Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 July 2009 20.27 BST
The parade, part of the city's international festival, was organised by Turner prize winning artist Jeremy Deller, who enlisted friends including David Hockney.
At twenty minutes to two, it's a normal, albeit spectacularly sunny Sunday afternoon in Manchester: shoppers, idlers, lunchers. At ten to, the long, straight expanse of Deansgate is suddenly lined with expectant crowds. As the town hall clock strikes, you begin to hear it: the boom of a bass line, the shrilling of brass and wind.
Gradually the slow-moving, bellowing beast moves into focus. This is Manchester international festival's Procession, organised by Turner prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, the man who got the Women's Institute arranging flowers in the Tate and re-created, with historical re-enactment groups, the Battle of Orgreave, the 1984 miners' strike conflict with police.
First up in the parade is the Scouts' marching band. "You've got to have the Scouts in a procession," says Deller. "It's almost the law, isn't it?" Aside from the fact that he has asked them to play the Fall's Hit the North, this is one of the most conventional parts of the parade, for next up comes a large float beautifully done out as a brick factory, complete with smoke-belching chimney and former mill workers.
Deller likes the idea that there are people who, according to conventional wisdom, ought not to be celebrated – which is why, wandering gloomily into view, come the emos and goths who hang out in Cathedral Gardens on a Saturday afternoon. Before and behind them putter local authority mobile libraries.
Suddenly, there are nodding black plumes as a horse-drawn hearse appears – inside the glass-sided carriage, the word HACIENDA picked out in cream chrysanthemums. It's the first of a fleet of hearses, each bringing a floral tribute to another lost, loved club of the north-west: Wigan Casino; Bolton's Burnden Park. This gets the local vote: "Very poignant", says Rachel Cook, 36.
It's time for royalty – a whole dynasty of rose queens from Stretford. The queens, all dressed in white, wave regally – and look, there's Britannia, and after her, a banner celebrating Ian Tomlinson, who died during the G20 protests. Ed Hall, who often collaborates with Deller, has stitched beautiful banners, including one designed by David Hockney, depicting an ashtray, for a chain-puffing group, the Unrepentant Smokers. There's a Smoking Kills banner just behind, for balance.
Matters of appetite are not neglected, for here comes a quite magnificent, giddyingly camp cavalcade devoted to the notion that Oldham was the home of the first ever fish and chip shop. "Choose the chip!" bawls one of the float's outriders, her headdress a sky scraping affair of fries in newspaper. On one float sings and dances a legion of fryers and a 3ft-tall vinegar shaker.
Revving behind are the local boy racers, sound systems booming. They are the crew that speed round the back of the Stockport Toys R Us car park on a Thursday night, and not everyone is pleased. James Clayden, 79, says: "All those fumes – it's enough to kill the smell of the fish and chips. We're supposed to be thinking about the environment."
He likes the Shree Swami Narayan Gadi Piping Band from Bolton, though – a group of Asian-British Hindus kitted out in full dress kilts piping as if their lives depended on it. But what brings the tears to the crowd's eyes is the last float. It bears a steel band playing, at Deller's request, Joy Division and Buzz-cocks songs. They ring out Love Will Tear Us Apart, the melancholy memory of Ian Curtis's singing mingling oddly with the steel band's glorious, passionately joyous treatment. It's vintage Deller, and, somehow, pure Manchester.
In the rear, like an apologetic coda, the sight of a municipal motorised road sweeper. Next time maybe there'll be room for a fleet of these, too.
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