Just to the north of Manchester's city centre is a small patch of grass. Roughly seven acres in size, it's a calm oasis among the continually procreating blocks of flats that dominate the city skyline.
But Angel Meadow is something more. The pavements are made from flat-laid grave-slabs. There is slab after slab commemorating individuals who died in their teens or their 20s.
Angel Meadow is the graveyard for the workers of Richard Arkwright's mill. Built in 1781, it was the first attempt at a steam-driven cotton mill. This is the site of the start of the industrial revolution. And Angel Meadow should therefore be seen as a sacred place.
It's the place where the first victims (up to 40,000 bodies) of that revolution were laid to rest. It's a place where the real cost of building the power and prosperity of Britain was marked; where the bones and blood of the white working class, with their average life expectancy of 17 years, mingle with the soil. They were to be followed by tens of thousands more across the country over the following centuries.
But it's a story that is hard to find reflected in our museums and galleries. For class is the absent spectre at the museum feast. White, liberal, middle-class museum professionals seem never happier than when concentrating on issues around race and gender; on revealing histories to introduce new narratives of difference, of the other.
But this process of revelation seems unwilling to give houseroom to something as untidy as class, particularly when it is the white working class we are considering.
The 2007 slave trade abolition commemorations saw many strange sights: middle-class primary school pupils being dressed as slaves, white middle-class teenagers marching to London in shackles and t-shirts proclaiming, "Sorry".
Teaching packs went out to schools up and down the country explaining the reality of the trade, while museums ransacked their collections for displays that were somehow related, even if the museums themselves weren't founded for at least half a century afterwards.
But when we look back to the start of the 19th century, another story was evolving. A story that museums seem to have no moral imperative to embrace: the story of the working-class population of Britain being forced from their land, being moved to the cities and taking their places in the deadly mills of the industrial revolution.
Even at the time this was something that many white liberals of the day were willing to ignore - "telescopic philanthropists", Dickens called them in Bleak House, interested more in what happened overseas than what happened in their own country to their own people.
The great abolitionist William Wilberforce (contrary to the statements of rather too many websites devoted to him) fought against the rights of workers in British factories while he campaigned for the rights of slaves.
Others were less able to turn a blind eye - the Leeds estate steward Richard Oastler, in evidence to a Select Committee in 1832, said: "I was in the company of a West India slave master and three Bradford spinners; they brought the two systems into fair comparison, and the spinners were obliged to be silent when the slave-owner said, 'Well, I have always thought myself disgraced by being the owner of black slaves, but we never, in the West Indies, thought it was possible for any human being to be so cruel as to require a child of 9 years old to work 12 and a half hours a day…'"
Where is this story, and its continuing resonances, in the modern museum? Where was the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the 1802 Factory Act? Where is the Museum of (Factory) Slavery to stand next to Liverpool's Atlantic version?
Representations of industrial history focus on the machines. Regional museums provide a romantic bucolic fantasy of "old-time" trades and crafts. Yet this is the story of the ancestors of nearly 90 per cent of our visitors.
All this is not to compare tragedies. It does not downgrade the Holocaust to talk about the Khmer Rouge or Armenia. It does not downgrade the Atlantic slave trade to talk about the effective slaughter of the white working class at the same time for the benefit of the factory owners. To paraphrase Tolstoy, each horror is unique in its own way.
And, just as the historical working class is ignored, that section of the community is still sidelined today And it's not just the white working-class experience that is downplayed. The experiences of young British Asians are remarkably similar to the experiences of working-class whites on the estate next door. But the former can appear in public, in papers, in galleries, always through the framing of race or religion.
The class associations are ignored. When it is clear that even American presidential candidates are talking about class, it's time the museum world did, too.
Vaughan Allen is the chief executive of Urbis, Manchester
But Angel Meadow is something more. The pavements are made from flat-laid grave-slabs. There is slab after slab commemorating individuals who died in their teens or their 20s.
Angel Meadow is the graveyard for the workers of Richard Arkwright's mill. Built in 1781, it was the first attempt at a steam-driven cotton mill. This is the site of the start of the industrial revolution. And Angel Meadow should therefore be seen as a sacred place.
It's the place where the first victims (up to 40,000 bodies) of that revolution were laid to rest. It's a place where the real cost of building the power and prosperity of Britain was marked; where the bones and blood of the white working class, with their average life expectancy of 17 years, mingle with the soil. They were to be followed by tens of thousands more across the country over the following centuries.
But it's a story that is hard to find reflected in our museums and galleries. For class is the absent spectre at the museum feast. White, liberal, middle-class museum professionals seem never happier than when concentrating on issues around race and gender; on revealing histories to introduce new narratives of difference, of the other.
But this process of revelation seems unwilling to give houseroom to something as untidy as class, particularly when it is the white working class we are considering.
The 2007 slave trade abolition commemorations saw many strange sights: middle-class primary school pupils being dressed as slaves, white middle-class teenagers marching to London in shackles and t-shirts proclaiming, "Sorry".
Teaching packs went out to schools up and down the country explaining the reality of the trade, while museums ransacked their collections for displays that were somehow related, even if the museums themselves weren't founded for at least half a century afterwards.
But when we look back to the start of the 19th century, another story was evolving. A story that museums seem to have no moral imperative to embrace: the story of the working-class population of Britain being forced from their land, being moved to the cities and taking their places in the deadly mills of the industrial revolution.
Even at the time this was something that many white liberals of the day were willing to ignore - "telescopic philanthropists", Dickens called them in Bleak House, interested more in what happened overseas than what happened in their own country to their own people.
The great abolitionist William Wilberforce (contrary to the statements of rather too many websites devoted to him) fought against the rights of workers in British factories while he campaigned for the rights of slaves.
Others were less able to turn a blind eye - the Leeds estate steward Richard Oastler, in evidence to a Select Committee in 1832, said: "I was in the company of a West India slave master and three Bradford spinners; they brought the two systems into fair comparison, and the spinners were obliged to be silent when the slave-owner said, 'Well, I have always thought myself disgraced by being the owner of black slaves, but we never, in the West Indies, thought it was possible for any human being to be so cruel as to require a child of 9 years old to work 12 and a half hours a day…'"
Where is this story, and its continuing resonances, in the modern museum? Where was the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the 1802 Factory Act? Where is the Museum of (Factory) Slavery to stand next to Liverpool's Atlantic version?
Representations of industrial history focus on the machines. Regional museums provide a romantic bucolic fantasy of "old-time" trades and crafts. Yet this is the story of the ancestors of nearly 90 per cent of our visitors.
All this is not to compare tragedies. It does not downgrade the Holocaust to talk about the Khmer Rouge or Armenia. It does not downgrade the Atlantic slave trade to talk about the effective slaughter of the white working class at the same time for the benefit of the factory owners. To paraphrase Tolstoy, each horror is unique in its own way.
And, just as the historical working class is ignored, that section of the community is still sidelined today And it's not just the white working-class experience that is downplayed. The experiences of young British Asians are remarkably similar to the experiences of working-class whites on the estate next door. But the former can appear in public, in papers, in galleries, always through the framing of race or religion.
The class associations are ignored. When it is clear that even American presidential candidates are talking about class, it's time the museum world did, too.
Vaughan Allen is the chief executive of Urbis, Manchester
