Manchester Central
Manchester Central was first created in 1974 when the city's seats were reduced in number from 10 to 8 to counter the population exodus. Since then the seat has been redrawn through subsequent reviews and now includes much more of Manchester's inner city areas than it did previously.
Manchester Central includes much of the commercial, business and retail core of the city. An IRA bomb devastated large parts on 15 June 1996. Companies have successfully rebuilt following this atrocity, with major new investment in all parts of the City Centre.
The city itself is a centre of banking and has a major manufacturing base, which employs nearly 300,000 people in the Manchester area. Some £14 billion annually is invested in plant, machinery and buildings. In the city centre 45,000 people are employed in professions such as accounting, management consultancy and other professional technical services.
The ethnic make up of the seat is both diverse and rich with Manchester's Chinatown district, a centre for social events. Manchester Central is also home to large Indian, Pakistani and West Indian communities together with an African community traditionally from West Africa but also in recent years from Somalia.
Old warehouses and factories, along with the Manchester Ship Canal, are a reminder of the city's heritage as the seat of the industrial revolution, a city which today bases its success around service industries. Castlefield is a case in point, with its many warehouses developed into housing and apartment units and the subsequent leisure-oriented development of the surrounding area.
The student population of the constituency help to give the city a cosmopolitan image out of which springs the youth culture and the popular music for which Manchester is so well known. Bands such as The Smiths and Morrissey, The Charlatans, The Chemical Brothers, James, The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, New Order, Simply Red and Oasis all found their feet in the Manchester music scene.
In recent years, Manchester has seen the regeneration of the Triangle (formerly the Corn Exchange) and Arndale Shopping Centres, and also the transport infrastructure of the city including Piccadilly Gardens, Piccadilly Station and the Manchester Coach Station on Chorlton Street. In addition, with Manchester being the host of the XVII Commonwealth Games in July and August 2002, the constituency is home to the City of Manchester Stadium.
Commonwealth Games - Manchester 2002
It is certainly true that the City of Manchester Stadium is not the only legacy of the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in 2002. Quite apart from the impressive stadia across Manchester and Greater Manchester, the spectacle of the Games themselves and the sense of good will and friendship generated will remain long in people's memories.
The Opening and Closing Ceremonies were magnificent and the outstanding performances by sportsmen and women such as Paula Radcliffe, the New Zealand Rugby 7s Team, Ian Thorpe (winning six swimming gold medals), Jonathan Edwards (completing a grand slam of major championship medals) and Nigerian athlete Adekunle Adesoji (smashing his own world record for the 100m for blind competitors) showing the strength of competition.
The organisation of the Games also took centre stage with innovations in travel arrangements, and the spirit and friendliness shown by the army of volunteers, winning universal admiration. Around 900,000 tickets for the Games were sold and 3,893 competitors took part in the 17 sports held at 15 venues.
Local schools played their part with many "adopting" competing nations and organising activity days and visits from the athletes. All of these factors ensured that not only was the Games an outstanding success in terms of the successful (and under-budget) delivery of the biggest multi-sport event ever to be held in this country, but also in projecting an extremely positive image of Manchester.
Population
As well as having a population of over 400,000, 60 per cent of the population of Britain (more than 33 million people) live within a two-hour drive of Manchester. The wider area of Greater Manchester has a population of 2.5 million and comprises the cities of Manchester and Salford and the Metropolitan Boroughs of Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan.