True Blues, Blacks and in-betweens: Urban Regeneration in Moss Side, Manchester A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of PhD in the Faculty of Humanities 2010 Tanzima Rahman Social Sciences, Social Anthropology Contents Abstract Declarations Acknowledgements Introduction Introduction 1. Envisioning the Global City: A Background to ‘the Maine Place’ and Moss Side’s Urban Regeneration. i) Envisioning a Global Manchester: Placing global economic shifts. ii) Third Way Politics: New Labour’s shift from welfarism to the search for ‘social cohesion’. iii) From Maine Road to the Maine Place: Decision making processes in local government. iv) The Mossy Side of the Hill: Some background to regenerating Moss Side. 2. From the community, for the community, by the community: Implementing governance without government? i) Implementing Regeneration: Emerging local government structures. ii) Gaining Legitimacy: Unpacking the ambiguity of power relationships. iii) Retaining Legitimacy: Ambiguous positions of ‘voluntary sector’ government. iv) Governance without Government?: Is the “top down” giving way to “bottom up?” v) Consultations as a means of accountability vi) Welfarism to Self Governance? 3. Finding a place in The Vision – Four examples i) Transforming Moss Siders and enforcing the scales of regeneration. ii) 4 reflexive responses to the scales of regeneration. iii) Identifying and becoming a BME community member: 2 4. Recognising Moss Side: How the Wyke lads dealt with displacement. i) “Students”: Social mobility as a condition for exclusion ii) Climbing the Ladder: Gang Hierarchy as an alternative means to social mobility iii) “Two Tokes T”: Belonging and conditions of exclusion iv) Desiring Mobility whilst wallpapering their own confinement: Strategies of defense against exclusion to social mobility 5. From Pirate to Private: A moment of Regeneration i) Background to becoming a ‘legitimate’ radio station. ii) What it means to us: Reforming notions of a “Black Community”. iii) 2004 and the ERDF iv) OFCOM bid to get legit: Negotiating conditions of ‘Moss Side’ and ‘legit’. v) Legal Pirates: Maintaining belonging and legitimacy 6. Visions, simulations and green fences: A Glimpse at the ‘un-real’ “Vision” of urban regeneration policy. i) Remarketing Moss Side ii) Engaging with the Vision iii) The Jessie James Incident iv) Visionaries 7. In search of the real, you get me?: Recognizing violence as violence And so… 79,381 (Excluding bibliography) 3 Abstract True Blues, Blacks and In-betweens: Urban Regeneration in Moss Side, Manchester In this thesis I describe state directed transformation through urban regeneration policy in the context of Moss Side, Manchester in the North West of England. The thesis explores connections between the state project of urban regeneration and the lives of residents’ who were targeted by strategies. The thesis therefore moves from economic and political contexts that informed the policies of urban regeneration to how they were implemented and by whom, and then into the personal lives of residents in order to demonstrate connections between these. The latter half of the thesis focuses particularly on residents who were associated with the gang “GCG” who were often the targets of regeneration strategies. The thesis deals with a variety of themes: global cities, governance, constructing race, recognition politics, localities, simulations and violence. These are grounded in detailed ethnography describing Moss Side through residents lives which transformed as a result of regeneration policy. The thesis argues that urban regeneration strategies do not (as is often argued by regeneration practitioners) relieve the difficulties existing residents experience and yet often have far reaching consequences. I demonstrate this through a variety of examples: new governing structures, consultation processes, anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), gang members strategies opposing displacement, pirate radio disc jockeys searching for legitimacy, and the threat of sexual violence. Tanzima Rahman, PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2010. 4 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/policies/intellectual-property.pdf), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on presentation of Theses. 5 Acknowledgements Thanks firstly to all of you in Moss Side who have let me into your lives. This thesis could not have been done without the help of friends that became family, thanks to all of you. Thank you to those who I’ve lost over the years. I would not be who I am without you. Thanks to my amazing friends outside Moss Side (and luckily there are a whole heap of you) who understood my silent absences (particularly you Barry) and also especially thanks to Jim for getting me out and about I’d like to thank the ESRC for paying for it, and Normal [- – —] and Sarah Kelly for proof-reading at the same time as encouraging me to finish. A HUGE thanks goes to my super supervisor, Professor Sarah Green, who had to put up with a lot of emotional ramblings and helped me remain (relatively) sane through all this whilst continuing to motivate me. 6 Introduction This thesis is about urban regeneration in Moss Side, an area of Manchester in the North West of England in Britain. The thesis describes Moss Side at a time of transition through state intervention from 2003 to 2010. I argue that urban regeneration was an intended and directed project of social transformation of Moss Side residents to make them acquiesce to changes that the state was undergoing and the changed role Moss Side had according to ‘the vision’ of the state project of urban regeneration. The thesis therefore focuses upon how existing residents responded to these transformations. It considers people who began to negotiate their own positions in regeneration structures, people who rejected their own exclusion and the difficulties of negotiating changing place. The thesis argues that urban regeneration in Moss Side was a method of governing individuals in an area that was assumed (by policy makers) to be difficult to govern. And I argue that the demand of transformation from urban regeneration policies compounded the pressures residents were already under. The thesis contributes to the Anthropology of urban areas by providing detailed ethnography of a British inner city area and the relationship of residents to a state project of transformation. The thesis also provides a much-needed anthropological perspective to regeneration discourses. The length of study, familiarity with regeneration practices and the people who were targets of those practices, means that it offers valuable insights into current regeneration literature. My aim has been very different to current regeneration literature. Rather than inquire how “successfully implemented” regeneration policy was, I aimed to consider what lay behind regeneration practices, what was meant by sweeping terminology such as “social cohesion” or “well being”, what would be the consequences of the policy, how would residents understand their changing position and so on. These questions are a much-needed addition to urban regeneration theories that, written from within a policy perspective, are limited to evaluating the success or failure of implementing policy. I sought to explore the connections between the state project of urban regeneration and the 7 lives of residents. As such, the thesis is structured by beginning with wider political and economic processes that informed policy makers’ decisions to target Moss Side with intensive state intervention through regeneration, and then develops further into the intimate spheres of residents’ lives. I chose this progression