Manchester composer’s requiem confronts UK’s slavery legacy

A requiem for the forgotten: how Manchester faces its past

Sunday’s news cycle in Britain opened with a quiet but profound reckoning. In Manchester, composer David Önaç has premiered a requiem that sets to music the names and fates of enslaved Africans, drawn from 18th-century insurance documents held by Lloyd’s of London. The work, funded by the insurer itself after an independent inquiry confirmed its historical ties to the transatlantic slave trade, is more than a performance—it is an act of artistic restitution. The project, supported by the arts charity Culture&, uses the very documents that once treated human beings as cargo to now honour their memory. Dr Errol Francis, the charity’s chief executive, describes the paradox of those documents: they invoked God in the same breath as they commodified lives. The requiem, performed in Manchester’s historic John Rylands Library, forces a confrontation with the city’s own role in the trade—its cotton mills, its merchant elite, its wealth built on suffering.

What makes this story resonate beyond the concert hall is its timing. Just weeks after the UK government announced plans to scale back teaching of Britain’s colonial history in schools, Önaç’s work arrives as a counterpoint. It is not the first artistic response to slavery’s legacy—Steve McQueen’s Small Axe films and the National Trust’s slavery disclosures have paved the way—but it is among the most direct. Lloyd’s, which has pledged £12 million to initiatives addressing racial inequality, is funding the requiem as part of its reparations efforts. The insurer’s involvement is not without controversy. Some historians argue that financial contributions, however substantial, cannot undo centuries of exploitation. Others see it as a necessary step toward accountability. What is clear is that the requiem has struck a nerve. Tickets for the premiere sold out within hours, and the piece will tour Liverpool and Bristol—two other cities whose prosperity was built on the trade.

Climate action: the UK’s fractured consensus

While Manchester grapples with its past, Westminster is divided over its future. Party conference season has laid bare the UK’s climate contradictions. The Conservatives, under leadership contender Kemi Badenoch, have pledged to scrap the Future Homes Standard, which mandates solar panels, heat pumps, and high-grade insulation in new builds. Badenoch’s argument—that the standard drives up housing costs—has drawn sharp criticism from environmental groups. The Green Party, meanwhile, has broken with its anti-nuclear stance, now backing new reactors as a bridge to renewable energy. Labour, for its part, has deferred a decision on new North Sea oil licences, a move that has frustrated both industry and climate activists. The result is a policy landscape where consensus is elusive, and action is piecemeal.

The divisions reflect a broader tension: how to balance economic growth with environmental responsibility. The Conservatives’ rollback on green building standards risks locking in higher energy bills for future homeowners, while Labour’s hesitation on oil licences underscores the party’s fear of alienating voters in fossil-fuel-dependent regions. The Greens’ nuclear pivot, though pragmatic, has fractured their base. What unites these positions is a lack of urgency. The UK, once a leader in climate policy, now risks falling behind the EU and the US in the race to decarbonise. The question is no longer whether the UK can meet its net-zero targets, but whether it will even try.

The new front in cybercrime: your calendar

A less visible but equally pressing threat has emerged in the digital sphere. A surge in “calendar phishing” scams is exploiting the mundane trust we place in our digital diaries. Victims receive seemingly innocuous meeting invites—“Project Review” or “Contract Renewal”—that include links to fake login pages for Google, Microsoft, or PayPal. Once credentials are entered, they are harvested and sold on the dark web. The scam’s sophistication lies in its banality. Unlike traditional phishing emails, which often contain red flags like poor grammar or urgent demands, calendar invites appear routine. They exploit the assumption that if an event is in your calendar, it must be legitimate.

The scale of the problem is growing. Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint reports a 300% increase in such attacks over the past year, with small businesses and local councils among the hardest hit. The scam’s success highlights a broader vulnerability: our reliance on digital tools has outpaced our ability to secure them. Google and Microsoft have introduced warnings for suspicious invites, but experts say the onus remains on users to verify links before clicking. The lesson is stark. In an era where our lives are mediated by screens, the most dangerous threats are often the ones we don’t see coming.

Delhi’s protests and the limits of dissent

Half a world away, India’s capital is bracing for another day of unrest. Thousands of young protesters, organised under the banner of the “Cockroach Janta Party” (CJP), are demanding the resignation of the country’s election commissioner, alleging bias in recent state polls. The protests, which began on Saturday, have already seen over 2,000 detentions, including that of CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke. A court ordered his release on Sunday, but the movement shows no signs of abating. The CJP’s name—a deliberate provocation—reflects its members’ frustration with what they see as a political system that treats them as pests rather than citizens.

The protests come at a fraught moment for India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced mounting criticism over its handling of the economy, with youth unemployment hovering around 20%. The CJP, though small, has tapped into a vein of discontent that transcends traditional party lines. Its demands—greater transparency in elections, an end to political patronage—resonate with a generation that has grown up in the shadow of corruption scandals. The government’s heavy-handed response, including the detention of Dipke and other leaders, risks escalating the crisis. For now, Delhi remains on edge, a city caught between the demands of the young and the resistance of the old.

What to watch

The day’s stories converge on a single theme: the tension between memory and progress. In Manchester, a requiem forces a reckoning with history; in Westminster, climate policy fractures along partisan lines; in cyberspace, trust is eroded by stealth; in Delhi, the young challenge the old order. What unites these threads is a question of accountability—who bears the weight of the past, and who shapes the future. The answers, as ever, are still being written.