Safety fears are rising in Manchester’s gay village after a shop’s windows were smashed with a crowbar for the third time in six weeks in what the owner has called a “premeditated, targeted hate crime”.
Businesses and LGBTQ+ people on Canal Street and the surrounding neighbourhood have spoken about experiencing an increase in abuse and crime, and have appealed for more police help.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) are trying to identify two masked people on motorbikes responsible for vandalising CloneZone, an adult shop on Sackville Street, on Monday.
This most recent vandalism happened during the day, moments after a community meeting following two similar attacks on the same shop, which sells leather and sex toys. CCTV footage of the attack shows a police car parked outside that had been intended to act as a deterrent but it was empty because the officers were attending another crime.
In a post on social media, the shop said: “Our LGBTQIA+ village has always been a safe space and that now sadly is becoming less and less of a reality.”
The Manchester council leader, Bev Craig, said the attacks were “concerning” but she wanted to reassure the community that Manchester was safe.
“As leader of the council residents have contacted me but I have also been closely monitoring the situation myself. Now as the third vandal attack has happened, it’s something that is concerning and we want to make sure it’s been dealt with properly.”
Craig said Manchester had statistically one of the biggest LGBTQ+ communities in the UK and the council had done a lot of work to encourage people to report hate crime in partnership with GMP.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing politics nationally that has become more divisive,” she said. “We’ve seen post-Brexit a rise in the number of racist incidents that have been reported. And we’ve seen, particularly with some of the discourse in the media around trans issues, hate towards the LGBTQ community rise as well across the country.”
Official figures show homophobic hate crimes increased by 41% in the year to March 2022 and transphobic hate crimes by 56% – the largest proportional rise of all categories, which also included race, disability and religion. The Home Office said at the time it was not clear whether it was due to an increase in crime or better recording processes.
Some people on Canal Street said they had become increasingly afraid to walk around at night. Rob Melody, who works in Bar Pop, round the corner from CloneZone, said he had switched from night to day shifts because he was worried about his safety.
“There are a lot of knobheads about and it’s got worse in the past year. There’s definitely more homophobia and targeted abuse.”
He said he would previously finish at 2am and take the long way around to a taxi rank to avoid a street in the village that had started to feel particularly unsafe. A couple of weeks ago, he was targeted with homophobic language at a bus stop.
“There are not enough police. There need to be more police patrols and more CCTV,” he said.
GMP has increased patrols and circulated images of the criminals, one of whom was riding a distinctive red motorbike.
They said it was too early to say whether homophobic hate was the motivation for the crimes but Ethan Barry, who works in the Rem Bar on Canal Street, said people had speculated that the shop’s window posters of scantily clad men had been the reason the shop was singled out in an area full of LGBTQ+-owned businesses.
“It does anger me,” said Barry. “Especially when you see in shops across Manchester, like Victoria’s Secret, provocative billboards with women dressed basically the same.”
This criminality comes amid a series of similar offences across the country, including an attack on Birmingham LGBT Centre in February where the words “dirty bastards” were scratched into a door, the third attack of its kind in that location.
It also comes a day after the Metropolitan police said they were treating a fire in a flat in Whitechapel, east London, as a transphobic hate crime.
