Greater Manchester is overrun with economic development agencies marketing the city, promoting business interests and creating a workforce and infrastructure for the newly attracted firms. But bodies such as the North West Development Agency, Manchester Enterprises and the City Council often duplicate and overlap, implementing a bewildering array of initiatives and strategies. The Manchester area is subject to no less than four economic plans in which certain priority sectors and assets reoccur, in particular the role of higher education, the ‘knowledge economy’ and financial services.

All these economic plans highlight Manchester Airport as stimulating growth and employment opportunities. Owned jointly by Greater Manchester’s local authorities (though Manchester City Council retains a controlling 55% share), many might question the wisdom of banking the region’s economy on an industry which contributes so significantly to climate change and whose long term viability is in doubt due to ever rising fuel costs. The reliance on aviation also makes a mockery of the City Council’s aim to become the UK’s Greenest City.

Strategies may dictate priorities but the money is spent through a series of partnerships: collaborations between public and private sector. Vast amounts of public money spent by these bodies and they naturally tend to benefit the business interests represented in the partnerships. The City Council-backed ‘Manchester: Knowledge Capital’ initiative includes the ‘Nuclear Futures’ partnership which (unsurprisingly) promotes the development of nuclear power. This influential group contains representation from Manchester University, which has close links with British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and has just opened a nuclear research institute at its Oxford Road campus. According to Professor Alan Gilbert, Vice Chancellor of the University, “Nuclear power will undoubtedly play a significant role in addressing the needs of future energy production and it is vital that the University is at the forefront of the UK’s nuclear research and education agenda.”

The Knowledge Capital project promotes an ethos of greater university/private sector collaboration. Gilbert is an expert at higher education privatisation, and such was the damage he did at his previous post at Melbourne University that he had to be driven round in a bullet-proof car to protect him from irate students. Other bizarrely-titled partnerships include Science City, Manchester: Ideopolis, Design for Sustainability and the laughably named Clean Aviation. Manchester’s participation in these partnerships represents an acceptance from local government that its role is to facilitate the interests of business. Agencies do not feel compromised by feeding money to the private sector; indeed they now see it as their role.

As a consequence of its neoliberal policies Manchester has generated a vast amount of money for the wealthy elite of the city. Manchester is now the second largest contributor to the UK’s economic output (after London and the South East) but within the city there are huge disparities in wealth. The GVA per head (a measure of economic performance) is 60% higher in Greater Manchester South than in Greater Manchester North. One quarter of the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods and one third of the most ‘employment deprived’ communities are sited in Manchester.





Current economic strategies prioritise jobs in highly skilled sectors such as finance, the creative industries and biotechnology. The city markets itself to attract young professionals and managers into these well-paid jobs. The working class, low-skilled workers living in surrounding wards are relegated to poorly paid service industry roles catering for the more privileged classes. High paying jobs are being filled by people moving into the city and by commuters travelling in. Demand for city centre housing is outstripping supply, driving prices ever higher. More wealth accumulates at the booming core while outlying wards remain mired in deprivation and unemployment, effectively excluded from the party within.