Yuri Gagarin Comes to Manchester

This really happened. It’s not made up.

July 12, 1961, three months after becoming the first human in space, he stepped off the plane at Ringway (now called Manchester) Airport. There was little time for the world’s first astronaut to rest, as he was bundled into a car and whisked along the streets of Wythenshawe, towards Manchester centre. Wythenshawe, a post-war new build estate, in 1961 was in its hey day. The largest housing estate in Europe, it was designed along the principles of a garden town, with shops, pubs, churches, and other amenities nestled at conveniently-distanced intervals between the twee red brick houses, still maintained lovingly by the municipal council. And it was that municipal socialism that welcomed Yuri with open arms as a statement of comradeship and love. 

It was only a year later, in 1962, that Wythenshawe became twinned with Leningrad. In 1971, when the civic centre leisure centre opened, it sat within the spacious and grandly named Leningrad Square, a name it technically keeps to this day, although this is not widely publicised (even though Leningrad was officially renamed St. Petersburg in 1991). 

The anticipation of Wythenshawe receiving Yuri was so great that children were released from school early. People lined the streets and cheered the cosmonaut with all the fervour of a ticker tape parade, although instead of paper, heavy clouds and a "ferocious downpour" lashed the tarmac at Ringway Airport when his plane landed around 10:00 AM. It was a real Manchester welcome for the lad, a typically sunny day in July, assailed by tantrums of angry showers. 

Unfortunately for Gegarin, he was transported in an open-top Bently to greet the thousands, and so got soaked. His sojourn through Wythenshawe was actually part of a lengthier procession to Old Trafford, to the Headquarters of his hosts, the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers (AUFW). There, in solemn solidarity with the working people of Manchester, he was made an honorary member of the AUFW and presented with a shiny medal engraved with the words “Together, moulding a better future”.

My gran and grandad lived in a house with a wide view of Woodhouse Lane, one of the main arteries along which Gegarin paraded. They loved their house and really looked after it. They had a grim upbringing in the slums of Salford, and were moved out into the suburbs when they were demolished. This fact, was their own personal ‘post-war miracle’, a reward for all their austere years of grinding abject poverty, and they deserved it. They had worked hard. They deserved a slice of success. 

Not all of our family were so lucky. Some were shoved into high-rise flats in Salford, where living compressed on top of each other like the dusty pleats of a forgotten accordion packed away in a dark attic, too its toll. Took its toll on their physical health, but also their mental wellbeing. In one small flat there was my great gran, her daughter (my aunty), and two sons Gay Georgie and Robert, who had learning needs. I remember bleak drizzly days visiting them as a kid in the grey clouds of the high-rise, in a cramped humid flat that always stank of cabbage. It felt brutal, institutionalised, in a strange way medical. I could never reconcile the great improbability of how high we were up. 

On the day of Yuri Gegarin’s visit people were swarming everywhere along the roads, gathering in pockets and generally ambling around either side of Gegarin passing by. My gran got home at some point during that melee, it is not known if she even saw the great hero, or whether she had taken the opportunity to do a bit of shopping in civic, a stone’s throw away from Woodhouse Lane. What is known is that by the time she arrived home, there had clearly been a break in: things all over the place, piggy banks broken, the lot. 

Asking neighbours & friends, my grandparents asked if they’d seen anybody. They said it had been a busy day with Major Gegarin coming down Woodhouse Lane to go to the airport, but that by coincidence at the same time his car passed their house, a photographer had taken a photo of Gegarin travelling down Woodhouse Lane, and it so happened that Gay Georgie and his girlfriend were snapped carrying my gran & grandad’s suitcases down the road; full of the family silver. 

Anyway, Gay Georgie’s day in court came, and he was handed his due punishment in the form of a fine, and permanent black sheep status in the family for shitting on his own doorstep. It turns out he was working in a gang, and “Gay Georgie’s girlfriend” was actually the gang leader. On the day of the court hearing, my gran was waiting in the foyer and approached a woman asking for a light for her cigarette. The woman pulled out a lighter… GRANDAD’s LIGHTER right in front of her and sparked it up. GAY GEORGIE’S GIRLFRIEND??? My mum recalls gran’s reaction that day and put it succinctly thus: “It’s a wonder that girl nearly got her arm back, me mother nearly killed her”.

Some of the non-biographical details of Major Gegarin’s visit were drawn from Gurbir Singh’s book: Yuri Gagarin in London and Manchester (2017), which apart from some media archival remnants, is one of the few resources available on Gegarin’s visit to Manchester. 

Reference

Singh, G. (2017) Yuri Gagarin in London and Manchester: A Smile that Changed the World? AstrotalkUK Publications.