Andy Jackson was born in Salford and moved to Scotland in 1992. He is the medical librarian at Dundee University and a respected poet now living in Perthshire. He is editor of Whaleback City: the poetry of Dundee with city makar WN Herbert. Mr Jackson tells The Courier that his home city will recover, although it will not forget its losses.
Manchester is the city of my birth, though after 25 years in Scotland I now call Dundee my home. Most of my family still live there.
The IRA planted a bomb in Manchester city centre in 1996, though thankfully no-one was killed.
As a result, the city was forced to rebuild its heart, and in the process reinvented itself as a modern cosmopolitan city, able to celebrate its contribution to industry and invention, football and music, politics and social justice.
It has an unspoken kinship with cities like Dundee, places who once thought their better days were behind them until they learned to celebrate themselves and move forward.
Given the city’s long-established multicultural, multi-faith population and its relaxed and tolerant nature, it’s barely conceivable that anyone would want to commit an act of terrorism on the modern Manchester.
The selfless response of its people to the events of last night shows its true character, and this atrocity is particularly shocking because that kind of anger and cruelty is not part of that character.
Manchester will recover, I have no doubt, even if it cannot forget the family and friends that it has lost.
