“I’m proud to have known him, worked with him and called him a friend”

Together, they led Manchester’s renaissance, helping to lift the city out of its post-industrial slump. Here Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, pays tribute to his friend Sir Howard Bernstein, the former chief executive of Manchester City Council, following his death at the age of 71 last Saturday.

I first met Howard Bernstein 40 years ago when I became leader of Manchester City Council. It was not an obviously auspicious moment.

Howard was a relatively young clerk, 31 years old. He was working on the presentation of evidence at the inquiry into the expansion of Stansted Airport, which led to the Eyre Report.

Manchester’s case was that the huge public subsidy for Stansted Airport would harm Manchester Airport and was unfair competition. Howard was over the technical details and was keen to impress upon me the importance of lobbying Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary John Prescott amongst others.

Sir Howard Bernstein: The visionary who re-entered Manchester

He was enthusiastic and helpful, but I and I don’t think anyone else could have foreseen how important Howard would become to the future development of Manchester. It was deeply ironic and a measure of his and Manchester’s success that 30 years later he was instrumental in Manchester Airport’s acquisition of Stansted.

Howard, who was knighted in 2003, was born and raised in Manchester, where he lived and served all his life until his death on June 22. in Manchester, which prevented it from declining into a dreary, post-industrial city with no future.

It is difficult to select, of all the projects in which Howard was involved, one as the most significant. However, arguably the most complicated and difficult was putting Manchester back together after the IRA bomb devastated the city center on 9 June 1996.

It took three years of non-stop hard work, which Howard described as “absolute bloody hell”. First, he managed the creation of a working group with him as chief executive and a chairman of the private sector and the public sector representing central government and Manchester City Council.

The complexities of keeping small businesses solvent and large businesses engaged while redesigning downtown can only be imagined. The politics between central and local government and the local community was at least as challenging, not to mention there was a change of government a year later.

Three years later, a much improved downtown was thriving. This is impressive in itself, but there is a comparison with Manchester; Oklahoma, which two years earlier had suffered a similarly devastating bombing.

With a huge federal aid package, Oklahoma needed more than 10 years to restore normalcy. The success of the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, which did so much to enhance Manchester’s national and international image, owed much to Howard’s meticulous attention to detail.

He went over all the routes officials and athletes should use between venues to ensure there were no unforeseen problems. One project that got away was the super-casino intended to house the Co-op Live arena, which would have brought thousands of jobs to Manchester.

An independent adjudication committee was established to decide between competing sites. This was believed to be a device to give the super casino to Blackpool (ministers at the time have since confirmed to me that this was their intention).

Howard refused to accept that. He was regularly on the phone asking me to write a letter or lobby for a critical person, and on the Sunday before Manchester’s submission was due on Monday, Howard went into the town hall and rewrote the entire lengthy report.

That submission won the day. Unfortunately, although the Commons accepted the decision, the House of Lords did not, and the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had no appetite for an ongoing battle.

Howard showed resilience to move on to the next project when our victory was unfairly denied. Manchester was the first city in the UK to restore trams to our streets.

From start to finish, this was always more difficult than observers might suspect. Initially Howard had to help devise plans to satisfy the Thatcher government that trams were the private sector and the Labor councils that they were the public sector.

This required some administrative dexterity. To simplify, the scheme started in the private sector and was to be handed over to the public sector. Everyone was happy.

Civil servants are also not very keen on trams because of their upfront costs, although in the long run they represent a greater commitment to public transport and are cheaper than the alternative, buses. When it came to extending the tram system to Manchester Airport, Ashton, Oldham and Rochdale, officials advised the transport secretary, Alistair Darling, against the project.

The advice was accepted. This required a different form of organization.

Howard made sure that every private sector person in Greater Manchester who was invited to 10 Downing Street would tell the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that trams were vital to the economic future of this conurbation. The day has been won and we have the extended system.

Howard Bernstein joined Manchester City Council aged 18 as a junior clerk, making coffee for middle-ranking officials and doing tedious transport work. Manchester would be a very different city if he had chosen a different career path – although perhaps only working for his beloved football club Manchester City would have held as much appeal.

From tea maker to star chief executive has a Hollywood ring about it. He retired in 2017, in my opinion, too soon, with a lot more to give.

I saw him at the end of April. Obviously very stupid, but I’m still trying to organize meetings for myself and others to continue to help make Manchester a better place.

I am proud to have known him, to have worked with him and to have called him a friend.