A senseless tragedy but Mancunians will be back
For many outside the city and certainly the United Kingdom, the name Manchester conjures images of the most successful football club in the history of the English Premier League.
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A city that on most Saturday (and some Sunday) afternoons puts up a spectacle of athletic beauty from Old Trafford and the Etihad Stadiums for millions around the world, is now a smouldering pyre of the tragic remains of innocent young men and women whose only crime was to go see Ariana Grande in concert. The tragedy of this is as unfathomable as its senselessness, but Manchester will be back.
Busby Babes and tragedy of post-industrial Manchester
A bastion of the old industrial England sandwiched between the Cheshire Plains and the Pennine Hills, Manchester had been in decline since World War II with the demise of its once dominant textile industry that was the source of most of its wealth and that of Lancashire.
It was slowly recovering when tragedy struck in February 1958 with the Munich air crash that claimed the lives of eight members of a young Manchester United team, along with some crew members and eight journalists among others, who were returning from Belgrade after drawing 3-3 in the European cup championship match against Red Star Belgrade of Yugoslavia. The eerie sadness of that tragic event hang over the city for years but a decade later, Manchester United, with the Busby Babes (named after United’s manager Sir Matt Busby) rebuilt, went on to win the European Cup with some of the all-time greats of English football, including George Best, (arguably most skilful delightful player these Islands have produced), Denis Law and Sir Bobby Charlton who was among the only two surviving members of the 1958 crash to play in the final against Lisbon’s Benefica.
1996 1RA Bombing and Manchester’s renaissance
In 1996, tragedy struck again when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated what was then the most powerful bomb on the British mainland since World War II, at the Arundel Shopping Centre in Manchester city centre. Miraculously there were no fatalities although 700 or so people were injured with significant damage to buildings and property. The devastation from this bomb inveigled the local authority and government to step up the redevelopment of the city and it led to an architectural and cultural renaissance which also coincided with the heady footballing dominance of United and the emergence of successful rock bands such as Oasis. Manchester was hip again.
A defiant Manchester will be back
The recent tragic attacks and the sight of distraught and frightened young girls running for their dear lives cannot be expunged from our memories but the city will be as defiant as once its famous daughter, the suffragette, Dame Emily Pankhurst was and will not rest until justice is done.
The tragic loss of young, innocent lives is most dispiriting but Manchester will not be cowed by the cowardice of the terrorists who murdered them in cold blood. Mancunians will be back - on the terraces at the weekend and in concert halls and theatres all over the city to celebrate life as only this city knows.
