# Nick Buckley

Nicholas Brendan MBE (born April 1968) is a British charity worker and independent political candidate, formerly representing Reform UK. He spent 15 years working with the homeless. In 2011, he founded The Mancunian Way, a charity which dismissed him in 2020 after he posted an article critical of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, the board of trustees later resigned and Buckley was reinstated.

## Early life and career

Buckley grew up in the Longsight area of Manchester. He held numerous positions at Manchester City Council, starting as a youth intervention officer until 2011, when his role as a Community Safety Co-ordinator, which he held during the 2011 Manchester riots, was terminated by the City Council due to budget cuts. Instead of taking an offered alternative job he took his severance and used it to found a charity named Mancunian Way, which worked to reduce antisocial behaviour via prevention and intervention.
In 2018, Buckley stood as an independent candidate in the local council elections for the Deansgate ward of Manchester. Buckley received 164 votes in total, and did not gain office. The election was won by three Labour candidates.
Buckley was recognised at the 2018 NW Charity Awards with the Small Charity Big Impact Award and at the 2019 SME News Finance Awards 2019, winning Greater Manchester Homeless Project of the Year. While Buckley was CEO, the charity he founded was recognised as "Community Project of the Year award" in 2015.
In 2019, Buckley, who spent 15 years working directly with the homeless, explained on BBC Radio that individuals handing out food to the homeless have unintended consequences, including preventing them from getting the necessary support and help to get off the street. Buckley criticised Lucy Powell, saying her "words would have a negative effect on teenagers from deprived backgrounds." One of Buckley's projects, Change4Good, "placed 28 homeless or vulnerable individuals into employment" that year. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to young people and to the community in Greater Manchester.

## Politics

In 2021, Buckley was the Reform UK candidate for Mayor of Greater Manchester. In the ensuing contest that May, he won 2.69% of votes cast and came in fifth place.
Buckley stood as an independent candidate for the 2024 Greater Manchester mayoral election, in which he won 7.6% of the vote, placing third.

## Views
### Black Lives Matter article

In 2020, Buckley authored an article on Medium which he shared with Mancunian Way staff and on the professional networking site LinkedIn. The article was critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, and was accused of upholding inequalities by those calling for his dismissal via an online petition.
The trustees of Mancunian Way dismissed Buckley on 19 June 2020, announcing that the charity had severed their relationship with Nick Buckley's company BNB services Ltd. Buckley was reinstated after reaching a pre-lawsuit agreement with the existing trustees, which saw them step down en masse to be replaced by a new set of trustees.

### Wagamama Pride campaign

In September 2022, Buckley criticised the decision of British–Asian restaurant chain Wagamama to form a partnership with the youth transgender charity Mermaids during Pride 2022, further alleging that money raised was funding a "charity that promotes child abuse". Buckley's comments were criticised by the online newspaper PinkNews.