A history of oppositional Salford: from dirty old town to splintering post-industrial city

This paper presents a history of the City of Salford from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Focusing in upon the city’s explosive growth throughout the Victorian period and the social horrors that accompanied this development, I will examine development of early radical politics (Chartism, the Suffragettes, Trade Unionism, Engels and Marx) and the ways in which working class organisation was often inhibited by other social cleavages (especially anti-Irish feeling). Nevertheless, it will be contended that by the middle of the twentieth century the city experienced something of a golden period, whereby full employment, commitment to progress and the solidarities formed through the experience of the second world war stood in stark contrast crushing poverty that had hitherto defined Salford, but also to the processes of social fragmentation that would latterly develop. Perhaps first amongst such processes was the restructuring of the city in response to political, technological, economic and cultural change.