[...] In 1890, after new tariffs were introduced by the United States, the velvet workers at Lister’s were told to expect a cut in their wages of up to twenty-five per cent. The velvet workers did not have a trade union. They called for support from the Weavers Association, but Lister and his directors refused to budge and on December 17 a strike began at Manningham which lasted for nineteen weeks. At first only the velvet workers came out, but by March the dyers and spinners had joined them and almost 5,000 workers were on strike. There were violent confrontations between strikers and the police, but the strike was defeated and the production of velvet resumed. This had a large, lasting and unexpected consequence, because, by drawing attention to the lack of union organization inside the Yorkshire textile industry, it helped cause the formation of a political party to represent the interests of the working classes. The Independent Labour Party, later the Labour Party, was founded in 1893 and one of its first branches was in Bradford.

This brings us back to Mario Buitrago, who slept outside Lister’s on that very cold night. The day before the opening, the staff of Urban Splash found him freezing on their doorstep when they arrived for work at seven in the morning. They invited him in and gave him a cup of tea. It made a wonderful story for the local papers. He spoke little English but was ‘all smiles and handshakes’, according to the Yorkshire Post reporter who interviewed him. He explained that he wasn’t waiting to buy a flat for himself. He had been paid to queue on behalf of an anonymous client, thought to be a private investor from London and staying in a Bradford hotel, who was keen to secure a particular flat and willing to pay somebody else to sit out in the cold to do it.