It’s been over a month since Ricky’s death and I just wanted to get a few thoughts down which have been crossing my mind a lot recently. Ricky was – and will remain – rightly a significant hero to many. His career and life have touched so many Mancunians, boxing fans and the wider public too. He lived his early life on the same council estate as me (Hattersley) and I think it’s important to talk a bit about Hattersley and the town of Hyde. There was a photo that appeared the day before Ricky’s funeral which showed him as a young boy in front of a white fence – those white fences were familiar to residents of Hattersley and I think we all probably had a photo with one in the background. I know I did.
It was actually that photo that set me off thinking about my own childhood and life.
Hattersley is a large overspill estate built in the 1960s to house families moved out of Manchester as part of the awfully named slum clearance programme. Before I was born my parents lived in Bradford (Manchester) close to where the present-day Etihad Stadium is and they were told their house would be demolished as part of the clearance programme. They were moved to Hattersley, a new estate built in what was at the time Cheshire. Their new house was almost ten miles from their old one. Communities were ripped apart and the new estate at that time offered little in the way of employment, forcing many (like my dad) to look towards Manchester for employment. Like all overspill estates it has had its problems but there have always been many, many good people living there.
Many of the established residents living in Hattersley’s neighbouring village of Mottram or in Hyde itself resented the new estate full of Mancunians being dropped onto their green fields. Nowadays, planning permission would probably never get granted for such a large estate to be plonked there. The artist LS Lowry, a well-known Mancunian/Salfordian (actually born in Stretford and also a prominent Manchester City fan who talked of his love for City), lived at Mottram and was quoted once comparing Hattersley’s tower blocks (since demolished) to New York. He wasn’t impressed.
I was born a few years before Ricky, but those of us living on the estate as children and young adults in the 70s and 80s were often labelled in some way. There was a bit of prejudice against us, and this wasn’t helped by the fact that the Moors Murderers were living on Hattersley at the time of their arrest (and had murdered there too). Their house was demolished in 1987, over 20 years after their arrest, and was behind the New Inn, the pub where I first saw Ricky. His dad was the landlord, and I used to go there with Paul Alexander (who has also died in the last year or so) as our ‘regular’ pub (I won’t say our age when we first started going there!). Ricky was a young boy occasionally seen in the pub or at the pool table. Back then the fact that Ricky’s dad Ray was a former City apprentice/reserve was probably a factor in drawing Paul and me to the pub – it wasn’t the nearest pub to either of our homes on the estate.
From an identity point of view those of us growing up on the estate were usually children of Mancunian parents, living on a Manchester council estate (the rent book said Manchester City Council for many, many years) in Cheshire, except it was no longer Cheshire by the mid 70s. It was an invented metropolitan borough called Tameside, linking several towns from parts of northeast Cheshire and southeast Lancashire. We looked towards Manchester and saw ourselves as Mancunians, but we were living ten miles away and some Mancunians said we weren’t Mancs at all, while some from Mottram said we were not locals either back then!
When meeting someone or going for job interviews those who knew Hattersley would often make a judgement. You’d feel a change sometimes in the way people would talk to you. I started work in Hyde at 16 (Youth Training Scheme at a prominent building society of the era) and I heard negative comments frequently from managerial figures about the estate; the people who lived at Hattersley and so on. In later years Hyde suffered from Dr Shipman’s crimes too and, nationally, Hyde and Hattersley tended to be known for Brady, Hindley and Shipman and not for the incredible things the people of the town have achieved. Judgement can be an awful thing.
Identity and role models are important to us all and we need to look for others like us who can act as role models. It’s so important to see people achieve something that are as ordinary as we are, living in the places we live and experiencing the things we experience. That’s why Ricky Hatton is so important to many people. He’s rightly idolised by the people of Hattersley and Hyde because he was the local boy who did well. He always seemed to be a positive influence and for anyone growing up in the years after Ricky’s first successes he was someone to look up to. He came along at a time when Hattersley and Hyde needed a hero, and he delivered time and time again.
There are other Hattersley role models of course, for example Chris Bird became the Managing Director of Manchester City and Shayne Ward (singer/actor) lived there before the age of ten and went to the same primary school as me (many, many years after I left the school!). But Ricky was always the People’s Champion and a man who remained firmly fixed in our minds as the lad from Hattersley who took on the world and brought major glory home. He also continued to be seen in and around Hattersley and Hyde, adding to his status as a man of the people.
Let’s not forget too that at a time when it was unfashionable to support Manchester City Ricky made sure everybody knew he was a Blue. Like Noel and Liam he was often seen promoting the club and talking about life as a City fan.
So much has been said about Ricky and my words add nothing I guess (If anyone’s interested, I wrote something elsewhere on the site about the time I interviewed Ricky in his training boxing ring a few years back as part of a Manchester City academy session), but I think it’s worth getting things off our chest at times. It’s important to talk.
On a personal level my thoughts are with his family and close friends. I’m delighted that Ricky’s name keeps being chanted at Manchester City games (and that a banner and other tributes continue to appear) but, of course, like so many others I wish he was still here. We’ve lost quite a few Blues this year including in recent weeks broadcaster John Stapleton and Corinthian footballer Margaret Allen. My thoughts are with all who have suffered a loss recently.
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