FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (1st - 7th FEBRUARY 1971)
This week's stories include the Plaza stag nights, the repercussions of the postal strike, a revealing book is published on the 7-week Pilkington strike, success for a severely disabled Rainford man at Crufts, the Rank Xerox workshops in Haydock and a puppet show at the Theatre Royal.
This was week 3 of Britain's first national postal strike, which was causing considerable inconvenience to St Helens businesses and residents. The 7-week strike led by Tom Jackson, general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, did not just affect letter deliveries but many telephone, telegram and post office counter services. In St Helens volunteer strikers had been providing cover for emergency service telephone operators.
However the Liverpool Echo reported that supervisors and management staff had been forced to take over the 999 lines as the volunteers had stopped manning them. The paper added: "Firms and other telephone subscribers in the Prescot area have had increasing difficulty since Monday in getting through to numbers in St. Helens because of sheer weight of traffic". Many small businesses were concerned about their cash flow, as the postal strike meant their customers could not mail in cheques.
However it's "an ill wind" as they say and the newspapers benefitted by many businesses spending much advertising cash spelling out their alternative arrangements to using the post. Grattans catalogue firm directed their customers to take their orders to one of six St Helens' centres. These varied from Prestts pram shop in Duke Street to Mrs Whittle's house in Haresfinch Road.
"Don't Miss That Littlewoods Fortune", said the pools firm as they provided a phone number to ring in St Helens, if you didn't know who your nearest coupon collector was. Curiously the Liverpool Head Postmaster also had to take out a large advert in the Echo to explain how postal staff on strike could collect any back pay that was owed to them. I expect he would normally have sent the notice out by post – but all the postmen were on strike!
Many St Helens men worked at Ford's giant car plant at Halewood. They were also out this week, demanding a pay rise as industrial action escalated throughout the country. Speaking in Manchester Vic Feather predicted a wave of strikes over the next few months. The general secretary of the TUC felt that by the end of April there would be more days lost through walk-outs than in the whole of 1970. Then a record 11 million days had been lost – quite of a number of them courtesy of the 7-week Pilkington glass strike in St Helens.
A new book on the dispute by two Liverpool University lecturers was published this week – which created much press interest. The strike leaders had given Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts much behind the scenes access and the Daily Mirror was intrigued by some of the strikers declaring that they found the strike "liberating." One striker told the authors: "I enjoyed it [the strike] without a doubt. I enjoyed the freedom it gave me to express myself, which was something entirely new to me after working in factories."
With newspapers in the Midlands having followed the strike very carefully through the knock on effect on the car industry, the Birmingham Daily Post published a large piece on the book. They wrote that the its authors had conducted a survey among 187 strikers and only about 20% said they had welcomed the strike with many claiming to have been drawn into it reluctantly. The newspaper said the book saw the cause as a "revolt of semi-skilled and unskilled workers against the dull repetitiveness of their work".
The Daily Mirror had reported a fortnight ago that Gerry Caughey – the joint leader of the strike – was desperately trying to get his job back. The 36-year-old former Triplex worker was applying for re-admission to the General and Municipal Workers Union (NUGMW), which, as the Mirror put it, was the union "on which he declared war". Caughey and other sacked Pilks workers believed the only way they would ever work again in St Helens was to re-join their old union, and persuade its leaders to get them their jobs back.
Councillor John Potter had been another leading light on the strike committee and on February 2nd the Guardian reported his expulsion from the Labour party for not being a member of an appropriate trade union. A furious Potter told the Guardian: "The Labour party are having a witch-hunt on me. I tried to get back into the NUGMW. Negotiations have been going on since December, but we have heard nothing."
When I first started writing these articles three years ago, the Plaza Club had a solitary "exotic dancer" appearing at their Thursday evening stag nights. This grew to four and later expanded, first to eight and then to ten young women supposedly dancing "exotically". An advert in the Echo on the 4th showed that twelve strippers were now on stage at the Duke Street venue, plus "top cabaret".
Owner Alf Wood was now employing security staff after last September's petition that women in nearby Oxford Street had signed. The St Helens Reporter wrote that the ladies had complained about a "trail of havoc left by stag-night revellers", with resident Lily Traverse telling the paper: "Thursday is the worst night when it is men only night at the club. The noise in the early hours of the morning is terrible. They are up to all sorts of tricks. I have seen them jumping on top of cars. It is really terrifying some nights".
Also advertising in the Echo was Rank Xerox who had workshops and a depot in Haydock on the Boston Trading Estate in Penny Lane. These had opened in 1966 primarily to distribute and service their revolutionary Xerox 813 photocopier – the first desktop plain-paper copier (assuming that you had a pretty big desk!). These were expensive beasts and leased to firms on 30-day contracts rather than being sold. As more business was being done, so more technicians were needed to service the machines when the copiers went wrong – as they inevitably did, with paper jams and the like.
Hence the large Echo recruitment advert, which was headlined "Right Men It's A Walk-In" – a clever play on strikes and walk-outs. Alongside a silhouette of a group of workers, those interested in working for the company were invited to attend "walk-in" job interviews over a period of two days with no appointments needed. I think very few people are actually carried in for job interviews! So "drop-in interviews" might have been a better term but wouldn't fit with the theme of the ad.
Roy Free of Junction Road in Rainford had served as an RAF parachute instructor but around 1960 had been severely disabled in an accident. So he took up dog breeding as a hobby and on the 5th won first prize for the best novice dog at the Crufts Dog Show at Olympia. Five months earlier Roy had been offered £1,500 for his smooth-haired dachshund called Dunroamin Pedlers Pioneer. That's around £25,000 in today’s money but he told the Echo: "He'll never be sold".
At the Theatre Royal in St Helens during this week, another puppet performance of 'Snow White and the Seven Musical Dwarfs' was given. When Ray and Joan da Silva's company first came to St Helens in 1968, their two-hour programme was described as "Britain's first full-size puppet spectacular". Their 20-foot high puppet stage was claimed to be the largest in the country and allowed for simultaneous operation of marionettes from above and glove and rod-type puppets from below.
And finally this short item with the headline "Postmark!" caught my eye in the Echo this week: "Because of the postal strike, a Merseyside insurance representative decided to deliver policy renewal notices himself. At one house he tangled with the postman's traditional hazard – a dog, and was nipped on the leg. Imagine his feelings when he discovered that the dog belonged to – a postman on strike!"
Next week's stories will include the Lennon's takings robbery outside a Prescot bank, the punch card operators at Pilks, the Silhouette Slimming Club, long-gone St Helens' newsagents and Redgate Boys Band broadcast on Radio 2 with the St. Edmund Campion Choir.
This was week 3 of Britain's first national postal strike, which was causing considerable inconvenience to St Helens businesses and residents. The 7-week strike led by Tom Jackson, general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, did not just affect letter deliveries but many telephone, telegram and post office counter services. In St Helens volunteer strikers had been providing cover for emergency service telephone operators.
However the Liverpool Echo reported that supervisors and management staff had been forced to take over the 999 lines as the volunteers had stopped manning them. The paper added: "Firms and other telephone subscribers in the Prescot area have had increasing difficulty since Monday in getting through to numbers in St. Helens because of sheer weight of traffic". Many small businesses were concerned about their cash flow, as the postal strike meant their customers could not mail in cheques.
However it's "an ill wind" as they say and the newspapers benefitted by many businesses spending much advertising cash spelling out their alternative arrangements to using the post. Grattans catalogue firm directed their customers to take their orders to one of six St Helens' centres. These varied from Prestts pram shop in Duke Street to Mrs Whittle's house in Haresfinch Road.
"Don't Miss That Littlewoods Fortune", said the pools firm as they provided a phone number to ring in St Helens, if you didn't know who your nearest coupon collector was. Curiously the Liverpool Head Postmaster also had to take out a large advert in the Echo to explain how postal staff on strike could collect any back pay that was owed to them. I expect he would normally have sent the notice out by post – but all the postmen were on strike!
Many St Helens men worked at Ford's giant car plant at Halewood. They were also out this week, demanding a pay rise as industrial action escalated throughout the country. Speaking in Manchester Vic Feather predicted a wave of strikes over the next few months. The general secretary of the TUC felt that by the end of April there would be more days lost through walk-outs than in the whole of 1970. Then a record 11 million days had been lost – quite of a number of them courtesy of the 7-week Pilkington glass strike in St Helens.
A new book on the dispute by two Liverpool University lecturers was published this week – which created much press interest. The strike leaders had given Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts much behind the scenes access and the Daily Mirror was intrigued by some of the strikers declaring that they found the strike "liberating." One striker told the authors: "I enjoyed it [the strike] without a doubt. I enjoyed the freedom it gave me to express myself, which was something entirely new to me after working in factories."
With newspapers in the Midlands having followed the strike very carefully through the knock on effect on the car industry, the Birmingham Daily Post published a large piece on the book. They wrote that the its authors had conducted a survey among 187 strikers and only about 20% said they had welcomed the strike with many claiming to have been drawn into it reluctantly. The newspaper said the book saw the cause as a "revolt of semi-skilled and unskilled workers against the dull repetitiveness of their work".
The Daily Mirror had reported a fortnight ago that Gerry Caughey – the joint leader of the strike – was desperately trying to get his job back. The 36-year-old former Triplex worker was applying for re-admission to the General and Municipal Workers Union (NUGMW), which, as the Mirror put it, was the union "on which he declared war". Caughey and other sacked Pilks workers believed the only way they would ever work again in St Helens was to re-join their old union, and persuade its leaders to get them their jobs back.
Councillor John Potter had been another leading light on the strike committee and on February 2nd the Guardian reported his expulsion from the Labour party for not being a member of an appropriate trade union. A furious Potter told the Guardian: "The Labour party are having a witch-hunt on me. I tried to get back into the NUGMW. Negotiations have been going on since December, but we have heard nothing."
Owner Alf Wood was now employing security staff after last September's petition that women in nearby Oxford Street had signed. The St Helens Reporter wrote that the ladies had complained about a "trail of havoc left by stag-night revellers", with resident Lily Traverse telling the paper: "Thursday is the worst night when it is men only night at the club. The noise in the early hours of the morning is terrible. They are up to all sorts of tricks. I have seen them jumping on top of cars. It is really terrifying some nights".
Also advertising in the Echo was Rank Xerox who had workshops and a depot in Haydock on the Boston Trading Estate in Penny Lane. These had opened in 1966 primarily to distribute and service their revolutionary Xerox 813 photocopier – the first desktop plain-paper copier (assuming that you had a pretty big desk!). These were expensive beasts and leased to firms on 30-day contracts rather than being sold. As more business was being done, so more technicians were needed to service the machines when the copiers went wrong – as they inevitably did, with paper jams and the like.
Roy Free of Junction Road in Rainford had served as an RAF parachute instructor but around 1960 had been severely disabled in an accident. So he took up dog breeding as a hobby and on the 5th won first prize for the best novice dog at the Crufts Dog Show at Olympia. Five months earlier Roy had been offered £1,500 for his smooth-haired dachshund called Dunroamin Pedlers Pioneer. That's around £25,000 in today’s money but he told the Echo: "He'll never be sold".
At the Theatre Royal in St Helens during this week, another puppet performance of 'Snow White and the Seven Musical Dwarfs' was given. When Ray and Joan da Silva's company first came to St Helens in 1968, their two-hour programme was described as "Britain's first full-size puppet spectacular". Their 20-foot high puppet stage was claimed to be the largest in the country and allowed for simultaneous operation of marionettes from above and glove and rod-type puppets from below.
And finally this short item with the headline "Postmark!" caught my eye in the Echo this week: "Because of the postal strike, a Merseyside insurance representative decided to deliver policy renewal notices himself. At one house he tangled with the postman's traditional hazard – a dog, and was nipped on the leg. Imagine his feelings when he discovered that the dog belonged to – a postman on strike!"
Next week's stories will include the Lennon's takings robbery outside a Prescot bank, the punch card operators at Pilks, the Silhouette Slimming Club, long-gone St Helens' newsagents and Redgate Boys Band broadcast on Radio 2 with the St. Edmund Campion Choir.
This week's stories include the Plaza stag nights, the repercussions of the postal strike, a revealing book is published on the 7-week Pilkington strike, success for a severely disabled Rainford man at Crufts, the Rank Xerox workshops in Haydock and a puppet show at the Theatre Royal.
This was week 3 of Britain's first national postal strike, which was causing considerable inconvenience to St Helens businesses and residents.
The 7-week strike led by Tom Jackson, general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, did not just affect letter deliveries but many telephone, telegram and post office counter services.
In St Helens volunteer strikers had been providing cover for emergency service telephone operators.
However the Liverpool Echo reported that supervisors and management staff had been forced to take over the 999 lines as the volunteers had stopped manning them.
The paper added: "Firms and other telephone subscribers in the Prescot area have had increasing difficulty since Monday in getting through to numbers in St. Helens because of sheer weight of traffic".
Many small businesses were concerned about their cash flow, as the postal strike meant their customers could not mail in cheques.
However it's "an ill wind" as they say and the newspapers benefitted by many businesses spending much advertising cash spelling out their alternative arrangements to using the post.
Grattans catalogue firm directed their customers to take their orders to one of six St Helens' centres.
These varied from Prestts pram shop in Duke Street to Mrs Whittle's house in Haresfinch Road.
"Don't Miss That Littlewoods Fortune", said the pools firm as they provided a phone number to ring in St Helens, if you didn't know who your nearest coupon collector was.
Curiously the Liverpool Head Postmaster also had to take out a large advert in the Echo to explain how postal staff on strike could collect any back pay that was owed to them.
I expect he would normally have sent the notice out by post – but all the postmen were on strike!
Many St Helens men worked at Ford's giant car plant at Halewood. They were also out this week, demanding a pay rise as industrial action escalated throughout the country.
Speaking in Manchester Vic Feather predicted a wave of strikes over the next few months.
The general secretary of the TUC felt that by the end of April there would be more days lost through walk-outs than in the whole of 1970.
Then a record 11 million days had been lost – quite of a number of them courtesy of the 7-week Pilkington glass strike in St Helens.
A new book on the dispute by two Liverpool University lecturers was published this week – which created much press interest.
The strike's leaders had given Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts much behind the scenes access and the Daily Mirror was intrigued by some of the strikers declaring that they found the strike "liberating."
One striker told the authors: "I enjoyed it [the strike] without a doubt. I enjoyed the freedom it gave me to express myself, which was something entirely new to me after working in factories."
With newspapers in the Midlands having followed the strike very carefully through the knock on effect on the car industry, the Birmingham Daily Post published a large piece on the book.
They wrote that the its authors had conducted a survey among 187 strikers and only about 20% said they had welcomed the strike with many claiming to have been drawn into it reluctantly.
The newspaper said the book saw the cause as a "revolt of semi-skilled and unskilled workers against the dull repetitiveness of their work".
The Daily Mirror had reported a fortnight ago that Gerry Caughey – the joint leader of the strike – was desperately trying to get his job back.
The 36-year-old former Triplex worker was applying for re-admission to the General and Municipal Workers Union (NUGMW), which, as the Mirror put it, was the union "on which he declared war".
Caughey and other sacked Pilks workers believed the only way they would ever work again in St Helens was to re-join their old union, and persuade its leaders to get them their jobs back.
Councillor John Potter had been another leading light on the strike committee and on February 2nd the Guardian reported his expulsion from the Labour party for not being a member of an appropriate trade union. A furious Potter told the Guardian:
"The Labour party are having a witch-hunt on me. I tried to get back into the NUGMW. Negotiations have been going on since December, but we have heard nothing."
When I first started writing these articles three years ago, the Plaza Club had a solitary "exotic dancer" appearing at their Thursday evening stag nights.
This grew to four and later expanded, first to eight and then to ten young women supposedly dancing "exotically".
An advert in the Echo on the 4th showed that twelve strippers were now on stage at the Duke Street venue, plus "top cabaret".
Owner Alf Wood was now employing security staff after last September's petition that women in nearby Oxford Street had signed.
The St Helens Reporter wrote that the ladies had complained about a "trail of havoc left by stag-night revellers", with resident Lily Traverse telling the paper:
"Thursday is the worst night when it is men only night at the club. The noise in the early hours of the morning is terrible. They are up to all sorts of tricks. I have seen them jumping on top of cars. It is really terrifying some nights".
Also advertising in the Echo was Rank Xerox who had workshops and a depot in Haydock on the Boston Trading Estate in Penny Lane.
These had opened in 1966 primarily to distribute and service their revolutionary Xerox 813 photocopier – the first desktop plain-paper copier (assuming that you had a pretty big desk!).
These were expensive beasts and leased to firms on 30-day contracts rather than being sold.
As more business was being done, so more technicians were needed to service the machines when the copiers went wrong – as they inevitably did, with paper jams and the like.
Hence the large Echo recruitment advert, which was headlined "Right Men It's A Walk-In" – a clever play on strikes and walk-outs.
Alongside a silhouette of a group of workers, those interested in working for the company were invited to attend "walk-in" job interviews over a period of two days with no appointments needed.
I think very few people are actually carried in for job interviews! So "drop-in interviews" might have been a better term but wouldn't fit with the theme of the ad.
Roy Free of Junction Road in Rainford had served as an RAF parachute instructor but around 1960 had been severely disabled in an accident.
So he took up dog breeding as a hobby and on the 5th won first prize for the best novice dog at the Crufts Dog Show at Olympia.
Five months earlier Roy had been offered £1,500 for his smooth-haired dachshund called Dunroamin Pedlers Pioneer.
That's around £25,000 in today’s money but he told the Echo: "He'll never be sold".
At the Theatre Royal in St Helens during this week, another puppet performance of 'Snow White and the Seven Musical Dwarfs' was given.
When Ray and Joan da Silva's company first came to St Helens in 1968, their two-hour programme was described as "Britain's first full-size puppet spectacular".
Their 20-foot high puppet stage was claimed to be the largest in the country and allowed for simultaneous operation of marionettes from above and glove and rod-type puppets from below.
And finally this short item with the headline "Postmark!" caught my eye in the Echo this week:
"Because of the postal strike, a Merseyside insurance representative decided to deliver policy renewal notices himself.
"At one house he tangled with the postman's traditional hazard – a dog, and was nipped on the leg.
"Imagine his feelings when he discovered that the dog belonged to – a postman on strike!"
Next week's stories will include the Lennon's takings robbery outside a Prescot bank, the punch card operators at Pilks, the Silhouette Slimming Club, long-gone St Helens' newsagents and Redgate Boys Band broadcast on Radio 2 with the St. Edmund Campion Choir.
This was week 3 of Britain's first national postal strike, which was causing considerable inconvenience to St Helens businesses and residents.
The 7-week strike led by Tom Jackson, general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, did not just affect letter deliveries but many telephone, telegram and post office counter services.
In St Helens volunteer strikers had been providing cover for emergency service telephone operators.
However the Liverpool Echo reported that supervisors and management staff had been forced to take over the 999 lines as the volunteers had stopped manning them.
The paper added: "Firms and other telephone subscribers in the Prescot area have had increasing difficulty since Monday in getting through to numbers in St. Helens because of sheer weight of traffic".
Many small businesses were concerned about their cash flow, as the postal strike meant their customers could not mail in cheques.
However it's "an ill wind" as they say and the newspapers benefitted by many businesses spending much advertising cash spelling out their alternative arrangements to using the post.
Grattans catalogue firm directed their customers to take their orders to one of six St Helens' centres.
These varied from Prestts pram shop in Duke Street to Mrs Whittle's house in Haresfinch Road.
"Don't Miss That Littlewoods Fortune", said the pools firm as they provided a phone number to ring in St Helens, if you didn't know who your nearest coupon collector was.
Curiously the Liverpool Head Postmaster also had to take out a large advert in the Echo to explain how postal staff on strike could collect any back pay that was owed to them.
I expect he would normally have sent the notice out by post – but all the postmen were on strike!
Many St Helens men worked at Ford's giant car plant at Halewood. They were also out this week, demanding a pay rise as industrial action escalated throughout the country.
Speaking in Manchester Vic Feather predicted a wave of strikes over the next few months.
The general secretary of the TUC felt that by the end of April there would be more days lost through walk-outs than in the whole of 1970.
Then a record 11 million days had been lost – quite of a number of them courtesy of the 7-week Pilkington glass strike in St Helens.
A new book on the dispute by two Liverpool University lecturers was published this week – which created much press interest.
The strike's leaders had given Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts much behind the scenes access and the Daily Mirror was intrigued by some of the strikers declaring that they found the strike "liberating."
One striker told the authors: "I enjoyed it [the strike] without a doubt. I enjoyed the freedom it gave me to express myself, which was something entirely new to me after working in factories."
With newspapers in the Midlands having followed the strike very carefully through the knock on effect on the car industry, the Birmingham Daily Post published a large piece on the book.
They wrote that the its authors had conducted a survey among 187 strikers and only about 20% said they had welcomed the strike with many claiming to have been drawn into it reluctantly.
The newspaper said the book saw the cause as a "revolt of semi-skilled and unskilled workers against the dull repetitiveness of their work".
The Daily Mirror had reported a fortnight ago that Gerry Caughey – the joint leader of the strike – was desperately trying to get his job back.
The 36-year-old former Triplex worker was applying for re-admission to the General and Municipal Workers Union (NUGMW), which, as the Mirror put it, was the union "on which he declared war".
Caughey and other sacked Pilks workers believed the only way they would ever work again in St Helens was to re-join their old union, and persuade its leaders to get them their jobs back.
Councillor John Potter had been another leading light on the strike committee and on February 2nd the Guardian reported his expulsion from the Labour party for not being a member of an appropriate trade union. A furious Potter told the Guardian:
"The Labour party are having a witch-hunt on me. I tried to get back into the NUGMW. Negotiations have been going on since December, but we have heard nothing."
This grew to four and later expanded, first to eight and then to ten young women supposedly dancing "exotically".
An advert in the Echo on the 4th showed that twelve strippers were now on stage at the Duke Street venue, plus "top cabaret".
Owner Alf Wood was now employing security staff after last September's petition that women in nearby Oxford Street had signed.
The St Helens Reporter wrote that the ladies had complained about a "trail of havoc left by stag-night revellers", with resident Lily Traverse telling the paper:
"Thursday is the worst night when it is men only night at the club. The noise in the early hours of the morning is terrible. They are up to all sorts of tricks. I have seen them jumping on top of cars. It is really terrifying some nights".
Also advertising in the Echo was Rank Xerox who had workshops and a depot in Haydock on the Boston Trading Estate in Penny Lane.
These had opened in 1966 primarily to distribute and service their revolutionary Xerox 813 photocopier – the first desktop plain-paper copier (assuming that you had a pretty big desk!).
These were expensive beasts and leased to firms on 30-day contracts rather than being sold.
As more business was being done, so more technicians were needed to service the machines when the copiers went wrong – as they inevitably did, with paper jams and the like.
Hence the large Echo recruitment advert, which was headlined "Right Men It's A Walk-In" – a clever play on strikes and walk-outs.
I think very few people are actually carried in for job interviews! So "drop-in interviews" might have been a better term but wouldn't fit with the theme of the ad.
Roy Free of Junction Road in Rainford had served as an RAF parachute instructor but around 1960 had been severely disabled in an accident.
So he took up dog breeding as a hobby and on the 5th won first prize for the best novice dog at the Crufts Dog Show at Olympia.
Five months earlier Roy had been offered £1,500 for his smooth-haired dachshund called Dunroamin Pedlers Pioneer.
That's around £25,000 in today’s money but he told the Echo: "He'll never be sold".
At the Theatre Royal in St Helens during this week, another puppet performance of 'Snow White and the Seven Musical Dwarfs' was given.
When Ray and Joan da Silva's company first came to St Helens in 1968, their two-hour programme was described as "Britain's first full-size puppet spectacular".
Their 20-foot high puppet stage was claimed to be the largest in the country and allowed for simultaneous operation of marionettes from above and glove and rod-type puppets from below.
And finally this short item with the headline "Postmark!" caught my eye in the Echo this week:
"Because of the postal strike, a Merseyside insurance representative decided to deliver policy renewal notices himself.
"At one house he tangled with the postman's traditional hazard – a dog, and was nipped on the leg.
"Imagine his feelings when he discovered that the dog belonged to – a postman on strike!"
Next week's stories will include the Lennon's takings robbery outside a Prescot bank, the punch card operators at Pilks, the Silhouette Slimming Club, long-gone St Helens' newsagents and Redgate Boys Band broadcast on Radio 2 with the St. Edmund Campion Choir.