With central government examining the surge of emergency foodbanks and charities warning of an increase in poverty-related hunger, it’s clear food insecurity is on the rise. The horsemeat scandal may have raised a lot of questions about our supermarkets but more daunting questions are now being asked about how we protect the poorest from rising food prices. How can we make healthy food more accessible in the wake of the cuts? And can cities really feed themselves? Manchester International Festival and the Biospheric Foundation in Salford are working together to answer these very questions….

Read on below:

The event kicked off with an introduction by the chair of the Manchester BME Network Atiha Chaudry who also gave some of the partners a chance to talk about their Defra-funded research and findings. This included Michelle Ayavoro from Creative Hands and Kate Damiral from NCVO. I sadly missed this but arrived in time to sample some the workshops.

After listening into the ‘understanding the impact of climate change’ presentation I wandered into the community involvement workshop run by Catrina Pickering from Afsl. All attendees were given some handouts about projects in Manchester and were told to discuss them in pairs and share back to the group. I happened to walk in just as the group were enthusing about how great Manchester Climate Monthly was (my work here is done!) so I was pretty impressed. All the attendees got to talk about projects they wanted to share with others and also ask for help. Pretty cool stuff but I’m clearly biased.

Talking to various people during lunchtime, it’s clear that whilst they were happy that the awareness-raising event (funded by Defra as part of the research) was happening, they were wondering ‘what next?’. I sat down with Atiha Chaudry and asked her that very question. Here’s what she said:

The final report with all the findings and also the toolkit will be available next month.

Last year, the Manchester BME Network got £15,000 from Defra to do exactly that. They were tasked with “mapping the needs of BME, older people and refugee and asylum communities to better understand their needs and concerns about the impact of a changing change.” The project also wanted to find the gaps and consider how these might be addressed. The project is led by Muslim Communities UK (MC-UK) with direct support from Manchester BME Network (MBMEN), Salford Refugee Forum and Creative Hands Foundation. The partners interviewed 100 people and held four focus groups.

Ahead of the final report which will be released next week, MCFly caught up with Atiha Chaudry, from MBMEN, to talk about their findings and what happens next.

Could you tell us a little about the Manchester BME network and the work it does?

The MBMEN is a well established network supporting BME groups and organisations in Manchester. It holds regular networking meetings addressing key issues relevant to the BME sector and brings together a diverse range of groups, individuals and local stakeholders to meet and share knowledge and experience. The Network delivers a range of projects and currently is involved in the following: a partnership with Fareshare to address the issue of food redistribution and meet the needs of those in most need; climate change and its impact on the BME sector; safeguarding and supplementary schools; sexual health and BME women.

You mention that the network has been involved in climate change before. Could you tell us what form the project took and why you were keen to tackle this issue?

We were invited by NCVO a year ago to work with them on a pilot project in Greater Manchester which would look at working with a cohort of 20 BME groups. We brought together these groups and sat on the steering group for delivering this project . It involved 3 workshops to build knowledge and understanding of climate change, disseminate this to others the groups work with and build a better awareness in the local communities.This was really successful and lead to the success of the bid to Defra for a £15,000 grant for further work gathering evidence of need and developing solutions. The NCVO work will be presented at a national conference where we will have the opportunity to share our experience and influence the national strategy.

Why do you feel it’s important to explore the climate change and BME link now?

Because, many BME communities need more awareness and connection to local strategies so that the particular concerns of BME communities are taken on board. BME communities also have an added issue about the impacts of climate change to their friends and family in their country of origin as well as the overall impact of this on wider issues (eg foods they are used to eating from their countries of heritage).

What do you hope to do with these findings and the information that emerges from your research?

We hope to produce a toolkit that addresses the concerns people share with us so that it can provide advice and support. We are also holding a conference at the end of the project (end of March) to share our findings, engage the strategic and wider sector, influence local work and national strategy and look at ways to continue the work we have started.

Is the funding for research only or will some be available to implement some findings?

It’s for research only but we are hopeful that through engaging local stakeholders we can continue the work.

Originally posted at Manchester Climate Monthly.

Manchester Climate Monthly co-editor Arwa Aburawa travels all the way to Brussels and sees parliamentarians decide that European states must now take account of the “sub-national context” when measuring their greenhouse gas emissions. What does this mean for Manchester? Read on…

Manchester City Council has been struggling to keep its promises to monitor its greenhouse gases. For example the annual carbon budget report, which would help make sure the council is on the right track to meet its ambitious targets, failed to appear on the agenda of the July meeting of the City Council’s Executive. The Council’s “Environmental Advisory Panel” has met only once all year, and the Greater Manchester Climate Strategy Implementation Plan is delayed again. So, where does the European Union come in?

Well, as you are probably aware the Kyoto Protocol and various agreements at Cancun and Durban have helped set binding carbon targets for the UK and most member states of the EU. To help monitor their progress, a ‘monitoring mechanism’ was established. However, there are two major problems with the monitoring mechanism: the reporting isn’t transparent or consistent enough between nations, and it is also too focused on the national level to be useful regionally.

The local context is missing and that is a real problem. Councillor Neil Swannick* developed a proposal that has been put to the European Committee of Regions on ‘monitoring and reporting greenhouse gases’.

As Seb Carney, a researcher at the University of Manchester and the expert who helped put forward the proposal with Councillor Swannick, explains: “It all very well saying how you’re going to cut your carbon but it’s vital, in my view, to say where you are going to do it and over what time-frame. So the amendment adopted by the CoR of adding ‘spatially resolved’ into the wording of the plans [low carbon development plans/monitoring mechanism] means that there can be greater input from the cities and regions to national plans, as well as guidance to them on implementation. This ‘place’ specification provides greater opportunities for monitoring progress on mitigation, but more importantly delivering it.”

The proposal, presented on Thursday July 19th,  was passed at the European Committee of Regions with unanimous support. So, if this is subsequently passed at European Parliament European states would legally have to factor in the sub-national context when looking at their monitor mechanisms/low carbon development plans. But what does it mean for Manchester?

Well, it means that soon there could be a free, comparable and useful tool for Manchester to monitor its carbon and see how it compares with other European cities. It could also help the national government see what city-specific targets they need to set to make sure that they reach their national targets overall.

“If the amendments are adopted by Europe it will provide more power and understanding to cities and regions in Europe about what they need to do, and by when, to reduce their emissions than they currently have,” says Carney, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology (CURE) at Manchester University. “It’s about giving more power and understanding to cities, regions and other stakeholders to perform their own analysis to see how they can best play their part in delivering National and European targets in potentially a more cohesive way.”

Councillor Swannick added that monitoring and reporting of carbon is costly so offering these mechanisms freely and openly means that cities can adopt them without using up their limited resources. In fact, there isn’t a formalised way of measuring carbon internationally or nationally so having a mechanism that is embraced by Manchester’s ten councils would be great. If, nothing else, it would help settle the ongoing ‘greenest city/country/council’ titles people keep awarding themselves and let us know how well/badly Manchester compares to other European cities.

The only downside to this focus on monitoring and measuring carbon is that it can distract from taking real action. The data we have is usually enough to tell us we need to take pretty drastic action. Now. The longer we wait for the ‘situation report’ on carbon, the more emissions we release. Saying that, having a way to measure how close/far we are from our targets is useful. We just need to make sure that the balance between measuring carbon and taking action is more heavily weighed towards the latter in future.

:: Photo via © Comité des Régions / Wim Daneels.

Arwa Aburawa
Freelance Journalist

*Conflict of Interest Disclaimer: The trip to Brussels came about via an invite from Cllr Neil Swannick. Travel and accommodation expenses were paid by the EU (and in part, by Manchester Climate Monthly).

As an advocate of ‘free love’, a pacifist and more controversially a secularist, the Victorian feminist Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy did not exactly lead a conventional life. Born in Eccles in 1833 and self-educated, she went on to become a significant pioneer of the British women’s emancipation movement. She was at the heart of almost every Victorian feminist campaign ranging from the demand for better education, the right to vote, the rights of prostitutes to the sensitive issue of marital rape.

Unfortunately, her rather forthright nature as well as the scandal surrounding her pregnancy out of wedlock meant that she was marginalised in official histories. In accounts by the Pankhurst family, she is unfairly portrayed as a bad mother, a scandalous ‘free love’ secularist; her partner Ben Elmy is painted as a cruel and unfaithful man. Maureen Wright, who teaches history at the University of Portsmouth, wanted to challenge that misrepresentation with a more balanced look at Wolstenholme-Elmy’s life.

In her book Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian Feminist Movement – The biography of an insurgent woman, Wright portrays the complex and also contradictory nature of her subject. The book is broken down into eight chapters which chart Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy’s life from her birth to her death at the age of 84 in March 1918 – just days after hearing the good news that women had been granted the right to vote. Arwa Aburawa interviewed Maureen Wright for Manchester Radical History.

Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy was born in Eccles, Salford in December 1833. Can you tell a little about her early experiences and how they help shape her activism around education and universal suffrage?

Maureen Wright: Although born in Eccles, Elizabeth’s father Joseph Wolstenholme was an Independent Methodist Minister and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of Richard and Mary Clarke of Roe Green, Salford. By the time Miss Wolstenholme was 12 she had lost both her parents. Her mother had died when she was little more than a week old and her father died in 1845. At that time Elizabeth and her brother, Joseph Jnr., became the wards of their maternal Uncle, George Clarke of Worsley. While Joseph Jnr, aged 17, became a student of mathematics at St John’s College, Cambridge, Elizabeth’s two years of secondary education drew to a close when she was just 16, her Uncle having declared that by then she had ‘learnt everything it was necessary for a woman to know’.

But Elizabeth defied her guardian and studied privately, preparing herself to be a governess and, latterly, headmistress of her own girls’ school. She had no desire to remain in the domestic realm. She placed her commitment to feminism from the moment when, acting as a bridesmaid aged 17, she fully realised what marriage meant for women – a “lifelong sentence of pauperism and dependence” with no control over their actions or autonomy over their own bodies.

Elizabeth’s political commitment was to liberal ideals. She was brought up in the environment of the ‘Manchester Radicals’ – namely the group of Quaker-inspired activists gathered around Richard Cobden and John Bright and others who had led the anti-Corn Law movement in the city. She believed wholeheartedly in the rights of the individual. For her, votes for women was a simple matter of women receiving the vote ‘on the same terms as it is, or shall be, granted to men’ – for it must be remembered that, at this time, it was property, not individuality, that enabled men to claim citizenship. When she placed her signature on the petition for women’s suffrage in 1866 Elizabeth was asking not for special treatment for women, but equal treatment or “justice”.

Although Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy was part of a quite a small groups of women emancipators working in the nineteenth century, she never really got much recognition for her work. Why do you think that was?

Two of the earliest significant histories of British women’s suffragism were written by Ray Strachey and E. Sylvia Pankhurst. Strachey’s book, The Cause, (1928) told the story from the point of view of the ‘constitutional’ suffragists – those women who did not support the militancy of the suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Wolstenholme Elmy’s opinion of these activists was not always complimentary as she believed that their commitment to ‘the cause’ was not total. Many were content, she believed, “to give their name” to the movement without engaging sacrificially to its work. Elizabeth’s somewhat scandalous private life caused her to be criticised by many among this more conservative group, and thus she received only a couple of mentions in Strachey’s work.

The other significant book, The Suffragette Movement, (1931) was written by Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughter, Sylvia. While Pankhurst did acknowledge Elizabeth’s significant contribution to the early years of women’s suffragism from the 1860s, she clearly wanted to place her mother and her father (the “Red Doctor”, socialist lawyer Richard Marsden Pankhurst) in the premier roles. Elizabeth was, therefore, marginalised and damned with faint praise as an overworked woman and an ‘instrument in the grasp of progress’ – her small physical frame likened to that of a ‘Jenny Wren’. Subsequent scholars failed to realise her significance to the movement until the 1980s when revisionist scholars began to uncover the extent of her contribution. My biography is the first full-length narrative of Elizabeth’s life, some 30 years after the first call was made for it to be written!

Elizabeth’s early passion was education for women. Tell us a little about how that emerged and the role Manchester played in her development as a campaigner.

When Elizabeth returned to Worsley in 1854 from undertaking two years work as a governess in Bedfordshire it was to inherit a ‘small capital’ on her 21st birthday. Her guardian, who, remember, had advised her against undertaking higher education herself, now suggested that she invest her money in the establishment of a boarding school for middle-class girls. Elizabeth established precisely such a school, at The Grange in Boothstown Road, which catered for between 12-16 teenage pupils. In the spring of 1867 she moved her school to Moody Hall, a substantial Georgian residence in the town of Congleton where she continued in her role of Headmistress for another 4 years. Before her move to Cheshire Elizabeth founded the Manchester Schoolmistresses Association in 1865, and her pupils were among the first to sit the Cambridge Local Examination.

In 1866, Elizabeth had travelled to London to testify before the Royal Commission into Education – known as the Taunton Commission. She was one of the first women in the country to undertake such a role, but did not appear at all daunted at the prospect. If one reads the transcript of her evidence, it’s obvious that her answers were given in a clear and direct manner. As she tells of her work at The Grange, it’s clear too that the curriculum she taught was not one only of female “accomplishments” (such as singing, dancing and drawing) but included political economy, mathematics and other skills thought to be to ‘masculine’ in nature for a girls’ school. Elizabeth sought to fit her girls for not only the world of marriage and motherhood, but for the world of work, and many of them went on to become Headmistresses of schools.

It became increasingly difficult, however, at this time for Elizabeth to continue her career. This was because she was turning against the Christian faith – the teaching of which was, of course, a core element in the Victorian curriculum. The loss of her faith caused Elizabeth deep personal pain and unhappiness and ultimately she couldn’t force herself against her conscience to teach something in which she no longer believed. Thus she abandoned Moody Hall for a new life as the first professional employee of the women’s emancipation movement.

From around 1870, EWE’s role as a feminist took precedence over her vocation in education. What were the major campaigns she worked on and what long-term influence did she have?

Before her move to Congleton, Elizabeth had been active in many areas of female emancipation in Manchester. These included: The Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage, the Manchester Branch of the Society for the Employment of Women and the Northern Counties League for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. She was a founder member of the Married Women’s Property Committee (MWPC), established in the winter of 1867/8 to campaign for the rights of women in marriage. She was to be its Secretary until the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act, 1882. In addition, she was an Executive Committee member of the Ladies’ National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (LNA) from 1870.

Her paid work however (from 1871-74) was as Secretary of the Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights (VADPR). She was based in London and she termed her work as being as a ‘scrutinizer’ of parliamentary practice – for which her salary was the princely sum of £300 per annum. So effective a political lobbyist did she prove that MPs gave her a nickname – the ‘parliamentary watch-dog’ – and, upon seeing her tiny figure approaching them along the corridors of power, many of the country’s greatest would quake in fear. Elizabeth’s tenacity shines through here. She was a life-long advocate of “small government”, in which the individual’s personal right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ should be as free from government intervention as possible.

The ‘New’ Liberalism of the late-nineteenth century, with its increased emphasis on regulating public behaviour through legislation, was anathema to her. Elizabeth worked tirelessly and travelled extensively to promote the organisation’s objective of an equal right to live in a just society. She published copious reports, minutes, pamphlets and articles and Elizabeth continued her labours in other areas. She was, for example, a Committee member of the Central Committee of the National Society of Women’s Suffrage and remained strongly committed to the work of both the LNA and the MWPC. In fact, one begins to wonder how she ever found enough hours in her day!

One radical aspect of Elizabeth WE is that she was secularist and an advocate of ‘free love’. This was quite hard for many of her colleagues to deal with and was particularly problematic when she got pregnant. Was she perceived as too radical in some ways?

It was when Elizabeth was headmistress of Moody Hall School in Congleton she met the man who would become her life-long companion. Benjamin Elmy was from a Suffolk family, he owned three silk-crepe mills in Congleton but his avowed secularism was always a matter of concern for the town’s civic leaders. One of the most divisive issues was the charge that secularists advocated ‘free love’ (living together un-wed), something which undermined the rigid moral structures of mid-Victorian society.

The couple undertook a ‘commitment’ ceremony in the spring of 1874, making solemn vows to one another before witnesses. But when this and Elizabeth’s subsequent pregnancy became known more widely, there was general outrage and condemnation within their circle of friends. Despite her expressed wish that her marriage (with took place under some duress in October 1874 in London) should have no effect upon her work for women, the opposite was true and the couple were forced to retire from public life for a short period. Elizabeth did however continue her Secretary’s role with the MWPC, working ‘underground’ and unacknowledged in the organisation’s reports for another six years – until her ‘rehabilitation’ in 1880.

Those of Elizabeth’s colleagues who knew of her secularism were prepared to turn a ‘blind eye’ to it before her pregnancy – one reason being that they knew her work was exemplary and her shoes would be difficult to fill. However, the immanent arrival of her son Frank proved to be the catalyst that changed attitudes towards her.

Lydia Becker (a close friend and confidante of Elizabeth’s since 1867) demanded at one meeting that the Registers at Kensington be searched to confirm that the October wedding had taken place. Another close friend since 1866, the physically frail Josephine Butler, recorded in a letter from her sickbed that she wished she had ‘never heard of such people as the Elmys’. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, never especially close to Elizabeth, chastised her with the fact that she had brought the women’s movement into disrepute. For Elizabeth the hurt of their rejection of friends was so great that she retired to Congleton for the birth ‘wishing never to be spoken of again’. Obviously, her resolve on this matter did not last long.

Although Elizabeth WE preferred to work outside party politics (apart from her support for the Independent Labour Party), there were political movements and figures which influenced her. Could you talk us through the main players which informed her political consciousness?

Elizabeth believed that party politics ‘ruined work’, as it caused divisions and factionalism where there should be a united desire to improve life for all. The bedrock of this belief, I believe, came from the Quaker influences of her early life. She was a lifelong pacifist, a cause to which she held true even throughout the jingoism of the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War. The family refused, in 1902, to join in the celebrations in Congleton Park after peace was restored and although there are no first-hand sources to confirm or deny this, I feel sure Elizabeth’s reaction to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 would have been one of complete horror.

Though of radical-Liberal heritage, Elizabeth found William E. Gladstone, three times PM of the United Kingdom, a trial. She believed he was the biggest stumbling block to women’s freedom, as he was known to use his veto as Prime Minister to prevent the passage of women’s suffrage bills through parliament. Elizabeth herself became a member of the Manchester Central Branch of the ILP in 1905 but her commitment to socialism in its strictest sense was never total, unlike that of her husband, who she wrote of as being an ‘ardent socialist’ until his death in March 1906.

The truth about Elizabeth’s politics is that she was, first and last, a humanitarian and she was not above using any party-political machinery she could to promote her work. As secretary of the Women’s Emancipation Union from 1891-99 she had as much contact with the labour movement’s Women’s Co-operative Guild and Trades’ Unions as she did with the Conservative’s Primrose Dames, using these and many other organisations to promote feminist views and propaganda.

The decision in 1909 to force feed the militants of the WSPU was seen by Elizabeth as ‘state torture’ – even though she condemned the actions of the women themselves, which grew increasingly more violent after 1912. She berated them for their antics of window smashing, axe throwing and arson for, she wrote, “how could they be certain not to hurt the innocent?” From that moment on (and bear in mind she was almost 80 years old) she continued her campaigning as a ‘non-militant’ – even leading the NUWSS procession into her home town of Congleton in 1913. By now, as an octogenarian, she had earned the respect even of her former critics.

One of the controversial topics which Elizabeth WE spoke about was marital rape- indeed she was the first woman to speak on the issue in a public platform. Why did she feel so strongly about this issue?

Elizabeth’s abhorrence of marital rape became clear in 1880, when she stood on the platform of the London Dialectical Society to declare her desire to see the practice criminalised. Her opposition was in part built on personal reasons and a desire to see a legal inequality quashed.
Wives were often beaten or starved for non-compliance or, as evidence from one notable legal case of 1891 shows, imprisoned against their will. Elizabeth saw the crime of marital rape as one common to women of all classes, and thus a cause of unity. At a moment when even polite society was concerned with the ever-increasing rise in sexually transmitted diseases she found a receptive audience, in some quarters, for her views.

That is not to say her path in this regard was an easy one; far from it, for she found herself apologising to her 1880 audience for speaking, as a woman, on so ‘delicate’ an issue in public. Of all the disadvantages married women faced Elizabeth believed this ‘sex slavery’, as she termed, it to be the worst. For all her efforts, Elizabeth did not see a law passed against it in her lifetime – in fact this did not pass the Statute Book until 1991.

Reading through some of the exchanges and letters of Elizabeth WE it’s clear that whilst she was hard to work with at times, people respected her and her work for the feminist movement deeply. One example of this, is the financial support she received after the death of her husband.

Ben Elmy’s firm was a victim of the textile recession in north-west England in the late-1880s and was sold at a significant loss. After his death, Elizabeth and her son Frank had little more than their house and the £52 a year Frank earned as a local council rate collector. What saved them financially was the assistance of Elizabeth’s colleagues, led by Harriet McIlquham along with Frances Rowe and Louisa Martindale. These women could see beyond the sometimes acerbic exterior to the woman beneath and, to ease her material burdens, established the ‘Grateful Fund’ in the mid-1890s, which provided an income for the Elmys of £1.00 per week. The ‘Grateful Fund’ and, latterly, a Testimonial organised in 1910 by (among others) Lady Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pankhurst, provided for her care in the final years of her life.

Sometimes, as Elizabeth’s letters show, the money kept the family from real poverty – although she only accepted it on the grounds that it let her work continue. The reality is that as many as found Elizabeth difficult found her vulnerable, and they loved her with real devotion and commitment, understanding that she worked from pure, selfless motives. Elizabeth’s significant collections of letters and other documents, which form the documentary base for the biography, are wonderful resources and they tell many times of her gratefulness to her benefactors. Often written late at night, after she had completed a full day of domestic and political work, her letters to Harriet McIlquham are full of love and tender concern.

Also, albeit infrequently, they show what one eminent historian has referred to as ‘bile and vitriol’, spiteful commentaries regarding colleagues who, Elizabeth believes, have fallen from the true, selfless, feminist path. Particular targets of criticism include Florence Fenwick Miller, Ursula Bright (sister-in-law of John Bright), Millicent Garrett Fawcett and the leadership of the NUWSS. It is true that some of these letters can be read as being excessively critical of some of her colleagues, but the context in which she wrote them is important – particularly when she was under severe strain following Ben Elmy’s business failure in 1888. The fact that she was herself working over 50 hours a week in the textile mill to try and save its fortunes, plus her ‘normal’ domestic duties and feminist campaigning, perhaps makes her somewhat harsh style a little more understandable.

What do you think is the key aspect of EWE’s legacy?

Simply, her tenacity. Without her single-mindedness and untiring focus, I wonder just how successful Victorian feminists would have been in changing so many of the laws that repressed women in all circumstances of life. Elizabeth was foremost in campaigns which made it possible, for example, for working women to have a right to their own income; for separated wives to have increased rights of access to their children; and for the campaign for the vote to be rooted not in the possession of property but simply on grounds of individual autonomy. She died having achieving much of what she had set out to do. The parliamentary vote had been granted to women over thirty year of age (and to women University graduates) a mere six days before her death.

As I have written in the conclusion to the book, it is satisfying that she died at a moment of triumph in feminist history but she still would not have been content because the issue of ‘sex slavery’ had still not been resolved. Her true legacy though is that she never stalled in her objectives, no matter how ill or tired, no matter what her age or personal circumstances, she put all thoughts of self aside. Her place in history should be, perhaps, as one of England’s greatest humanitarians.

Title: Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian Feminist Movement – The biography of an insurgent woman
Author: Maureen Wright
Price: £65.00 (hardback)
Published: 2011
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 978-0-7190-8109-5

Article by Arwa Aburawa

Arwa Aburawa explores whether a religious take on banking offers any alternative for ethical consumers.

In 2008, as the world slid into what is now known as the ‘Great Recession’, Islamic finance was witnessing something of a resurgence. This faith-based banking hit the headlines as an ethical and sustainable alternative to the conventional, profit-driven banking system. If the financial crisis was caused by irresponsible banking, then Islamic finance – which is risk-averse and anti-speculation – could be the solution went the logic.

But is Islamic finance really the answer to our banking prayers?

In some aspects, Islamic banking does follow more ethical guidelines. It forbids what it calls effortless profit (interest) and generally prohibits investment in activities such as gambling, tobacco, pornography, pork, alcohol, military armament and speculation. It is asset-based which means that wealth can only be generated through legitimate trade and investment in assets. Making money from money is forbidden and it is this principle which has been highlighted by Islamic financial experts as creating a more stable and transparent system of banking.

Another principle at the heart of sharia-compliant finance is the notion of profit and risk-sharing between the bank and the customer. This means when a customer wants to buy a house, the bank buys it outright and then sells it back to the client at a fixed higher price. They both share the risk and any profit made by the bank is deemed reward for the shared risk taking.

Drawbacks

There are however some distinct downsides to Islamic banking. When it comes to environmental responsibility, the Islamic finance sector still has a long way to go. Many of the UK-based Islamic banks are as happy to invest in polluting industries such as oil and gas as they are in relatively low-risk commodities and the banks have strong connections with the oil-producing Middle East. There are also no Islamic mutuals or co-operatives despite many experts stating that these models could better serve the spirit of Islamic banking.

Another downside is that some banks don’t offer loans or credit cards. Due to the principle of not making money from money, the regulations make it almost impossible to give money to people who aren’t going to put it directly into a tangible product like a house. Many of the banks also focus on businesses and high-income individuals rather than the average customer. In fact, the Islamic Bank of Britain is the only sharia-compliant retail bank in the UK. Many Islamic banks were set up in the last 10 years and struggle to make a decent profit. Saying that, all the banks are authorised by the Financial Services Authority and are covered for £85,000 per person if they go under.

UK role in Islamic Banking

Outside of the Muslim world, the UK is considered the centre of Islamic finance. There are three conventional banking institutions that offer Islamic banking services – HSBC, Lloyds TSB and the United National Bank – and four sharia-compliant banking institutions. Islamic banking is open to all customers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

The Islamic Bank of Britain was founded in 2004 and has branches in Manchester, Birmingham, London and Leicester. It was bought out by the Qatar International Islamic Bank in 2010. It has no environmental policy and does not offer credit cards or loans. Its Home Purchase Plan, which is the Islamic alternative to a mortgage, operates at a 4.19% rental rate and its target profit rates (interest) for saving accounts are around 0.1% and up to 3% for fixed terms deposit accounts.

The Bank of London and the Middle East which was authorised in 2007 is an independent wholesale bank which focuses on businesses and high net-worth individuals. It doesn’t invest in the arms and military industry, pornography, alcohol; take excessive risks or speculate with their investments. The bank is involved with petrochemical projects and provided a £10 million leasing facility to Ocado, the UK independent online grocer.

Authorised in 2005, the European Islamic Investment Bank doesn’t invest in alcohol, tobacco, pork, most conventional financial services, much of the defence/weapons sector or the entertainment sector. Instead, it focuses its investment in energy and natural resources through companies such as TriTech which represents oil and gas assets in Texas and DiamondCorp which mines diamonds in South Africa. At the end of 2010, their oil and gas assets were valued at £26.4million.

Gatehouse Bank plc was approved in 2008 and is another sharia-compliant investment bank which is involved in oil and gas drilling, this time in Kuwait. It is however marketing itself as the UK’s leading Islamic real estate investment provider and has invested in numerous student accommodations, hotels and commercial properties across the UK.

Whilst the Islamic finance sector didn’t emerge unscathed from the banking crisis, it is now being considered as a viable alternative to conventional banking. Its aversion to excessive risk and speculation as well as its focus on assets means it is seen as a more responsible and ethical banking option – something that many in the post-financial crisis world are keen to embrace.

::Originally published at Ethical Consumer Magazine. See their full report on banking more ethically as part of the UK-wide Move Your Money campaign here.

: Image via

Manchester is one of over twenty cities which has made an official bid to host the Green Investment Bank (GIB) which will be government-funded to the tune of £3 billion. The bank is expected to funnel £15 billion of private finance into green projects over four years and employ up to 70 members of staff. Its main areas of work will be offshore wind, energy from waste, waste processing/recycling, non-domestic energy efficiency and supporting the Green Deal. The final decision on which city gets the bank will be made by Vince Cable, aided by an advisory panel, this February and the bank will be launched April 2012.

MCFly: Why do you want the Green Investment Bank to come to Manchester and what do you think will be the major benefits for the city?

Ashcroft: We see the Green Investment Bank as a key part of the low carbon agenda and we really want to be a success. We believe that the best to ensure that success is here in Manchester.

I think from a Manchester perspective we see three levels of benefits. Firstly, there is the installation cost of having the bank here which will bring in revenue in terms of rents rates and services – so there is a direct benefit in that respect. It will also bring 52,000 [UPDATE: should read "50 to 70" - transcription error on MCFly's part]  new jobs into Manchester which would be quite key and will mean new high profile jobs in the city. Thirdly, is the spin-off from 3 billion investment programme which could well spiral into 200 or 400 billion. So there are enormous benefits to the city and we also believe that we are the best place to guarantee its success.

MCFly: The government set out three criteria that each city or area making a bid had to fulfill. These are 1) the ability to recruit and retain staff with the necessary specialist expertise 2) presence of a specialist businesses ecosystem and 3) cost effectiveness. Do you feel Manchester meets these criteria?

Ashcroft: Manchester is well-placed both nationally as and regionally as well as internationally due to Manchester Airport to be able to make the most of the Green Investment Bank. In terms of the strength of the financial sector, we’ve got the strongest financial services sector outside of London, we have enormous private equity groups so in terms of the local ecosystem to support the Green Investment Bank, Manchester does very well. Another strength is that Manchester has quite a compact economy.

MCFly: London is clearly quite a serious contender due to the fact that it is already a strong financial hub. Can Manchester compete with the capital city?

Ashcroft: Based on the three criteria, I think Manchester can compete very well against London. And in terms of economics, Manchester offers a very compact economic solution which takes London out of the equation. But let’s face it, there are 22 cities and places which are competing for the Green Investment Bank so it’s a hot topic and there is a lot of interest from all types of places. You have interest from place like Scotland, Wales, Cardiff and Peterborough but nevertheless we feel that on all the criteria, Manchester comes on top in pretty much all of them.

MCFly: I understand that Manchester is offering low rates of rent to show the cost effectiveness of hosting the bank in the city. Is Manchester doing anything else to make sure its bid is successful?

Ashcroft: Technically, we didn’t lower the rents. There were some misquotes relating to how much it would cost to bring the Green Investment Bank to Manchester and so we want to say that you could bring in big banking projects and investment into the heart in Manchester, into Spinningfields which could be the equivalent of London’s Canary Wharf let’s say, and you could do that for less than £20 per square foot. It’s not that we are giving cut price deals, we are just offering attractive market rates which demonstrate how well Manchester competes with any other city in the UK.

MCFly: A blip saw Manchester’s Green Investment Bank website accidentally appear with text from the Leeds’ bid for the Bank. Do you think this may have damaged your campaign?

Ashcroft: There was no issue with regards to our website. I mean, we had a website under development through December and our final site was launched successfully. There was no issue as far as we were concerned- it was a blip, a fleeting moment which nobody saw apart from one journalist. It was a drop for 30 seconds and it was supposed to have lorem ipsom and latin text up there. If you look at the website now, it shows what we’ve been doing and the enormous commitment from key players from Manchester. All the big players have pulled together to support this bid and have committed to video content which is great. We are very proud of our website and the finished product.

MCFly: The Green Investment Bank won’t have full borrowing powers until 2016 at the earliest. Friends of the Earth have said that in order to avoid being a lame duck bank, GIB must be able to undertake independent borrowing from capital markets. Will this be a problem if the bank comes to Manchester?

Ashcroft: There are many ways that the fund can be amplified whether its through leverage borrowing or join venturing with partners. There are lots of ways that the issue of borrowing can be dealt with.

MCFly: The decision on which city will be chosen to host the Green Investment Bank is due in February 2012. What will happen between now and when the decision is made?

Ashcroft: We’re currently working with our parlimentary group of MP’s to make sure that they are fully briefed and we are going to be deciding with them over the coming week what the programme will be that we taking to the House of Commons.

The key date is the 30^th of January as documents have to be submitted by then and all our attention is focused on getting the final document together. In fact, we had a meeting just today to look at that and that document has to be submitted by 5pm on the 30th. After that, the the decision will take place pretty quickly we think and we expect a decision in February some time.

MCFly: As you mentioned before, there is a lot of competition to host the Green Investment Bank. What happens if Manchester isn’t chosen? Will the city still be able to take advantage of the opportunities it provides?

Ashcroft: We want the Green Investment Bank to be a success and we believe that the best place for it to succeed is in Manchester. We will be demonstrating the strengths of Manchester as a location for inwards investment and indeed for any financial banking proposition. However, the green investment agenda is enormous and the 3 billion kickstarter for the bank is essentially backing up what could be a 400 billion investment programme in terms of energy loans. It’s going to be a key component of the economy and so, yes, there will be benefits for everyone even if it is based in Manchester. There will be spin-offs nationally.

:: Green Bank Manchester.
:: John Ashcroft is the chief executive at pro.manchester which is a professional services group.

Arwa Aburawa
mcmonthly@gmail.com

: Originally published at Manchester Climate Monthly

Organic veg – in this case from the Ethical Superstore. Photograph: Organic Picture Library/Rex Features

This September saw the launch of a new organic food coop in Manchester called Manchester Veg People. It had been the culmination of years of work by local organisations such as the Kindling Trust and brought together local organic farmers with various clients such as sustainable groceries and restaurants. The unique thing about the coop, however, was that one of its clients was the Manchester University which has 29 eateries and as such requires a substantial amount of produce.

“We are lucky to have Manchester University as one of our clients,” admits Chris Walsh, who works at Kindling Trust which is part of the co-op. “They are our biggest customer by far and the public sector is a stable market for growers to tap into.” The co-op wants to ensure that growers receive a living wage for their work by selling their fruit and veg at market value and so having a stable market is one way to ensure that. Walsh adds that they are hoping to take on more public sector clients such as prisons and hospitals in the future which will also mean that organic food is reaching those not normally that interested in the quality of their food.

However, there is one downfall to having such a large (and relatively privileged) client taking advantage of fresh organic produce: there is a lot less left for everyone else. Julie Brown, who has been working with a more community-focused food co-op in London called ‘Growing Communities’ admits that Manchester’s co-op differs from conventional sustainable food models due to its focus on public procurement. She adds that as there are so few organic farmers around, there would be times when smaller organisations such as organic veg box schemes would struggle to co-exist alongside co-ops with large public sector clients. She says:

The problem is that there are not a lot of sustainable farmers left and so to make sure that smaller groups have access to local organic veg, you would need to be encouraging more growers. You would need to convince conventional farmers to switch to organic and also get farmers who are currently supplying supermarkets to start working with cooperatives and small groups.

Walsh responds that whilst he hopes that smaller veg groups won’t be affected by their work, he agrees that there is a lot of uncultivated land which could contribute to the sustainable food market. He adds that Manchester Veg People is currently working to establish six new growers which should boost the amount of local organic produce available.

There are lots of ex-growers who gave up farming in the late 1970s and 1980s as it wasn’t economically viable and I’d really like persuade them to start growing again, but this time growing organic as there is a fair market out there for them.

The Manchester Veg People Co-op currently includes the University of Manchester, The Kindling Trust, Dig veg box scheme, Unicorn grocery, Eighth Day Café, Tom &amp Julia Rigby Farm, Dunham Massey Organics, Moss Brook Growers and Glebelands. Growers are allowed to trade outside the co-op and those with established relationships can continue to trade directly. Any new links between growers and buyers developed by the co-op will however trade at an extra cost to make the co-op economically viable.

Julie Brown of Growing Communities insists that there is room for different scales of operations and sustainable food models to exist together as long as they are economically viable and environmentally sustainable. She adds:

The two co-ops may work differently but they have very similar principles so it will be interesting to see how Manchester makes their co-op work for everyone involved.

Arwa Aburawa is a freelance journalist who also writes for Manchester Climate Monthly.

: Article originally published at the Guardian- Manchester Uni contract raises questions on organic food market