Red Squirrel

The Red Squirrel is Ben, Ancoats is his natural habitat. It was mine when I was a boy. A population of grey squirrels have been introduced to Ancoats and they don't mix well with red squirrels.


"History is written by the victors"
Winston Churchill


Ancoats is considered to be the first industrial suburb in the world. I didn't know that growing up, I would not have cared. I do know that red squirrels have been there for a long time. Surviving in a tough environment and enduring things like a lower life expectancy, a poor education, a lack of social mobility. The lack of social mobility tends to mean that red squirrels don't migrate that much. They live and die close to where they were born.

Gentrification is seldom a good thing for red squirrels. It's an interesting social experiment but it's not driven by a social concerns,
it's driven by finance. Red squirrels have no money, you've got to attract grey squirrels. How do you make a tough environment attractive? How do you sell it? You reinvent it, you destroy many of the homes of red squirrels. You make new one's that only grey squirrels could hope to live in. You gate them off from the natives, you tell them it's a new town.


Saw sign a couple of years back that said "Buy to live". In the distance I could see the old council block where I had my first flat after leaving home. Twelve floors of derelict flats that the council had just abandoned,
homes for at least 60 red squirrels

That's a high price to pay