Council Not Welcome Here, Beswick, 2001 | Anne Worthington

Anne Worthington photographed Beswick, Clayton and Openshaw in the late 1990s and early 2000s, during the final years of streets that had once formed part of industrial East Manchester. These were areas that had employed thousands of people, but by the time Worthington arrived with her camera, much of that world had gone. Industry had collapsed, streets had emptied, and whole neighbourhoods were being prepared for demolition as East Manchester was earmarked for regeneration.

“I took these photographs in Beswick, Clayton and Openshaw, three areas of industrial East Manchester,” Worthington recalls. “Areas that had employed thousands of people and very little remained. The streets housed a fraction of the people who used to live there. Like other parts of the UK, it’s a well-trodden story.”

This image was photographed in Beswick in 2001. The graffiti on the front of the house is blunt and doesn’t need much explanation. It records a moment when official plans for renewal met the reality of people still living among the empty houses, broken streets and uncertainty left behind by industrial decline.

Worthington’s wider East Manchester work shows more than dereliction. She photographed people on doorsteps, children playing out, families looking after each other, and residents trying to hold things together as the area changed around them. She remembers meeting people living in the only occupied house on otherwise empty streets, and families who had started a club for young people because there was little else for them.

“It could be a tough place, sometimes a dark place, but rarely unhappy,” Worthington says. “People had a sense of purpose. They saw something wasn’t right and took it on. They’d been keeping their community going when other institutions had fallen away. And they knew how to have fun.”

The strength of this photograph is in its directness. It turns regeneration from an official word into something seen at street level. Behind the sign is a wider story of housing clearance, broken industry, community survival and people making their feelings known before familiar streets disappeared.