Two hundred years ago, Britain, or more specifically Manchester, the “shock city” of the age, as the historian Asa Briggs famously put it, was incomparably the most innovative place in the world. As early as the 1780s, one local observer wrote “A particular felicity has attended the trade of this town… that when any branch of it has failed, the industry and invention of manufacturers have been so much the more excited to introduce others”. Sixty years later, the eponymous Coningsby of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel, visiting Manchester for the first time and meeting the industrialist Mr GOA Head (get it?), exclaims: “I see cities peopled with machines. Certainly Manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!” Were any of these observers able to see Britain today, I hazard a guess that they would not consider our society similarly characterised by widespread enthusiasm for progress and innovation. More likely, they would pick up on a grumbling resentment of small changes and a suspicion of inventiveness. They might wonder why we had stopped being happy to see “industry and invention” replace declining or just unnecessarily expensive activities, and why we were so nostalgic for how things used to be done.

Two hundred years ago, Britain, or more specifically Manchester, the “shock city” of the age, as the historian Asa Briggs famously put it, was incomparably the most innovative place in the world. As early as the 1780s, one local observer wrote “A particular felicity has attended the trade of this town… that when any branch of it has failed, the industry and invention of manufacturers have been so much the more excited to introduce others.” Sixty years later, the eponymous Coningsby of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel, visiting Manchester for the first time and meeting the industrialist Mr GOA Head (get it?), exclaims: “I see cities peopled with machines. Certainly Manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!” Were any of these observers able to see Britain today, I hazard a guess that they would not consider our society similarly characterized by widespread enthusiasm for progress and innovation. More likely, they would pick up on a grumbling resentment of small changes and a suspicion of inventiveness. They might wonder why we had stopped being happy to see “industry and invention” replace declining or just unnecessarily expensive activities, and why we were so nostalgic for how things used to be done.