1960s and North Staffs

The mood at the beginning of the decade was cautiously optimistic. A Sentinel editorial ran;

“The Nation depends on food we import and the goods we export. Six years of a Socialist Government produced the welfare state and nearly brought us to our knees. But we can look to the future with a measure of confidence, which would have been considered imprudent at any other age in our history”.

The “Beat generation” caused some concern. Local Churchmen worried that religion held no interest. One such young man might be Stephen Seadon of Bentilee aged 14 who went missing was later discovered working as a fairground attendant at Rhyl with “Mother 1960” tattooed on his arms.

There was a problem recruiting GPs to the area-an issue highlighted by City Coroner Hails was the high number of industrial related dust deaths.

A wallaby which had escaped from the Roaches was caught in Penfleet Ave Meir.

In August the National Waterway Conference was held in Stoke. As a 5-year-old one of the first things I can recall was the brightly decorated barges.


1961

 Education radically changed in City Schools. Blurton and Willfield schools were set to become the first comprehensives. The Chairman of the City Councils Education Committee Bob Cant said “ One cannot bind any future committee for all time but as far as the future is concerned we do not propose to change these timetables.


In Newcastle the jobless figures continued to fall and labour shortages existed in the mining and building industry. Full employment was a characteristic of the period.

The major decision made by the City Council in April 1961 was the Longton development reputed to cost £500,000. There was some controversy. Mr Cornes a local businessmen believed that the Council had acted suspiciously. He felt that they’d rejected a stronger business application and forced through a dubious one. Leader of the Council Albert Bennett refuted these claims arguing that Longton had an excellent deal.

A new Medical Centre was planned for Hartshill.

1962

Lewis’s new Store opened in Hanley but the iconic statue  “Man of Fire” was erected the following year. There was a concerted effort throughout this time to make Hanley the regional shopping centre.

Housing remained problematic. Tunstall couple Mr and Mrs Cox of Pittshill were eager to swap their purchased house in which they lived with their 3 small children for a council house in Fegg Hayes.

Racial discrimination sometimes flared up. Crewe landlord Mr Bramhall of the Chetwode Arms barred coloured people. Fortunately the towns people backed a campaign by West Indian born Ephraim Brown to reverse the ban.

October 9th 1962 was a prestigious day as the Victoria Theatre opened in an old cinema in Hartshill. The first play was “The birds and the well wisher” by William Norfolk. The company was helped on its way by a £50 cheque from actress Hermione Gingold.

In October Little Richard played to enthusiastic crowds at Trentham Gardens.

The month was nearly the last for humanity as the Soviet Union and the United States almost went to war over the siting of soviet missiles on Cuba. President Kennedy issued a series of ultimatums to Soviet President Kruschev. October the 24th was the peak of the crisis. The Soviets relented and the possibility of a nuclear war passed.

AE Glaze of Burslem used the Sentinel Letters page to state that  “ October 24th was the blackest day in the annals of the human race, and by an unimaginable divine miracle a nuclear holocaust was avoided. Certainly the narrowest of squeaks closely avoided. Let us pray”

On a lighter note Mrs Shenton’s budgie went missing in late September from its Blurton home. Mrs Shenton was originally from Athens and the bird spoke Greek, a favourite phrase being” It always rains in England”.

1963

The winter of 1962 –3 was the second worst of the 20th century. Heavy snowfalls in January ensured hardship for many people in the area. Tean suffered black outs, Bradnop farmer Mr Chadwick of Birch Lea Farm assisted 25 travellers caught in a heavy snow storm on the Ashbourne Rd. Trentham Lake was iced over and locals enjoyed the floodlit skating. The canals were ice bound and children fed the swans at Whieldon Rd- I was one of them.

Saturday January 26th 1963 was an ordinary day as far the Sentinel was concerned. The Old Nortonians held their AGM, Biddulph Allotment Growers held a social event and the annual dinner dance of the Assistant Colliery Managers was held at the North Stafford Hotel. However a few yards away The Beatles were playing the in the area for the first time. It went unnoticed.

Backstage at the King's Hall after the gig Lennon and McCartney began writing Misery, which would subsequently appear on The Beatles' debut Please Please Me.

The Rolling Stones also played in North Staffs and appeared at Leek Town Hall on Christmas Eve.

It was a good year for Stoke City who won promotion to the First Division propelled by the 48-year-old maestro Stanley Matthews.

Politicians believed that Britain had to keep ahead of competitors with technology. In June 1963 Sir John Cockcroft the creator of the hovercraft opened a science wing at North Staffs College of Technology in Shelton.

On 22nd November 1963 the news of President Kennedy’s assassination reached the UK. The murder and the televised shooting of Lee Havey Oswald the following Sunday shocked the British public.

A sensational local murder occurred in 1963 when a well known operatic singer beat to death the wife of her lover. The body of Mary Walton was dumped in the back of her car at Mow Cop. However the murder had been committed at the Rudyard home of Gwen Massey- a strikingly attractive 34-year-old brunette. Massey met Frank Walton a well-known singer at a concert in Congleton and this liaison was to have fatal consequences. Mary Walton and Gwen Massey met at the Plough in Endon and later drove to Massey’s.



1964

Port Vale’s attendance record was shattered by the 40,000 plus crowd that watched the FA Cup replay in late January 1964 against Liverpool. The Merseysiders won a pulsating match.

A period came to an end on 4th March when the Loop line carried its last passenger. The railway was a splendid manifestation of Victorian engineering. Men who had worked for the railway for years were interviewed. Harry Cooper of Porthill who had worked at local stations since 1911 recalled Mr Cratchley at Tunstall Railway station with his tailcoat and his fresh red carnation.

 The M6 reached North Staffordshire. The link was opened in May.

It was a glorious period for club cricket in North Staffs. The West Indian stars Gary Sobers and Wes Hall played for Norton.

This year was an Election year when a resurgent Labour party led by Harold Wilson narrowly beat a Tory Government beset by scandal. The election was fought in a spirited fashion. Keele University students heckled Tory Home Secretary Henry Brooke. Local politicians made promises. Labour candidate in Stoke South Ellis Smith campaigned for Ford to open a factory locally. As a 9 year old I did my bit for Labour’s cause by delivering leaflets for Barnett Stross in Old Mill St, Stoke.

1965

The Torch opened in Tunstall. A reviewer drooled that the young people “ in gay clusters admired the polished golden parquetry of the dance floor which was soon to feel their leather”.

April and a testimonial game for Stanley Matthews. I went to the game and recall Matthews being carried off by enthusiastic colleagues to the music of the Dagenham Girl Pipers.
Newcastle born Jackie Trent had a Number 1 hit with “Where are you now?” in May.


There was an unusual event in July when the antics of Leek MP Harold Davies was the subject of a question at a US Presidential Press Conference. The President was Lyndon Johnson, and the extraordinary incident was a secret peace mission to war torn North Vietnam undertaken by Davies, an expert on the politics of the area at the behest of Harold Wilson.

It was a busy period for shopping centres. The Bennett Precinct in Longton, a controversial development was opened. The Sentinel believed that this visionary project was a “challenge to the long hampered trading instincts of a town that refused to be vanquished”

Education was felt to be vital but one young Shelton’s resident enthusiastic study backfired literally. Safebreaker Eric Dwyne got 8 years following an aborted raid on Twyford’s Factory. According to the police he learned to make explosives from books borrowed from local libraries.

1966

Not everyone felt optimistic about the Potteries. Richard Crossman, Housing Minister in the re-elected Labour Government wrote” if we spent billions on this ghastly collection of slag heaps, pools of water, old potteries, deserted coal mines there would be nothing to show for the money”

It was also the year that Clayton schoolgirl appeared on ITV’s Opportunity Knocks compered by Hughie Green. The 14-year-old singer, a pupil of Seabridge School had already tasted fame by coming 3rd in Keele University Rag Queen competition. She was introduced on the show by Bill Morris of the Place. She hoped to emulate Julie Andrews.

If 1966 is known for one thing it is England’s World Cup triumph. However what is apparent is how low key the event is reported in the local media. The sports pages of the Sentinel had greater coverage of the Test series against the West Indies than they did of the progress of the national football team. One football related event that did make the front page was Sir Stanley Matthews’s narrow escape. Sir Stan, knighted the previous year, crashed into a lorry at Brown Edge. Fellow passenger, former Stoke City player Jackie Mudie had to crawl through the rear window of the car. Sir Stan watched the final from a hospital bed at the NSRI.

 Holidaymakers paused their outward journeys to watch the game as the AA reported light traffic.  The Sentinel showed a group of pensioners about to catch a coach to the North Wales coast at the fully operational new Hanley Bus Station.

In Smallthorne the pub “La Verdo Stelo” (Esperanto for Green Star) was opened. A strong advocate for the language Alderman Horace Barks was present. In the pub helpful Esperanto phrases were available including “ I’ll have a pint of Bass”.

1967

An important event of the year was the electrification of the main line railway completed in March. A new route was blasted through the rock for the Harecastle Tunnel. Over 18,000 lbs. of gelignite was used in the process. A new signal box was built and £41,000 spent on refurbishment.

On 2nd April the Prime Minster Harold Wilson gave an address to party loyalists at the Victoria Hall. I was present and cannot recall anything about the speech. I do recall the cigarette smoke and the hecklers carrying placards against the Vietnam War. Wilson spoke about the slums of the city “ What is the answer to our Coronation St houses that lack basic amenities”?

A bizarre event was witnessed in Bentilee in early September. Several saw an orange disc with bright red glowing dome as it flew low overhead and apparently landed in a nearby field. No sound was heard, but one witness felt "wind" as the UFO passed overhead. A fiery glow was seen in a field- the apparent landing site. Police were called, but the light disappeared. Witnesses saw a luminous object rise from the field, hover, and then disappear "in a fraction of a second.”

A grim event hit many farmers in North Staffordshire in November. The foot and mouth outbreak badly impacted on the area. Farms in the Staffordshire Moorlands were particularly affected and 91 cows were killed at Bagnall.

1968

Radio Stoke, one of the first BBC local radio stations, began in early March. The opening jingle was the clinking of a cup and plate. Most of the staff including John Abberley were locally born. The BBC were rather wary of the first community radio stations and they refused to underwrite it. The City Council paid the running costs of the station for its first two years. Stoke Council felt it was an excellent medium to promote the City. The station broadcast for 4 hours only.

Immigration was a major issue with the arrival in the country of Asians who were thrown out of Kenya. The influx of citizens from the New Commonwealth caused concern expressed in the Letter Pages.
“Immigration should not be curbed but stopped altogether”, wrote Worried of Harpfields.

New estates flourished in the late 60s with private housing being built in many areas. In Stoke large estates were built in Trentham and elsewhere and in the Moorlands Wimpey houses were built in Tean and the large Westwood development completed in Leek. In Cheddleton a buyer could get a 95% mortgage and a 3-bedded new house could be had for £3000.

The effect of the breathalyser introduced at the end of 1967 had an instantaneous impact on road accidents. They fell by 20%.

The late 60s were a time for people who did not want to end up in little boxes. The alternative culture even spread to North Staffordshire. In the summer the Leek Post and Times carried a story of three people moving through the area who were keen to live a more natural life free from the stresses of modern technology. Robert Lewis from Suffolk 22, Vashti Bunyan 23, from London and To Copnall 20, lived in a horse drawn bread van that had been painted green and yellow. They and their horse Bess and a collie dog lived for a time in the Combe Valley. Their ultimate aim was to settle in the Highlands. One of the company, Vashti was a musician who since that year has achieved cult status and is still producing acclaimed records.

The new permissiveness did not please everyone. Leek Council took against a film version of the James Joyce novel “Ulysses”. Councillors condemned it and one Cllr Fisher complained “ If I used the words from Ulysses and shouted them in Derby St. I would be arrested and rightly so”. A sprightly correspondence developed in the letter pages of the paper although perhaps the most insightful comment came from Enid Clews of Onecote who thought that the film was “ boring and a waste of 2/6”.

1969

 Stoke on Trent had the greatest area of derelict land in the country and the plans to redress this problem led to highly imaginatively schemes. Ministers were taken on a tour of the proposed developments at Hanley Forest Park, Westport Lake, Berryhill and Fenton.

Moonscape perhaps adequately describes the industrial scenery of urban North Staffordshire. The real thing dominated the world media in July when Neil Armstong set foot on the lunar surface. No one who witnessed this could fail to appreciate the significance of this epoch making event.

The need for a trained young work force was one of the recurring themes of the decade. Northern College in Burslem was opened by 1967 to be followed 2 years later by an expanded Elms College at Shelton . The college had all the modern conveniences and a catering and hairdressing salon gave students practical experience. The opportunity to be trained and earning a living was an attractive proposition for youngsters. The provision of post 16 education was completed with the opening by Prime Minster Harold Wilson of the Sixth Form College in Fenton the following year.

It was not all progress. On July 17th 1969, in the same week of the Moon landing, more than 100 Mods and Rockers clashed in Cobridge and Burslem. Surprisingly no one was hurt. The Mods assembled by ABC Cinebowl in Hanley. Meanwhile the Rockers were outside a café in Burslem. The Rockers marched down Waterloo Rd. The police had a difficult time keeping the gangs apart. The police who at one point threatened to be overwhelmed drew truncheons. At some point dogs were called in. The Mods with mini skirted girls in tow moved to Vale Place where the police stopped them. Magistrates who met the following day took a dim view and heavy fines were administered on 6 young men from Blurton, Abbey Hulton and Bentilee.

The abiding concern for the Sentinel in the closing months of the decade was the tension between capital and labour. I witnessed this myself. In the summer of 1969 the Post Office Engineering Union went on strike. It was the first time the union had taken industrial action- the consequence of a pay dispute. The strike was unanimous in the Potteries and all 700 staff were out. The telephone service was 99% unionised and the union organiser was my father who spent part of the holiday co-ordinating the action. The conflict between authority and the unions was to take centre stage in the coming decade.

1930s- the Gathering Storm

In 1934 the Bradford born writer and play write JB Priestley came to Stoke as he journeyed around researching a book that described Britain in the 1930s. He had seen the new industries that were opening up in the South of England and he was obviously aware of the huge textile mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire and now he was in the Potteries to document the area for posterity. He was not impressed by the physical geography of the area. The region was an unrelentingly grim one, an ugly work a day place. He could not find a City Centre only a collection of small towns full of mean houses in equally mean streets. What intrigued Priestley used to the gaunt vastness of the factories of the West Riding was the littleness of the factories and the major public buildings. It reminded him of Lilliput. The smoke belching out of the bottle kilns were in his opinion a monstrous intrusion on the landscape.

The Potteries were for him as a man himself from the provinces was that he found it insular, self-contained and within the newly created City Of Stoke on Trent there was little to raise the spirits.

However he was fascinated by the pottery industry as he saw as still essentially a craft industry with a contented workforce. It was still dominated by small family run companies. But one point that the Yorkshire man made was that a place like Stoke was “ no place to be idle in” “For a potter must either be in work or in misery”

Priestley ended his piece by hoping that “one day Stoke on Trent would emerge a real city, spacious and gay, high and white”

 Priestley was not the only well-known writer in the area in the 1930s. It was something of a vogue for writers to travel into the depressed industrial areas to judge for themselves the misery and poverty. In 1936 George Orwell the public school educated scion of colonial public servants came through North Staffordshire on his way to Lancashire. He had been commissioned to write a piece of extended reportage on the social conditions in the north of England. The research would eventually produce “The Road to Wigan Pier”. Orwell being an observant writer picked up material that he hoped to use latter in the book as he progressed northwards. He passed through the area on foot in February 1936. It was bitterly cold as he came through Hanley and Burslem. He noted in his journal that the streets were full of poorly dressed and desolate looking people. The shops looked meagre and were scantily provisioned.

 Orwell stayed a night at the Youth Hostel beside Rudyard Lake. The lake was frozen over and ice had formed into blocks which gave off a clanking sound as they collided into one another. Cigarette packets bobbed up and down amongst the ice floes and Orwell felt it was one of the most depressing images he had ever witnessed. The Youth Hostel was freezing and lit only by candles. It was so cold that he thawed his hands over a fire in the morning to get warm. He walked on towards Macclesfield arriving in Manchester penniless by the evening. He pawned his scarf and spent the night in a doss house before meeting people who put him in contact with people from Wigan.

Both men were drawn to Stoke as even then it was considered an area that had the history of being dominated by one industry and was finding it difficult in adapting to the new economic conditions of the time.

In October 1929, the collapse of the Stock Market in New York heralded the Great Depression. The ensuing American economic recession shook the world: World trade contracted prices fell and governments faced financial crisis as the supply of credit dried up. Many countries adopted an emergency response to the crisis by erecting trade barriers which worsened the crisis by further hindering global trade.

The effects on the industrial areas of Britain were immediate and devastating, as demand for British products collapsed. By the end of 1930, unemployment had more than doubled from 1 million to 2.5 million and exports had fallen in value by 50%. Government revenues contracted as national income fell while the cost of assisting the jobless rose. The industrial areas were hardest hit, along with the mining districts. London and the south-east of England were hurt least. The political centre of the country was therefore most remote from the impact of the recession..

In Stoke in the worst year of the recession 1932 30% of those employed in the pottery industry were unemployed. The situation did improve during the decade and by 1936 the proportion did fall by to 17%. The area remained depressed and unemployment remained an intractable problem. Lowering tariffs and imports from other parts of the world continued to put the Pottery industry under the greatest of pressure. The courage and stoicism of the Potters suffering from the Coalition Governments indifference was noted by the Daily News in August 1932

And never has the true kindness been manifested than today, sharply silhouetted as it is against the background of industrial gloom

Frankly the Potters admit that the land flowing with protectionist milk and honey is not theres. Long as it been promised them. Their fathers had waited in vain to posses it and found it a barren desert. Indeed under the Government some of the oasis that was already there’s has been despoiled by the enemy.
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Under such circumstances it was understandable that people might look to the political extremes and the 30s offered a number of choices to those looking at the edges of politics.. Oswald Mosley believed himself the man for the moment. The Leader of the British Union of  which were  also known as the Blackshirts from their clothing believed his time had arrived.

Mosley knew North Staffordshire well. He spent some of his child hood at Rolleston Hall near Uttoxeter. A First World War hero much was expected of Mosley whose dashing good looks and political connections marked him out as potential Prime Ministerial material. He was a man in a hurry and despised the existing political structure having been a Conservative MP and then joining Labour where he became a Birmingham MP entering the cabinet of the Labour Government in 1929. He was desperate to do something about unemployment and published the Mosley memorandum in 1930, which advocated public works and increased borrowing to finance the programme. The Labour Party leadership rejected it and Mosley resigned the Labour Party in disgust. By the early 1930s he was looking across to Italy and the fascist state of Mussolini as inspiration to start a new political party- the British Union of Fascists to tackle many of the social problems that beset Britain.

Stoke on Trent was one of his power bases. He was assisted in this by his first wife Lady Cynthia Mosley MP for Stoke in the late 1920s and adored by many local people for charm. The City became the location for an early meeting of the British Union of Fascists. An well-advertised meeting was held in the King’s Hall in Stoke in October 1932. On the night of the meeting a packed hall listened intently as Mosley explained the objects of the BUF. In Government he laid before the country a set of ideas to meet an emergency but the established parties would not accept them. These ideas ‘had now been developed into a permanent programme, and a political system and philosophy of life which he believed could save the future of this country’. Mosley was always a mesmerising speaker
The party did well and recruited many members in the early part of the decade. The first BUF branch headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent was at 84 Normacot Road, Longton, opened in October 1933. A second office in Stoke at 14 Glebe Rd followed.
There was little opposition to the BUF in Stoke in this early period. There was a very small Communist Party in the City were vociferously opposed to Mosley but the main political parties choose to ignore the BUF.
There were about 500 individual members and additional 500 supporters. It was successful at recruiting school children who were organised into a youth wing.
On the 25th March 1934 the BUF held two very successful public meetings in the Potteries. Mosley spoke at an evening meeting at the Kings Hall and earlier the Director of Research for the BUF William Joyce, later to be known as the executed traitor Lord Haw Haw, spoke at a packed meeting at Longton Town Hall. He was given an unbroken hearing as he explained Fascism. Joyce could be a very witty speaker as a confrontation at a meeting around that time proves. He was heckled by a middle aged woman who shouted “ You bastard” as Joyce rose to speak. His answer “ Not now mother” suggests a quickness of mind. Mosley spoke later that day to a 4,000 strong audience.

   According to the Sentinel journalist covering the event a larger venue would have been filled without difficulty.  Local people flocked to hear the fascist leader. The hall was filled long before the meeting was due to start, there being a large queue waiting early in the evening. Mosley was given an enthusiastic reception. The meeting passed orderly and uninterrupted throughout.
Membership and interest in the movement in the area was broken following the violence at a large public meeting at Olympia in London in June 1934. Nearly 1000 Stoke BUF members and supporters arrived in the capital in 60 buses. Many of them found themselves caught up in the riot in and around the hall as a group of around 4,000 anti fascists laid siege to the venue. One Stoke participant at the rally Albert John Buckley, aged 17 of 64 New Street, Hanley, sustained serious internal injuries when struck across the stomach with a flagpole in the melee.
The local BUF membership suffered a further attack when reports began to circulate that the  centres were hot beds of sexual activity.. A clean up was ordered and a senior member of the Blackshirts as the BUF was commonly known as arrived in Stoke to organise a purge of the local party. AK Chesterton- a relative of GK Chesterton the writer- was alarmed to find that the local centres had degenerated into a drinking club with separate bars labelled Officers and Blackshirts. He closed the clubs.
Mosley however continued to be a draw. On the Saturday evening of 10 November 1935 the fascist leader addressed yet another capacity 4,000 strong audience at the King’s Hall, Stoke. The local press reported that during his speech Mosley told the audience that Jews controlled the City of London which in turn dictated to whichever party was returned to Westminster and used it ruthlessly and relentlessly against Britain’s interest.
Meanwhile growing hostility to the BUF was evident in the streets of Stoke on Trent. A Remembrance Day wreath laying ceremony at the cenotaph in Kingsway was disrupted when local Blackshirts were subject to booing and jostling Incidentally my mother as a child recalls the disturbance as innocent passer-by were in danger of being caught up in the violence.. It was a similar experience when out door meetings held in  Market Sq, Hanley. sometimes required the police to part local fascists and communists..
The last gasp of fascism occurred in April 1938 when a Kings Hall meeting, which Mosley spoke, was violently disrupted by local Communists. Local BUF activists had ascertained before the meeting that any trouble could be contained. The violence inside and outside the hall proved him wrong. Several thousand people turned up to demonstrate against the presence of the leader of the black shirts. The worst incidents of the night, however, occurred after the meeting.  A large number of anti-fascists assembled outside and waited for Mosley to attempt to leave. When he emerged with a body of escorts, in a portion of the crowd broke through a police cordon and rushed the fascists and fighting continued for quite a while before the police succeeded in restoring order. But it was the up turn in the local economy that doomed the BUF in Stoke. At the time of Mosley’s final visit to Stoke-on-Trent as fascist leader in 1938 pottery exports from the start of the year had increased impressively and the need for a radical right solution to economic problems seemed unnecessary.
One boost for the local industry occurred with eagerly awaited Coronation of Edward VIII intended for the spring of 1937. Edward was very much a play boy prince succeeded his respected father George V in January 1936. However by December a constitutional crisis occurred when Edward let it be known that he intended to marry his girlfriend the American divorcee Wallis Simpson . The Government lead by the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the Church of England made it clear that they could not allow the relationship to continue as it would jeopardise Edward’s position as Head of the Church of England. The Church could not recognise Mrs Simpson as Queen as a divorced woman. While the crisis developed one man who was willing to support Edward was Oswald Mosley who was living with his second wife Diana at Wotton Lodge in the Staffordshire Peak District. Mosley had married Diana Mitford at a secret ceremony in Germany in October 1936. Hitler was one of the guests. However his assistance was not required and Edward abdicated to be replaced by his brother who ascended the throne as George VI. Although the institution of the Monarchy shook it quickly resumed its popularity and it was the intentions of the American woman which questioned in that most insightful of arenas the school playground’s of Stoke. My mother recalled children’s song of the time


Who’s that coming down our street?
Its Mrs Simpson and her smelly feet.
She’s been married before
And now she’s knocking on Eddy’s door.
The change  for the Coronation caused consternation in the Pottery industry as the Sentinel opined
Of course mugs and beakers, which are either in the biscuit or glost stage, will be capable of utilisation for King George VI designs but losses must be sustained in respect of the great quantity of lithographic sheets which have been printed already

 Mr Gilbert of Drubbery Lane, Longton in the Letters page had a solution

I suggest that every family in the Potteries and elsewhere should endeavour to buy a Coronation Mug bearing the image of Edward VIII

In this way we can assist the manufactures, wholesalers and shopkeepers to clear their stocks and reduce the burden that has been placed on them.

But the new King and his family had the good will of the people of North Staffordshire and in an editorial in the Sentinel commenting on these tumultuous events remarked

In all we say let there be charity, in all we do let there be unity. Then the Empire will save its soul.

We have a constant vision. The happy family, the beloved little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. We are confident of a happy future.

But already the vision was beginning to darken

A stench in time- a history of smells

A few weeks ago I received a letter from Shirley Williams thanking me for sending her an article I had written on her mother Vera Brittain. In the piece, which appeared in May, I wrote of Vera’s taking her Oxford entrance exam at Leek College one hot day in July 1914. She wrote of the unpleasantness of the occasion the consequence of being cooped up with “odiferious” 16-year-old students. In her letter of reply the Baroness believed that the personal hygiene of teenagers had not changed much in a century. It’s an opinion, which I challenge given the range of deodorants available. But nevertheless this led me to think of the olfactory landscape of North Staffordshire in the past.

One great change is the absence of horses nowadays compared with 100 years ago the by-product of equines would have been very noticeable as would have been the absence of cars and exhaust fumes. People would have smelt of carbolic, especially as soap become more widely available after the 1880s. There was the odour of camphor from mothballs on clothes during the winter. My mother recalls clearly the smell of “Rinso” on washing hanging in the alleyways in the 1930s. Industry would have its own emanations. Smoke hung heavily in the air. Dye works gave off a pungent fragrance. The smell of steam trains to me is wonderfully evocative, other places would give off from less pleasing stenches. A friend recalls the reek coming from a bone mill near to where he lived in Silverdale. Slaughterhouses smelt of blood and the acrid smell of scorched hide, but for my mother an unforgettable aroma was that of roasting meat on the range. My own Proustian recollection is that of hot Brown’s sausage rolls in Stoke market. Of cigarette smoke during a football match combining agreeably with wintergreen. And I do miss the smell of pipe tobacco in public places.

Certain places carry with them unique bouquets. I always think of the pleasing reek of Higson’s brewery- sadly gone- as you walked out of Lime Street Station in Liverpool. When the wind was in the right direction aniseed fragrance from the Uncle Joe’s Mint balls factory pervaded the air of Wigan and catching a train in Worcester was made the more congenial by the close proximity of the Lee and Perrin works.

Working at Shelton Bar Steel Works

It is over 30 years since I had a temporary job working at the steel works at Shelton Bar. I was working for cleaning contractors that was based in Birches Head. The experience was like something from Boys and the Blackstuff and for many of the men employed I guess that it was a last hurrah, as I could not see many of them surviving the mass unemployment of the following decade.

Some of my colleagues sort to avoid work by hiding in the shed, which was close to an old furnace. Sometimes a splash of hot metal would send a shower of sparks on to the roof. Inside the building was a scene of indescribable squalor filled with many months of accumulated debris

A number of people who worked with the contractors had problems and some of them tried to flush their troubles away with drink. One, I was told, drank ten pints a night in a pub in Cobridge He did not say anything and sat slumped in a chair everything morning holding his head. Another rather haunted figure was illiterate and it was said that his wife died because he did not know how to use a phone to summon an ambulance.

One was so detested by the others that they got their revenge by substituting his filling in his sandwich with the contents of a mouldy something found in the back of a sofa in the shed. It reminded me of the line in the "Odd Couple" of it being either old meat or young cheese. There was a rumour that he was the son of a very wealthy businessman who despairing of his congenital idiot of a son had paid him off by buying him a house in Stoke. One of his few friends said that he had called around to see him and had been stunned by the state of decoration. It would seem that he covered the walls of the house with the contents of a wallpaper sampler. The root of the dislike that he provoked was the belief that he had made a pass at one of the men.
Another a young worker with a harelip would earn extra money by running a disco each weekend on a local estate. He would often clash with people and would turn up on a Sunday morning with a fresh cut or bruise gained after a brawl on the dance floor.

I worked outside helping to clear up an oil leak into a nearby brook. I worked in an enclosed culvert in which there were heated pipes. The oil was a foot deep. I filled buckets of the sand and oil mix, which was hauled off in a dumper. It was August and it was hot. I gained some satisfaction when it was all cleared up. I was working with a very cheerful Irishman who had the unnerving habit of tossing the butts of his cigarettes into the fuming oil. He always apologised afterwards. I was filthy and there was nowhere to wash. I would travel back home on the bus to Abbey Hulton looking like tar baby. No one would sit beside me. It took several hours to clear the mess off as it had stained the skin.
　
　
One aspect of my time with the cleaning company was a friendship that has now lasted 30 years. I was reading history at York and as I had a few essays to write decided that I should try to catch up with some reading. I was reading the "Social History of the Third Reich" when I met up with Greg. He assumed that I was a Nazi. It was only over the sausage and chips in the canteen that the misunderstanding was cleared up and I found out that he was going to York that October. We have remained friends since; in fact he reminded me that it has been 30 years this month

The late Robert Freeman

I used to know the father of Robert Freeman the man whose murder was reported in the Sentinel with the result of the trial. Two men were found guilty of his death and are currently awaiting sentence; a third was found guilty of manslaughter. This terrible case is compounded by the killing four years earlier of Robert Freeman’s sister Julie. Both deaths were drug related.

I last saw David Freeman, Robert and Julie’s father nearly 40 years ago. We were both pupils at Carmountside High School on the Abbey Hulton estate in Stoke from 1966-71. We were also members of a group of lads " The Birchfield Mob that included David and his brother Robert, the Reeves brother’s, Eric Robinson, "Danny" Kaye, myself and others whose names whose names now elude me.

We used to be activity that might have led to an ASBO now although in reality in did not stretch further than trespassing, apple scrumping, annoying adults and kicking a football around an oval in Eaveswood Road. Typical laddish things. David and I were in the same class and I tended to hang around with him and the others. David was very good with his hands in metalwork and woodwork. He was industrious a good sportsman and from memory thoughtful and quite considered. He could stick up for himself.

The Freeman family were like many others on the Abbey Hulton estate. Hard working, companionable, family centred. This was the Abbey Hulton that I knew in the years before DC- Drugs came.

I can probably date when hard drugs made its first appearance on the streets of Abbey Hulton. I was working on the Abbey as an Education Welfare Officer in late 1981. The first heroin -related death was of a young man named Harvey who was found dead in a shed. He probably died of hypothermia as temperatures that winter were frequently below zero.

I think heroin appearing on the streets and the massive growth of unemployment during 1980-1 is no coincidence. You destroy a set pattern of how people are expected to lead their lives on a council estate like Abbey Hulton or Chell Heath or Bentilee or anywhere else and something came to occupy that vacuum. We have been playing the price ever since.


The irony is that areas like Abbey Hulton were quite socially conservative areas and my peers at High School were very disdainful of the drug culture in the early 70s. I bought a copy of a Stones album into the 5th year common room once and some made dismissive comments about Mick Jagger's cannabis habits.

All that began to change scarcely a decade later and drugs have wrecked havoc destroying lives and undermining communities ever since.

I witnessed the desolation that that involvement in drugs can cause on Wednesday 6th September 2000.

I remember the date very well. I was working in Tameside for the mental health organisation Mind and in the late morning a youth called at the office to say that there was something wrong with his friend who lived opposite the offices in Ashton
.
Another worker and I went over the road and entered a very run down flat. On the stairs there was rubble and in a first floor room we found his friend slumped on a settee.


The TV was on and a can of beer on a small table beside him. The man was dead, very grey and purple in the face. A small syringe was sticking in the back of his right hand.


On the walls of the decaying room were an England Football scarf, a poster of the film "Trainspotting" and pictures of the dead man whose name was Terry McGuire and a small child, his daughter.


McGuire was in his late 30s. Evidently McGuire who had been out of Strangeways Prison a few months. He had died from a toxic batch of heroin that had killed many users in the North West that autumn.
It seems that the dealers mix the heroin with all sorts of rubbish including brick dust.

Currently we have a situation where it is the dealer who chooses price, purity, cutting agents as well as business location and operating hours. And these dealers certainly are not asking minors for ID, nor are they encouraging their customers to moderate or abstain from drug use.

Sooner or later national politician will have to grasp the nettle of decriminalisation and legalising drugs. I'm of the opinion like former Labour minister Bob Ainsworth drug addiction is a public health issue rather than a criminal one. Mr Ainsworth deserves credit for starting that debate. Because unless we realise that we need a new strategy to tackle drugs fundamentally decent families like the Freeman’s will continually be burying their children