In this hard-hitting blog for the William Temple Foundation, Greg Smith considers white, male privilege and the role of the Church in a world still beset by racial inequality. Despite some progress in the past forty years Smith laments that still "so little has been achieved in the struggle against oppression and the legacy of colonialism and slavery", and that being white, male, middle-class and university educated (as he readily admits he himself is) still confers significant social and economic privilege over all others.

"Despite all the enquiries and reports, and equality and diversity policies, institutional racism remains in place and life chances in education, employment, income, the criminal justice system, health and housing are significantly higher for white middle and upper class people living in the south of England than for any of the minority ethnic communities. Violent hate crimes are frequent and tend to peak when political events give permission for racist thuggery, verbal and online abuse goes on unchecked and subtle forms of racism expressed in a look, body language or unfavourable customer service are an everyday experience."

As for the Church, again while there is much work and progress to be commended, still for the most part there is white male domination, particularly of leadership, and unwillingness to address issues of legacy. “Conversations about colonial history in white-led evangelical circles often begin and end with a self congratulatory, virtue signalling narrative around Wilberforce and the abolitionists, plus a mention of the great Christian leadership of Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu.” Read the full blog here.

This Guardian article from 2015 outlines a walking tour of key sites of Manchester's radical history. This of course includes 'Peterloo' in 1819 where sword-wielding cavalry charged into a defenceless crowd who had gathered to call for parliamentary reform, leaving 15 dead and more than 600 injured. Several of the speakers were also involved in the fight to abolish slavery, one of a number of parallels in Manchester's history. “It was the largest crowd ever gathered at that point in British history,” says radical historian Michael Herbert. “The sight of the British army attacking its own people was unusual, almost unprecedented. It was a really shocking event with reverberations that went on throughout the nineteenth century.”

Those reverberations can still be felt and echoes of Peterloo can be heard today. As Herbert has said more recently, the event: "was about political reform as a response to hunger, unemployment and poverty, which has inescapable parallels with food bank Britain in 2017." Peterloo has been described elsewhere as "a war on the emerging working class movement".

With Peterloo's 200th Anniversary coming up on 16 August 2019, this walking tour would be a good way to familiarise yourself with Manchester's history of political protest and campaigning for economic and social justice. An extra stop to find out more about Peterloo and other significant events would be the People's History Museum (on the map on Bridge Street to the West of point D).