Bradford is so often portrayed as a city divided. Sometimes, those descriptions can be correct. It is a place swamped with economic instability and problems that run deep, but over the past week, and again this weekend, the two things that unite its many communities have risen to the fore.
One is its football team. Bradford City, like the West Yorkshire city itself, have had their fair share of inauspicious moments, but their incredible escape from League Two last Saturday, scoring a 96th-minute winner to beat Fleetwood and secure automatic promotion for the first time this century, sparked jubilant scenes over the bank holiday weekend.
More than 24,000 supporters attended that game and on Tuesday evening thousands gathered in Centenary Square to celebrate with the players. Perhaps it was fitting this happened in this week of all weeks because on Sunday supporters and players will meet in the same spot to remember the other thing that binds this city.
It will be the 40th anniversary of the Valley Parade fire, when 56 supporters – 54 from Bradford, and two from Lincoln, the opponents on 11 May 1985 – lost their lives when the main stand caught ablaze. Hundreds more were injured. Thousands suffered mental scars that will never heal.
It was supposed to be a day of celebration, with City parading the Third Division title they had won a week earlier. They have not won a division title since. The day has often been referred to as a forgotten tragedy, with questions about why it is not given the same level of coverage as others. But the people of Bradford – and indeed Lincoln – will never forget. Every year they assemble to remember and pay their respects. Bradford will stand together on Sunday, just as it did 40 years ago in an extraordinary show of unity.
Oliver Evans will lead his seventh memorial service as Bradford City’s club chaplain. He was due to attend the game against Lincoln, but was unable to go. “I’d been to every home game that season,” he says. “I used to cut the grass for my dad and that day I’d not done it. My mates all turned up to go to the game, but Dad said I couldn’t because I hadn’t cut the grass.”
Evans’s memories of that day do not end there. His father was a clergyman and faced a devastating task. “He was asked by the head of the ambulance service to receive the bodies at North Parade. I’d never heard him cry before. I heard him cry through the bedroom wall as he told my mum what happened.”
Evans’s family were supported by their neighbours, the local community and many more. In the days that followed, Bradford’s spirit rose in a way nobody had seen before, with the bishop of Bradford reportedly travelling about 25,000 miles, making sure those affected received the appropriate pastoral care.
“Manningham, the part of Bradford where the stadium is, already had a relatively strong south Asian population in 1985,” Evans says. “The people in those terraces around Valley Parade had no connection to football, but came out with cups of tea, blankets, water … anything the victims needed. I believe the whole city was touched by that day and it still is.”
A disaster fund was created and within days it had raised more than £3.5m. Today, that figure equates to around £12m. It has supported the victims and their families but it also led to the creation of one of Bradford’s proudest institutions: the Bradford burns unit.
It was the brainchild of Prof David Sharpe, who would pioneer the Bradford Sling, designed initially to help the victims of the fire and now patented and used worldwide. In 2010, Sharpe, the head of the unit, was due to retire. At the time Prof Ajay Mahajan was residing in Sweden, but looking for somewhere to call home. A trained plastic surgeon, he applied for the job. He has remained ever since and is acutely aware of how this disaster connects the city.
“I knew of the Bradford Sling before I came to Bradford, but I didn’t know why it was called that,” he says. “You instantly learn when you come here what this means to people.”
Now called the plastic surgery and burns research unit, it has helped research treatment for burns victims worldwide. When it faced financial hardship in 2009, £100,000 was raised to keep it alive. It has gone on to revolutionise burns treatment across the world.
There have been countless initiatives from people of all ages to raise funds. The local fire service walked between Bradford and Lincoln and the teenager Georgia Taylor has raised thousands selling homemade ribbons for several years.
“Bradford can be so proud of it,” Mahajan says of the unit. “Everyone feels like it belongs to them and it should feel like that because the research is only possible because of the spirit of Bradfordians. I know that day in 1985 everyone came together in the aftermath with their community spirit. It has changed lives worldwide, not just in Bradford.”
Mike Harrison is editor of the City Gent, the longest-running fanzine in the UK. He was at Valley Parade on 11 May 1985 and one of many who helped. “I have mental scars, but we did anything and everything that summer. Sponsored walks, putting money in the box at the chippy … there was such a dark cloud over the city.
“The good that came out of that tragedy, if that is such a thing, was the sense of community Bradford has. In its darkest times, it always rallies. We were in the news, but eventually something else takes the headlines. That is where Bradford as a city shone for me. We were left to look after ourselves, but we did that.”
Perhaps the biggest point of pride, though, is how the tragedy resonates with those who were not born at the time. Supporters of all ages will be in Centenary Square, with stories of 1985 and the importance of it to the club and the city passed down through generations.
“The community spirit of that day has paved forward to today,” Evans says. “Bradford is viewed nationally as the cousin in the family we’d rather not talk about. Last weekend was a city getting some of its pride back and Sunday will be the same. Thousands of people are there come rain or shine. But the thing that stands out is there are young families and young people who weren’t born and who will never let this be forgotten. It united our city 40 years ago, and it does the same today.”