Manchester is of course of the great British cities.
Known for its sporting, industrial, and cultural prowess, it came into controversy amidst a specific allegation in 2023.
The emblems of its Premier League football clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City, came into question in some quarters.
United of course is well-known for its successes under managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Matt Busby, and has won the most English top-division titles of any club (20 to date). City is the current Premier League, European and World club champions (as of the 23/24 season), and under manager Pep Guardiola they have gone from strength to strength to rule world football.
However, the source of the controversy is the three-mast ship contained in each club’s emblem.
According to some groups, it is reminiscent of slave ships and thus is a symbol of racism and subjugation.
Facts
On the surface, this claim isn’t that crazy. Slave ships, as with most other ships of the 18th/19th centuries, were three-masted. This was to better gain control of winds, and thus ensure greater manoeuvrability at sea.
Manchester was never a major port in the sense of Liverpool. Liverpool was the prime centre of the slave trade, as many slave-trading firms and merchants worked from there.
However, Manchester did ship goods to Liverpool, which in turn may have been used to trade for slaves in Africa.
According to records, some ships did leave from Manchester to Africa, though not to the degree of Liverpool.
Fiction
Not all three-masted vessels were slave ships. Many normal cargo ships were three-masted. Naval ships were often three-masted. As mentioned prior, it was the standard for the time, and all large ocean-going vessels. Technologically, a three-masted ship enabled superior control of varying degrees of winds. It thus led to a higher degree of surety on the high seas and allowed people to travel faster and more safely around the world.
Manchester by the mid to late 19th century was an industrial powerhouse. The Manchester Ship Canal had helped it attain this position, and whilst it wasn’t a port like Liverpool per se, it exported and imported a high amount of goods from overseas, thus using the canal as stated. This would have involved both finished goods and raw materials for use in the factories within what is now Greater Manchester.
Considering the emphasis on trade and export/import industries, the use of a ship by the late 19th century on the United/City emblems thus is reasonable. By the time Man United and City were founded, slavery had been abolished by the British for decades. Britain had also engaged in anti-slavery operations in the Atlantic and had ended slavery in mainland Africa and in other parts of the Empire it had acquired.
Thus, to have a pro-slavery symbol, when the country was resolutely anti-slavery is peculiar. Moreover, Manchester at the time was part of Lancashire. The county is known for its many mills, where cotton and other fabrics were manufactured.
It can also be noted that during the American Civil War, numerous cotton mills that relied on imported slave-grown cotton from the Confederacy refused to function. Whilst Britain was resolutely anti-slavery at this point, the economic ties it had with southern American-grown cotton were a stickler in whether to openly condemn the Confederates or not. Mills in the Lancashire area, despite relying on this cotton, saw the greater moral good and openly refused to function, irrespective of the knock on their own economic wellbeing.
Also note that Manchester United was founded as Newton Heath FC in 1878, and the US Civil War was from 1861-1865. Feasibly, the founders of what is now United might have been mill workers, had family members as mill workers, or otherwise knew people who partook in these work-based protests. 13 years from the surrender at Appotomax Court House to the founding of what is now Manchester United is well within living memory in any era.
Conclusion
Do the activists’ claims hold validity?
Most slave ships were three-masted. As ocean-going vessels, it was the best technology at the time allowing adaptivity to rapidly changing sea winds and conditions.
Manchester did have some actual slave ships embark from it, even though Liverpool was by far the major slave trading centre between the two. Even after the slave trade was abolished, Liverpool remained a pre-eminent port, and today still has a port that far exceeds anything present in Manchester.
However, by the 1870s and 1880s, when Manchester United and Manchester City were founded respectively, it begs the question of why a seemingly pro-slavery symbol would be added to a badge. Especially at a time when slavery had been abolished for decades, let alone the slave trade. Note that Britain abolished the trans-Atlanic slave trade in 1807. It ended slavery in 1838. This was of course some time before both Mancunian football clubs were founded.
Is this some form of cryptic and pictorial “dog whistle” If so, then why? Such a reasoning for this is scant and minimal.
The activists also don’t acknowledge that legitimate and non-brutal trade was a major staple of the north-west of England. And arguably still is. Manchester was known as the world’s workshop. Raw materials and finished goods were received and sent accordingly across the British Empire and beyond. The region also has extensive coal and iron ore deposits, which would have been used for domestic consumption and export, as well as localised steel industries. Steel too would be subject to domestic use and export, again to the Empire and the wider world.
Industry and trade thus defined the north-west - the decline of said industries in the latter 20th century led to social unrest and poverty, and Manchester and Liverpool must be credited for restoring themselves as places of pride. In the past 30-40 years. both now have emerged as primary cultural hotspots, of national and global renown.
Even during the slave trade period, the north-west exported finished goods around the world. This is in addition to finished goods sent to Africa, in exchange for slaves procured from African kings and leaders.
It is very likely that the activists, whilst in principle right to point out potentially insensitive or racist imagery, have taken a claim loosely based on fact and used it to push a fallacious agenda.
Establishing a link between any supposed pro-slavery sentiment and the inclusion of three-masted ships on the Manchester clubs’ crest is moot at very best.
Let’s not also forget that export and trade with the world, via the high seas and thus ships, formed the bedrock of Lancashire and north-western life at that point. This started in dark and barbaric ways, as per the slave trade. But much of it, arguably most of it, was the export of cloth, crockery, grains, coal, metal ores and steel, wool, foodstuffs, and other things of value around the world.
Much is said of “wokery” in this current time - and perhaps this accusation is a further extension of such.
Good historical analysis needs to root out baseless claims, and see things as they were without being clouded by contemporary agendas, whims and ideologies.