Manchester "Slum" Clearance/The Three Crows music "Oh Hattersley"

For nearly two decades from the 1960s, the council set about demolishing hundreds of streets in Manchester and Salford. It became known as urban clearance, and saw families torn apart and people’s homes destroyed. “This was one of the biggest clearances of people en mass in Europe at the time. The clearance took place as the council purchased congested streets of old and decaying houses, which were quickly turning into slums. Residents were offered alternative accommodation, or given a pay out and asked to move on. This was the destruction of the communities and people who had lived in the same streets and areas for generations were evicted. Generations were finding for the first time their family lines were being broken. They were being offered accommodation in different parts not even of the city but the wider city in new high rise towns like Hattersely. You didn’t have any choice and you couldn’t ask for your auntie and uncle and granny and sisters to be sent to the same place. The music is from a folk group formed In 1963 by three lads from Stalybridge. They used to sing an old Scottish folk song, ‘the three Crows’, so for want of a better idea, they decided to name the group after the song. The song Is called Oh Hattersley.