Tony Lloyd has unveiled a beautiful stained glass window dedicated to the memory of the first British woman to swim the English Channel at Victoria Baths.

Tony said: “It’s a great honour to unveil the window as it was a tremendous achievement to be the first British woman to swim the channel.

“Sunny was a great Mancunian, and she was a woman who did something fantastic in an era when it was massively more difficult for women to achieve things like that.

“She deserves this recognition and of course it’s fitting that the window should be put in the baths where she used to train.”

(Left to right) SSR Principal Ian Hu, Tony Lloyd MP, RNCM Vice Principal Linda Merrick and RNCM Principal Professor Jonty Stockdale.

The RNCM and SSR have formed a partnership that offers unique and highly exciting opportunities to students of Music in the city of Manchester. Through this partnership the cream of young performing talent from the RNCM will be working with the finest creative sound engineers and record producers trained by SSR whose achievements were recently recognised through their Business of the Year award last year.

RNCM musicians, bands and ensembles will be featuring in SSR lessons and SSR engineers will be working at the RNCM recording concerts and performances. A dedicated face book style website has also been set up which allows the students from the institutions to collaborate independently on their own projects.

SSR Principal Ian Hu said: “I would like to thank Tony for coming along and supporting this partnership which is a prime example of two Manchester institutions working together to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This collaboration  will produce material of outstanding quality that would stand up against even the biggest commercial projects.”

Manchester MP Tony Lloyd took time out from the Labour conference in Manchester today to pose with local campaigners to pledge his support for a new law to halt the environmental damage being caused by factory farming.

Tony joined a herd of Manchester Friends of the Earth campaigners to highlight the hidden chain linking meat and dairy from British factory farms to wildlife and rainforest destruction in South America. Friends of the Earth is supporting Rob Fello MP’s Sustainable Livestock Bill and is campaigning for MPs to vote for it in Parliament on Friday 12 November.

Tony said: “I’m backing the Sustainable Livestock Bill because I support a fairer and more planet-friendly future for farming. We must reduce our reliance on imported soy for animal feed which is causing forest destruction overseas – and instead support local farmers to graze their animals, grow their own feeds and get a fair return for their produce.”

Manchester Friends of the Earth Campaigner Helen Rimmer said: “It’s great that Tony Lloyd MP will be supporting the local appetite for planet-friendly food and farming by voting for a strong new law that supports British farmers to feed animals a homegrown diet.”

Tony Lloyd and Councillor June Hitchen are calling on the Tory government to scrap plans to strip council tenants of their rights.

David Cameron has unveiled plans that would see tenants lose security of tenure meaning that they could be evicted should they start earning more or if there is a change in their personal circumstances.

Tony said, ‘Most right thinking people are against removing council tenants rights. It is simply wrong that tenants could lose their homes because their partner has died or their children have moved away. These plans would see communities torn apart with vulnerable people becoming isolated.’

Cllr June Hitchen said, ‘I am appalled at the Lib Dem /Tory’s plans to remove tenants basic rights to remain in their homes. Decent tenants have a right to security of tenure. These proposals are simply unfair and unacceptable. I want to call on the Lib Dems to show us that they support the communities they claim to represent by opposing these plans.’

Tony Lloyd MP and Cllr June Hitchen with a petition from local people opposing the Tory plans.

Tony Lloyd visited Manchester Art Gallery on Friday 27 August to experience some of the gallery’s family activities. The first two images show Tony taking part in a ‘Heroic Fridays’ workshop, which have been running alongside the gallery’s summer family exhibition, ‘Heros and Monsters’. The exhibition brings Ancient Greek superbeings from the gallery’s historic paintings into our modern world. The gallery has welcomed nearly 50,000 visitors since the exhibition opened on 20 July, and more than 4,000 family visitors from all over the city have taken part in the workshops.