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There must be an Engels (playing with my chart) | Letters

Readers Prof Ralph Darlington and Keith Flett respond to the suggestion that the political theorist took liberties with his researchThe research on which you report (Friedrich Engels ‘took creative liberties’ with descriptions of class divides in Manchester, 21 October) reads like a deliberate attempt to diminish the nature and extent of class differences that Engels observed and wrote about.There clearly were areas of the inner city marked by extreme residential segregation, such as Little Ireland, where Engels’ companion Mary Burns lived and showed him around and informed his book. You report that the study says that “in Manchester’s ‘slums’, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off … classes”. In Moss Side and Hume in the 1970s and 80s there were some professional people living there whom I knew, but the overwhelming majority of inhabitants were working class, and many of them impoverished and discriminated against. To suggest class was not that important is surely to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Prof Ralph DarlingtonManchester Continue reading...

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