The Changing Face of Trafford

The Changing Face of Trafford 1974-2024

It can be said with confidence, that anyone who has not visited the Trafford area since 1974, would find some familiar places but would also be amazed at the transformation that has occurred in large areas of the borough over the last fifty years.

This article explores some of the differences between Trafford as it was when it was established in 1974, and Trafford today as it marks its 50^th Anniversary in 2024. It considers the significant evolution that has taken place over the fifty years in the make-up of the population, jobs and the labour market; industry; retail and shopping habits; transport; housing developments and the environment. It concludes by providing some insight into future plans for the borough.

It has not always proved possible to make direct like-for-like comparisons of data between 1974 and 2024 as formats and requirements of government and other agencies have changed significantly over the years. For instance, data on ethnic origin was not collected in any decennial census before 1991 and the data was collected in different formats in 2001 and 2011. For 2024, the latest data available has been utilised and this may date from up to three years earlier, utilising the most recent census which was carried out in 2021.

The National Picture

What was in the News in 1974?

A look at events that were happening in the news at national level in 1974 show quite a few parallels with the news in 2024. The United Kingdom had entered the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973 and was going through the process of adjusting to the resulting obligations that this brought.

1974 began with the country entering its first recession since the Second World War. There were restrictions on the use of electricity resulting from an oil crisis in the Middle East, which was a result of the Yom Kippur War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, in October the previous year.

There were also concerns that coal supplies might run out if there were to be further strikes by miners in the UK, and this became a reality in February 1974. As a result, factories were restricted to a three-day week and shops had to choose whether to light their premises in the morning or afternoon. Many small businesses faced cash flow problems, before restrictions were lifted in early March after the miners’ action was terminated.

1974 was a year of two General Elections. The first of these resulted in the first hung parliament since 1929. Harold Wilson formed a Labour government, thus defeating Ted Heath and the Conservatives who couldn’t persuade the Liberals to form a coalition. The miners were offered a 32% pay increase and ended their strike and the three-day week came to an end.[i] A second election took place in October with Wilson winning by three seats.

Inflation hit an all-time high of 17.2% in 1974 but reached a peak at 22.6% the following year as a result of the oil crisis.[ii] However, unemployment at 3.7 %, was at its lowest point until 2022. 

1974 was a year of violent actions at home. March saw an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Princess Anne on her way home from a charity event. There were several bomb attacks as the so-called ‘Troubles’ spilled over onto mainland Britain.  In February, a bomb planted on a coach hired to transport British soldiers on weekend leave, travelling from Manchester to Catterick barracks in Yorkshire, killed eleven people and injured fifty others on the M62.

There were two bomb blasts at public buildings in London. The first of these in June, was in the Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament which failed to kill anyone, and the second in July at the Tower of London which killed a lady from Lewisham and injured forty-one including many children.

These attacks were followed in October by the bombing of two pubs in Guildford frequented by soldiers from nearby barracks. Five people were killed and again dozens injured. Then in November, the bombing of a pub called the Mulberry Bush in Birmingham took place. This killed ten people and injured dozens. In December the London home of Ted Heath was bombed, but fortunately he was away from home. In May power-sharing in the Northern Ireland Assembly collapsed following a strike by unionists.

Sir Alf Ramsay, who had led England to their only World Cup success in 1966, was sacked from his job as England manager at the start of May. Bill Shankly, manager of Liverpool FC stunned the club by announcing his retirement after 15 years as manager. To top it all, Manchester United, Trafford’s pride, were relegated from the First Division of English football at the end of the 1973 - 1974 season.

However, not all was doom and gloom. Several excellent vinyl albums were released in 1974 by well-known artists such as David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, Van Morrison and Manchester’s 10 CC, to name but a few, though the singles charts were dominated by ‘Teenybopper’ artists such as the Bay City Rollers, Mud, the Rubettes, and the Osmonds.

The Hardrock Concert Theatre, later B & Q on Greatstone Road in Stretford and now demolished, was the venue that most of the music stars of the seventies played in Manchester between September 1972 and November 1975. David Bowie had played there for four nights in 1972. The Faces, Slade and Paul McCartney’s Wings had all played there in 1973. Five days after the new Metropolitan Borough of Trafford began its new administration, Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest in April with ‘Waterloo’.[iii]

The transition from the former authorities to Trafford, largely passed unmarked in the local press. The main issue reported in the Stretford and Urmston Journal was the rates. Trafford introduced a uniform rate throughout the new borough, and this did not please the residents of Stretford, Urmston, and particularly Partington, who saw the rates rise by more than a half,[iv] and those who had been in the rural area of Cheshire were no longer able to pay a lower rate for living outside the urban area.[v]

Residents rallied to form Trafford Ratepayers and collected over fourteen thousand signatures objecting to the changes.[vi] The problem was alleviated when the Chancellor announced a cut in the rates for all those whose rates had gone up by more than 20%, as an interim for the current year in a mini budget in July 1974.[vii]

Whilst the issues that dominate the news in 2024 and the years leading up to it are not exactly the same, 1974 was facing some very familiar problems. In a booklet entitled ‘Greater Manchester Votes: a guide to the new metropolitan authorities’ produced in March 1973, to help voters understand the key priorities facing Greater Manchester and its component parts, the author, David M. Clark[viii] highlighted the local issues for the new Metropolitan as:

• Jobs
• Cost of Living
• Housing
• Transport
• Education
• Welfare
• The Environment

The National Picture and its impact on Councils in 2024

The Covid pandemic, the rising cost of living, immigration and rising inflation have all played their part in making life very difficult for local authorities like Trafford. Three major recent events: the departure of the UK from the European Union, the war between Ukraine and Russia, and the invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel have had a major impact on stability and price rises in fuel and food.

Changes have taken place in levels of funding available for local government and in priorities, both local and national since 1974. Council tax was introduced in 1993 to replace the short-lived Community Charge, otherwise known as the Poll Tax, which, in turn, had replaced domestic rates. This Council Tax has been restricted to no more than an annual 5% rise in most local authorities, made up of a 2% inflation rise plus a 3% ‘Social Care Precept’. This annual rise has not kept pace with inflation. In 2024, councils have greater costs to bear, not just for adult social care, but also children’s services and responding to national and international challenges locally, along with the expenses associated with the current climate emergency and the need to reduce use of fossil fuels and decarbonise the way we organise our lives. In recent years, problems faced by Local Councils and residents have been exacerbated by the national financial situation, followed by the pressures caused by the Covid health emergency.

Rising costs, caused by soaring inflation, reached a high point of 11.1% in October 2022, but have dropped to 3.4% in February 2024, reducing the amount of funding available for other areas of council responsibility.[ix] Interest rates have risen from 0.5% in December 2022 to 5.25% in August 2023 and have remained at that level in March 2024.[x] This rise has caused much pain for households with mortgages and has reduced the borrowing power of families and local government. In March 2024, grocery price inflation had dropped to 4.5% “from an eye-watering peak of 17 per cent in March 2023” said Frank McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at analysts Kantar, and 23% of British households still felt they were struggling.[xi]

The key areas of challenge for the borough are now Adult and Children’s Social Care, the ‘levelling up’ agenda, including health and education, housing, economic development and environmental regulation. Trafford Council's corporate plan for 2024 indicates that it will focus on three priorities:

• Reducing health inequalities,
• Supporting people out of poverty,
• Addressing our climate crisis.[xii]

Governance of Trafford Council 1973 - 2024

Overall control of Trafford Council has shifted over the period since 1974 (Table 1). In 1974 Conservatives were the predominant party, holding 32 seats. Labour (19) and the Liberal Party (12) held the remainder. Labour is the predominant party in April 2024 with 41 of the 63 seats. The other seats are held by Conservatives (10), Liberal Democrats (6) and the Green Party (6).[xiii]

Years	Party in control
1973–1986	Conservative
1986–1988	No overall control
1988–1995	Conservative
1995–1996	No overall control
1996–2003	Labour
2003–2004	No overall control
2004–2018	Conservative
2018–2019	No overall control
2019–2024	Labour

Table 1 Governance of Trafford

 

 

The Population of Trafford

A cursory glance at the Census figures for 1971 to 2021 in Table 2, show that Trafford has not undergone a population explosion since the 1970s. In fact, its population declined between 1981 and 2001 and has only grown by 13,264 since 1981.

Although there had not been much change in the total population, by 1974 there were fewer people living in the Manchester City Centre and, to some extent, this pattern was reflected in the older towns, even Altrincham. Much of this was due to smaller families and the efforts of slum clearance policies. Despite the construction of some high-rise flats, it had not proved possible to rehouse all those displaced from clearance areas.[xiv]

However, Trafford was among the top 30% most densely populated English local authority areas at the 2021 census.[xv]

Total Population

Year of Census	Total Population
1971*	227973
1981	221788
1991	212731
2001	210145
2011	226578
2021	235052

Table 2 (*Pre-Trafford data)

In 2021 there were about six thousand more females than males in the borough.[xvi]

 

Diversity in Trafford

It can be seen from Table 3 below that the ethnic make-up of the Trafford population has changed over the thirty years since data was first collected for the census in 1991.[xvii] North Trafford had long been known for its settlement of immigrants, from the Irish in the 1880s, to the Polish and other Europeans during and after the Second World War. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Afro-Caribbean community arrived and began to settle in areas of Old Trafford and Hulme, as well as neighbouring Moss Side in Manchester. People from the Indian sub-continent started to arrive during the 1960s, but settled in more significant numbers from the 1980s onwards.[xviii] In 2024, the borough clearly has a diverse range of communities.

Ethnicity	2021		2011		2001		1991		1981
White	77.8%		85.5%		91.7%		94.5%		data not collected
Asian/Asian British	12.6%		7.9%		4.0%		2.9%	Asian	data not collected
Black/Black British	3.4%		2.9%		1.9%		2.4%	Black	data not collected
Mixed/Mixed British	3.8%		2.7%		1.5%				data not collected
Other	2.5%		1.0%		0.8%		0.6%		data not collected

Table 3 It should be noted that changes in the categorisation of ethnic groups may be affected by how individuals wish to self-identify at the time of the census.

The national picture in 2021 was that 81.7% of the population of England and Wales was white, 9.3% Asian, 4.0% black, 2.9% mixed and 2.1% from other ethnic groups.[xix]

There are difficulties in making like-for-like comparisons, but it is clear that the increase in Asian/Asian British or Asian Welsh by 9.7% from 1991 to 2021, was the highest of the ethnic groupings in the area. This is balanced by the drop in those identifying as white by 16.7% over the same period.

A report on the ethnicity of Trafford residents in 2021 produced by Trafford Datalab shows that:

‘The largest proportion of residents in Trafford are of White ethnicity, however, this demographic is not evenly distributed across different age groups. White residents make up 66.3% of all residents aged 15 and under, 77.35% of all residents aged 16 to 64 years, and 92.72% of all residents aged 65 years and over.

The second largest group for all age groups are residents of Asian ethnicity, with 17.6%, 13.33%, and 4.03% respectively. Mixed or Multiple ethnicity residents were the third largest group of all residents aged 15 and under, representing 8.96%, which is more than double the proportion of Black ethnicity residents (3.8%) and residents of other ethnicity (3.34%).

However, for the two age groups over 15 years, residents of Black ethnicity were the third largest group with 3.77% and 1.85%, a slightly higher proportion than residents of Mixed or Multiple ethnicity (2.94% and 0.94%).’^[xx]

Main Language of Trafford Residents in 2021

In 2021, 92.8% of Trafford residents aged three and over were declared as having English as their main language, or a person’s first or preferred language, a 1.7% decrease from 2011. The top five non-English main languages in Trafford in 2021 were Urdu (0.9%), Polish (0.6%), Arabic (0.6%), Panjabi (0.4%) and Cantonese Chinese (0.4%).[xxi]

Religion of Trafford Residents in 2021

In the 2021 census, 48.4% of Trafford residents described themselves as “Christian”, a 15% decrease from 63.4% in 2011. 33.1% declared “No Religion” in 2021, an 11.9% increase from 21.2% in 2011. 13.3% declared non-Christian as their religion in 2021, a 4.3% increase from 9% in 2011. 8.7% described themselves as “Muslim” in 2021, the most common non-Christian religion, a 3% increase from 5.7% in 2011.[xxii]

Places of Worship

The decrease in Christianity is reflected by church closure across Trafford. This reflects the national picture and a survey carried out for the National Churches Trust, showed that the number of churches had dropped from 42,000 to 39,800 in the decade leading up to 2021.[xxiii]

The Church of England alone was found to have closed 423 churches between 2010 and 2019, with Greater Manchester having the second highest number.[xxiv] Declining attendance and the rising costs of maintaining the buildings and retaining a minister that cannot be met by smaller congregations, are two of the main reasons for this.

Once Sunday opening became available for large shops, people’s preference to spend their Sundays at one of the temples of consumerism, such as the Trafford Centre, which resembles a Roman temple, the Pantheon in Rome, or watching or taking part in sport of other outdoor activities.

Some churches have been turned into residential accommodation, such as Trinity United Reformed Church in Hale, others have been converted to community use, taken on by another Christian or other faith group; others were demolished for housing. These included St Andrew’s C of E and St John the Baptist (RC) in Timperley. Trafford Park lost St Cuthbert’s C of E and St Anthony of Padua, following the demolition of the housing in the estate. The churches of St Lawrence (RC) and St Thomas (C of E) have gone from Old Trafford and there are many more.

As might also be expected from the data, several places for Islamic worship and education have been established since 1974. For instance, the Masjid-E-Hidayah Mosque in Old Trafford was founded in 1987 and rebuilt in 2012.

The majority of mosques in Trafford can be found in the Old Trafford area but are also located elsewhere. In Altrincham, the Islamic Centre on Grove Lane in Hale, was established by the Altrincham Muslim Association in 2003 in the former St David’s Church. For the Sikh community a new Gurdwara on Upper Chorlton Road, between Old Trafford and Whalley Range. opened in 2011.[xxv]

Sources

[i] 1974: Mark Dunton, Forty Years On, National Archives [https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/1974-forty-years/ [Accessed 20 Mar 2024].

[ii] Oxford Economics Research Briefing UK ‘Forty-year high and rising, but this isn’t 70s inflation’. June 2022, https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/20220630-RB-1970s.pdf?utm_campaign=PR-UK&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=218213527&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8Y9xUiX-5XfKjBVaszF9JQZ089iFEyvRaW185yUULJU-CX3Xw0XARZZYreuPzKSsg1MC-8LtSRYnfwwN30BOfmpk2v2A&utm_content=218213527&utm_source=hs_email [Accessed 20 Mar 2024].

[iii] Compiled from: Rennison, Nick, ‘1974 – Scenes from a Year in Crisis’, Harpenden: Oldcastle Books, 2023 and Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_in_the_United_Kingdom [Accessed 24 Mar 2024].

[iv] Headline in the Stretford and Urmston Journal was ‘Rates up by more than a half’ on 7 Apr 1974, p.1.

[v] Stretford and Urmston Journal, 20 Mar 1974, p.1.

[vi] Stretford and Urmston Journal, 15 May 1974, p.8.

[vii] Stretford and Urmston Journal, 24 Jul 1974, p.1.

[viii] Clark, David, M, ‘Greater Manchester Votes: a guide to the new metropolitan authorities’, Redrose, Mar 1973. Trafford Local Studies, 96698098.

[ix] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/d7g7/mm23 [Accessed 7 Apr 2024].

[x] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02802/ [Accessed 07 Apr 2024].

[xi] The “i” newspaper, 27 Apr 2024, p.45.

[xii] Trafford Council Corporate Plan https://trafforddatalab.shinyapps.io/corporate-plan/ [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xiii] Table and notes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafford_Metropolitan_Borough_Council_elections [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xiv] Clark, David, M, ‘Greater Manchester Votes: a guide to the new metropolitan authorities’, Redrose, Mar 1973. Trafford Local Studies, ref 96698098.

[xv] https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/censusareachanges/E08000009/ [Accessed 19 Mar 2024].

[xvi] Labour Market Profile – Trafford, produced by Nomis, Office for National Statistics 2024 https://nomisweb.co.uk/reports [Accessed 24 Mar 2024].

[xvii] https://history.blog.gov.uk/2019/03/07/50-years-of-collecting-ethnicity-data/ [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xviii] Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Trafford_(area) [Accessed 17 Apr 2024].

[xix] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest/ [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xx] https://www.trafforddatalab.io/analysis/census2021/ethnicity.html [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xxi] https://www.trafforddatalab.io/analysis/census2021/ethnicity.html#Languages [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xxii] https://www.trafforddatalab.io/analysis/census2021/ethnicity.html#Religion [Accessed 28 Mar 2024].

[xxiii] https://evangelicalfocus.com/europe/14005/UK-Over-2000-churches-closed-in-the-last-10-years [Accessed 21 Apr 2024].

[xxiv] Survey by Daily Telegraph based on Church of England data https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/03/exclusive-400-churches-close-decade-amid-shocking-threat-parishes/ [Accessed 21 Apr 2024].

[xxv] Manchester Evening News on-line, 14 Jan 2011 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/doors-open-to-new-sikh-temple-875846 [Accessed 21 Apr 2024].