No it was not commercial pressure it was standard operating procedures in place and used countless times before.
Are you saying that it is "standard operating procedure" to continue a flight to the point where it is necessary to make a Mayday call to ensure the safety of the aircraft?
Were the crew aware, when they made the decision to continue the flight from LAX, that they would need, some 11 hours later, to declare an emergency and land at MAN rather than LHR?
If the answer is "yes" then that would seem to be an abuse of the emergency system.
If the answer is "no", which seems much more likely, then someone or something got the fuel sums wrong in deciding that continuation to LHR was reasonable.
Either of those seems worthy of discussion, and something that we can learn from to improve the decision making process.