Free Trade Hall is my favourite building in Manchester, a perfectly proportioned palazzo cut from that rich pink sandstone that lends a certain warmth to the city even when (as often happens) its skies are like pewter and its street lights reflect wanly in puddles.

The hall stands on the site of the 1819 Peterloo massacre. Campaigners against the Corn Laws first built a temporary pavilion there to host their rallies and then, after their victory in 1846, the present gorgeous temple, the Mecca of the free trade movement.

It was behind those handsome colonnades that Disraeli made his One Nation speech in 1872. It was here – in a hall rebuilt after the Blitz – that Bob Dylan appeared on stage with an electric guitar in 1966, prompting the famous cry of “Judas!” from a horrified folk music fan.

It was here, too, that, in 1904, Winston Churchill, then the MP for Oldham, delivered one of his one-line zingers. The context is rarely remembered these days, and is worth setting down in full.

“It is the theory of the Protectionist that imports are an evil. He thinks that if you shut out the foreign-imported manufactured goods you will make these goods yourselves, in addition to the goods which you make now, including those goods which we make to exchange for the foreign goods that come in. If a man can believe that he can believe anything. We Free-traders say it is not true. To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle.”