My abiding Bradford memory is of the aftermath of the terrible fire at the Valley Parade football ground in May 1985, which claimed 56 lives. As a young reporter on a Yorkshire paper, I had been sent to the scene to write what was then quaintly called a colour piece. There was precious little colour anywhere when I arrived. The air was thick with the stale stench of smoke and the atmosphere laden with grief. When a hardened Fleet Street hack tried to light his cigarette outside the charred ground, two residents of Manningham Lane screamed at him. In a nearby pub, seemingly oblivious to the tragedy, an ageing stripper danced to Ruby Turner’s ‘Move Closer’ as sweaty businessmen leered at her and gulped their lunchtime beer. This was a city fractured and forlorn.
’Twas ever thus. In 1840, as the industrial revolution gathered pace in this famous centre of the textile industry, the German poet and occasional revolutionary Georg Weerth wrote: ‘Every other factory town in England is a paradise compared to this hole. If anyone wishes to feel how a sinner is tormented in Purgatory, let him travel to Bradford.’ A century and a half later, the usually courteous Bill Bryson, in Notes From a Small Island, regretfully concluded that ‘Bradford’s role in life is to make every place else in the world look better in comparison, and it does this very well’. This unflattering image explains why ridicule greeted the maverick metropolitan architect Will Alsop’s futuristic Bradford masterplan, which envisaged creating a lake, a ‘business forest’ and an Eden Project-style sensory garden in the centre of the city. Ridicule turned to anger when the city’s ill-fated and frankly useless quango, Bradford Centre Regeneration (BCR), appeared to spend more time and money talking about Alsop’s dreams in exotic places such as Cannes rather than trying to turn them into reality in Bradford.
It came as no surprise when BCR was axed by the council in May this year. In 2008 its expenditure was nearly £4 million, including £530,000 for 11 employees, while its income was just £1.2 million. One of its favourite buzz-words was ‘sustainability’ but this clearly didn’t apply to its own finances. As one furious local resident commented: ‘You really couldn’t make this whole debacle up. The level of incompetence displayed on all BCR’s schemes is breathtaking.’ There’s a joke which serves as an indictment of this futile quango. It goes: ‘What do Bradford city centre and a Polo mint have in common?’ The answer is a hole in the middle — where the developers Westfield were going to build a £320 million shopping centre, once scheduled for completion next year. In recent times it has been boarded up, with sarcastic graffiti that replaces ‘masters of construction’ with ‘masters of destruction’; the claim ‘good times are coming’ is followed, simply, by ‘When?’ This scheme was meant to be the jewel in Bradford’s tarnished crown. Its failure effectively sealed BCR’s fate.
However, it would be misleading to suggest that all regeneration in Bradford is now on hold, either because of the recession or because of BCR’s demise. Irish developers McAleer & Rushe have begun work on a mixed-use development in the city centre which will include an office building for Provident Financial and a hotel for Jurys. On the southern outskirts, work has begun on a 90-acre development which will create many much-needed jobs. ProLogis Developments, in conjunction with Marks & Spencer, are developing a massive distribution centre covering more than a million square feet.
Given Bradford’s history of racial tension, which erupted into riots in 1995 and 2001, it is crucial that developments of this scale succeed. While there were interlocking social and cultural causes for the riots — and isolated incidents may have sparked them off — an ailing economy, with its toxic combination of deprivation, unemployment, boredom and resentment, is the paraffin on the fire. There are signs that enlightened religious leaders are encouraging their communities to look outwards, rather than turn inwards, but districts such as Manningham still resemble strife-scarred outposts of the Punjab, which is in nobody’s interests, least of all those who live there.
J.B. Priestley, Bradford’s most famous literary son, bequeathed a backhanded compliment to his native city in Bright Day, when he said its ugliness could be enjoyed, especially since its residents were ‘not far from the uplands and blue air, while its horizon is never without promise’. Appropriately, Priestley’s imposing statue looks down at one of Bradford’s most grotesque office blocks. Behind him, though, is the excellent National Media Museum, which attracts 750,000 visitors a year, and sets the benchmark to which the rest of the city must aspire. It is a superb museum, run with verve and imagination by ex-BBC journalist Colin Philpott, and its main exhibition this summer (until 27 September) is a selection of stunning photographs by Don McCullin, including some haunting portraits of Bradford’s dispossessed. McCullin felt he discovered himself while photographing Bradford, though he found self-discovery ‘a not entirely comfortable process’.
Colin Philpott talks passionately about Bradford. The city needs more enlightened ambassadors like him, who can extol the virtues of Saltaire, mill-owner Sir Titus Salt’s model village which is now an International Heritage Site, of the city’s own cultural core of the National Media Museum, the Alhambra Theatre and St George’s Hall, of its magnificent Gothic town hall based on Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio and of Cartwright Hall, a hidden gem of an art gallery in Lister Park featuring an impressive collection of 19th- and 20th-century British paintings. Significantly, Bradford has just been named Unesco’s first City of Film, a tribute not just to the National Media Museum, but also to the fact that movies as diverse as Billy Liar, The Railway Children, The Dresser, Rita, Sue and Bob Too! and — curiously — The Life of Brian were filmed in and around the city.
Philpott also sees a brighter economic future for the city, once the clouds of recession lift, Westfield begins building and the train operator Grand Central starts a direct service from Bradford to London. He may be right. But one thing’s for certain: this city deserves better than grandiose architectural visions and self-serving quangos whose track record is a chilling example of public-sector profligacy.
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