BRADFORD'S EXAMPLE
By MAURICE WEBB, M.P.
BRADFORD is celebrating the centenary of its incorporation. There's no mistaking Bradford. Its character is sharply defined, unmistakably evident. It has got individuality and it knows it. The temporary lassitude of its early rulers—perhaps they were engrossed in some big wool deal at the time—may have led to the city being kept off a main railway line, hidden away from the tides of life which surge between North and South. It may still take anything up to three quarters of an hour for the vast organisa- tion of the L.N.E.R. to get an " express " trainload of Bradfordians as far into the outside world as Wakefield, thirteen miles away, and the L.M.S. time-tables may still carry the insulting instruction to " change at Leeds " or even " change at Shipley " for Bradford. But no matter. The citizens of Bradford have no backwater mind. They are the centre of things in these parts, and nobody is allowed to forget it.
After all, the West Riding lives on wool, and the heart of the great industrial machine which turns wool into cloth is in Bradford. They can say what they like in Huddersfield, Halifax or Heckmondwike ; the wool-trade pivots on Bradford. And that's all there is to it. As for those lesser breeds without the law, the people who, for some inexplicable reason, make Leeds their home, there is nothing but aloof contempt in Bradford. What do they know about wool any way? It -is only a sideline there. And if they produce any arguments to confound the claims of Bradford to supremacy in commerce, industry and civic progress—well, we can always point to what happened at Wembley as recently as last May, when Bradford Northern just about wiped the floor with the Rugby League " favourites " from Leeds. No, there really is no argument about it. " They " may have refused to give Bradford's great technical college university status ; " they " may be threatening to annex one of our Parliamentary seats ; " they " may have put every Government office in Leeds and made the citizens of Bradford visit that benighted- place every time they want something done ; but the facts are plain enough for all to see. Bradford is the " capital " of the industrial West Riding. Look at he returns from the bankers' clearing-house ; look at the number of foreign consuls stationed there ; look at the trading figures ; look at any possible means of comparison, and you will be bound to admit Bradford's claim to be on top.
In these latter days it is often difficult to tell which provincial city you happen to be in. They have all been regimented into the same physical shape. The same chain stores, the same cinemas, the same banks are all assembled together in ugly uniformity along the main streets, so that one might as well be somewhere else for all the difference one can detect. But Bradford, more than any other com- parable city, has saved its soul from this commercial blight. The chain stores, it is true, have got inside the city's defences. But somehow the inherent individuality of the place has kept its character unsullied. The intruders do not dominate the scene. They are scattered abroad, and have to take second place to the commercial institutions which grew out of Bradford's own initiative. When you set off on a shopping expedition to Bradford you go in the knowledge that the service you will get has not all been organised by some remote gentleman in London, but is the product of native com- mercial skill. That is why, as 1 can testify, discriminating house- wives regularly come up from such distant outposts as the Midlands to acquire the merchandise which Bradford's shops display. • But commerce does not absorb all the energies of the city. It has much more to do than make a living. It knows how to make " brass," and gives a lot of time to that engaging pursuit. But it has ideas on using " brass," ideas which show cultivated taste, discriminating selection, and, above all, a deep and pulsing sense of good communal living. There is no city in these islands which has done so much to foster progressive conceptions of civic life. No other city has set aside so large a part of its resources for the improvement of the conditions in which its people live. Individualistic the people of Bradford may be, but they have made- a fine art of community activity. Their robust independence, with all its insistence on "folk standing on their own feet and making their own way," has not led them to overlook their responsibilities to each other. They have pioneered a whole range of social activities which have since become an accepted part of the pattern of our national life. " Started in Bradford " has become as distinctive a hall-mark in social affairs as is "made in Britain" in the field of industry.
The murky tide of Victorian industrialism left in Bradford marks as grievous as any in the land. But the city was never without resolute men and women of public spirit who set about the job of cleaning up some of the mess and squalor which offended their con- science, and the list of their achievements is unmatched by any other provincial city. It was Bradford where, the first school medical officer was appointed. Nobody ever thought of giving school meals to needy children, or, if they did, never did anything about it, until a few far-sighted Bradford citizens organised their provision. One of these citizens, by the way, was the father of Mr. Priestley. The city created the first municipal general hospital, and was years ahead of most other cities in the introduction and development of public maternity and child welfare services. Indeed, the other great cities sent deputations to Bradford to learn how it was done. Where do we first hear of open-air schools in this country? Once again, in' Bradford. And the first nursery schools, now so established a feature of our national life? Bradford pioneered in this great experiment through that remarkable personality, Margaret McMillan.
There has always been this incurable itch in the city to be striking out in new fields to find better ways of living together. It was as if the reek of the factory smoke which kept out the sun became a spur to effort. It was not all idealism, although that determined the pattern of this effort. There was a good deal of the Bradford man's hard business sense entering into it as well. Thus it was that, well in advance of the time when municipal Socialism had become general, the city decided that there was money to be made out of electricity, and founded the first public supply of electric power from its own works. Then take sewage. You would hardly think that offered a profitable field for business initiative. But you don't know Bradford. They have built up a vast and highly lucrative business out of the disposal of sewage. They waste nothing, not even the water used to clean the fleeces before they go into production. This water carries a high content of fat, made available by amiable and accommodating sheep. Every ounce of it is recovered from the sewers, processed and exported all over the world in the form of some by-product or another. The disposal of refuse, too, gave scope for pioneering enterprise. Local authorities everywhere talk about, and go to see, the "Call Plan," which is an ingenious system of controlled tipping of refuse, so as to avoid combustion and make new land. They have a vast stadium up at Odsal, created out of the contents of the city's dustbins. And the new Grammar School has been built on a site which evolved from the same mundane source.
Then there is the Conditioning House, another municipal under- taking which gives a good return on the ratepayer's investment. Its scientists test the weight, length and condition of any materials commonly used in the textile trade. If you want to buy a consign- ment of wool, send them a sample and they will tell you how much is wool and how much water. If you are a motor-manufacturer and want to know just how long some material for upholstering your cars is likely to last, the Conditioning House will tell you all you want to know. Its certificates are accepted all over the world as a hallmark of quality, and massive commercial transactions turn on the reports which this unique institution prepares "for a reasonable fee." All these developments are indicative of the spirit and creative energy of this city of the West Riding which is now celebrating its centenary as an incorporated borough.
They are by no means the whole story. The same questing mood has been shown in the wider field of all those activities which concern the mind rather than the body. If you think of music, remember Delius was a Bradford man. Science? Sir Edward Appleton was born there and educated in one of the secondary schools which are the city's pride, and, incidentally, yet another example of its pioneer- ing activity. Literature and the theatre? Well, there is J. B. Priestley, as Bradford as they make them. (I wonder why, by the way, they have not yet honoured this distinguished son with the freedom of the city?) It was a Bradford M.P., W. E. Forster, who introduced the great measure in Parliament in the last half of the last century which founded our modern system of popular educa- tion, a distinction in which the city still justly takes pride (although it has made an architectural mess of Forster Square and allowed the G.P.O. there to obscure its ancient and gracious cathedral). All these traditions live on. Such institutions as the excellent little Civic Theatre, the bustling, lively club for the city's youth, the pugnacious and imaginative Civic Society which fulfils the office of gadfly to the Town Hall and a score of similar bodies give contemporary expression to the pioneering urge.
I would not say that the urge is as lively as it used to be. There is a tendency to live on the glories of the past. But the same intense local pride is there—the pride which makes the Bradfordian denounce any "foreigner" who dares to venture even a mild criticism of the city's life, although he himself may go in for a lot of steady grumb- ling about things he may not like. I once got into hot water for complaining about the amount of smoke in the city. Not that any- one contested the validity of my complaint. It was simply that I had offended against the belief that the right to " run down " the city belongs solely to its citizens and is not to be conceded to anyone else, not even the local M.P. It is that spirit of sturdy local patriotism which has brought Bradford through a hundred years of distinctive and creative achievement, and made it no mean city.
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