Centenary City

Get the bunting out: Salford celebrates one hundred years as city , a century since gaining a royal charter from King George V in 1926. I can report that at lunch today, my daughter’s school (at least) had celebration cake for afters and sang happy birthday.

It wasn’t a simple rubber stamp job. Since the white heat of the Industrial Revolution, Salford always had a decent-sized population to be a city, though thought to be under a threshold of 300,000 people. The balance of its sprawl, perhaps the lack of an Anglican catherdral too, had some decision makers unconvinced. As Salford grew westward from the Manchester border, there was incredible high density in the original township with parts of Pendleton and Broughton remaining semi-rural into the 20th Century. Those opposed charged Salford as being nothing more than a Manchester overspill; merely a lot of 240,000 people collected in small towns and villages. Were it not for the support of the then Home Secretary, Viscount Brentford (William Joynson-Hicks), who knew the area quite well, it is unlikely the King would have been won over.0

While the density issue was flattened, literally, with clearances of so-called slums such as Hanky Park, similar charges remain. Salford does not have a defined centre – it arguably doesn’t need one, but it’s not great for one’s brand – and thus remains a collection of small towns, within which some don’t class themselves as Salfordian. Civic pride is an elusive aura in a place where everyone calls Manchester ‘town’.

There is Salford City and, of course, Salford Reds injected ‘City’ to its name at the dawn of the new millennium.0 But taking sport out of the equation, what does it mean to be a Salfordian? There are few recognisable landmarks. There is no centre. Meaning lies solely with Salford people, and within those Salfordians who feel such pride.

Salford’s success in gaining city status was perhaps its zenith as population declined thereafter as industry declined. 100 years on, the encouraging news is that Salford’s population is on the rise again, probably thanks to its proximity to the rise and rise of the ‘Second City’ and the creative industry on Salford Quays.

This milestone and a long overdue uptick has provided impetus to seek new reasons to be proud; to try to throw off the shackles of post-industrial malaise. From the Other, for example, is looking for collaborators to create a new anthem for the Salford to usurp Dirty Old Town.

From a Salford RL supporter‘s perspective, what the city status replaced is potentially more interesting. Much was made of Salford being a proud ‘royal’ borough. It was certainly a county borough – a big town, essentially – with autonomous powers independent from Lancashire. But a lot of civic pride was built on the specialness attached with royalty. An early nickname for Salford RFC was the ‘Royal Reds’.

In 1907, the Manchester Evening News debated whether Salford was indeed a royal borough. Sitting on the face somewhat, they concluded that it probably wasn’t, but with Salford’s history as a manor of several medieval monarchs, being part of the Duchy of Lancaster, and largely supporting the Royalist cause in the English Civil Wars, who was to say it couldn’t be?0