned the theory many years later, which is if you have any sort of disaster of that sort, places always say they're going to build back better but that ignores the fact that when you have a disaster of that sort you immediately lose capital. In order to build back better, you need more capital. Manchester acted immediately to stop the outflow of capital to provide the base to be able to build back better.

I think that really, also, by taking the second example I'm going to give shows I think how the city has developed over a 20-odd year period. Because the second example I'm going to pick is the Arena Bomb in 2017 which in some respects was far more tragic because 22 people young people died in that bomb. But again, you had an enormous collective response from the city. And if you want to see that collective response, you’ll probably find it on video, was a vigil that was held 24 hours after the bomb which was unlike any other vigils. And so, one of the decisions I made was that no politicians were going to speak at that vigil. There were a lot of ministers on the platform, but we were not going to have the political speeches. It was something that was really very much a made in Manchester event culminating with Tony Walsh's poem This is the City and that really symbolised the city that was unified in a shared sense of purpose across all of its communities.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you. I have actually seen that video – it's incredibly moving. Just to sort of pick up throughout the conversation you've been referring to this collective endeavour, and I'm not sure yet if we've asked you where you think that has come from, or where that has emerged from, and the genesis of that collective endeavour as you see it?

Sir Richard Leese 

Well, I think it comes from a long history. If you take some of the social movements that started in or around Manchester: I talked about the Chartists earlier, talked about the impact of Peterloo on the history of the city, clearly the Cooperative Movement headquartered in Manchester, but born just up the road in Rochdale. So there is a long history of operating in collective ways, and that's been emphasised by the way the city has gone about things.

So at the moment, Manchester City Council is undergoing an exercise of preparing its 2025 to 2035 strategy. Manchester’s always the long-- always the long-term strategies, by the way, it's never been stuck in the short term. But a lot of the rhetoric about that 10-year strategy and the approach to people. I think they've had over 10,000 responses from individuals so far is this strategy is written by you. It's built in-- I was almost gonna say DNA. It's the way we do things. That's the way we do things. There is, I think, a Manchester way of doing things and that collectivity is an important part of it.

Greg Clark 

Richard, we're really grateful for your time, and this has been brilliant. But is there anything we haven't asked you that we should have asked you?

Sir Richard Leese 

I suppose there’s probably one area that might be worth exploring which is how Manchester went from a depressed, dying industrial city in the 1980s to, certainly the time of pre-COVID, the fastest growing economy in UK. One of the fastest growing economies in Europe. And I think that kind of transformation is interesting because I think we really got away from what have been traditional models of economic development which includes find a big field, put some roads in, put some power in and build sheds. What Manchester recognised, oh, probably certainly by the mid-90s is that the ingredients of a modern economy were slightly different. Infrastructure is certainly important. Absolutely. Skills were important. Innovation was important. But probably even more important, where a skilled workforce could almost choose to work anywhere in the world, is being a good place to live. So, the investment in culture and investment in sporting facilities, bringing back a city centre population, developing neighbourhoods like well, redeveloping Hulme, probably the single most successful large-scale regeneration project in the country still and still going after 30-odd years. But also rebuilding neighbourhoods like Ancoats. All of this was about creating a place where people wanted to live and that recognition that the modern economy has changed. You need different ingredients. The universities were important. Building on strengths not pathological approaches to economic development, but assertive, positive approaches. What are we good at? Challenging the university: well, if you're a world-class university, what are you world-class at? And making them answer those questions. So I think that was kind of the approach that was taken to building the economy with one added ingredient. The first element of this was the Manchester Independent Economic Review back in 2009 which was getting people with reputations, with expertise to tell us, warts and all, what it was really like. So to face our own misconceptions of what we were really like and be prepared to do something about it.

Greg Clark 

Yes, the very bold initiative to allow experts to independently tell you where were the strengths, where were the weaknesses, and what you needed to do. And it turned out to be very catalytic, didn't it?

Sir Richard Leese 

It did and we repeated that 10 years later and that equally gave the momentum for the next phase, yeah. And by and large, I think a lot of cities-- I've been to cities and a lot of their self-promotion is based on mythology rather than reality. I think Manchester was a city that tried to honestly get into the reality and then do something, the things that weren’t so good, do something about it.

Greg Clark 

Yeah, brilliant, Richard. We're very, very grateful. Thank you so much.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Richard, for taking the time to speak with us this morning.