Yahya Birt
When people talk about Bradford’s history, it’s often treated as a local or regional story. Like the quote from J.B. Priestley above, these narratives usually focus on the city’s industrial past, occasionally mentioning how “outsiders” contributed to its growth or brought challenges. However, these accounts often leave out something crucial: Bradford’s global connections during the British Empire and the voices of those who came as colonial travellers or post-imperial migrants. Without these perspectives, we’re left with an incomplete story.
Alan Hall’s The Story of Bradford is a recent example of this kind of local history.[1] Originally published in 2013 and updated in 2024 to celebrate Bradford’s Year of Culture 2025, it follows the familiar arc of Bradford’s rise and fall as a global wool trade leader. Hall describes how the city reached its industrial peak in the mid-19th century but struggled to stay competitive after that. He acknowledges how 19th-century German traders, many of whom were Jewish, helped to grow the city’s international textile sales, and then how post-Second World War migrants from Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth kept the mills running by working night shifts during 24-hour operations.[2] Yet, Hall also draws a line between desirable outsiders, who help the city flourish, and undesirable outsiders, who are often blamed for its challenges.
The later chapters of Hall’s book move from a chronological history to a mixed portrayal of Bradford’s recent past. It includes moments of conflict involving the city’s Asian Muslim community, like the Honeyford Affair of 1984, the 1995 and 2001 riots, and the burning of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1989. Alongside these flashpoints, Hall attempts to rebrand Bradford as a cultural and heritage destination. This focus reflects what scholars call “boosterism” — using a city’s history, in Hall’s case, selectively, to promote economic growth. As Peter Payne explains, boosterism is the effort
to encourage progress, by which … [is meant] economic development and growth … with decline … [it] sought to make use of history to provide examples of past glory and an exploitable past that could point to future growth.[3]
While boosterism has its roots in 19th-century American frontier towns, it only became a major strategy for British cities after World War II. Unlike other post-industrial cities, Bradford adopted this approach by promoting heritage and tourism early on. In the week the Bradford Exhibition of 1904 opened, a leader in the Yorkshire Daily Observer commented that
[The Bradford Exhibition] comes very opportunely at a time when English manufacturers are under a sort of cloud … it is appropriate that one of the great Yorkshire towns should have come forward … to uphold the credit of industrial England. It is a Bradford exhibition, intended to display Bradford products … Bradford appears to have taken a hint from the United States, and to have adopted that deliciously American maxim, “Don’t grumble, boost!” The word “boost” is good American; it seems to be compounded of “boom” and “boast”, and means putting a good face on things…. It is part of that art of advertisement of which the Americans are past masters, and to which … they owe their success. There is no lesson we can learn from them of more practical importance.[4]
Bradford boosterism was also reflected in the city’s centenary booklet, published in 1947, where history and heritage, town planning and entertainment are discussed even before its industry is, while in the city council’s 1962 official handbook there is an optimistic ethos of modernist town planning for a city rebuilt and ready to do business based on its industrial history.[5] Later, in the 1990s, Bradford’s advertising focused on “Bronte Country,” creating a literary and rural image far removed from its modern, multicultural identity.[6]
Hall’s book, for all its insights, struggles to incorporate Bradford’s diverse population into this rebranding effort. Instead, it treats multiculturalism as a separate issue from heritage and culture per se. But Bradford’s story doesn’t need to stop at postwar migration. The city’s history can — and should be — connected to the global context of empire. As the anti-racist writer and activist Ambalavaner Sivanandan put it, “We are here because you were there.”
This isn’t about singling out Bradford. It’s about recognizing that the British Empire influenced every part of life in the UK — not just in London or Edinburgh, but in provincial cities and rural areas too. Bradford’s archives, along with those across Yorkshire, are full of evidence of these connections. It’s time these archives were uncovered and their stories retold. If we’re going to tell a fuller story of Bradford, it’s time to think beyond local boosterism and embrace the city’s global, imperial past. Only then can we truly understand how its history shapes its present and future, and wool is at the heart of this story.
Yahya Birt is a community historian of early Muslim life in Britain.
References
[1] A. Hall, The Story of Bradford (Cheltenham, Glos: History Press, 2024), revised edition.
[2] Hall, pp. 154, 172‒8; G. Firth, “The Bradford Trade in the Nineteenth Century”, in D.G. Wright and J.A. Jowitt (eds), Victorian Bradford: Essays in Honour of Jack Reynolds (Bradford: City of Bradford Metropolitan Council, 1981), pp. 7‒36, on economic uncertainty after the boom period (1837‒1874) up to 1900, see pp. 22‒34.
[3] P. Payne, “Boosterism” in C. Kammen and A.H. Wilson (eds) The Encyclopedia of Local History (Lanham, M.D and Plymouth, England: Altamira Press, 2013), second edition, pp. 57‒60.
[4] “Bradford and Its Exhibition: The Art of Advertisement”, Yorkshire Daily Observer, 4 May 1904, p. 6.
[5] J. Krueckeberg, “Review of Ward, Stephen V., Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities, 1850‒2000”, Humanities and Social Sciences Online, October 2000, https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4605; Bradford: The Centenary of the Granting of the Charter of Incorporation to Bradford, 1947‒1957 (Bradford: Yorkshire Observer, 1947); City of Bradford Corporation, The City of Bradford: The Official Handbook (London: Ed. J. Burrow, 1962).
[6] J. Proctor, Dwelling Places: Postwar Black British Writing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 109.
Somali Village 