A festival celebrating the working-class history of Salford will take place on Saturday, October 3rd, marking the 100th anniversary of the city being granted city status. The Salford Histories Festival, hosted at St Thomas' Church in Ford Lane, Pendleton, will honour the miners, factory workers and other labourers who built the city.
Former miner Paul Kelly, a driving force behind the event, said his school history lessons focused on monarchs and leaders rather than industrialists or the Chartists. "There is a ruling classes history and there is our history," he said. "People will know who Lord Nelson was but not Arthur Scargill."
A church that survived wars and regeneration
The Grade II listed church, dating from 1821, was built with a grant from the "Million Fund" — money set aside for church building as national thanksgiving for the end of the Napoleonic War. Over its 195 years, it has survived two world wars, the Blitz, shrinking congregations and 1960s and 70s regeneration.
Barry Emberton, from the Friends of St Thomas's, said representatives of community arts, local history, churches and cemetery groups will attend. The Working-Class Movement Library will provide "a taste of the real lives of Salford people who helped to grow this city in all its wonderful diversity."
Miners' stories and memorials
Paul Kelly worked at Agecroft Colliery for 12 years, as did his father and grandfather. When the pit closed, he helped create the Irwell Valley Project, which campaigned for a monument unveiled in 2013. At the unveiling he said: "Miners have been treated very badly for the work they've done and the money they've made for the rich in society, who wouldn't go down the pits to bring back that coal. Blood is the price of coal."
Agecroft operated from 1844 to 1932 and again from 1960 to March 1991 after redevelopment. In the 1950s and 60s, about 40 percent of the male population in Swinton and Pendlebury worked in pits. The festival will display memorabilia including from the 1984 strike, which Kelly said left "deep seams of ill feeling" that remain "even more entrenched now."
Music and community
Today (Saturday, September 26th), the church hosts "Sound of Salford," a performance of 16 songs spanning the city's musical history, from Frederic Norton's "The Cobbler's Song" to John Cooper Clarke's "I Wanna Be Yours." Donations at the festival will be shared between Loaves and Fishes in Pendleton and Salford Unemployed and Community Resource Centre in Patricroft.
Barry said the festival is about recognising that the city's history belongs to its people: "By bringing together major museums and institutions with smaller local societies, individual researchers and community groups, the festival places all of those stories alongside one another."
