‘We Are Still a Society Where the Postcode of the Bed You Are Born In, Sadly, Still Pretty Much Determines Where You End Up in Life’

Last month, Byline Times was invited to the launch of ‘Class Ceiling’ – a new report reviewing working-class participation in the arts across Greater Manchester. A day after he was blocked from standing as the Labour candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham gave the opening address

I don’t think we have this conversation enough in this country about how some professions are dominated by people from certain backgrounds, and kids who have grown up in these parts just find that they can’t break through. They can’t find a way in. Work experience is arranged, if you like, through social gatherings where parents with connections can do that. But for those kids, who does that?

It’s very personal for me because I came back here in 1991 when I graduated from university. Like many people in the north-west, at that time, there was a period when people were breaking the cycle, like becoming the first in their family to go to university. That was true for me and my brothers.

I came back wanting to work in the media. I remember that period, the late 90s, wasn’t a great time in Greater Manchester. It was pretty depressed at the time. I was wandering up and down Oxford Road, around the BBC, putting applications in and writing to all of the newspapers. After about four months of that, I ended up with the only opening l could find – and it was as an unpaid reporter on the Middleton Guardian. That was my very first job opportunity outside of university.