Meet the man taking on Manchester's 'Christmas Refusniks'

Put 50p in Pat Karney and he’ll tell you a prerehearsed quote about Christmas. Every year, the Christmas Councillor (other monikers: ‘Mr. Christmas’, ‘Councillor Christmas’, ‘Santa’s Right Hand Man’, and ‘Labour Councillor for Harpurhey’) spends the winter months filling the pages of the local press with lines about “Santa’s favourite city” and Manchester’s “intoxicating Christmas atmosphere”. Sure enough, when I draw him aside for a chat on Albert Square, in pound-shop Christmas hat and Christmas jumper, he goes off like a pull-string Santa toy. “I love Christmas,” he says. “I live for Christmas. I would start Christmas in August if I was allowed to.”

As it happens, he isn’t allowed to. Today, Friday, yesterday to you, marks the official first day of the Christmas markets, and to many Mancunians even that date is all too soon. Last year, my editor and I published what Karney himself described at the time as a “wokish low volume debate” on the pros and cons of Manchester’s markets. At the end we had a poll, in which 70% of Mill readers sided with me in favour of binning them off altogether. Well, Karney, markets, and Millers, today I return with my tail between my legs to tell you that I am now entirely pro-market because of one thing and one thing alone: the Big Wheel.

But we’ll get to that later. Karney, 77, was made official Christmas Spokesperson for Manchester City Council 25 years ago, a year after the markets began. I don’t know if he expects me to look surprised when he tells me it’s the only role of its kind in the country. It’s a role he's dedicated himself to with remarkable enthusiasm. Karney describes himself as in charge of overseeing the city’s “Christmas arrangements”, but on further interrogation of his actual responsibilities it seems he is indeed simply the council’s festive mouthpiece. “I just do the clowning about,” he says.

But Karney is perhaps most notorious for his insatiable desire to further expand Manchester’s markets. This year his Christmas wish has been fulfilled, as the city’s markets are now the biggest they’ve ever been, with a total of 274 stalls, spread out across 10 city centre sites. Most notable is the reintroduction of Albert Square. The shadows of the Town Hall scaffolding are now teeming with Bratwurst wagons and stalls selling hot liquor at 11am — plus the 50m wheel, a carousel, and a candy-coloured helter skelter.

Karney says he’s well accustomed to criticism of his markets. Like a carriage on a Big Wheel, he tells me it goes up and down. “I see people saying things like ‘I’m not coming to the markets, they’re rubbish’ and all that,” he says, “and I always think, well no one’s forcing anyone to come.” Of course, much of the criticism of Manchester’s markets surrounds the fact that a good chunk of the city centre is effectively unwalkable for two months out of twelve — they’re virtually unavoidable. “No one’s forcing anyone to buy anything,” says Karney. “The atmosphere’s free.”

This might be Karney at his most subdued. In 2016, when councillors opted in favour of axing the famous Town Hall Santa due to budget constraints, Karney branded them “faceless Santa-deniers” and compared Manchester City Council to the supreme government of North Korea, who ban the celebration of Christmas. “The people behind this scandalous suggestion need to contact Pyongyang City Council to see how you really stop Christmas celebrations,” he said at the time.

And he takes back none of it. As we sit in the yellow glow of Christmas-market lights in early November, yellow autumn leaves still falling on our heads, Karney tells me that the Town Hall to this day is full of “Christmas Refusniks” who don’t embrace the holiday as he does. “And I’ll name names,” he says. I ask him to name names. “Well, I can’t actually name names just now,” he backtracks — though he will tell me that the rot goes all the way to the top. Some of the worst offenders are “very leading figures in the town hall,” he tells me, eventually allowing that ex-council leader Sir Richard Leese was one such grinch. “He’s gone now. Thank goodness.”

Still, despite his boundless festive cheer, Karney is quick to note that Christmas is more than mere fun and frivolity. He mentions that in Harpurhey, where he grew up and has long served as Labour councillor, many residents work in retail and hospitality in the city centre, and maintaining income during the Christmas months is paramount. Customer spending drops off drastically in January and February, but the increased footfall the markets bring in the previous months helps the surrounding businesses as well. In a survey The Mill carried out last November, exactly half the city centre shops, restaurants, and bars we asked agreed that the Christmas markets boosted their business, while only a fifth disagreed.

Karney admits that the markets have changed somewhat since they started in 1999 — particularly the stall-holders themselves. Pre-Covid, he tells me that stall-holders were a “genuine mixture of people from Holland and Germany, and local people”, whereas these days it tends to tilt more local. He denies the allegations that multiple stalls are often run by single, larger organisations. “We wouldn’t encourage that,” he tells me. Does he have any say in the matter? “I don’t. I’m just the front guy.”

But back to the Big Wheel. Karney won’t go up the wheel with me, sadly. It turns out the councillor is cripplingly afraid of heights. It also turns out that I am cripplingly afraid of heights, though I only realise this around 40 metres up into the air, cowering in the corner of our carriage, eyes shut tight, whimpering occasionally, holding onto my colleague’s hand for comfort. Admittedly, the fact that our carriage roof was leaking water, the carriage lights flickering ominously, did little to soothe my apprehensions. Nor did the fact that I’d consumed nothing but market-stall hot chocolate that morning do much to calm the rising sickness in my gut.

As I closed my eyes, two terrifying images appeared before me. One was of our carriage breaking free of its circular prison, crashing down to Albert Square at terminal velocity, killing half the Mill team and a number of innocent bystanders. Far more frightening was the second image, the face of notorious gangster Dominic Noonan – round as a wheel and terrible – appearing at my carriage door. Himself freed from prison weeks ago, just as the wheel made its long-awaited return (coincidence or otherwise), perhaps he intended to scale the Christmas disk once more, for a final, valedictory spin. 

However, I’m glad to say that neither of these things happened, and a ticket on the Big Wheel actually gets you two goes round, and by the second I’d grown considerably calmer and was able to look at the view. And hey, who knew, Manchester from above is actually really lovely.

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