From the early nineteenth century and until the 1960s, Manchester's annual Whit celebrations transformed the city centre into a spectacle of colour. Catholics walked on Whit Friday and Protestants on the following Monday, and they each competed for the most impressive celebrations, carrying banners, statues and flowers. Although they took place throughout Lancashire, Manchester city centre drew the largest processions and crowds. Howard Spring's 1934 novel, Shabby Tiger, described the Catholic procession starting from Albert Square in front of the city's town hall:

The processions were a rare moment when Protestant and Catholics articulated and expressed their differences collectively and publicly in a city largely untroubled by sectarian divisions and tensions, particularly in comparison to Liverpool or Glasgow.Footnote ² They are used here to explore how the city centre became a stage for the performance of public, yet episodic, forms of Catholic identity by the 1930s. This article argues that the importance of the processions peaked between the two world wars in reaction to a broader programme of urban transformation implemented by Manchester Corporation after 1918. Catholic communities were broken up and widely dispersed throughout the new suburbs, making it necessary to find new ways to articulate their shared identity. At the same time, the city centre became an increasingly important and emotive site to express religious collectivity as new forms of commercial and municipal architecture also emerged. It is a story about religion and the self, which reveals important details about the cultural meanings of the inter-war city and contributes to an emerging field of cultural geography that explores the relationship between space and faith.Footnote ³

The processions highlight the importance of religion to Manchester's urban culture. Their study goes some way to counter what David Nash recently described as the marginalization of religion by social and cultural historians,Footnote ⁴ which is perhaps especially true of urban historians.Footnote ⁵ The approach employed here is reflective of the recent shift in historical scholarship on the city towards an interest in experience and culture.Footnote ⁶ The study of Manchester's Whit processions also makes a significant contribution to the secularization debate, which continues amongst historians of twentieth-century Britain.Footnote ⁷ Those writing on inter-war England tend to ignore religion or perceive the period as one of decline: for Adrian Hastings, the ‘Church was crumbling on many a side’ in the 1920s.Footnote ⁸ Yet, as this article shows, Catholics in Manchester reacted confidently to the city's redevelopment, despite the dislocating effect on traditional parish communities, and this led to a shift in the role of the Catholic Whit processions. In turn, they caused the city centre to become increasingly important as a stage for the performance of an episodic and public form of shared religious identity.

Manchester's Whit processions can be understood as part of a broader tradition of using public spaces for individuals to ‘put themselves on display to others’.Footnote ⁹ The Whit celebrations necessitated putting the self on display, but also to demonstrate a community identity that can be understood through an analysis of how religious collectivity was itself constructed through the processions. Jonathan Sperber suggests the materiality of processions ‘create a rich and varied field of symbols, ideal for semiotic investigation’.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, the shifts in the articulation of a Catholic shared identity can be read by the changes in the icons and religious symbols in the Whit celebrations, which exposes the connections between the ritualistic nature of the processions and their relationship with collective identities: as Anthony Cohen suggests, ritual ‘confirms and strengthens social identity and people's sense of social location: it is an important means through which people experience community’.Footnote ¹¹ Cohen's analysis helps explain why and how Manchester's Catholic population increasingly relied on the ritual of Whit processions whilst its sense of community was severely undermined following the city's redevelopment.

Steven Fielding examined the Catholic Whit processions using the local press and autobiographies and emphasizes continuity in their role and expression over the period 1880–1939.Footnote ¹² In contrast, visual sources permit an anthropological reading of the shifting signs and symbols within the processions, which uncovers their changing cultural role. About a third of Greater Manchester County Record Office's (GMCRO) collection of photographs relating to Whit (both Protestant and Catholic) was examined here, alongside around half of those held by Manchester Central Library Local Image Collection (MCL LIC), and film footage held by the British Film Institute and Pathé. Although not without limitations,Footnote ¹³ these visual sources are used in conjunction with published sources and personal testimony to offer some sense of how religious selfhoods were put on display through the Whit processions.Footnote ¹⁴ They reveal that the form and expression of the Catholic processions became more distinct and exotic in comparison to their Protestant counterparts over the period and that religious iconography became a much more prominent feature as the inter-war period progressed. However, the episodic nature of Catholic collectivity in Manchester is also stressed here, which was closely related to the specific nature of Catholicism in inter-war Manchester.

Catholicism and urban redevelopment in inter-war Manchester

The profound impact of the city's redevelopment on Manchester's Catholic population necessitated a shift in the way religious shared identity was performed between the two world wars. Salford Diocese (which covered Manchester, Stockport in the south, Preston in the north-east, Clithoroe to the North and Todmorden on the Eastern edge of the Pennines) estimated there were 300,000 Catholics in 1936, within Greater Manchester's population of just over 2,700,000.Footnote ¹⁵ There was no such thing as a Catholic ghetto in Manchester by 1918, rather, as Fielding has demonstrated, Catholics tended to be concentrated in the poorest working-class districts close to the centre, including Angel Meadow, Collyhurst, Hulme, Ancoats and Miles Platting.Footnote ¹⁶ Manchester's Catholic population was also diverse, particularly in comparison to Liverpool, for instance, and to be Catholic did not necessarily mean to be Irish also:Footnote ¹⁷ significant numbers of non-Irish Catholics settled in the city during the decades prior to World War I, notably from Italy and eastern European countries including Poland and Hungary.Footnote ¹⁸ These immigrants imported their own culture of religious celebration and had a significant impact on the Catholic community, shaping shared identity from within.

Poverty and Catholicism were strongly linked in inter-war Manchester. Although overall unemployment rates in Manchester never met the national rate, some parts of the city were badly affected and they included the more Catholic districts.Footnote ¹⁹ One survey undertaken by Manchester University in the 1930s noted that around 35 per cent of Ancoats’ inhabitants were Roman Catholic; 70 per cent of men earned less than £3 a week, and 53 per cent of households lived below the poverty line.Footnote ²⁰ Yet, the study also noted the longevity and stability of the Ancoats community, where over 40 per cent of inhabitants lived in the same house for over 20 years and some for over 30 years.Footnote ²¹ Subsequently, the report concluded, ‘Ancoats people have a great deal of pride and are attached to their neighbourhood through long association.’Footnote ²² Although the title suggests the survey was undertaken in 1937 and 1938, the introduction states the ‘study occurred as Ancoats was scheduled for clearance in 1934’.Footnote ²³ The researchers were concerned about the future of the community as Ancoats, along with other Catholic areas, was targeted for clearance.

The stability of Manchester's Catholic communities was severely undermined by the Corporation's investment in urban redevelopment after 1918. Municipal leaders embarked on an ambitious programme of housing reform and 21,859 new suburban council houses were completed by 1933.Footnote ²⁴ In Wythenshawe alone, 40,000 inhabitants occupied 8,145 homes by 1939,Footnote ²⁵ providing suburban homes specifically for the working classes.Footnote ²⁶ Clearance focused on built-up areas adjacent to the city centre and Catholics were especially affected: whereas 40 per cent of all Catholics lived in seven parishes close to the city centre in 1890, the proportion had fallen to less than 25 per cent by 1939.Footnote ²⁷ Traditional parish communities were destroyed. Richard Wright estimates the number of Catholics in Ancoats halved during the 1930s, which ruined their micro-economy and forced local tradesmen (particularly ice-cream sellers) to relocate.Footnote ²⁸ Catholic churches near Manchester city centre struggled to survive: 2,000 parishioners of St Anne's Church in Ancoats were re-housed by the Corporation by 1939, and the church nearly closed.Footnote ²⁹ Salford Diocese was alarmed, particularly because Manchester Corporation ignored the diocese's requests for members of Catholic parishes to be re-housed together.Footnote ³⁰ The diocese embarked on a building programme in those suburbs within its jurisdiction: new parishes were established in Irlam, Bolton, Didsbury, Burnley and Blackley in 1928 alone.Footnote ³¹ During the episcopate of Thomas Henshaw, bishop of Salford 1925–38, 41 new churches were built and 15 new parishes were formed.Footnote ³² However, some housing estates, such as the Wythenshawe estate, were governed by other dioceses and did not witness significant building programmes until the 1960s.

Despite Salford Diocese's efforts, Manchester's Catholic population had to change the way in which their sense of community was expressed. As Fielding argues, Catholic identity in Manchester was flexible by nature: ‘They were neither simply Irish, Catholic or working class, but an amalgam of all three . . . There is much to suggest that the Irish Catholic immigrant identity was an extremely malleable identity, defined by ambiguity and equivocation, with vague boundaries and a viable character.’Footnote ³³ Manchester's redevelopment caused Catholics to develop a less ambiguous, yet episodic, form of community. Cohen argues that communities respond to change by asserting a stronger sense of collectivity, suggesting ‘societies undergoing rapid, and, therefore, de-stabilizing processes of change often generate atavistically some apparently traditional forms, but import meaning to contemporary circumstance’.Footnote ³⁴ Cohen's analysis helps explain why Manchester's Catholic population used the traditions of the Whit processions to assert a stronger sense of collectivity following Manchester's redevelopment. To understand this more clearly, the nature and significance of the Whit processions needs to be examined directly, alongside an examination of why the city centre also became more important as a stage to perform shared identity.

Redefining the city as a spiritual space

Whit weekend traditionally represented a key moment when Manchester city centre was given over to religious celebration. Nevertheless, the impact of the processions became more emotive and significant as the city centre itself underwent notable change. Manchester Corporation was not only concerned with housing reform, it also sought to improve the city's architectural style. In particular, a more clearly defined civic area emerged following the great investment made by municipal leaders to expand the town hall and build a central library adjacent to it. Manchester Central Library was completed in 1934 and cost almost £600,000; the library accommodated 1 million volumes and seated over 300 readers in the great hall, making it the largest after the reading room of the British Library.Footnote ³⁵ The Town Hall Extension was completed in 1938 at a cost of £750,000 and included a new council chamber, gas and electricity departments with showrooms, cinemas and demonstration rooms, and a 200 foot ‘rates hall’.Footnote ³⁶ New commercial buildings emerged also and architectural historian John Parkinson-Bailey notes, ‘Manchester erected some of its most notable, and expensive, buildings. Portland Stone, rather than brick and terracotta, characterises the city in the 1920s and 1930s.’Footnote ³⁷ The new architecture was grand and imposing, and represented an aesthetic shift away from the city's neo-gothic heritage. It included the Ship Canal Building (1926), Lee House, Great Bridgewater Street (1931), Sunlight House, Quay Street (1932), then the city's tallest commercial building, and Edwin Lutyens’ Midland Bank on King Street (1935).Footnote ³⁸ This new architecture was accompanied by a substantial extension of the public transport system, which had the city centre as its terminus and extended to the new suburbs. Manchester's buses carried 6.9 million passengers in 1925, increasing to 20.2 million in 1929 and by 1938, at least one tram passed through Market Street (the main shopping street in the city centre) every 24 seconds.Footnote ³⁹ These developments are important because they reveal the vitality of urban culture in Manchester by the 1930s: the city centre was the hub of commercial and civic activity for the Greater Manchester area, drawing in large numbers of people for work and shopping.

The impact of the Whit processions became more emotive as the new civic and commercial architecture emerged. The Catholic procession started from Albert Square and finished at Portland Street, beginning at 10 o'clock in the morning with the hymn ‘Faith of Our Fathers’, which told the story of Catholic persecution and then triumph.Footnote ⁴⁰ The route first took the Catholic procession along Deansgate, the most fashionable shopping district, and past Kendal's department store. Then, it followed on through Peter Street, alongside the town hall and the new extension, as well as the newly built central library, before moving up along Market Street and past the city's other shops and department stores, including Lewis's and Woolworth's. Finally, the walkers reached Piccadilly Gardens, the city's main transport terminus. Thus, the procession utilized the very areas of the city that underwent significant changes between the wars: Catholic walkers took advantage of the developing city centre and appropriated the space for themselves.

The importance of the Whit procession also increased with the involvement of Bishop Henshaw, who made a clear attempt to invest the celebrations with a more explicitly religious meaning. In 1927, for example, Henshaw compared the impact of the Catholic procession to that of the previous year's General Strike. During Whit, he wrote, ‘Commercial Manchester rests for a spell from its task of making money. The stock exchange is deserted; the shops are shut . . . the real wealth of the nation comes out into the sunshine . . . The children of the poor invade the centre of Commerce.’Footnote ⁴¹ Manchester's Whit celebrations disrupted the day-to-day workings of the city and there was a striking difference between the commercial buzz of the city and the hymns, colour and religiosity of the Whit ceremonies. Yet the Whit processions also offered a form of amusement and leisure. Street hawkers sold orange boxes for people to stand on, as well as flowers and unofficial programmes. Photographers and newsreel companies set out to record the events, women did no cooking that day and many combined it with a day in a public house. For many, it was a leisure activity and remembered Whit was ‘as good as going to Blackpool’.Footnote ⁴² Nostalgic representations emphasize the importance of Whit weekend for children, remembered by many because they were given new clothes and as a time of excitement and fun. Although the role of the Whit celebrations in providing leisure and amusement is important, this has overshadowed the procession's importance as a religious ceremony. Furthermore, it is symptomatic of the broader neglect of religion in existing historical accounts of twentieth-century Britain.Footnote ⁴³

The Catholic processions actually became more popular after 1918, which is indicated by the sheer quantity of photographs donated to the GMCRO: 60 of their Whit photographs are from the period before 1918, nearly 200 are from the period 1918–39, and just 41 are from the post 1945 period.Footnote ⁴⁴ As Figure 1 illustrates, there was also a significant increase in the number of official participants in the Catholic processions: 16,000 people took part in 1903, but in 1929 (the centenary year of Catholic Emancipation) this rose to nearly 22,000 participants and settled at around 20,000 into the 1930s. Nevertheless, although participation in the Whit processions became more important as an assertion of Catholic identity as the inter-war period developed, this remained an episodic form of public selfhood and continued to be a rare moment when sectarian divisions were clearly asserted in Manchester. People expressed their allegiance through small, but highly emotive, acts such as refusing to wash their front step or by preventing their children from watching the procession.Footnote ⁴⁵ Ivy Bolton and Edie Smythe (born in Manchester in the 1920s) recalled, when the sun shone on Whit Friday Catholics would say ‘God knows his own.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Whit weekend drew out tensions and issues regarding collective identity and community, not normally witnessed in Manchester and the surrounding area. However, the shared religious identity that emerged during Whit remained flexible. Fielding emphasizes the importance of Irishness in processions, writing ‘what emerged on Whit Friday was a collectivity defined by Catholic and Irish ideas and sentiments founded upon a past largely distinct from the rest of society’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Although these aspects of identity and articulations of religious difference that emerged were traditionally associated with Manchester's Whit processions, the context of urban redevelopment combined with a greater involvement of non-Irish Catholics altered their expression between the two world wars. Differences between Catholic and Protestant forms of expression during Whit were limited at the start of the inter-war period. As Catholic parishes were broken up, shared identity was increasingly articulated through the annual processions and their forms of expression became more exotic and overtly Catholic in iconography.

Figure 1:

Number of participants in the Catholic processions, 1903–1934

Source: Salford Catholic Diocese, The Authorised Official Programme of the Catholic Whit-Friday Procession (Manchester, 1895–1934).

Processional culture in Manchester c. 1918

Manchester's processional tradition probably began when Anglicans started walking in the city centre from the early nineteenth century. Catholics began to take part during the mid-nineteenth century, following the influx of Irish and Italian immigrants to the city.Footnote ⁴⁸ Although the processions took place on separate days and were notorious for exposing sectarian tensions that normally lay dormant in Manchester,Footnote ⁴⁹ at the start of the twentieth century they reflected a parish identity foremost. Figure 2 depicts a Catholic parish from Ancoats in a Whit procession around the time of World War I. Despite the poverty of the area, women appear to be in their best dresses and are wearing hats, yet there is nothing about the walk that suggests that it is actually Catholic and the women do not carry any icons, just a banner which is probably for the parish. As we shall see, even Catholics from the poorest areas attempted to obtain white costumes in the later inter-war years, suggesting poverty was not the reason these women did not wear matching white costumes. This scene is also echoed in a picture of St Paul's Methodist Church (also from Ancoats) taking part in the Whit procession of 1920, and indicates they were typical of the Whit processions at the time of World War I.Footnote ⁵⁰ As the study undertaken by Manchester University in the 1930s highlighted a strong sense of community within Ancoats,Footnote ⁵¹ these images imply that the Whit processions were probably part of a broader processional tradition reflecting a local communal identity, which was to evolve later in the inter-war period.

Figure 2:

St Michael's Roman Catholic Parish, Ancoats, c. 1910s

Source: MCL LIC Ref N9653.

Not only were there few explicitly religious symbols in the Whit processions in the first two decades of the twentieth century, but the similarities between the expression and display of the Catholic and Protestant celebrations were also strong. The following two pictures illustrate Whit celebrations from around 1918 and highlight little tangible difference between the Catholic and Protestant processions. Figure 3 depicts a Catholic walk as it left Albert Square to traverse Market Street, Manchester's main shopping district. Girls are shown wearing white dresses, they carry flowers and a banner that spells out ‘JESU’, but as in Figure 2, no part of the iconography of costume suggests the walk is Catholic. The large crowds are an important feature of the picture with observers six or seven deep leaning out of the windows, showing it was an important local event but not necessarily a proclamation of Catholic difference. Similarly, the Manchester Evening News’ description of the scene in 1920 shows references to religion in the Catholic procession were perceived as ‘picturesque’, rather than spiritual. ‘Record crowds witnessed the arrival of the Roman Catholic Guilds, which, for splendour and pageantry and attention of detail, are unexcelled outside Rome. This morning, many beautiful floral tableaux were portrayed. Youths dressed as Roman martyrs and gladiators lent a picturesque touch, while hundreds of banners were carried.’Footnote ⁵² The article indicates that in 1920 the Whit celebrations were a time of celebration and festivity, but the form of Catholic expression was not narrowly prescribed: children were dressed as both martyrs and gladiators and banners were an important part of the processional culture.

Figure 3:

Roman Catholic walk, c. 1918

Source: GMCRO Image Collection Ref 1313/26.

Figure 4 also shows the difficulty in detecting the visible differences between the Catholic and Protestant Whit processions in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Although it depicts a Protestant group of walkers, the white dresses and the flowers are very similar to those in the Catholic procession shown in Figure 3 and, again, there is little overtly religious iconography. These pictures are typical of those that have survived from around the time of World War I, where the emphasis seems to have been on young girls in white dresses, carrying flowers, perhaps, in part, a celebration of springtime.Footnote ⁵³ This is echoed in newsreel footage of the processions, which indicates Catholic and Protestant Whit walks were related to a broader processional culture in England during the early 1920s. Pathé newsreel shows both the Protestant and Catholic processions of 1921 were made up of girls wearing white dresses, as they were in Figures 3 and 4, and they are also shown carrying shepherd's crooks and flowers. The film footage, like the photographs, portrays few men in the Catholic procession (unlike the Protestant procession, the Catholic celebrations took place on a working day and few men were unable to participate because of work with the exception of those holding the statues, which were very large and heavy). Pathé certainly perceived little difference between the processions in 1921 and gave the different newsreels similar titles, which again emphasized the scenic and decorative qualities of the processions. The Catholic procession was described as, ‘Whit Friday Procession, Picturesque Scenes at Annual Parade’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Similarly, the Protestant procession was described as ‘Protestant Procession, Picturesque Scenes at Annual Parade’. In both processions, the participants carried parish banners and the only explicitly religious icons were the Italian's crucifix and statue of the Madonna in the Catholic procession.Footnote ⁵⁵ Both the Protestant and Catholic processions seem to have been strongly related to traditional celebrations of springtime, related to a nostalgic vision of the countryside. The ribbons and banners carried are notably similar to a Maypole, which is perhaps unsurprising considering the popularity of these traditions during the two decades prior to World War I.Footnote ⁵⁶

Figure 4:

Protestant walk, c. 1910s

Source: MCL LIC Ref M69197.

As the photographs and newsreel footage show, there were few prominent religious icons in either Protestant or Catholic Whit processions around the time of World War I and this contributed to the similarities between their form and expression. It seems that not only did the celebrations not then articulate a narrowly religious identity, but that the collective identity that was performed was itself also malleable in nature. For instance, during the Boer War, the Catholic parishes of St Johns and Holy Name dressed boys as soldiers and girls as nurses and marched them behind the Union Jack.Footnote ⁵⁷ There were complaints about the lack of Irish music after the Manchester Catholic procession of 1904 and the musical bands were often non-Catholic, including the Primitive Methodist Prize Band; by 1912 Catholic groups hoped to improve matters by introducing hymns to the procession.Footnote ⁵⁸ Nevertheless, little had changed by the early 1920s and, in 1922, the Manchester Guardian reported the Italians brought a cross and Madonna, ‘the only religious emblems, beyond the processional cross and the banners’.Footnote ⁵⁹ The absence of many explicitly Catholic icons may have reflected the problematic nature of Irishness in the first decades of the twentieth century. Catholic priests dissuaded Irish Catholics from promoting their identity in the Whit celebrations because they feared the inflammatory nature of Irish nationalism. As a result, ‘when Irish Catholics took to the streets it was usually to ostensibly express their Catholic faith rather than their Irish nationality’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Irish nationalism was especially problematic in the years 1920–22, with violent attacks on Manchester by the IRA.Footnote ⁶¹ Perhaps only the influence of other Catholic nationalities, alongside a decline in IRA terrorism, made Irish involvement and symbols associated with Irish nationality more acceptable in the Whit celebrations by the 1930s.

Catholic expressions of difference in Manchester city centre

The role of the Catholic Whit processions began to change in the 1920s as the redevelopment of Manchester took hold. In particular, 1925 marked an important turning point as Thomas Henshaw become bishop of Salford and was instrumental in transforming the celebrations into a vital spiritual event in Manchester's Catholic calendar. He renamed the celebrations as the ‘Annual Catholic Procession’, which distanced it from the Protestant Whit celebrations. Henshaw also introduced a personal address, published in the Official Programme, to invest the processions with a more overtly spiritual role. In his first address, he proclaimed the Whit celebrations were a symbol of Catholic rejuvenation and represented ‘a noble and striking demonstration of the strength and power of the Church which is rebuilding itself in England upon the ashes of its martyred self’.Footnote ⁶² By 1932, Henshaw claimed the annual celebrations permitted Catholic families of Manchester to ‘feel that at least one right of citizenship is theirs equally with the rich, the right to parade the street of their own city’.Footnote ⁶³ The Whit processions allowed Catholic leaders to nurture an alternative vision of Manchester than that created by municipal leaders or businessmen through the new civic architecture, shops and businesses.

Just as Bishop Henshaw asserted the specifically religious role of the Catholic Whit celebrations from the mid-1920s, so the icons and items of dress used within the processions also changed. Figure 5 shows a Whit procession from a Catholic parish in Angel Meadow and illustrates how girls still wore white dresses and carried flowers in the mid-1920s, but there is a much stronger presence of Catholic iconography in comparison to the earlier Whit processions.Footnote ⁶⁴ There is a boy holding a crucifix and the two banners in the background portray religious icons. Salford Diocese prohibited non-Catholic symbols from the procession during the later 1920s and in 1931 explicitly forbade the use of non-Catholic flags and emblems.Footnote ⁶⁵ The ruling suggests Catholic leaders were eager to define the Catholic procession more clearly and made a conscious decision to make it different in expression from the Protestant Whit procession. Yet, it is clear that from the 1920s Catholic women were instrumental in negotiating the way the Catholic processions looked. Figures 2 and 3 illustrated it was very common for children to wear white dresses during Whit, but by the mid-1920s more adult women took part in the Catholic processions and wore costumes to emulate the Virgin Mary. Figure 6 illustrates a group of women dressed to participate in the Catholic procession of 1927 as ‘The Children of Mary’, which was a semi-formal religious group in Manchester. These women set themselves apart by wearing veils and emphasized their close relationship with the Virgin Mary. The tradition continued throughout the late 1930s as it became increasingly common for women to cover their heads during the procession. Salford Diocese even began a tradition of crowning a young girl ‘Mary’ during Whit from the mid-1920s. Margaret Kierman, born in Manchester during the 1920s, remembered that the crowning of Mary had to be stopped for a period because it caused so many problems within the Catholic community over who should be chosen, the honour was so great.Footnote ⁶⁶ This was a clear link to Mary, Mother of God and a Catholic oppositional figure to the Rose Queen, who was crowned during the Protestant Whit celebrations. Newsreel footage from 1928 shows the crowning of a Rose Queen in Lancashire; the emphasis (as in the early Whit processions) was on springtime and many girls are shown wearing white dresses, while some children wear Scout and Guide uniforms and many carry flowers.Footnote ⁶⁷ Thus, the iconography of the Rose Queen celebrations mirrored some elements of the early Whit processions and, by the mid-1920s, the Whit processions incorporated English traditions with Catholic iconography to nurture a localized form of religious expression in which imitating Mary was a strong expression of Catholic difference.

Figure 5:

St William's Procession, Angel Meadow, Salford, 1926

Source: MCL LIC Ref N4101.

Figure 6:

Children of Mary, Catholic Whit Procession, 1927

Source: GMCRO Image Collection Ref 905/39.

Catholics seem to have been especially concerned about the importance of obtaining specific costumes as the inter-war period progressed, despite the poverty many families found themselves in. One Anglican cleric, who worked in Manchester in the early 1930s, recalled people falling into debt in their desire to provide the necessary costumes for the Whit processions, claiming ‘our Roman Catholic friends were more guilty of this sort of thing’ as ‘they made greater demands’.Footnote ⁶⁸ His criticism reflects the complexities around the expressions of Catholic selfhood during the Whit processions by the late 1920s and early 1930s. On the one hand, the pressure to have the necessary items of dress and adornment was difficult for many families, but at the same time, participation in the processions was fulfilling and offered Catholics public and visible demonstrations of status and respectability. Nostalgic recollections of those who participated in the Catholic walks as children during the late 1920s often draw attention to the importance of clothing: children were ‘dressed up really nicely’ for Whit, recalled Winifred Kelly, herself Catholic, and she noted that the clothes were sometimes kept for a couple of Sundays ‘before they go into the pawn shop’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Similarly, Edith professed her mother ‘did always try to buy you a bit of something’, remembering slippers cost 4s 11d and socks 1s 3d, and these small token items meant ‘at least you'd got a bit of something new’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Carolyn Steedman has recently questioned the concept of ‘the other’ as an analytical tool in understanding collective identity. ‘This other is a very big thing, and undetailed’, writes Steedman, ‘littleness, on the other hand, is the something tiny that can be held, and appropriated and incorporated into the idea of who you are.’Footnote ⁷¹ ‘Little things’, like the socks and shoes, helped articulate an increasingly strong sense of difference between Catholics and Protestants during Whit. Protestants and Catholics not only defined their collective identity in opposition to each other, but also constructed a shared identity from within that was performed publicly in the city centre during the Whit celebrations.

In order to participate in the Whit processions and obtain the ‘little things’ they needed, women found themselves obtaining clothes for Whit in the same imaginative and frugal ways they obtained more fashionable clothes, including home dressmaking made possible by wide access to the sewing-machine.Footnote ⁷² These methods became essential as the period developed and participation within the processions was increasingly important as an assertion of collective Catholic identity whilst at the same time problems of unemployment and poverty made it especially challenging for women to obtain the specific items of dress and adornment needed to take part. The Whit celebrations of 1926 were badly hit by the General Strike, but Winifred Kelly recalls how the Catholic community came together to ensure everyone could take part: her mother convinced Elworth's, a drapers on the corner of Deansgate and Market Street in the city centre, to sell her some dress material cheaply. As a skilled dressmaker, Winifred's mother used it to make matching Whit costumes for six or seven children.Footnote ⁷³ The experience is echoed in other oral testimonies: Margaret Kierman remembered her mother saving in clubs all year to pay for Whit outfits and Ivy recalled ‘my mother would save every penny she had to get our dresses . . . mum used to save hard to make you look nice for the Whit Walk’.Footnote ⁷⁴ In 1934, the Catholic Herald celebrated the effort Catholics made to obtain the costumes needed for the procession, ‘I cannot, and shall not, attempt to describe the overwhelming detail of this cavalcade of Catholicity . . . I applaud the courage and sacrifice that had been obviously made in thousands of homes.’Footnote ⁷⁵ Manchester's Whit celebrations were clearly a moment of both emotional and financial investment for Catholics by the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Catholic women's appropriation of modern consumer culture for a religious event reflected the importance of Whit as a method of bolstering shared identity as the community underwent a period of change. Cohen's anthropological study of Whalsay, in the Shetland Isles, suggested inhabitants used change to bolster their own sense of uniqueness and harden their collective identity. When threatened by change, inhabitants ‘nurture a view of their own eccentric modernity’.Footnote ⁷⁶ Again, there are parallels with the inter-war Catholic Whit processions, which occurred within a background of broader social and cultural change. A populist culture of glamour and consumer culture emerged after World War I and attracted the attention of young, working-class women, which alarmed the Catholic Church.Footnote ⁷⁷ At the pope's behest, Catholic women around the world gathered in protest against ‘those exaggerations of fashions’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Salford Diocese was no exception and the early 1920s was characterized by a local campaign against ‘the evils of fashion’Footnote ⁷⁹ and women's ‘craving for constant, daily amusement’, particularly the cinema and dances.Footnote ⁸⁰ Yet by the late 1920s and early 1930s, Salford Diocese (particularly under Henshaw's leadership) became noticeably more relaxed about modern forms of consumer culture and, as shown above, Catholic women incorporated them into the Whit processions to stress a stronger sense of difference from their Protestant counterparts and, as Cohen's inhabitants of Whalsay, fostered their own form of modernity.

The Catholic Whit celebrations of the late 1920s and 1930s were also characterized by a greater autonomy of Catholic women themselves in shaping the form and expression of the celebrations. Around 1930 Salford Diocese, in recognition of the poverty so many Catholic families experienced, ruled against a stipulation for Whit costumes, which meant white dresses were not compulsory, yet this caused a great outcry amongst Catholic women. Margaret Kierman recalls, the ‘mothers all said “we want them to wear white dresses”’,Footnote ⁸¹ and the white costumes remained. There was a mutual relationship between church leaders and Catholic women: they negotiated the form of expression taken by the Whit walks and the façade of appearance offered Catholic women status and became increasingly specific to the Catholic processions into the later 1930s.

Adult women were also far more involved in the Catholic processions in comparison to Protestant women by the 1930s. Newsreel footage of the 1934 procession depicts greater numbers of statues and icons, larger and more ornate than in the earlier years. Rather than spelling out generically Christian inspired words such as ‘PURITY’, as the Protestant walkers did, ‘AVE MARIE’ was spelt out to accompany a large statue of the Madonna covered in flowers. Many girls were also dressed as peasants with their heads covered and young boys wore eastern European satin suits with pointed slippers. Thus Catholic procession members in the later 1930s reflected a more exotic, and certainly non-English, expression of Catholicism because of the influence of immigrants to Manchester.Footnote ⁸² Those who were children in Manchester during the mid- and late 1930s emphasize the impact of immigrant Catholics on the form and expression of the Catholic walks. Essie and Ronnie Strul, themselves both Jewish, recalled watching the walks in Manchester when they were children and remarked the Catholic processions were considered to be an especially great occasion because of the exotic costumes.Footnote ⁸³ Alma Todhill remembered the Catholic walks were ‘very colourful’, particularly the Hungarian participants in national dress, whereas Ivy insisted the Irish in their national colours were the most noteworthy members of the procession.Footnote ⁸⁴ In contrast, the Protestant processions were then dominated by patriotic banners and flags, with children in Scout and Guide uniforms and few white dresses or flowers.Footnote ⁸⁵ By the later 1930s, the Catholic Whit procession was noticeably different from the Protestant procession and this was reflective of internally constructed forms of shared identity and of a popular and exotic urban religious culture.