NV sales

EARLY indications suggest Northern Voices 11 is selling well in our central Manchester outlets. The newly opened Peoples' History Museum has sold out once and had to be restocked, as has the Cornerhouse bookshop. We haven't checked our pub outlets there yet, but there are indications that some new city centre newsagents may for the first time take it on a sale or return basis. We now have several outlets in the Glossop area for the first time, though for the first time sales in Eccles went down for NV10. Barry suggested it was down to a 'poor front cover' for NV10. Sales of NV11 in Hebden Bridge are moderate but Waites bakery said some people had already commented on Chris Draper's review of 'Tea Time Treats' that gave their shop top marks for Eccles Cakes. Views about the contents of NV11 are mixed but almost everyone regards it as the best looking issue yet. There has been strong reactions in certain quarters to our editorial response to the question of some Freedom Press photos of Spanish Civil War exiles taken at a camp near Chorley which were supplied to the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, but there has been little interest in this from our general readership. The campaigners in Derker, Oldham, fighting against the former Labour Government's Pathfinder Project have expressed their delight at our coverage of their situation and our report on their MP Phil Woolas's election expenses. Woolas only got re-elected by the skin of his teeth in May. The pub sales in Oldham for NV10 was a surprising sell out. In Rochdale, there has been reaction to the piece by Les May attacking local protest groups. Littleborough artist, Walter Kershaw, is dead chuffed about NV's report on his winter exhibition in Sale. Over in Ashton-under-Lyne, since our piece on a blue plaque for Jimmy Keogh, the Arts & Events Advisory Panel has agreed to let Tameside TUC put their case in person at their next meeting this Summer. In Madrid, among members of the anarcho-syndicalist CGT trade union there has been some questioning of our comments in NV11 of one of their union leaders Carlos Beltran, but Carlos himself has taken it in good humour. Chris Draper has challenged the presence of nudes on some NV front covers which he thinks are 'sexist'.