Eventually the pattern of world trade changed and we started to look for our trade more towards Europe. Manchester found itself on the wrong side of the country. More important than that was the advent of containerisation; unlike the old transatlantic ships, the new big container vessels could not get up the Manchester Ship Canal. Containerisation led to rapid decline of traffic on the canal. By the 1970s the Port of Manchester began dying, and it died very rapidly. It was not like the old port like Liverpool. There were no redeeming features, no marvellous buildings to be reclaimed at a later date. There was nothing but widespread contamination and dereliction.


Then we had the 3-day week, the dead not being buried in Liverpool and all of that.


So here was Salford, in the midst of a really serious recession, with this enormous and derelict port and a horrible, highly contaminated canal, reputedly the most contaminated waterway in Europe, wondering what to do about it.


The Port of Salford to Salford Quays


Their first option was to try and sell the site and, not surprisingly, there were no takers. They then decided to give it away. Salford was an impoverished local authority, old fashioned in many ways, but a fabulous bunch of people, determined to ‘do well by the people of Salford’; they had little idea of how they were going to go about it.


In 1973, they did find a developer who said he would take the docks off their hands for nothing. His “vision” was to fill in the dock basins and turn it into a giant car park. A deputation went down to London to finalise the deal. As they walked into his office the developer announced that yes, he would take it off their hands but it was in such a bad state they would have to give him £500,000 for the privilege. This was declined and they said, grandly, “We will do it ourselves”, without the faintest clue of what that meant.


And it stank. The bubbles coming up to the surface were not oxygen, as they are today. An enormous and derelict site, right in the middle of this already impoverished city called Salford. It was renamed at this point. It was no longer known as the Port of Manchester, its name while it was thriving; now closed and derelict it became the Port of Salford!


The 1970s


What to do? Salford was a bit of a maverick local authority in those days, often out of step even with a Labour government! Salford has often been fortunate to have some outstanding councillors and officers; people of vision. The then leader Les Hough, long dead sadly, was a man of huge courage with real aspiration for the people he represented. He, and his Chief Executive, Roger Rees were not going to take this lying down.


In the 1970s I was the BBC Industrial Correspondent and often reported on the then recession. Today all my erstwhile broadcasting colleagues pontificate on Radio 4 and BBC1 night after night about living through the worst recession we have ever had. I know the banking crisis and the global recession is very serious, but the term “worst recession” does not wash with anyone who lived through the 1970s and 1980s in the North of England. That was a recession. Then, when I reported redundancies it was not in tens or hundreds, but in thousands. For example the closure of Shotton Steel Works put out of work, at a stroke, overnight, 6,000 men, all main wage earners. It devastated an entire community. Unemployment rates in Liverpool, Manchester and Salford were 28 to 30%. It was devastating; there was not a family, not a household who was untouched by it. That was a recession.


ASSET - Liverpool-10


The Salford Industrial Development Officer, a young man called Peter Henry, then hawked it around various exhibitions, to no avail until he met the architect Peter Hunter. Peter was the third partner in Shepherd Epstein Hunter, a great architectural partnership that specialised in public works. The recession meant the bottom had completely fallen out of public works market. Whilst looking around for inspiration Peter saw photographs of the site and was intrigued. He came to a meeting on the dockside with the then Salford council leader, his chief executive and, for reasons I can never fully understand; I was invited to join them. As we all stood on the dockside on a horribly gloomy day, Peter said, “Yes, but look at the sky, look at this stretch of water. This could be a marvellous urban water side development.” This was before the redevelopment of London docks, and the redevelopment of Albert Docks; it was a revolutionary thought. Later my camera crew, when I did a piece to camera retelling this story, actually fell over laughing. My editor thought I was stark raving mad bothering to report it. I waited for the council to laugh as well. They did not.


This is the key message I want to put across. To achieve transformation, you need leadership and you need courageous people. You will find leadership and courageous people in sometimes the most unexpected places, but it is an absolute prerequisite to successful regeneration, not just of Salford, but also in the North West, and particularly in Manchester and Liverpool.


The key elements are leadership, vision and a great deal of bravery.


To redevelop the derelict and disused Port of Salford into this


Felicity Goodey CBE


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