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The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester on 31 August 2024.

From the England Football Team to our grassroots coaches, so many of you have told a different story and you have been a light on the hill in times of darkness.

And you’ve reminded us that there is a better country out there.

A few years ago I sat down with Danny Boyle, who hails from just down the road in Radcliffe. He says he’s from Bury, but he’s actually from Radcliffe.

And I asked him how a country that could unite so decisively around the inspiring and inclusive story of the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony could descend so quickly into anger and polarisation and division.

I asked him where has that country had gone.

And he said simply, that it is still there. But it is waiting for someone to give voice to it again.

And that is my firm belief that this country, as George Orwell said, lies beneath the surface.

And it will be heard. Not out of some technocratic notion of fulfilling quotas, getting out of London, but because that voice has a spirit and energy our country desperately needs to hear.

We are meeting here for a reason.

Because this museum celebrates the industry, innovation, and enterprise of our people. The growing economy our country needs again. The contribution that regions like ours have made to our economy, our country and to the world.

But most of all it tells the story of all the parts of our nation.

It’s the story of the ordinary extraordinary people who contribute to the growth of our country, past and present. Who quietly in every community go out and build things that last and constantly, through their hard work, rewrite our national story.

I spent many, many happy times here in this museum as a kid.

And in turn have spent many happy times here with my little boy in recent years. Although he does want to know when the train section’s reopening.

He has grown up knowing, as my generation did, that this is his museum, his

inheritance – he belongs here, and this inheritance belongs to him.

This museum, like so many of your institutions, help to shape and define us as we shape and define them. We pass them down from one generation to the next. And we neglect them at our cost.

This museum is testament to the spirit of the city that has always believed in itself. And empowered the next generation to believe in itself anew; often despite the odds.

It was just down the road in Salford that Engels wrote ‘The Condition of the Working Class’ in a city that was the driving force of the industrial revolution.

That spirit lives on in my favourite museum – the People’s History Museum. It’s funded by the councils of Greater Manchester, and there’s a reason that we do. These are the councils who have always understood that the history of ordinary people and the ideas that drove them can not just help us not just to interpret the past, but can help us navigate the future.

That museum reminds us that change doesn’t come easily. It took the battle of

Peterloo to enfranchise the men who were building our country – and far too long before our women won that right too. But today I see that spirit at work right here amongst the amazing Mancunian women like Erinma Bell who leads the battle against the violence that scars a generation and shames our country and is a priority for our Government.

This was the city that gave the world the first free library – the Central Reference Library – which stands as a shining testament to how much the mothers and fathers of this city not only believed in our people, but cherished our culture.

And I grew up here in the aftermath of the Moss Side Riots and so it is in my DNA that never again can we be allowed to write off a generation of young people. It was that belief that led me into my first job at the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint – where I learnt everything I know about politics from those brave young people – and I feel them walking alongside me as we create a new generation of OnSide Youth Zones – from Wigan to Bolton – and show this generation that they matter to us again.

From Granada TV and its pioneering journalism, whether the campaign to free the Birmingham Six to the persistent approach to telling the story of Hillsborough and achieving justice for the 96 – to today’s Manchester Evening News that has defied the odds to become one of the most groundbreaking papers in the country and reminds us all why local and regional papers matter so much.

As the late great Tony Wilson said, “this is Manchester – we do things differently here”.

That drive, that creativity, that inclusion, that willingness to do things differently. That is the spirit of our new Government.

I hope you can see and feel it already through the curriculum review we’ve initiated to put creative and sports opportunities back at the heart of a richer, larger life for every single child.

I hope you can see it through our investment in grassroots sport and our determination that the legacy of the Paris Olympics and Euro 2024 is measured not just in trophies and medals but in choices and chances for every child wherever they live and whatever their background.

Through our partnerships with our mayors, councils, businesses and charities, we’re putting rocket boosters under our growing industries – film and theatre, TV, fashion, video games, heritage and tourism – to take the brakes off the economy, create opportunity for every child and to export our incredible talent across the world.

And through my drive to ensure the public appointments that we make truly reflect our country in all its glorious diversity. Not to fulfil a quota, but to ensure that our government draws on the creative might of all of our people.

This is the spirit this city has always embodied.

And this is the country that we can be.

When we turn to face the nation again in five years’ time, it is our ambition that we will face a self-confident country, at ease with itself, where all of our people see themselves in the story we tell ourselves about ourselves as a nation – their contribution seen and valued.

And that work will be the privilege of my life.

But it’s work that belongs neither to me nor to this Government but to each of us. Equal citizens, ordinary people, but each one of us with an extraordinary contribution to make.

I will not pretend it is easy.

But growing up here, with my background taught me that whatever people say – we can move mountains.

And when I said I wanted to do this – our first national event in Manchester – they said you wouldn’t come.

But you did.

And my message to each and every one of you is that if you share that belief in our country. If you have that zest to make change. If you want to challenge us and are willing to be challenged in turn.

Then I promise you. That we will walk alongside you. We will have your back. And we will give voice to the country many of us have believed in all our lifetime but never quite yet seen.

As the great Mancunian band Take That once said:

“We’ve come so far. And we hope for more.”

The next chapter in our country’s story is about to be written. What it looks like – is up to us.