‘Crank Hitler fetishists and washed up hooligans’ descend on Oldham

Dear readers — welcome back to The Mill’s Monday briefing, which, whatever you think of it, always comes out on a Monday.

First things first this week: a huge thanks to everyone who sent kind words and well-wishes over the weekend after Jack’s Sacha Lord investigation was nominated for Private Eye’s Paul Foot Award, which commends the best investigative journalism of the past year. It’s a huge deal for us, the first time we’ve ever been up for this one and in a few short days we’ll know if we’ve made the final shortlist (as will our wonderful colleagues in Liverpool, who were also nominated). As one Mill reader, Pam, kindly said: “Brilliant work from Jack but 'Hooray' to the whole team who constantly trawl Manchester for the most interesting, oddball or, in this case explosive stories. This is a really prestigious award.”

Anyway, that’s plenty of self-congratulation for one week — on with the show. Today’s briefing features Nazis in an Oldham pub, Manchester United continuing to be comically stingy and cutting free tickets for charities, Ophira’s request for someone to go halves with her on a very nice flat in Castlefield and precisely how many fine art pieces are languishing in storage facilities at Manchester Art Gallery, but first, here’s a quick round up of what members will be getting in their inboxes this week.

• Coming up this week, we’re publishing an investigation into a staff revolt against the senior leadership at the John Rylands Library that has led to multiple figures departing in recent months. If you’d like to pass us any information, get in touch with Mollie.
• And Jack will be reporting on the latest developments at the CIS tower (which was once Europe’s third tallest building). If you’ve heard anything, get in touch.
• And, inspired by the Royal Exchange’s current production of Abigail’s Party, Ophira will be taking us through the influence that Salford and Manchester had on writer and director Mike Leigh. She would also like to add that, when she recorded an audio version of her most recent weekend read, she accidentally read the wrong email out when asking for feedback. If you wrote to her and you haven’t heard back, you can try again here.

Bringing a Grade II listed building back to life

Taking on an important heritage building right in the city centre is no mean feat. The new home of Manchester Building Society is right at the heart of Manchester – on the corner between King Street and Cross Street. A key priority for the project has been to ensure that the interior fit-out allows the original architectural features of the listed building to remain on show – including the beautifully detailed coffered ceiling on the ground floor. The design, materials, and colour palette have been carefully selected to remain sympathetic to the building’s period character.

Building work will be completed in the summer, before Manchester Building Society opens this beautiful space to the public once again. A place for face to face financial services. And a dedicated space for Manchester’s communities to come together, to share and collaborate. If you want to be kept up to date, click here.

This post was sponsored by Manchester Building Society.

☀️ This week’s weather

Tuesday ☀️Warm, dry and sunny with light winds. 24°C.

Wednesday ☀️ Very warm with sunshine and light winds. 26°C.

Thursday ☀️ Sunny, dry and feeling very warm. 25°c.

Friday 🌤️ Dry and mostly sunny but feeling fresher. 21°C.

Weekend 🌤️ Mostly dry with lots of sunshine, but feeling seasonably cooler.

We get our weekly forecast from Manchester Weather.

Your briefing

‼️ Several hundred onlookers gathered in a sunny Piccadilly Gardens over the weekend for a protest against the handling of grooming gang cases. Alongside Free Tommy Robinson posters and a cast of minorly famous far-right characters, a group of counter-protestors organised by Manchester Stand Up to Racism also gathered. One Mill reader who was present reported back that the “the PA [was] so bad that only one word in ten [was] audible, even from thirty yards away”. After a quick speech from UKIP leader Nick Tenconi made reference to hanging paedophiles, he was followed on stage by Raja Miah (a familiar name no doubt to long-time Mill readers) as well as Nick Buckley MBE, who came third in Greater Manchester’s mayoral election last year. Also present according to our eyes and ears on the ground? “King of the Manchester auditor scene, Charlie Veitch, wanders around being asked for selfies and hugging his imitators, before lurching into a shambling run towards anything that might need recording.” After the speeches were done things almost kicked off involving the UKIP leader Tenconi, but after “a bit of pushing and shoving” he was whisked away. In the end two arrests were made, one on suspicion of assault and the other on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.

🎨 According to a Freedom of Information Request we got back recently, Manchester Art Gallery currently has 12,179 fine art pieces languishing in storage facilities. The art gallery’s stated reason for keeping pieces in storage is space constraints in the gallery — but given Manchester Art Gallery has a habit of putting on exhibitions for an extremely long time (see: Trading Stations, an exhibition about hot drinks that has been on display for half a decade), is it possible we’re missing out on seeing some great artworks that could come into circulation? If you know more, get in touch.

🚖 Zoë Bread, a viral TikTok star who hides her face behind a piece of bread to conceal her identity, has been darkening Manchester City Council’s door again. Two weeks ago, she published a video showing how the council placed signs directing motorists towards a private parking meter rather than the council’s own — meaning drivers paid for a parking ticket and still got fined by the council, forcing the council to launch an internal review. Now, she’s questioning whether the council’s warning signs alerting motorists that they can’t drive on Oxford Road between 6am and 9pm are clear enough. “As someone with a degree in graphic design, albeit from one of the worst universities in the country, this is just bad design,” she says. According to her data, 80 people are caught out each day for driving on Oxford Road when they shouldn’t.

📊 Local elections take place this Thursday. Except for a byelection in the Balderstone and Kirkholt ward in Rochdale, there aren’t any major local election stories to watch out for in Greater Manchester — in fact, according to the Democracy Club, this is the smallest set of UK council elections since 1975, in terms of the numbers of councillors up for election. All eyes will be on Reform UK, who recently elected their first politician at local authority level in Greater Manchester — councillor Allan Hopwood in the Longdendale ward in Tameside — and seem to be making a play for council seats in Doncaster, Runcorn, Lancashire and the Ribble Valley. At the Reform UK party conference in September last year, deputy leader Richard Tice said “We’ve got to learn from the wonderful Lib Dems”, seemingly referring to the party’s strategy of increasing their share of local councillors to build national support. 

👮 Greater Manchester Police have confirmed they are investigating after the MEN revealed that a group of neo-Nazis celebrated Hitler’s birthday in a pub in Royton last week. According to posts on their own Telegram feed, members of far-right group the British Movement sat down in the Duke of Edinburgh pub with a birthday cake emblazoned with a swastika, flags, football shirts with 'Fuhrer 44' printed on the back and did Nazi salutes, all to “celebrate the 136th Birthday of Uncle A” and “plan their future BM escapades”. The pub’s landlords Terry English and Jean Anderson said they didn’t realise what was happening until they saw what was posted online and that they couldn't understand why the group picked their pub, adding the BM would not be welcome in future. David Lawrence, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, told the MEN the group had been trying to raise its profile in the North West recently but reassured that it has failed to build up a large membership and remains “a tiny collection of crank Hitler fetishists and washed up hooligans."

Quick hits

⚽ Manchester United continue to be unbelievably, comically stingy under the leadership of Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Popbitch reports that charities linked to the club, who previously received free tickets to home matches, were informed via email on Wednesday that they would no longer be receiving any comped tickets. Ouch.

👮 Choni Kenny, a former prison officer at Forest Bank, has been sentenced to three years in prison for having a relationship with two inmates, promising to pass them information on who the "local grasses" were and telling them about planned police firearms raids. 

👟 Manchester Marathon is growing. Andrew Smith, CEO of the marathon’s organising company ASO UK, says participant numbers are rising by around 4,000 each year, adding “there’s no reason why it technically can’t be as big as some of the biggest marathons in the world”. 

🏗️ The Campfield market redevelopment off Deansgate, led by Allied London, will soon open as a “groundbreaking tech campus”. Excited though we are by the re-animation of a glorious old building (first completed in 1878) we can’t help but think the developer’s latest comments — that the completed building will be a masterpiece to rival Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum — might be a slight insult to architect Frank Gehry. But decide for yourself.

Home of the week

This two bed and Grade II listed apartment in Worsley Mill, Castlefield, might be the most beautiful Home of the Week we’ve ever shared — and it’s a reasonable £300,000, if anyone wants to go halves.

Our favourite reads

The vile rooms being promoted promoted on stickers all over Manchester — The Manchester Evening News

The MEN followed the QR codes printed on mysterious stickers plastered around the city, and fell down a rabbit hole of antisemitism, Islamophobia and Hitler worship. The codes directed people to various far-right forums filled with white supremacy theories and updated hourly. One such chatroom, “The British Movement” showed pictures of men dressed in military garb holding a painting of Hitler with flags that read “white men, fight back.” There were even AI-generated images of women holding placards reading “it’s okay to be antisemitic.”

Has Sheffield’s new PSPO created a ‘hostile environment’ for homeless people — The Tribune

This piece, by our sister title in Sheffield, has sparked a big debate in the comments around the rights of homeless people and the rights of those getting around the city. It focuses on the public space protection order (PSPO) put in place by the council, granting it the power to relocate homeless people away from the city centre. The rationale is to make the city centre feel more welcoming and safe, but it can also look like moving a problem out of sight, and therefore out of mind, though many readers supported the move by the council, saying the city has felt much calmer and safer. We also have a PSPO in Manchester, but encampments on Albert’s Square and the Midland have raised questions about how rigorously it is applied. What do you think? Should homeless people in Manchester be relocated in the same way they have been in Sheffield? Meet us in the comments.

Labour get a shot at Galloway — The Mill

There are precious few local elections in Greater Manchester this year. In fact, there’s just one, a by-election in Balderstone and Kirkholt in Rochdale. The seat was vacated by Elsie Blundell, who was elected to Parliament last July. Amongst the candidates is Laura Pugh, who is running for the Workers Party of Great Britain, the party founded by Rochdale’s one-time MP George Galloway. We thought we’d look back on Jack’s long read on Galloway’s last few weeks in office, as the Labour party closed in to unseat him.

Our to do list

Tuesday

✒️ It’s a literary Tuesday in Manchester this week, starting with the Space Poetic poetry workshop — a focused writing class followed by an open mic, at Terrace NQ.

👃 And the Centre for New Writing are hosting writer Adelle Stripe at Blackwell’s bookshop, discussing her new book Base Notes: a memoir of life in the north of England, told through scent.

Wednesday

✏️ If drawing is more your scene, the Portico Library is hosting a (clothed) life drawing class, inspired by the folklore of China and Hong Kong.

🍿 And Queer Lit Movie Club will be screening the 1985 classic film My Beautiful Laundrette. Tickets cost just £5, with snacks included.

Thursday

⚒️ In honour of International Workers Day, Manchester Jewish Museum will be hosting a production of Chopped Liver and Unions: a one-woman play about Sara Wesker, who led the singing strikers of 1928.

🐘 And, nothing to do with Labour Day, Band on the Wall are putting on a disco, funk, and jazz party. Elephunk in the Room will feature local favourite funk-group Woioi, plus a couple of others.

Got a To-Do for The Mill? Tell us about it here.