Warm welcome for US President
(Not for Trump, but 100 years ago for President Woodrow Wilson during historic trip which took in the Ship Canal and Piccadilly)
DONALD Trump’s trip to Britain this weekend is mired in controversy and dogged by protesters. But it was so different 100 years ago when Manchester hosted a visit from President Woodrow Wilson.
In December 1918, Wilson became the first serving US President to take a tour through Britain.
Where Trump’s presence has been met by an angry reaction in many British cities, Wilson was met with a warm and often rapturous response.
This was especially the case in Manchester, which was the centre-point of his brief visit to Britain.
When President Wilson made his visit to Manchester, he was a global figure. This was the man who took the US into the war in April 1917, and who pledged to fight for a new world order of peaceful negotiation of international disputes and freedom of the seas. This was also a man with a long-running affection for the north west of England. In fact, Wilson had already been to England on four occasions before becoming President, most often spending his time cycling and walking around the Lake District. For Wilson, the academic (he had once been president of Princeton University), the Lakes were fascinating due to the region’s rich literary history. But it was also a region with which he had deeply-felt personal connections – his mother was a native of Carlisle.
This was the backdrop to Wilson’s 1918 visit to Britain, which had two key purposes. First, Wilson planned to meet with British political leaders prior to the start of the Paris Peace Conference, where the future of Europe was to be decided. This was important, as he knew he would have to persuade them that his plans for peace were achievable (especially his idea for a new international organisation, the League of Nations).
Second, Wilson also saw the opportunity for a bit of nostalgia, hence the decision to head north. So having arrived in London on Boxing Day, he and his entourage then took the train to Carlisle on December 29.
On arrival at the border town, Wilson was welcomed by the
Wilson’s visit also set the standard for what a US Presidential tour of Britain should look like Sam Edwards and Zachary Hobson
local great and good, before then unveiling a plaque to the memory of his mother and grandfather (placed on the church where his grandfather had preached).
With the ceremony done, it was back on the train, for the short journey south to Manchester.
Just like his trip to Carlisle, Wilson’s stopover in Manchester – which lasted less than a day – was both political and personal. Having arrived in the city on the evening of December 29, he dined with local dignitaries and then retired for the night.
The next day, he visited the Ship Canal, before giving a speech at the Free Trade Hall. Here, Wilson told the audience of cheering thousands that he felt at ‘home’ in Manchester, for the city ‘had so many of the characteristics of our great American cities’: it was dynamic, diverse, progressive and energetic. The city authorities responded by granting Wilson freedom of the city. His final engagement was to visit the offices of the Manchester Guardian, whose brand of journalism was in tune with key features of his own politics. By the early afternoon, the visit was drawing to a close, and Wilson took the 2.30 from Piccadilly, heading south back to the capital. Over the following days he received yet more enthusiastic welcomes from the cities and communities of Europe. But it all started here, in Manchester. Wilson’s visit also set the standard for what a US Presidential tour of Britain should look like, and what it should involve.
Ever since, his successors have tried to follow suit. That’s why so many of them take the time to combine the politics with something personal.
So where Wilson went to Carlisle and Manchester for a ‘pilgrimage of the heart’ (as he called it), President Jimmy Carter went to Newcastle in 1977 (and was granted Freedom of the City), and President Clinton went back to Oxford in 1994, to see again where he had once studied.
And President Trump? Well he’s off to Scotland, land of his mother’s birth, just as soon as the talking is done in London. But the response to President Trump has been a bit different to that received by Woodrow Wilson in Carlisle and Manchester