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WYTHENSHAWE CRIME HISTORY IS WYTHENSHAWE CURSED FOR CRIME?
Objective comparisons between the standards of law and order in one era and another are difficult. Typical of newspaper letters in the 1960s was one writing of the idyllic prewar days, 'when not one window in Brownley Green School was broken in four years'. Against that there were the reports, minuted in the Wythenshawe Committee records of the mid-1930s, that 'due to wanton damage by vandals and hooligans various farms and unoccupied houses will have to be demolished'. Sharston's stately homes, the Hall and the Manor, were leased again by the Watch Committee in 1946 for use by the Police, Fire and Ambulance Services. Community associations, model aircraft clubs and the like shared the premises until vandals, lead thieves and the weather took over. The police were praised for catching a 16-year-old stealing a 12-foot fence. In the 1950s the Rev. Sockett of St. Wilfrid’s Church, Northenden, had to fight vandalism with appeals in the church magazine for parents to control their children. At one time the churchyard had to be locked. Reports of hooligans regularly delaying building in the Baguley area were made in 1948. In 1953 a vast store of window frames went up in a huge bonfire and raids on materials were common. Strikes, particularly in 1947, often held up work, and when the houses were completed squatters were sometimes the first tenants. Even land cleared for building might be lost for a while when gypsies took over, as in Northenden in 1953 and Greenwood Road in 1955. Late in 1956 the complaints of owner-occupiers in Styal Road that “children from the Estate invade and strip the private gardens”, coupled with a demand for a barrier, brought the reaction from Harry Lloyd of “snobs of Gatley”. Vandalism and burglary were the most frequent crimes in the area, but one problem, exceptionally prevalent in Wythenshawe, was that of stolen cars. Narrow roads and lack of parking spaces near houses were factors arising from plans drawn up in an age when the idea of car ownership by many council house tenants seemed unlikely. Moor End Police Station, demolished in 1969, was replaced by offices. In 1965 it had to deal with a savage affray in Church Road that resulted in serious injuries and four Northern Moor youths each being given four years' gaol. In the same year 70 hymn books stolen from St Wilfrid's church were being sold from door to door and, in 1980, £1,000 was snatched from the Burnley Building Society on Palatine Road. At last, in Ford Lane, sited between the Spread Eagle, the Church Inn and the Crown Inn, a new Northenden police station was erected, its opening graced by the presence of Chief Constable James Anderton. Mugging and graffiti arrived when the new subways spread under the rebuilt Parkway, and in 1979 a double-decker bus landed across one path after collision with a fire-engine. After years of complaining by locals, in 1988 the expensive warren was eventually filled in. Some tenants enjoyed the seclusion and outlook of the ivory towers. Pensioners at Royal Green and Park Court publicly praised their wardens and the effective security screens. For young parents with children and those with irresponsible neighbours, the flats seemed like prisons. By 1962 the Woodhouse Park flats were being labelled modern slums though more were built at Newall Green in 1964 and at the Civic Centre in 1966. With vandalism, heating, lift troubles and condensation getting publicity, exactly 10 years after the first went up, in July 1970 it was announced that there would be no more high-rise flats in Wythenshawe. Rent was an ever-present problem for some, and the arrears in Wythenshawe reached £400,000 in the 1960s. The Child Poverty Action Group claimed 5,000 children were living below the poverty line; half Wythenshawe was declared to be a social priority area — on free meals returns. Within Manchester, Wythenshawe also has the highest percentage of supplementary benefits paid (16.5 per cent) and highest proportion of one-parent families (19.3 per cent). Modernisation of poorer council homes began in 1972 and converted the early gas-lit, outside-loo Bucklow council-built houses into desirable homes. Prefabs at Newall Green that had become fire risks were also renewed. The projected sale of council houses by the Conservatives to sitting tenants in 1967 became a political football that was still there even after a Northern Moor tenant's case went to the House of Lords. Wythenshawe had a greater than average percentage of children, especially in Benchill and Woodhouse Park, but a below average proportion of pensioners except in Northenden. One-parent families were over-represented in Benchill and Woodhouse Park, but car ownership was above average everywhere. As the population of children from Wythenshawe grew, so too did one of the main problems of the police, vandalism. Yet a police spokesman at Hall Lane could report, 'We have a great number of municipal houses but we don't get any more trouble from them, than you would expect'. Available targets grew, too. The new plate-glass windows in the Civic Centre, unattended at night, contractors' huts, vehicles and their gear boxes, motorways and their signs were most inviting targets for bricks, sand, and paint sprays. Bridges crossing the motorways created a new sport — bombing the cars. Schools, churches, glasshouses, trees in parks, curtains at the baths, marquees, scout huts and Christmas trees continued to be the occasional victims of petty vandalism, whilst thousands of pounds' worth of damage were reported after vandals had run amok in factories. As the child population decreased in the late 1970s, so too did vandalism. The Wythenshawe Fire Service suffered, too, from vandalism in the direct form of small fires and also from malicious calls, of which the division had the highest rates in Manchester. In 1972 the brigade had to attend the ignominious end of its old quarters at Sharston when they were burnt down by vandals. The question of community spirit in Wythenshawe has been more enigmatic. But banks of trees and ranks of houses do not a garden city make — necessarily. Claire MacGlennon in a sociological study in 1971 blamed any lack of identity on its unnatural growth to such a huge size and the consequent remoteness of authorities, church leaders and '. . . voluntary services in the main staffed by people who did not live in Wythenshawe'. A lack of cohesion was emphasised in 1988 in a Church of England Urban Aid pamphlet circulated nationally that included the assertion by the rector of Benchill, Oliver Forshaw, that Wythenshawe is 'the opposite of a community'. |
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There
is Reports, minuted in the
Wythenshawe Committee records of the mid-1930s, show that 'due to wanton
damage by vandals and hooligans various farms and unoccupied houses will
have to be demolished'.