Dear readers — we hope you’re enjoying the sunshine. Here’s your Monday briefing.
Firstly, a warm welcome to those of you who joined us after the profile of The Mill and its sister titles in this weekend’s edition of the Observer New Review. As well as getting into lots of detail about how we’re trying to change about local journalism (“while [Mill Media], which is barely four years old, is very much a new media business… in some other ways, it could not be more quaint if it tried”) we were pleased to see a nice write-up for our highly coveted office.
“The digital publisher of local news whose cheerleaders include Tina Brown, the former editor of the New Yorker, and Mark Thompson, the chief executive of CNN, has made its home high in the roof of the magnificent Royal Exchange, in a trio of rooms, little wider than corridors, that contain not one bit of boring, Scandinavian-inflected office furniture,” writes Rachel Cooke. Read the full piece here.
Greater Manchester Police is facing a mounting crisis after an officer was filmed kicking and stamping on the head of a South Asian man restrained on the ground at Manchester Airport. The incident has caused widespread outrage on social media, with the South Asian community in particular demanding accountability. The officer is now under investigation for criminal assault, and faces disciplinary action. But new footage released over the weekend has shown that the story is more complex than many first thought. Andy Burnham, who ultimately holds responsibility for policing, told The Mill the officer’s actions were “hard to justify”, but urged the public to remember that the new footage still doesn’t show us “the full event”. That’s our big story below.
We also recommend a fascinating Guardian long read from July 2004, about how Manchester became known for the curious accolade of issuing the most antisocial behaviour orders in the country, plus a disabled-led comedy night and a Challah bread making workshop in Manchester Jewish Museum.
Editor’s note: Four years ago, The Mill was a start-up local newspaper with a dozen readers on its list and dreams of one day also publishing in Liverpool. The fact that we’re now in Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham, soon expanding to London and Glasgow and being profiled in a national magazine shows just how much demand there is for thoughtful, careful and beautiful writing about local stories. To join the movement that’s fighting for quality local journalism, subscribe today for just £8.95 a month.
☀️ This week’s weather
Our local weatherman Martin Miles says we’ll enjoy three days of warm sunshine followed by three days of unsettled weather. Better make the most of it…
Tuesday ☀️ Dry and mostly sunny with a light breeze from the North West, which will make it feel a touch cooler compared to Monday. 25°C.
Wednesday 🌤️ Very warm with sunny spells and light winds. 27°C.
Thursday ⚠️ Warm and muggy with early showers clearing to sunny spells, although there will be the increasing risk of hit and miss thundery downpours during the afternoon and evening. 25°C.
Friday 🌦️ Warm and muggy with hazy sunny spells & a few showers. 24°C.
Weekend 🌦️ Fresher and breezy over the weekend with showers at times. Temperature highs will be average between the high teens and low twenties.
You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.
The big story: Controversy over airport video continues to grow
Top line: Last week, a video emerged of a Greater Manchester Police officer forcefully kicking a prostate man in the head and kneeing him in the stomach at Manchester Airport. It dominated national news coverage and triggered an investigation by the Independent Office of Police Conduct. But a lengthier video, released over the weekend, has fuelled further debate. It shows the run up to the confrontation, with a man attacking at least two police officers before he was tasered and restrained on the ground. Do we know the full story yet?
The original video: In the first video seen by the public, on Wednesday 24 July, the victim was named as Muhammed Fahir Amaaz, from Rochdale, whose brother Amaad Amaaz was also caught up in the violence. The family instructed the high-profile Birmingham lawyer Akhmed Yakoob to represent them. Yakoob told BBC News on Thursday that the incident left the brothers “traumatised”, and a CT scan revealed that Fahir had a cyst on his brain, though it has not been confirmed whether the cyst was the result of Fahir’s injuries. Yakoob also described the incident as an “attempted assassination”.
The lawyer: Yakoob is no stranger to the limelight, and in Birmingham is known for his brash style and vocal pro-Gaza message. In the recent West Midlands mayoral election he earned a surprisingly large 11.7% share of the vote. But he’s been investigated by our sister paper in Birmingham over his links to a known criminal and his associations with a convicted stalker. This morning, Yakoob announced that he was no longer representing the family, accusing the media of trying to “sabotage” him.
Mounting public pressure: In an initial statement on Wednesday last week, GMP said it acknowledged “the concerns of the conduct within the video, and our Professional Standards Directorate are assessing this”, but didn’t say whether it would be referring to the incident to the police watchdog. Meanwhile, the video was causing a media firestorm, with former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent Dal Babu telling the Today Programme he believed that racism played a “significant part” in the incident, and Nazir Afzal, the former chief prosecutor in the North West and now chancellor of the University of Manchester, tweeting: “Obviously don’t have the whole picture but I see no justification for the kick in the head, followed by a stamp & a taser on a prone, unarmed man with his hands by his side.”
Community tensions: Political leaders called for calm in their public statements, highlighting the potential for the video to cause unrest. Protestors congregated outside Rochdale police station on Wednesday night, where the town’s South Asian community will have been looking for accountability, and The Mill watched as a peaceful — but angry — protest unfolded outside Andy Burnham’s offices on Thursday evening. “Definitely at some points there was a concern that the tensions might boil over – there’s no hiding from that,” Neil Emmott, Rochdale’s council leader, told the Guardian.
Ratcheting response: Following the Rochdale protest, the force announced that it had “referred our actions to the Independent Office for Police Conduct and will be in further discussions with them today.” On Thursday morning, GMP announced that the officer had been suspended from his duties and would face disciplinary action. Then, on Friday afternoon, it was revealed the officer was facing a criminal investigation into his conduct.
Who started it? It has been very difficult to establish the facts of what happened during the altercation at the airport that led to the police intervening. Sources close to the Amaaz family told the Telegraph that Fahir and Amaad’s mother was involved in a row with a male passenger during the flight. At the baggage claim, they say the same man made a racist remark and pushed his trolley towards the mother. A physical fight broke out when the sons confronted the man, which led the police to step in.
However, these claims have not been independently verified, a man has not been identified and no footage has been released that confirms this version of events.
The political response: In a statement released on Wednesday, Andy Burnham, who is ultimately responsible for policing in Greater Manchester, said that he recognised “the widespread and deep concern this has caused in Greater Manchester and beyond” and said he had raised his concerns with the Deputy Chief Constable. But he also told Mike Sweeney in an interview on BBC Radio Manchester on Thursday morning that he wasn’t in a position to condemn the police officer’s actions. “When you say ‘condemn’, that would be me saying ‘I’ve looked at everything now, and I’m sitting in judgement on this’, and it's not my job to do that,” he commented.
‘Hard to justify’: At a press conference on Friday afternoon, The Mill spoke to Andy Burnham, who said he had seen more than what was in the public domain, including the police’s bodycam footage. When asked again if he would condemn the officer’s actions, Burnham didn’t directly respond, but said that he found the officer’s actions “hard to justify”:
“I found the images disturbing, hard to justify, but there needs to be a proper process of investigation that’s fair to everyone involved… It’s really important now that everyone allows space for this investigation to proceed and not think they know everything about it, because people don’t, and that’s what this investigation is there to do.”
The new video: A lengthier video, captured on Manchester Airport’s CCTV cameras, was released by the Manchester Evening News, which has complicated the sympathy for the Amaaz brothers. It appears to show a man punching two police officers to the ground. Following the release of the new footage, Burnham said this new footage still “doesn’t show the full event”.
Greater Manchester Police has confirmed in a statement that three police officers were hospitalised as a result of the altercation, with one female police officer suffering a broken nose.
Shared responsibility: The Mill understands that there was a meeting between Manchester City councillors and representatives from Greater Manchester Police on Friday morning, where local councillors called for the other police officers present during the altercation to face disciplinary action. One council insider told us: “There was a feeling that — if that had been a member of the public who was just stomping on a teenagers head, and police were nearby — would the police have a responsibility to stop that from happening? And I think the answer was that they would. So why should the other police officers not be held accountable for not stopping it?”
Bottom line: There’s still uncertainty about exactly what happened on Wednesday, but calls to refrain from judgement are unlikely to be heeded. The fact that the officer in the original video is clearly in control of the man on the ground means that no amount of prior context is likely to justify his subsequent actions.
But Burnham will also know that the 24-hour news/social media environment leaves little to no room for reflection. If he and GMP want to rebuild public confidence in the police — which has clearly taken a big hit from this incident — they will need to show they’re answering the unanswered questions, and quickly.
Your Mill briefing
🚌 Bev Craig has proposed to reroute buses away from Piccadilly Gardens to other parts of the city centre, saying the council needs to decide whether Piccadilly Gardens is "our plaza or... our bus station", rather than trying to do both, which “doesn’t quite work”. Under privatisation, the council was limited in what it could do to compel privately-owned bus companies to drop people off in a different part of the city centre, but now that Andy Burnham has brought Greater Manchester’s bus system back under public control, the local authority can decide which routes they take and the fares they charge. Transport for Greater Manchester says that "routing a bus network was complicated", but Craig says she believes the proposals are viable.
👮 Five men aged between 34 and 50 were found by police as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration at a car salvage yard in Oldham on Thursday morning. They had been sleeping in mobile homes and shipping containers and working for £2.50 an hour. It followed intelligence that foreign nationals were being exploited for their labour, and the firm is expected to be fined up to £100,000. Three of the men were detained at a UK immigration centre, waiting for removal from the UK, while two others have been bailed and have said they will leave the country voluntarily.
🏢 THG, the beauty and lifestyle retailer based in Manchester, is planning to cut 171 jobs, according to a memo seen by the Financial Times, which says the restructure aims to get the business into “the best possible shape to continue to deliver sustainable growth, profitability and cash generation”. In 2020, THG became the largest float on the London Stock Exchange for almost a decade, with a market capitalisation of more than £5 billion, but the business has since lost nearly 90% of its value. The process is expected to be completed by the beginning of September. Read our piece on THG here.
⛪ A 150-year-old Gothic former convent in Oldham has been saved from falling into disrepair after a hard-fought campaign by locals. The Werneth Grange building was occupied by nuns of the Sisters of Mercy Convent and was left abandoned when the six remaining nuns left in 2018. St Mark Universal Care, a Christian charity that gives medical equipment to countries in the Middle East, has come forward to take over the convent, turning the upper two floors into hotel accommodation.
Home of the week
This Oldham cottage has ivy climbing over the front walls, stained glass windows and is a short walk away from the picturesque Strinesdale Reservoir. £300,000.
Our favourite reads
Michel Butor, the writer’s writer? — The Times Literary Supplement
The French author Michael Butor was someone who liked to have fun with his own writing. In L’empoi du temps, he wrote of a British town called Bleston that was tainted by claustrophobic weather, low grey skies and terrible food, that seemed almost certain to be inspired by his time as a teacher at the University of Manchester. But he also curiously referred to areas of the town by numbered districts, as though we might be in Paris. “Sentences last whole paragraphs, with their Claude Simon-like sub-clauses and meanderings – personally I rather like that kind of writing.”
When home's a prison — The Guardian
In 2003, Manchester City Council applied for an anti-social behaviour order against Michael Talbot, a 13-year-old boy from a north Manchester estate who had been condemned for doing “childish things”, like playing knock-knock-run and jumping around in people’s gardens. The order banned Michael from entering areas of his estate for two years, the civil court threatening to issue him with a criminal offence if he did not comply. Over 300 ASBOs were issued in Manchester in the first five years of the order being introduced, almost twice the number of any other city in the country, an accolade that Basil Curley, the council’s former executive member for housing, was proud of. "Do you understand what we're doing?" his deputy said at a council meeting at Manchester Town Hall at the time. "We're dealing with Mrs Thatcher's grandchildren. We're dealing with the children of the people who grew up under Mrs Thatcher, and were brutalised. We're recreating society. Putting back some of the social glue.”
Why was it so hard to admit that I used him? — The Cut
In this personal essay, the author Rachel Connolly writes about being the villain in her own relationship, which began at the University of Manchester and started to break down in their early twenties. “I had thought about ending things before we graduated but put it off. Then when I realised he would be moving to the London flat, it seemed practical to keep things going. That was how I thought of him: a useful logistical arrangement.”
Our to do list
Tuesday
👑 Bad Moult, an award-winning social satire about a man named Roach driven mad by the pressure of modern life, left to reside in a commercial wheelie bin and name himself king of the vermin, is showing at the King’s Arms in Salford. Tickets are priced between £5 and £10.
📚 There’s a new exhibition in the gallery at the National Graphene Institute that explores what life was like for teenage girls in 1960s Britain. There’s a particular focus on the story of Andrea, and her experience of moving from her religious family home in a small village to university in London. It’s free to visit.
Wednesday
🍞 If you want to learn the secret to making the perfect light and fluffy Challah, Manchester Jewish Museum is hosting a Challah making workshop. While the bread bakes, you’ll get to hear stories from the museum’s collection and take your own bread home with you at the end. £5.
😆 Aviva Studios is hosting an evening of stand-up comedy, led by disabled performers Wheels and the Legman, best-known for their witty, quick-fire sets that gently push back against misconceptions about the disabled. Reserve a free space here.
Thursday
🎸 Fanny Lumsden, an alternative country music singer who grew up riding horses on a farm in Western Australia, is performing at Night and Day Café. £16.50.
☄️ There’s a space adventure in the Observatorium at Jodrell Bank that takes you on a journey across the solar system, from sun-scorched planets to icy expanses in deep space. Perfect for a family day out, and it’s only £5.
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