The inventor of the flying shuttle, the 18th-century innovation that transformed textile production and helped Manchester earn the nickname Cottonopolis, actually came from Bury. By the late Victorian period, John Kay’s home town and neighbouring Rochdale and Oldham were all renowned hubs of textile manufacture, while Manchester had become a globally important cotton trading hub. What contemporary economics would call an agglomeration effect – a kind of virtuous circle of growth driven by new methods and investment – spread growth across the region.
The contrast with modern Greater Manchester is stark. Partly as a result of a property investment and services boom, much of the city of Manchester has thrived in recent years. But the end of coal and cotton in the 20th century saw former mill and mining towns struggle to find a new role, and too much work in such places remains restricted to low-wage, low-skill jobs.
This is, of course, not a phenomenon confined to the north-west, or to the north as a whole. Beyond the south-east, the city-led “trickle-out” growth model in vogue during the first part of the 21st century has generally failed to deliver beyond urban centres. An attempt by the mayor of the Greater Manchester combined authority, Andy Burnham, to address these issues is therefore of more than merely regional interest.
In an interview last week with Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s economics editor, Mr Burnham emphasised that Greater Manchester’s devolution could deliver more for places like Oldham and Rochdale. To that end, he is backing an ambitious plan – dubbed Atom Valley in homage to Manchester’s role in splitting the atom – aimed at establishing a hi-tech manufacturing and research hub in the north of Greater Manchester. The aspiration is to establish a 21st-century cluster effect, encouraging inward investment from major advanced manufacturing companies and potentially creating 20,000 jobs.
This is the kind of project that needs to succeed for political and social reasons as well as economic ones. Unacceptably high levels of regional and intra-regional levels of inequality are part of the national story of anaemic growth, low productivity and stagnant pay. But it is also now a truism of British politics that a sense of marginalisation in such places has made the country a corrosively divided place.
There is no good reason why Britain’s underpowered research and development base should be disproportionately located in the south-east and around Cambridge. And in places such as Rochdale and Oldham, a flourishing relationship between properly funded technical colleges and local hi-tech manufacturers would transform communities that have become both older and relatively poorer. A new powerhouse of innovation, smartly situated in a region globally associated with the Industrial Revolution, would also find synergies with the groundbreaking scientific research at Manchester’s universities.
Mr Burnham’s vision deserves Westminster’s backing – and the kind of public money and devolved powers needed to attract investors, transform the local skills base and upgrade transport links. The former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane has witheringly criticised the government over its lack of a meaningful plan for growth. Atom Valley not only delivers one at a regional level; it also offers a template to deal with socioeconomic faultlines, which a politics dedicated to the common good must address.
