Remember the first transatlantic flight

In just over a month we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Rightly, there will be masses of publicity.

Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the day that John Alcock and Arthur Brown, after a hair-raising 16-hour flight in a first world war bomber, came down in a bog in the west of Ireland after taking off in Canada. The first pioneering transatlantic flight was over. Fifty years after their brave and wonderful exploit thousands of people were regularly flying over the Atlantic in the comfort of jet planes and the world had shrunk to an unanticipated degree and was infinitely better for it.

So how much was there in your paper about this truly groundbreaking, world-changing and historic flight? Nothing.

Last week I went to a celebration of this event held at Manchester Central Library, organised by the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University – Alcock and Brown were both Manchester men – and there were probably no more than 15-20 people there, all old, all white. The world has changed to an unprecedented degree, and you only have to look through the rest of Saturday’s paper, including other commemorations, to see this. But when we forget valour and courage tempered with a little wild and optimistic madness, and read only about hate and anger and unfairness and inequality and withdrawing from our best friends and nearest neighbours, then there truly is a lot be worried about in our brave new world.
Jan Wiczkowski
Manchester

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