Members Keith Corns has written ‘Liverpool Speedway 1928 – 1960’
Price: £19.95 plus p. & p. Email: speedwaypmb@outlook.com to order.
The book, which has over 400 pages and includes more than 70 photographs, is also available from:
London League Publications (www.llpshop.co.uk/), AbeBooks (www.abebooks.co.uk), Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk)
Dirt-track/speedway racing was introduced to Britain early in 1928 and the bikes roared into
Liverpool’s Stanley Stadium in August of that year. Sadly, speedway was staged at the Prescot Road
track for only two brief periods in the pre-war era. League racing returned to Liverpool in 1949, at
the tail-end of a post-war boom for the sport. Again, the team’s existence was relatively short,
lasting until mid-1953. A few non-league events were staged in 1957 and unlicenced racing shared
the bill with businessman Mike Parker’s speedcars in 1959.
As speedway recovered from the 1950s doldrums, the ‘pirate’ meetings led to a Liverpool team
being founder members of a newly established Provincial League in 1960. Exciting times lay ahead,
with a significant growth in the number of tracks operating in Britain during the following two
decades. The next boom period passed Liverpool by, however, as the team competed in just one
season of league racing before the stadium gates were closed to speedway yet again. The bikes were
never to return. This book looks at the efforts to establish the sport on Merseyside and examines the
reasons why seven attempts were short-lived, five at Liverpool’s Stanley Stadium, as well as single
attempts at Seaforth to the north of the city and directly across the Mersey estuary in New Brighton
on The Wirral.
