Star date: 14th May 2021

HI JINX IN HIGHER BROUGHTON

The Griffiths brothers of Higher Broughton are kind of infamous as the only people to be forcefully evicted from their house as part of the Pathfinder 'housing market renewal' project during the first decade of the 21st Century.

Here, Guy Griffiths, now living in 'sunny' north Wales and one of the main inspirations for the Salford Star's creation, gives his own personal view of the Government project that devastated communities throughout Central Salford.

Read Part One here...

Part 1: Pre-Salford Star

The Salford Star asked me to do an article about the regeneration in Higher Broughton but said 'Don't be too bitter about it...' Knowing how Salford Council works, I will say I am still bitter about Pathfinder, because if I don't they will assume that I am happy about it!

Oddly, the Oasis single Don't Look Back in Anger was released in 1996, about 18 months after a neighbourhood coordinator got involved in the area, and ten years before the first Salford Star was published.

I'll try and bring you up to speed with what happened before the Salford Star, as later stuff has been covered. It's worth mentioning that I kept a lot of the documentation involved and, as I probably won't live forever, maybe some historian will get in touch and cover the Pathfinder regeneration before I die.

There is evidence to show that a housing association owned a property in the Bottom Streets that a problem family was moved into, which started the decline of the area. The housing association always led people to believe that it was owned by a private landlord. Knowing that a lot of the people and agencies involved are very job incestuous, I sometimes wonder if it was a deliberate move to begin the degeneration of the area?

There are copies of leaflets that the neighbourhood coordinator gave out at residents' meetings, maps of the Masterplan (the original as there were several), which involved the county market becoming the community hub. There is also evidence of £70,000 out of £250,000 regeneration money being spent on two assistants to the neighbourhood coordinator. One of these turned up years later working for the Broughton Trust.

In around 2000, the Council announced that it had £1million to purchase approximately 130 properties in the area. If we had known the score then, we could have served a blight notice and then gone to a land tribunal. Assuming we would have been successful, that would have stopped the regeneration as the Council would not have had enough money to buy the houses.

Then the properties would have been in a real market, people would have come in to buy them and the existing homeowners could have either stayed or sold at a decent price. Sadly, I write that with hindsight and guilt that we didn't do it.

As I was quite vocal against the Council and didn't acquiesce, the neighbourhood coordinator made things difficult for me. If I wanted to photocopy something at Clowes House, it was censored or refused. I was not allowed to photocopy anything that referred to Councillor Merry or copy his image. I mean! He is a local councillor, not some tin pot dictator with delusions of godhood. I went through the complaints procedure several times as, while they had the complaints procedure booklets in white, blue and yellow, they didn't actually have a procedure and had to set one up.

After that, a lot has been published. The Bottom Streets were split from the Top Streets, and the people in the Top Streets were happy for the Bottom Streets to be demolished. I remember one woman who lived in King Street screaming "Demolish them they are full of piss heads...".

Oddly, years later, after she had died, I bumped into her husband and he said to me "I used to wonder what you were on about...but I realise now that they took the f*king piss out of us". The last time I saw him he was going to move out of Salford. Another resident from the Top Streets once said to me "Your house is coming down. Mine is stopping up, thank you very much.".

I wish the Salford Star had been there to cover things that happened before 2005.
There were the 190+ break-ins in empty Council owned houses in a ten month period. There were the attempts to get security on the demolition sites, the incident when a brick came through my window one Saturday afternoon and I left it in a local councillor's porch, with a note 'Yours I believe'...and his response 'That was very irresponsible. Someone could have used it to break my windows!'...Yes, you thick twonk, it has already been used to break mine!'.

There are letters from John Prescott's office and Hazel Blears, basically saying that the regeneration was a matter for the Council. So much for 'Our Hazel' being good for the people of Salford, eh? There is a letter from a Council officer to my brother, saying that they would not advance him the relocation grant if he did not accept the Council's valuation of his house; to stop him going to a land tribunal.

Anyhow, maybe that historian will get in touch at some point and cover it.

Some of us in Salford are old enough to remember other regenerations. The streets where I was born, on the Salford/Cheetham Hill border, being demolished and an estate built...then twenty odd years later, half of the estate being knocked down.

We remember Lower Broughton being knocked down and re-built, then partially knocked down again. If you are not old enough to remember, the shops on Lower Broughton Road and Great Clowes Street were thriving. Broughton Lane used to be open, then they closed it and now it has opened up again.

They built a sports centre on Littleton Road. Years later, they knocked it down, waited about ten years and then built another one. Schools were closed in Salford as they said that there were too many schools for the number of pupils. Ten years later there was a shortage of places.

People have different views of things. Some might say that all this was necessary and others might say that Salford City Council has never really had a clue...

This is Part One of Guy's Story – Part Two about the human fallout of regeneration will be published shortly...

For a bit of a background as to what went on see these previous Salford Star articles...

Higher Broughton Regeneration – A Can of Worms – click here

Council Dirty Tricks in Higher Broughton – click here

For loads more use the search engine at the top of the website front page

Previous articles on the Salford Star Closure...

Salford Star To Close After 15 Years – click here

The Star Is Born – click here 

Alice's Story: Injustice From South Africa to Salford – click here

Salford Stars – Part 1 – click here

Salford Stars Part 2 – click here

The Battle of Barton Moss – click here

Nigel Pivaro Looks Back Over 15 Years of the Star – click here

Planning Scandals and the Affordable Housing Crisis - click here

Campaigns, demos and protests – click here