Councillor Pat Karney, Manchester's self-appointed Christmas spokesperson and a tireless community champion for 50 years, has died aged 78. His final social media post was one celebrating Manchester and Christmas, two of his greatest passions.
Relentlessly enthusiastic and fiercely proud of his home city, he was always trying to make things better for the communities he served. As the man the council relied on to pull on an elf hat and Christmas jumper, he ensured the Christmas Markets every year would get bigger and better.
A legacy of parades and Pride
He was instrumental in bringing the now annual Christmas Parade to life, after the success of the Manchester Day parade, his brainchild, which started in 2010. He was a regular at Manchester Pride, The St Patrick's Day Parade and Manchester Day. When his home patch of Harpurhey started its own parade in 2025, he hailed walking in it as "the proudest moment of my life."
There was also a more serious side to Pat's campaigning. He was at the forefront of Manchester council's radical approach to gay rights in the 1980s, when the city's gay community faced open hostility and police raids on venues in the Gay Village.
At a time when Chief Constable James Anderton was making deeply prejudiced public statements about gay people, Pat and his fellow councillors stood up for the community. "We would go to court, we would hold demonstrations, we tried to change the licensing laws and used the council's name," he told the MEN in 2016. "We tried to protect it from the cops and said 'there's no second-class citizens'."
That determination helped create the conditions from which Manchester Pride grew, and played a part in the city's emergence as a national centre for LGBTQ+ life and culture. He recently joined Adam Maidment and Beth Abbit to film on the Mancunian Way podcast, where he recalled: "We put our arms around the village in the 1980s. Some people were calling it Satan's Square mile but we stood up for it. From that confidence came Pride."
Colleagues remember a Manchester legend
MEN Editor Sarah Lester said: "I never use the term lightly, but Pat Karney was a true Manchester legend. He loved this city and never stopped fighting to make it a better place for the people who live here. His work on gay rights in the 1980s was radical and helped change the culture of Manchester."
Features and perspectives editor Rob Williams said: "The first Manchester Day after the 2017 Arena attack I wrote a piece about how proud and resilient the city had been. Pat responded by describing me as an 'honorary Mancunian, who gets it'. It was like a stamp of approval, and I've never forgotten it."
Reporter Stephen Topping paid tribute saying: "He was always generous with his time, helpful when you were working on something and always good for a gossip." Reporter Chris Slater recalled his commitment to a story, saying: "He once asked us to come and film him having water poured over his head in the middle of Piccadilly Gardens as an apology for the fountains being broken again."
What's On reporter Adam Maidment recalled: "Manchester Day 2024 was a riot. I saw him ride a giant snail, fall over a life-size chess board, and then he invited me to wrestle him in the boxing ring. All in one day."
Final quote and lasting memory
Pat had chosen to keep his cancer diagnosis and treatment private. His final quote for this paper, printed just yesterday, saw Pat say: "Christmas can never come round quickly enough for me and I'm very excited for everything we've got coming up across the city - it's going to be fabulous."
His legacy includes the Christmas Markets and parades that bring joy to thousands of people each year. As one colleague put it: "He was 78 but lived life like a 21-year-old."
