Luxury flats where Engels once described slums. Photo Workers.
One of the most recent developments in Manchester City Centre, Deansgate Square, includes a luxury penthouse flat with an asking price of £2.5 million. The housing developer, Renaker, has christened it the Engels penthouse.
Friedrich Engels lived in the area in the 1840s and witnessed the appalling living conditions of those working at the heart of the industrial revolution but so obviously not benefiting from the wealth they created. His influential work, The Condition of the Working Class in England, was informed by what he witnessed – abject poverty, child labour and overcrowded slum housing.
Manchester City Council predicts that the population of the centre of Manchester will increase by 5,000 a year. There are already more than 15,000 people looking for social housing in the city with families requiring 2 or 3 bedroomed accommodation waiting, on average, from 1 to 3 years.
The Engels penthouse flat – and others like it – are clearly not aimed at the average Mancunian. Were Engels alive today he might well reflect that workers still have much to do to improve their lives.