Gary James said:
The elderly City fan was in fact my father, who's now in his seventies but was born a little before the start of WW2. He grew up in Moss Side, and first watched football in that era. He, his father and brother were all strong Blues, but had cousins and uncles who were Reds.
My dad watched both clubs when United played at Maine Road, and would sometimes go to Old Trafford to watch the Reds after they moved back there on days when City were away. He also watched the early United floodlit European Cup games at Maine Road - and has always maintained that Duncan Edwards is the greatest outfield player he saw play live. (For what it's worth, he would put Trautmann as the greatest 'keeper, for what it's worth, while his dad, my late grandfather, would have opted for Doherty and Swift).
Though my old man later grew to hate the club United had become, back then he - despite being City through and through - had a respect and affection for the Reds as well. As others have said, that was pretty common in those days. He also knew a lot of United fans, including family members, and his memory is that both sets of fans accepted that City were doing United a favour. He also doesn't recall the rent ever being mentioned by anyone at the time.
I suspect that this is true and that few fans either knew or cared about whether United were paying rent to use Maine Road. Whereas now, there are fans who have an interest in the business dealings of a club and the media does report these issues, I believe that back then this was barely ever discussed in the press or by supporters. However, I do believe that both clubs and both sets of fans accepted that City were doing United a good turn.
Now, this doesn't mean that the rent was never was paid. As it happens (I note a poster above saying he isn't a lawyer), I AM a lawyer, and I'd be interested to assess the evidence of City's and United's accounts to assess the evidence of payment or otherwise from a legal perspective - for instance, if minutes were to record a payment being approved, this would still fall short of being proof that payment was made, though it suggests that the money may well have been paid.
However, in a sense, it's irrelevant, I suppose. Whatever the terms were for United to use Maine Road, and even if the rent was paid in full, sharing the ground at that period delivered a great benefit to United in terms of wiping out debts and increasing their support base. Which implies quite decisively that whatever rent we charged them, it was too little purely from a hard-headed commercial perspective.
That was the period in which they went from the 'poor relations', to use a phrase that appears in this thread, to Manchester's top side. And there does seem to be to be a lot of revisionism from self-agrandising United fans who don't want to admit that they ever got a helping hand from City. Nevertheless, they did. And I'm also struck by the contrast between our conduct when Old Trafford was bombed and United's after the Hyde Road fire. We shouldn't let them forget that, especially as it seems to rile some of them so much. :)