The news just seemed to get worse during the course of that Friday [the day after the crash]. The city was flooded with rumours that Matt Busby was dead. Small crowds began to gather around the offices of the two Manchester evening papers waiting for any details as they came through.
The city was in a state of shock – even the newspaper sellers were silent; they sombrely sold copies of the News and the Chronicle with their poignant pictures and dreadful stories on the front page. The whole city was in mourning. Everybody – Red, Blue and uncommitted – was stricken with grief.
Chorlton on Medlock, where Mary Morris lived, was not far from Maine Road and most people round there, apart from her family, were City supporters. David Shawcross, who played for City, lived next door to her grandmother and grandfather, just round the corner. “So of course all the kids round there used to be City because David used to come out and play and kick the ball around with them,” Mary said. “I think there was only me and our James who were United, really. But then when the crash came they were all just as upset. Everybody took it very badly. Not quite as much as me. They didn’t have to take the day off school like me, but everybody did get very upset.”
That Friday afternoon when she was off school, Mary remembers an old woman from round the corner coming to her house. She had a framed picture of United on the wall of her living-room and she told Mary that twice on the Thursday afternoon the picture had fallen off the wall for no apparent reason. “What’s to do with you today?” she had said to it each time she picked it up and hung it back up on the wall.
Even people who were not football fans were caught up in the grief
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There was a terrible sadness hanging over the city and the only topic of conversation was the air crash and rumours of more deaths. The bleak mood was summarised in a letter in that night’s paper: “Standing on the outside, seeing and feeling the horror as one who is not a football fan, I now realise how much affection and admiration this city felt for United. Last night in the Tatler News Theatre there were very few laughs no matter how funny the show was. There was a heaviness, an anxiety, over everyone.
“This morning the passengers on the buses had their heads bowed, studying the latest reports. There was a newspaper in every hand. If anyone spoke it was about the plane crash. Even in the blackest fog there has never been such a heaviness over the city. Even the noise of the traffic seems to be subdued. Although I have never met them personally nor seen them play, I, a 22-year old office worker, feel the full tragedy of this loss.”
Twenty-four hours on and the normal vibrant weekend nightlife was subdued, but those who went out on the town were keen to contribute to the disaster fund
All over the city that Friday night, in hotels, pubs, clubs and restaurants, the dark shadow of the disaster that had turned Manchester into a city of grief darkened the glitter of its social life. Most events went on as planned – dinners, dances and parties – but they were subdued affairs.
Porters at the city’s hotels, where many of the players were regular visitors, were mourning “old friends” and in the restaurants and dance halls the players used to frequent, staff were still stunned at the loss of the young stars they had got to know so well.
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At the Midland Hotel a two-minute silence was observed before the start of the annual dinner dance of Bramall Park Golf Club and waitresses went about their tasks with tears in their eyes. At the Plaza Ballroom, coins and notes came tumbling in as Jimmy Savile, the ballroom manager, stopped the annual staff dance of Walker’s Showcards to raise money for the Lord Mayor’s Disaster Fund. For as long as Jimmy could hold his breath, the dancers showered copper, silver, pound notes and ten-bob notes on to the ballroom floor. Ralph Walker, the company’s managing director, said: “This is our small way of saying thank you for the entertainment they have given us in the past.”
It was only 13 years on from the Second World War and feelings towards Germany were still running strong. For a century, Germans had been the enemy and it was still hard to see them as the good guys
My dad had that night’s Evening News on his lap. He had been listening to the reports as they came in on the radio. Underneath the picture of Duncan Edwards at the top of the page he had written “Better” in red biro; under Johnny Berry’s picture he had written “Unchanged”.
We looked again at the picture showing Matt Busby in an oxygen tent with the German nurse by his side. My dad had read Busby’s biography – it was one of my Christmas presents the previous year – and he remarked how strange it was that when Matt was 6 a German sniper’s bullet had killed his father on the Somme. Now here he was in this German hospital and the wheel had come full circle: the Germans were fighting night and day to save his life.
On Saturday, February 8, United were meant to play Wolverhampton Wanderers in a match that looked likely to have a huge effect on the title race. Instead, Old Trafford was empty while the sport paid homage to the dead
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When they were not affected by the weather, the matches were going on all over the country and on that afternoon football stood in silent tribute to United on the blackest day in the history of British football. All over the country, Football League and amateur clubs alike, and all over Europe, too, the flowers of English football were remembered and honoured.
It was just the way Manchester United would have wanted to be mourned. Abide With Me was sung at many British grounds, then at 3pm precisely, wherever the weather allowed football to be played, a hush settled over the packed terraces. For two minutes, tens of thousands of heads were bared and bowed. All was still and silent. Then the referees’ whistles blew and the games commenced – everywhere except at Old Trafford, where the biggest game of the day, the one that was going to have a big say in whether the league championship trophy was going to stay in Manchester or move to the Midlands, should have been in progress.
Instead, the wind blew across the empty Stretford End and through the deserted main stand, while outside stood small groups of supporters, not sure where it was appropriate to be but drawn to the ground to make a tangible expression of their grief. Young and old stood with tears streaming down their faces.
Grown men were in tears as they mourned a loss they felt would never be replaced. Many were workers on their way home from their Saturday-morning shifts in the factories of Trafford Park. United were part of their lives and match-day routine never varied: work on Saturday morning, a couple of pints with your mates at the pub, then straight to the match. They did not want that routine to change; they did not want to believe that everything had changed.
As the initial shock subsided, the bodies were brought back to Manchester. Crowds lined the streets to pay their respects
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The bodies were due to arrive at Ringway at 8.25pm and to head off for Old Trafford in a procession of hearses at about 9.20pm. My dad and I left home at about 8 to get the bus to the bottom of Princess Parkway, where it met Altrincham Road, just by the Royal Thorn pub. There we waited in the rain. The crowd lining the route grew to three deep and all stood in silence.
The flight from Munich was delayed and we stood for a long time at the bottom of Princess Parkway on that freezing night. It was about 10 o’clock when a murmur went through the crowd as the low drone of an aircraft was heard in the distance. “That’s them. That’s their plane coming in.”
By this time more than 200,000 mourners were lining the streets all the way from Ringway airport to Old Trafford. About an hour after we had heard the heavy drone of the plane’s engines, another murmur went through the crowd as another sound was picked up. It was the distant roar of motorcycle engines cutting through the silent night air. We peered over the roundabout and then the headlights came into view, approaching slowly through the rain. As they drove slowly past, everything looked strangely anonymous. Where was Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor? Which of the coffins was Eddie Colman’s, Mark Jones’s or Geoff Bent’s?
Many of the people around us were in tears; some were kneeling down in the mud, heads bowed in silent prayer. We watched as the cortège disappeared into the distance, towards the Wythenshawe Road roundabout. That was all that was left of United, our football heroes who had been set to conquer the world. Along the entire route, the crowd stood silent and bareheaded in the driving rain. They were the men, women and children of the Old Trafford terraces; many more of them had never been to a match, they just felt that they should be there.
Not everyone joined the mood of mourning, as a group of factory workers found out
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The last of the funerals was held that Friday. As Eddie Colman’s coffin was carried into St Clement’s, Ordsall, a woman handed in a wreath inscribed “From the immigrants of Yugoslavia”. She said they used to support Red Star Belgrade, but since coming to Manchester ten years earlier had followed United.
Colman was a local lad and many people knew him. They took time off work to attend his funeral and most local bosses either closed down for a couple of hours or turned a blind eye to the absenteeism. But not so at one local factory. When 27 workers returned to the works of Boxmakers (Manchester) Ltd, they were locked out. Twenty-two women and five men were sacked because they wanted to see Colman off. He lived near the Salford factory and some of the women who left their workplace knew him. They were only away for half an hour, but it was enough to get them their cards.
The works manager, a United supporter for 53 years, said: “We had a collection for wreaths for Bent and Colman and the works flag has been flying at half-mast ever since the disaster. We have the greatest sympathy for them, but if industry allowed everyone to walk out just to watch a funeral, the wheels would just stop.”
Manchester’s Finest, by David Hall, is published by Bantam Press, rrp £16.99. Copies can be ordered for £15.29 with free delivery from The Times BooksFirst, on 0870 160 8080