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Since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008, the terrace chant has been repeated at Premier League title parades, on numerous trips to Wembley and at two UEFA Champions League finals. But the guilty verdict in City's case with the Premier League -- published last week -- has called all the recent success into question.

It's not so much "we're not really here," but rather should City have been there at all? Their supporters are caught in the middle of the scandal.

"I feel for the fans," said former England striker and TV pundit Gary Lineker. "It's always the fans that suffer from these things, which is sad."

No one can speak for all City fans when talking about their thoughts and feelings since the club were officially found to have broken financial rules between 2009 and 2018. Shortly after the verdict was published, the Manchester City Supporters Union released a statement to that effect.

"We will be engaging with our members and the wider fan base, consulting the memberships and gauging opinion," it read. "We all need to look out for each other as supporters in these uncertain times ahead. We need to be strong together."

With millions of fans and more than 400 supporters' clubs worldwide, there are a variety of opinions within City's fanbase. Talk to fans on the street or around the Etihad and there's no singular, unified view. It's reflected by the high-profile fans who have been asked to appear on TV, radio and podcasts.

"My overriding feeling is anger," said David Mooney of the "Blue Moon podcast" in an interview with Sky Sports. "They've lied to the fans, they've lied to the rest of football and acted with sheer contempt towards the football club that I support."

While some feel let down and misled by the owners, others are steadfast in their support of chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and CEO Ferran Soriano, who continue to strongly assert City's innocence. Some are choosing to wait until the outcome of the appeal -- filed last week -- before deciding what to think.

There are fans who have long since decided that it's the rules that are wrong, designed to help the "Red Cartel" of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal stay at the top and keep anyone from joining the gang. Soriano has played into it, referencing a "Premier League conspiracy theory" in a video message sent to staff.

"A lot of City fans are conflicted," said City fan Nobbins on "The Overlap" podcast. "There's no consensus about how we should feel. We have the chairman and the CEO saying, 'We're innocent,' and as a fan, you want to believe them.

"When you have a scathing official judgement, it's hard to rationalize our leadership saying we've done nothing wrong. I will wait until every appeal process has happened before reaching an ultimate conclusion."

There are still a lot of unanswered questions. Could the appeal be successful? Will the punishment include trophies and titles being stripped? Might this be City's last season in the Premier League?

City fans of a certain age don't fear relegation. Anyone who watched the club regularly between 1982 and 2002 has seen them relegated five times, and they spent the 1998-99 campaign in the third tier. Opposing fans visiting the Etihad Stadium have often aimed chants at the home end like: "Where were you when you were s---?" The answer that comes back is usually: "We were here when we were s---."

A lot of them were. Some City supporters even miss the visits to Chesterfield and Gillingham and would prefer a trip to a Football League outpost than an expensive train to Wembley for another FA Cup or Carabao Cup final.

On the flip side, the more recent generation -- those born after 2000 -- have only known success and silverware, and so a potential drop down the divisions is much more daunting.

Beyond possible sporting sanctions, fans are also dealing with the reputational damage.

"It hurts that my club has been tarnished in that way," former City winger Shaun Wright-Phillips said. "I'm gutted for the fans."

For most supporters, City is not just a football club -- it's part of their identity. Now labeled as cheats by the Premier League, it's something that will hang over every fan wherever they go.

There has been anger directed at City from other clubs' support since the verdict became public. Some of it has been aimed at the fans -- regardless of whether they're in support of the owners' actions. Every celebration and every memory is being ridiculed.

The impact of City's guilt -- pending appeal -- extends far beyond a few decisions made in a boardroom 10 years ago.

"It's really difficult to process because I'm trying to work out what this means for my club, what it means for the future," City content creator and fan Steven McInerney said. "Is my club going to exist? I guess so, but in what state? Maybe there is something in the bravado from the chairman, that there's something in the appeal. But of course I'm nervous and I feel a little bit let down. Absolutely.

"I was expecting a lot more balance based on what the owners have told us. People may think, 'Why did you believe it?' Because that's my job as a fan, to get behind the side. Ultimately, I don't feel guilty about doing that."

For the most part, City fans like their owners. Money from Abu Dhabi has brought success on the field and also a redeveloped stadium, a new training ground and a refurbished part of east Manchester.

From the outside, there has often been a feeling that City supporters have been so dazzled by the good things that they've willingly ignored the bad. It's something City fans push back on.

In February 2025, seven supporter groups sent a letter to complain about rising ticket costs and highlight local fans being priced out. In April the same year, a number of fans attending a home game against Leicester City staged a protest by staying in the concourses for the first 10 minutes. It worked: a year later, club bosses announced a freeze of ticket prices.

"We cannot ask for anything more, it shows that they have listened," City supporter chief Kevin Parker said at the time.

This time, the owners are asking fans to listen to them -- even in the face of a damning judgement and fierce criticism. With the Premier League returning this weekend after an eventful international break, around 2,000 fans are set to travel to watch City face Liverpool on Sunday. It will be the first taste of the taunts that will be waiting at every Premier League stadium.

Often at Anfield, City fans have chanted, "We're not really here." It will take on new meaning this time amid what is an uncertain future for the club and their supporters. %!s()

My friend and I felt like we were overdue for a trip without our kids. Between the two of us, we have seven children, ranging in age from 6 to 10, including three pairs of twins.

We knew we wanted it to be a warm-weather destination to extend the feeling of summer, as the leaves are already turning red in Maine, where we both live.

The one destination we kept coming back to was Florida. And because we are both huge Disney fans, I threw the crazy idea of going to the parks without our kids.

Getting to feel like a kid again alongside my friend was one of the most uplifting experiences in my years as a mom.

We got Park Hopper tickets

Because we still wanted to lounge by the pool and drink frozen drinks, we figured we'd dedicate one day and one day only to Disney World. So we got Park Hopper tickets that allowed us to move between parks.

The way we used them was absolutely key, and was very different from the trips I've taken with my kids. Whenever I've gotten Park Hopper tickets at the parks with my kids, I've felt like I wasted my money because they just wanted to do one park at a time, or we would take forever with meals, snacks, potty breaks, and all the things little kids require.

With just the two of us, we were able to do three parks: Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. Our initial plan was just to do two and skip Magic Kingdom, but we did so much of Hollywood Studios by 1 p.m. that we decided to add one more stop.

We rode 12 rides

Sure, our approach was not to do absolutely everything in every single park. We were just going with the flow, especially considering that we didn't splurge on Lightning Lanes since we didn't have a firm plan and didn't want time slots to deter our adventure. On the Sunday we were there, Lightning Lanes ranged from $24 to $27, depending on the park.

We started our day at Hollywood Studios because we are both big Star Wars fans and hadn't done that area yet. We were able to get on rides super quickly without waiting in line. After we made our way to Toy Story, I finally rode the highly coveted Slinky Dog Dash, which had by far our longest wait at 45 minutes.

Both my friend and I grew up going to the parks, and we knew we had to ride the Tower of Terror because it's just a classic. I hadn't done that ride in 15 years (my kids are not enthused about thrill rides), and it was even better than I remembered.

When we entered Magic Kingdom, our first reaction was how empty it was — especially for a weekend day. I looked at the map, and wait times were surprisingly low. I think that going during a day when Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party was happening played in our favor. Those attending the ticketed event can enter after 4 p.m., so while we didn't have the park to ourselves, our longest line was at Tiana's Bayou, at 30 minutes.

To end the night, we moved on to Epcot to experience the International Food and Wine festival, another thing we had never been able to do because kids have little patience to walk from booth to booth to try new things. At one point, while we were eating, it started drizzling, so we made our way into the Frozen Ever After ride to wait it out, because after all, October is hurricane season in Florida, and some weather is to be expected.

We tried 6 different foods

We actually didn't know the food festival was happening, but we knew we wanted to end the night at Epcot because we wanted a full meal there, since we had only been snacking at the other parks.

As soon as we entered the festival section, we grabbed a frozen mango margarita (we had earned it) and started our dinner with samosas and chicken tikka masala at the India stand, then followed up with a spiked mango lassi. We then moved to Greece, where we had a spanakopita that was out of this world.

After that, we went to Brazil, where we had a moqueca de camarão and a frozen caipirinha — the latter had nothing on the margarita and mango lassi we had just finished. We finished the food portion of our tour around the world with some escargot in France. But the last thing we had was a Mexican paleta, which was, hands down, my favorite thing of the entire day.

We then walked around the park, rode rides with no lines, danced to live bands, and kept reminding ourselves that we wouldn't have been able to do all of this if our kids had been there with us.

After over 27,000 steps and hours of laughter, we headed out of the most magical place on earth and collapsed in our beds. For one day, I wasn't anyone's mom. I was just a girl at Disney with her best friend, and I didn't realize how much I'd missed myself.

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Conz Preti

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Conz Preti doesn't just cover the stories that matter to modern families — she shapes them.An award-winning editor and author with over 15 years in digital media, Conz has built a career at the intersection of parenting, health, and culture. Armed with a master's in digital journalism from Columbia University, her byline has appeared across the publications millennials turn to most — and her editorial instincts have shaped countless more stories behind the scenes.She's the author of "Too Pregnant To Move" and a contributing voice in "100 Diverse Voices on Parenthood" — because she doesn't just edit the conversation around modern parenting, she's part of it. As Deputy Editor, she leads a team of editors and reporters, and works with endless freelancers covering parenting, health, college life, and sex and relationships.Originally from Argentina and a mom of three under 8, Conz brings lived experience and sharp editorial vision to every room she walks into.Some of her viral essays are:

• My 8-year-old invited his 4 best friends to dinner. I sat at a separate table and watched them have fun independently.
• We gave our kids only my husband's last name. Years later I regretted it, so we changed them all to include mine.
• My toddler wanted to be a sand dune for Halloween. I asked a costume expert for help and the results didn't disappoint.
• I realized I was spending over $2,000 a year to get my builder gel nails. I decided to stop and save that money.
• I got my kids, all 7 and under, a landline. They invited friends over on a snow day without my help, and I was thrilled.
• A mom of identical twins said she had to go to the police to tell her babies apart. As a parent of twins, here's how I avoid mix-ups.Besides creating viral content, Conz was also the editor behind these powerful stories:

• I stopped being the first to reach out to friends. It made me realize I don't need to be liked by everyone.
• My toddler came out as trans at age 4. He's so much happier now.
• Long-term elder care in the US can cost 5-figures a month. These families are moving to Mexico for cheaper options.
• Boomers seem to have traded in the child-raising village for traveling. Now millennial parents say they have no one to support them.
• I moved with my kids to a hotel room. It's cheaper than renting an apartment and has many amenities
• My 11-year-old walked less than a mile away from home. I was arrested and charged with reckless conduct.

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The Las Vegas Aces center claimed her third consecutive nod (and fifth in her career) on Thursday, after leading her Aces to their eighth straight playoff appearance with averages of 26.0 points and 9.4 rebounds. She scored at a near-career-high 62.5% True Shooting clip and blocked at least 2.0 opposing shots per game for the fourth consecutive season. Wilson was, once again, the best statistical player in the league by a wide margin, making her selection for the award something of a foregone conclusion as the regular season was wrapping up.

Needless to say, five MVPs is a lot. No other player in WNBA history has won the award more than three times -- accomplished by Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson. Wilson has now personally won about 17% of all MVPs awarded in the entire three-decade history of the W.

If we zoom out and compare Wilson's MVP feats with those from other leagues, she has joined some pretty special company. Only eight players in the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL and WNBA have won five or more MVPs in their careers -- and it's a who's who of all-time sports legends:

The list of three consecutive MVP winners is roughly as exclusive and contains some additional greats -- names such as Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Orr and Brett Favre:

And Wilson's most exclusive club of all doesn't even necessarily involve a streak but rather a set of MVPs won in a specific period. In all of major North American pro sports history, only six players -- including Wilson, now -- have won at least four MVPs in a five-year span. And they're basically all serious GOAT candidates:

It's extremely difficult to stay at the absolute pinnacle of a sport for such a sustained period, due to reasons ranging from one's own performance and health, external factors like voter fatigue, and the emergence of other, younger challengers to the throne. (Just ask Nikola Jokić, who won three NBA MVPs in four years but saw his place at the top usurped by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander each of the past two seasons.)

There's even the matter of narrative and expectation. The trouble with setting the bar as high as Wilson has is that it stays there for future seasons, forcing you to play even better the next year just to keep from losing ground. Your own present greatness can become a liability for your MVP chances in the future.

But Wilson keeps outrunning that potential pitfall -- and all the rest -- by simply playing better than everyone else. She led the WNBA in LAKER Wins Added by a full win over No. 2 Veronica Burton, and the margin was even greater in other statistics such as Win Shares. While it's easy for even GOAT-level players to let the MVP narrative spiral away from them when another candidate sticks close in those leaderboards on a team with a more interesting story, Wilson's antidote seems to be to not let anyone else get close enough to even entertain that conversation.

The closest that might have come to happening during Wilson's streak was last season, when Napheesa Collier and the Minnesota Lynx had dream seasons that fed into the player's and team's case as the best in the sport. For much of the season, Collier's performance -- and the "M-V-Phee" narrative -- had Minnesota's star in the award's driver's seat. But a late-season injury to Collier combined with a stretch-run heater for Wilson to flip the MVP race around and earn her hardware in the end. Collier had a year that would have been MVP-worthy most seasons. But Wilson had one of the greatest individual seasons ever, and it was not to be denied.

Nor was she to be denied this season. And the amazing thing is that Wilson only turned 30 in the middle of the season: Basketball-Reference actually lists this as her age-29 season because that's how old she was on July 1. Only two other athletes in our sample of major pro sports -- Wayne Gretzky and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- are in the same club as Wilson, winning at least five MVP awards through their age-29 season:

Obviously, that means Wilson could get plenty more chances to add even more hardware to her trophy case by the time her career comes to an end.

Of course, this is not always guaranteed: Though no one would have guessed it at the time, Gretzky's ninth Hart Trophy win, at age 28 in 1989, ended up being his last. For his part, Abdul-Jabbar had one MVP left in the tank after winning his fifth at age 29 in 1977; he also won in 1980, at age 32. These runs of dominance can disappear quickly when they finally do reach their expiration date.

So even as Wilson dominates the WNBA's award landscape year after year, we shouldn't take for granted what she is doing -- even if it does now feel like one of the few things we can count on in life. %!s()

Fast forward about 20 years, and that universe has moved much closer to the average driveway. The Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 now makes 1,064 hp from a twin-turbo 5.5-liter V8, and it costs a fraction of what a Veyron did. The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 hit 1,025 hp on E85 before the muscle car era ended. Even trucks have joined the party, with the Ram 1500 TRX packing 777 hp and the Ford F-150 Raptor R putting out 720.

The hp wars are very much alive, and automakers have gotten remarkably good at squeezing huge numbers out of their engines. Forced induction is the biggest tool in the box. Turbochargers and superchargers cram far more air into each cylinder, which means more fuel burned and more power made without needing a massive engine.

Modern engine power also benefits from superior exhaust design, variable valve timing, stronger materials, and sophisticated engine management that keeps everything from blowing apart under pressure. All of that has created a golden age for anyone who loves big numbers. Here are some of the most powerful engines you can get in new cars and trucks right now.

Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo

With the dawn of electric motors, internal combustion engines now have, for the first time, a practical rival in terms of power. Cars like the Lucid Gravity GT-S essentially offer a family SUV with seven seats and 1,070 hp, which is more than what the original Bugatti Veyron made. However, internal combustion refuses to give up the fight, and the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo, with 2,031 hp, leads the charge.

ds 214 hp on top of that.

The extra power comes from a strengthened engine, bigger turbochargers, and development work with Ilmor Engineering in England. Hennessey also reworked the aerodynamics and fitted adaptive suspension  with five driver-selectable modes to keep all that power under control. The carbon-fiber tub keeps dry weight down to about 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), which explains much of that acceleration. None of this comes cheap, though, as pricing starts at $2.75 million. That is a lot of money and also shows how far the internal combustion engine can still be pushed.

Koenigsegg Jesko

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The Koenigsegg Jesko gets its power from a twin-turbo 5.0-liter V8, and its output depends on what is in the tank. On regular gas, it makes 1,280 hp at 7,800 rpm and 738 lb-ft of torque. On E85, that rises to 1,600 hp and 1,106 lb-ft of torque, which works out to roughly 316 hp per liter. The V8 has four valves per cylinder, double overhead camshafts, and dry-sump lubrication, with a bore and stroke of 92 by 95.25 millimeters.

The flat-plane crankshaft weighs about 27.5 pounds (12.5 kg), and Koenigsegg calls it "the world's lightest V8 crankshaft." Idle to 7,800 rpm takes 213 milliseconds, and the redline sits at 8,500 rpm. The regular-gas torque is available from 2,700 to 6,170 rpm, and the E85 peak arrives at 5,100 rpm. Power goes through a nine-speed Light Speed Transmission that weighs around 200 pounds (90 kg); it has seven clutches, and all that power is sent to the rear wheels only.

The Jesko weighs 2,910 pounds (1,320 kg) and comes in two versions: the top-speed tuned Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut and the track-focused Koenigsegg Jesko Attack. Koenigsegg quotes up to 3,000 pounds of downforce for the Attack, while the Absolut has F-15 fighter jet-inspired vertical stabilizers instead of a rear wing.

After Koenigsegg gave the Jesko Absolut an over-the-air update, it covered the quarter mile in 8.54 seconds at 190 mph on an unprepped surface, and it reached 200 mph in 9.38 seconds. That 200 mph time is 0.92 seconds quicker than the 10.3 seconds Hennessey claims for the Venom F5 Revolution Evo. The quarter-mile time is also a record for non-electric production cars.

Chevrolet Corvette ZR1

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The mid-engined C8 Corvette ZR1 finally brings four-digit hp to a Corvette. Its LT7 engine is a twin-turbo 5.5-liter V8 that makes 1,064 hp at 7,000 rpm and 828 lb-ft of torque at 6,000 rpm. That is 394 more hp than the 670 of the Z06, which uses the same displacement without turbochargers.

The ZR1 is also the first turbocharged factory Corvette ever. Boost comes from two 76-millimeter ball-bearing turbochargers. The compression ratio is 9.8:1, versus 12.5:1 for the Z06. Bore and stroke are 104.25 by 80 millimeters, and the redline is 8,000 rpm: dished pistons, shorter connecting rods, variable valve timing, and dry-sump lubrication round it out. 

The engine also has twin 65-millimeter throttle bodies and two water-to-air intercoolers. The output works out to about 193 hp per liter. Power goes to the rear wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. Chevrolet quotes 0 to 60 mph in 2.3 seconds and the quarter mile is around 9.5 seconds at 149 mph. Top speed is 233 mph. GM vehicle dynamics engineer Brian Wallace drove the ZR1 around the Nürburgring Nordschleife in June 2025 and recorded a 6:50.763 lap. 

Carbon ceramic brakes are standard. The ZR1 is sold as a coupe or convertible, and both use the same engine. Chevrolet also sells the super-quick Corvette ZR1X, which adds a 186-hp electric motor on the front axle for 1,250 hp combined.

Ram 1500 SRT TRX

The last-generation Ram ended TRX production in late 2023/2024 with 702 hp. Now, in 2027, Ram brings back the 1500 TRX with 777 hp and 680 lb-ft of torque from a 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi V8. That is 57 hp more than the Ford F-150 Raptor R.  Ram calls it "the most powerful production gas off-road truck ever."  The TRX is the first Ram with an SRT badge, short for Street and Racing Technology, since 2006.

The engine descends from the Hellcat V8, which made 707 hp in the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, and the TRX makes 70 more. Compared with the old TRX, output is up 75 hp, or about 11 percent. The supercharger is also a Hellcat-derived 2.4-liter twin-screw unit. The TRX has an eight-speed TorqueFlite automatic and full-time four-wheel drive. 

Ram quotes a top speed of 118 mph, a 12.2-second quarter mile, 3.5 seconds from 0 to 60 mph, and 10.0 seconds from 0 to 100 mph. Although it outperforms pretty much every other internal combustion engine truck on the market, it is still a truck, courtesy of 11.8 inches of ground clearance, 8,330 pounds of towing capacity, and 1,510 pounds of payload capacity.

Pricing starts at $99,995 before the $2,795 destination charge, which works out to about $129 per hp. Ram builds the TRX at Sterling Heights Assembly in Michigan, and customer deliveries began in the summer of 2026.

Ford F-150 Raptor R

Brandon Woyshnis/Getty Images

The F-150 Raptor R gets its power from a 5.2-liter supercharged V8 that makes 720 hp at 6,650 rpm and 640 lb-ft of torque at 4,300 rpm. That's 270 hp and 130 lb-ft more than the standard Raptor's 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6,  with 450 hp and 510 lb-ft. It tops the F-150 lineup, but it still makes 57 hp less than the Ram 1500 SRT TRX.

The Ford F-150 Raptor R engine is a version of the one in the Mustang Shelby GT500, which made 760 hp. The Raptor R launched for model year 2023 had 700 hp, and Ford raised that to 720 for 2024. The 2027 model keeps the 720 hp figure. Power goes through a ten-speed automatic. Four-wheel drive is standard, and it includes a low range and a locking rear differential.

The tires are up to 37 inches tall; the rear suspension uses coil springs with 14.0 inches of travel with 37s, and the shocks are FOX racing shocks. Tests put 0 to 60 mph times at 3.6 seconds. The Raptor R comes in one body style, a SuperCrew cab with a 5.5-foot bed. Ford lists the V8 package as Equipment Group 803A.

Overall, the Raptor R represents the top-end, most powerful version of Ford's performance truck. If that is not enough and you want more power than the RAM TRX, you can take your Raptor R to the Hennessey Performance team for upwards of 1,000 hp. %!s()

A study by Global Threads, a public history project, has examined how the exploitation of Africans enslaved in the Caribbean was linked with the struggles of cotton workers at Peterloo. Though these workers were divided by thousands of miles and led different lives, they were exploited by the same forces – as Robert Wedderburn, a Black abolitionist in London, said at the time.

As well as looking at Wedderburn’s story, Global Threads’ research looks at the life of Hugh Hornby Birley, the yeomanry commander who led the fatal charge on the crowd at Peterloo. It found Birley’s family fortune was intimately linked with transatlantic enslavement.

Meanwhile, the story of Sir George Philips, also examined in the project, reflects the contradictions of 19th-century liberal politics. While Philips helped fund the Manchester Guardian as a liberal reaction to Peterloo, he was personally invested in the exploitation of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, as owner of the Success plantation in Hanover, Jamaica.

Birley and Philips were members of the Portico Library, Manchester’s historic members’ library. In the 19th century it was a centre of information exchange for Manchester’s business elite, helping ensure their place at the apex of global capitalism. The Global Threads project is part of research into the history of the Portico, which stands a few yards from where the Peterloo massacre took place.

Introducing the study, Global Threads said: “Drawing together just three of the thousands of threads connecting Peterloo with Africa and the Americas, we can see how the leaders of each wing of Manchester’s elite – Hugh Hornby Birley and Sir George Philips – owed their positions and power to their family and business activities drawing on colonialism and slavery.

“They actively described the system they had created as a transatlantic one. It was not just profit that connected Peterloo … Birley and his reactionary colleagues brought colonial-style coercion more akin to the putting down of uprisings of enslaved people, working people themselves were connected to transatlantic people and places, and slavery hung like a spectre over the Mancunian struggles for justice and equality.”

On 16 August 1819, 60,000 people converged in the centre of Manchester to campaign for political representation. Conditions for those workers were better than those endured by the trafficked and enslaved African workers at the other end of the transatlantic commodity boom, who were classed as property. But Britain’s working class were disenfranchised. Only 10% of men in the country could vote, and while landowners were enriched by the tariffs placed on foreign grain by the Corn Laws, workers could barely afford bread.

The protest at St Peter’s Field ended in tragedy when the yeomanry – a militia of Tory businessmen – charged the crowd. In the aftermath, the authorities blamed protesters. But Wedderburn, a Jamaican-born Unitarian preacher, was quick to challenge the official narrative.

In September 1819, at a meeting at his Soho chapel, he described Peterloo as “an act of murder … committed by the magistrates and yeoman”. In his preaching and writings, Wedderburn had long argued Africans and English labourers were being denied by the same forces.

The backstory of Birley shows how. Ella Sinclair, writing for Global Threads, found Birley’s family’s business financially benefited from the estate of Daniel Backhouse, an enslaver who funded and profited from 103 voyages that set out from Liverpool between 1773 and 1807, trafficking more than 27,000 Africans.

In the late 18th century, three of those voyages exported people to St Lucia, where Backhouse’s company funded and profited from the Rabot sugar estate. Early 19th-century records reveal that workers there included families trafficked from Guinea and Cape Verde.

After the emancipation of enslaved Africans in the British empire in the 1830s, the Birley family supported the enslaving US confederacy, which was integral to their cotton interests. Birley was closely involved with the development of Manchester institutions, including “the Liverpool and Manchester Railway – designed to more easily transport slave-produced cotton”, Sinclair found.

Wedderburn’s family was also embedded in the plantation economy. His uncle, John Wedderburn, owned the Blackheath, Blackness, Bluecastle and Glen Islay plantations in Westmoreland, Jamaica. Workers on those plantations included people trafficked from Old Calabar, in modern-day Nigeria, to Montego Bay in 1773, on a ship carrying textiles woven in Manchester.

Robert Wedderburn’s mother was an enslaved woman called Rosanne, while his father was the plantation owner who raped her. Raised in Jamaica by his African grandmother, Talky Amee, Wedderburn served in the Royal Navy and sailed to London, settling in multicultural St Giles and became a leading radical.

Global Threads found that the Dreadnought, the ship that trafficked some enslaved workers to Wedderburn plantations, had also trafficked workers to Success, the plantation later owned by Philips.

At the time of Peterloo, Wedderburn was in prison, accused of inciting slaves to kill their masters. He believed in armed struggle against enslavement across the Caribbean, and that a revolution had begun at Peterloo.

Around the same time as Peterloo, hundreds of abolitionists who had escaped slavery were staging raids on plantations in St Catherine, Jamaica. The British governor at the time was, coincidentally, titled the Duke of Manchester.

In a paper on Wedderburn, Global Threads historians write: “In the weeks following the [Peterloo] massacre, Wedderburn gave the most clear contemporary articulation of a transatlantic understanding of liberation and justice. He drew direct parallels for his followers … showing that the oligarchy profiting from the labour of working people in Manchester – while denying their rights to representation and improved working and living conditions – were part of the same elite and system that imposed the violence and coercion of slavery upon enslaved Africans.” %!s()