WhenProgrammesWereAShilling
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- 30 Dec 2013
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Unearthed this i hope its of interest as ive not heard it mentioned here before...
In 2014 a book on the IRA in Britain by historian Gerard Shannon, noted that the destruction of the Manchester City ground at Hyde Road during November 1920, was one of a number of incidents about which the British Police suspected Irish involvement.
City had played at Hyde Road since 1887 and had developed a mainly enclosed but cramped ground on land which was sub-let to them. Timber stands and cinder banking's were home- a home hemmed in by a railway line, terraced houses, factories and arches. Somehow the ground had an official capacity of 40,000, and this is believed to have been exceeded on several occasions. The club had been thinking about moving since around 1905 but the events on 6th November 1920 finally sealed the fate of this ground and City eventually moved on to greater things at Maine Road in August 1923.
On 27th March 1920, an historic moment in City's history occurred when King George V became the first reigning monarch to visit a provincial football ground. He watched the match that followed and 'applauded vigorously' as City beat Liverpool by two goals to one. This event brought national attention to the club and its Hyde Road home and less than eight months later the timber main stand where King George had sat was razed to the ground. Within an hour of the blaze starting on the evening of 6th November 1920, the stand was gone and with it all the club's records and its faithful watchdog 'Nell'. Strangely no match had taken place that day and the fire was during the night. It has been recorded by the club as being started by a discarded cigarette- just how they found that is anyone's guess, but the ground was not totally destroyed as it could easily have been. Just a week later after the debris had been cleared, a new cinder banking had been constructed on the site of the old stand, and City played host to Huddersfield Town in front of 35,000 spectators.
British Police suspicions were not unfounded as the fire fitted with a wider pattern of IRA attacks in Britain that had commenced in 1920. Irish Military Archives have shed light on IRA activities in Manchester during this period and amongst the correspondence and documents is a testimony from a former IRA Volunteer- Drogheda born Thomas Morgan. In 1939 he began the process of applying for a pension for his military service during the campaign for Irish independence. His application was typical of those submitted, containing sworn statements outlining such services as were rendered to the cause of establishing the independent Irish state. In Thomas Morgan's case, those services included the torching of Manchester City's ground.
He provided little detail about how the operation was planned and executed, but his involvement was relayed to assessors on more than one occasion and he first admitted his role in the attack in October 1939 and again three years later in further correspondence to assessors. He also confessed to being one of a number of active arsonists in mainland Britain.
On one occasion he remarked '...me and Harding and about six men...took part in the burning of Hyde Road football grounds...headquarters of Manchester City Football. We decided we would burn the stands, they were preparing for a big match' (Possibly the Manchester derby match which was scheduled for later that month). The 'Harding' referenced was Charles Vincent Harding from Clonmel, a man who had made no mention of his involvement in this fire, although he did did admit to his other IRA activity in Manchester about that time including the shooting of a Police Constable in 1921, a planned but aborted attack on Manchester Racecourse and an arms raid on a golf course, both in late 1920.
Another accomplice of Morgan's was said to be Joseph Flood, he also never admitted to having any involvement in the Hyde Road football ground attack, just that he was '...organising and taking an active role in reprisal burnings in Manchester and district'.
Thomas Morgan joined the Irish Volunteer Movement- later the IRA, in May 1917 in his hometown of Drogheda. He set off for England as his links with Sinn Fein deepened amidst the post 1916 rising radicalisation of Irish political life. He initially arrived in Liverpool then settled in Manchester from June 1920. It is estimated at least 1,000 men were actively involved in IRA units across the UK by mid 1921, and most were based in the urban centres of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Tyneside. In Manchester the number of volunteers numbered around 100 and were organised into three IRA companies. No. 2 Company was led by Charles Harding, whom Thomas Morgan had claimed as an accomplice on the City football ground attack. IRA volunteers readily decorated the city in propaganda graffiti but in 1920 the IRA changed focus and attacks increased in number and violence. Manchester was seen as a legitimate target to raise public awareness of Ireland's desperate and worsening predicament.
Just three weeks after the Hyde Road fire and a week after the horrors of Bloody Sunday in Dublin, up to eighteen fires had been started in the Liverpool and Bootle areas causing around £1m worth of damage. It was becoming obvious that targets across mainland Britain could be selected at random, and so another football ground in Manchester would soon be targeted...
Manchester United's ground had been open for over ten years. Although impressive, in 1921 it had still not yet witnessed an attendance anywhere near capacity, despite hosting the 1915 FA Cup Final between Sheffield United and Chelsea, which attracted an attendance of just 49,557. However, it was also now seen as a legitimate IRA target and the night before the match chosen for an attack was the FA Cup Semi-Final Replay between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Cardiff on 22nd March 1921.
A small group of Irish arsonists visited with the intention of destroying the stadium by fire. Thomas O'Brien from Limerick had previously been involved in various attacks including burning down farm houses, cafes and a hotel in Manchester as had his accomplices such as Peter Gilmartin and Paddy Fennell, who were also joined by Michael Hayes and Eamon Conroy. They approached the ground under darkness but were seen by Constable Thomas Carr who was patrolling that night adjacent to the football ground. When Carr peered over a wall into the stadium he discovered three men under the enclosure and two others outside of the ground. Challenging the two men, shots were fired in the Constables direction and the potential arsonists took flight.
Unhurt, Constable Carr slipped and fell to relative safety. A search conducted of the ground soon after the alarm was raised revealed what was planned when three bottles of paraffin and a notebook belonging to Paddy Fennell were discovered. The following day he was arrested and further discoveries and documents revealing Fennell's political loyalties and IRA connections meant he was promptly hauled before the courts along with two others.
Charles Harding, who was later to be mentioned as part of the gang who torched the Manchester City ground the previous November, was willing to give Fennell an alibi, despite the fact he was by then serving a fifteen year prison sentence himself.
Harding said he, a John Morgan and a J. Barrett had gained entry to the United Ground via a twelve foot high wall. When disturbed by Constable Carr he shot him only because the Constable had opened fire first, and he did not intend to injure the officer but just frighten him. He was unrepentant about the attack saying 'We carried this out that night as a reprisal for the burning of our homes in Ireland and I maintain that it was my right to do so'.
Harding, as mentioned, was already serving time. John Morgan was by then dead and Barrett was back in Ireland so his story was consequence free for everyone but himself. Constable Carr denied he ever shot at anyone in his life. The jury found Harding guilty and added another seven years to his sentence.
Within weeks of the attack on the Manchester United football ground, police raided the Irish Club on Erskine Street in Hulme, said to be a base of IRA activities in Manchester at that time. In all, nineteen people were arrested during or as a result of the Erskine Street raid, along with documents and information on raids in Britain.
In 2014 a book on the IRA in Britain by historian Gerard Shannon, noted that the destruction of the Manchester City ground at Hyde Road during November 1920, was one of a number of incidents about which the British Police suspected Irish involvement.
City had played at Hyde Road since 1887 and had developed a mainly enclosed but cramped ground on land which was sub-let to them. Timber stands and cinder banking's were home- a home hemmed in by a railway line, terraced houses, factories and arches. Somehow the ground had an official capacity of 40,000, and this is believed to have been exceeded on several occasions. The club had been thinking about moving since around 1905 but the events on 6th November 1920 finally sealed the fate of this ground and City eventually moved on to greater things at Maine Road in August 1923.
On 27th March 1920, an historic moment in City's history occurred when King George V became the first reigning monarch to visit a provincial football ground. He watched the match that followed and 'applauded vigorously' as City beat Liverpool by two goals to one. This event brought national attention to the club and its Hyde Road home and less than eight months later the timber main stand where King George had sat was razed to the ground. Within an hour of the blaze starting on the evening of 6th November 1920, the stand was gone and with it all the club's records and its faithful watchdog 'Nell'. Strangely no match had taken place that day and the fire was during the night. It has been recorded by the club as being started by a discarded cigarette- just how they found that is anyone's guess, but the ground was not totally destroyed as it could easily have been. Just a week later after the debris had been cleared, a new cinder banking had been constructed on the site of the old stand, and City played host to Huddersfield Town in front of 35,000 spectators.
British Police suspicions were not unfounded as the fire fitted with a wider pattern of IRA attacks in Britain that had commenced in 1920. Irish Military Archives have shed light on IRA activities in Manchester during this period and amongst the correspondence and documents is a testimony from a former IRA Volunteer- Drogheda born Thomas Morgan. In 1939 he began the process of applying for a pension for his military service during the campaign for Irish independence. His application was typical of those submitted, containing sworn statements outlining such services as were rendered to the cause of establishing the independent Irish state. In Thomas Morgan's case, those services included the torching of Manchester City's ground.
He provided little detail about how the operation was planned and executed, but his involvement was relayed to assessors on more than one occasion and he first admitted his role in the attack in October 1939 and again three years later in further correspondence to assessors. He also confessed to being one of a number of active arsonists in mainland Britain.
On one occasion he remarked '...me and Harding and about six men...took part in the burning of Hyde Road football grounds...headquarters of Manchester City Football. We decided we would burn the stands, they were preparing for a big match' (Possibly the Manchester derby match which was scheduled for later that month). The 'Harding' referenced was Charles Vincent Harding from Clonmel, a man who had made no mention of his involvement in this fire, although he did did admit to his other IRA activity in Manchester about that time including the shooting of a Police Constable in 1921, a planned but aborted attack on Manchester Racecourse and an arms raid on a golf course, both in late 1920.
Another accomplice of Morgan's was said to be Joseph Flood, he also never admitted to having any involvement in the Hyde Road football ground attack, just that he was '...organising and taking an active role in reprisal burnings in Manchester and district'.
Thomas Morgan joined the Irish Volunteer Movement- later the IRA, in May 1917 in his hometown of Drogheda. He set off for England as his links with Sinn Fein deepened amidst the post 1916 rising radicalisation of Irish political life. He initially arrived in Liverpool then settled in Manchester from June 1920. It is estimated at least 1,000 men were actively involved in IRA units across the UK by mid 1921, and most were based in the urban centres of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Tyneside. In Manchester the number of volunteers numbered around 100 and were organised into three IRA companies. No. 2 Company was led by Charles Harding, whom Thomas Morgan had claimed as an accomplice on the City football ground attack. IRA volunteers readily decorated the city in propaganda graffiti but in 1920 the IRA changed focus and attacks increased in number and violence. Manchester was seen as a legitimate target to raise public awareness of Ireland's desperate and worsening predicament.
Just three weeks after the Hyde Road fire and a week after the horrors of Bloody Sunday in Dublin, up to eighteen fires had been started in the Liverpool and Bootle areas causing around £1m worth of damage. It was becoming obvious that targets across mainland Britain could be selected at random, and so another football ground in Manchester would soon be targeted...
Manchester United's ground had been open for over ten years. Although impressive, in 1921 it had still not yet witnessed an attendance anywhere near capacity, despite hosting the 1915 FA Cup Final between Sheffield United and Chelsea, which attracted an attendance of just 49,557. However, it was also now seen as a legitimate IRA target and the night before the match chosen for an attack was the FA Cup Semi-Final Replay between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Cardiff on 22nd March 1921.
A small group of Irish arsonists visited with the intention of destroying the stadium by fire. Thomas O'Brien from Limerick had previously been involved in various attacks including burning down farm houses, cafes and a hotel in Manchester as had his accomplices such as Peter Gilmartin and Paddy Fennell, who were also joined by Michael Hayes and Eamon Conroy. They approached the ground under darkness but were seen by Constable Thomas Carr who was patrolling that night adjacent to the football ground. When Carr peered over a wall into the stadium he discovered three men under the enclosure and two others outside of the ground. Challenging the two men, shots were fired in the Constables direction and the potential arsonists took flight.
Unhurt, Constable Carr slipped and fell to relative safety. A search conducted of the ground soon after the alarm was raised revealed what was planned when three bottles of paraffin and a notebook belonging to Paddy Fennell were discovered. The following day he was arrested and further discoveries and documents revealing Fennell's political loyalties and IRA connections meant he was promptly hauled before the courts along with two others.
Charles Harding, who was later to be mentioned as part of the gang who torched the Manchester City ground the previous November, was willing to give Fennell an alibi, despite the fact he was by then serving a fifteen year prison sentence himself.
Harding said he, a John Morgan and a J. Barrett had gained entry to the United Ground via a twelve foot high wall. When disturbed by Constable Carr he shot him only because the Constable had opened fire first, and he did not intend to injure the officer but just frighten him. He was unrepentant about the attack saying 'We carried this out that night as a reprisal for the burning of our homes in Ireland and I maintain that it was my right to do so'.
Harding, as mentioned, was already serving time. John Morgan was by then dead and Barrett was back in Ireland so his story was consequence free for everyone but himself. Constable Carr denied he ever shot at anyone in his life. The jury found Harding guilty and added another seven years to his sentence.
Within weeks of the attack on the Manchester United football ground, police raided the Irish Club on Erskine Street in Hulme, said to be a base of IRA activities in Manchester at that time. In all, nineteen people were arrested during or as a result of the Erskine Street raid, along with documents and information on raids in Britain.
