Opening with the theft of the original Factory club poster from a Manchester gallery in 1992, this chapter sees Andy Spinoza reflecting on memory and, more particularly, the lucrative market that has sprung up in Factory memorabilia. The Haçienda closed in 1997 and was demolished not long after – its contents were salvaged for auction, with the DJ booth selling for £8,000. Spinoza brokered the deal that saw Peter Hook sell the club name to property developers. But a remarkable act of reconstruction occurred for the film 24 Hour Party People. Spinoza was present at some of the filming, which gave him and various other Manchester characters a chance to relive the Factory era.

Part III of the book examines the 1922 Committee’s influence. This chapter looks at how the creation and activity of 1922 has affected MPs individually. Until the 1990s, new MPs were not given any formal direction in how to acclimatise to Westminster. It was for this very reason that the 1922 Committee was formed. As well as providing orientation for new MPs, it presents opportunities to socialise and bond with colleagues. It is also an important forum for information exchange. The 1922 Committee provides a platform for backbenchers to voice concerns to the party leadership. In this respect, it can help to strengthen communication within the party and act as a safety valve for frustrated members who might otherwise be tempted to go public. In addition, since 1965, the 1922 Committee has had the power to determine the leadership of the Conservative Party, making every member an important voter.

By 1984, Ruefrex had reached what seemed like an insurmountable impasse. Martin J. Galvin was an Irish American lawyer and activist notable for his role in the formation and promotion of NORAID (the Irish Northern Aid Committee). The organisation became known for raising funds for the Provisional IRA and other nationalist groups during the Troubles. Although banned from Northern Ireland for espousing terrorism, Galvin entered the country in 1984, attending high-profile gatherings, flouting his presence to the security forces and providing Sinn Féin with a press coup. This flurry of activity provided the catalyst for Ruefrex to record and release a song that they had finished a year earlier. ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ tells the story of Jack Duggan, an Irish rebel and native of Castlemaine, County Kerry, who became a convict, then a bushranger in nineteenth-century Australia.

Part of a series of four dialogues with contemporary art and writing practitioners whose work represents a critical intervention in thinking about gesture, politics, and embodiment – across art, writing, and theory – and the various entanglements found therein. This collaborative dialogue on gesture as writing is written by Kathleen Stewart and Lauren Berlant.

In this chapter, life history interviews ‘orientate’ during what was experienced at first as an uncertain and disorientating time. Putting the ethnographic detail of the salsa classes in the context of life stories also orientates the ethnography upon which the book rests in a wider context, providing a deeper understanding of practices of heterosexuality and femininity that have taken generations to form, multiply and evolve. The chapter begins with the jubilation of change in the ‘second stage’ of the women’s lives, where salsa classes were one of many recent changes. Certain lifestyles and interdependencies were perceived of as generational and women distanced themselves from their mothers’ ways of ageing. Drawing on the writings of historians of gender relations, love and marriage and sociologists of contemporary feminism and intimacy, the chapter situates these emancipatory and transitional narratives within the social histories of post-war changes to selfhood and relationships. Despite being enthused about freedom from familial ties, stories show the women are ever-intwined in family relationships and in some cases ‘freedom’ was facilitated by their families. In another layer of complexity, extracts from the interviews reveal deep nostalgia for the durable relationships of their parents’ generation, idealising and aspiring towards these durable, long-term relationships. Finally, current dating practices are described in which multiple femininities and desires played out. A multitude of often conflicting ideals and expectations surrounding ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ femininities circulated at the same time, shaped by normative understandings of gender, generation and age. Yet they were always produced as respectable.

Continuing the story of Manchester’s redevelopment, Andy Spinoza looks more closely at the relationship between city leaders and the city’s music scene. A key figure in this relationship was Colin Sinclair, a former band manager and owner of the indie rock venue the Boardwalk, who in 2005 was made CEO of MIDAS, Manchester’s Inward Investment Agency. He quickly scored a success by attracting the Bank of New York Mellon to Piccadilly. Another success was bringing on board Factory designer Peter Saville to help rebrand the city. Overall, the 2000s saw the city leadership taking a close interest in ‘culture’, which would be a watchword for Manchester’s global offering in years to come.

Cohen was first known as a poet, and on the basis of his first volume of poetry he was described as Canada’s leading poet. As the 1965 documentary Ladies and Gentleman, Mr. Leonard Cohen attests, he became a celebrity in Canada on the basis of his poetry even before he had recorded an album. He continued to publish poetry throughout his career, and the relationship of the poems to the lyrics is interesting and complicated. Cohen’s early poetry is more modernist, largely eschewing rhyme or regular rhythm, while his later poems are often similar to his lyrics. Poetry inhabits both novels in various ways. Lawrence Breavman enjoys a first name that nods to and withdraws Lawrentian possibilities, and the strategies of the poet are all over Beautiful Losers: repetition, anaphora, listing, grammatical and syntactical dislocation, a variety of forms, symbolism, making strange, surrealism. Sometimes, Cohen publishes his song lyrics as poems, sometimes verbatim, sometimes in a different form. Other poems are quite different from his songs set to music, yet he seems to have thought of his poems and lyrics collectively as “songs.”

This chapter looks at the 1922 Committee in the years 1940–65. The outbreak of the Second World War and the formation of a coalition government dramatically changed the role of the 1922, which had previously been limited to information sharing among backbench MPs. With the end of adversarial conflict between the Conservatives and Labour and the suspension of much of the organisation of the Conservative Party, the 1922 served to maintain the integrity of the Conservative voice in dealing with ministers. The general election of 1945 saw the Conservatives lose almost half their seats. This created conditions for the strengthening of the 1922, which became an important forum for discussing how to challenge the new government, as well as for questioning the ongoing leadership of Winston Churchill. Later, with the Conservatives back in power, Harold Macmillan made a point of currying support from the 1922, a reflection of its increasing influence.