FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (15th - 21st FEBRUARY 1971)
This week's many stories include an update on the violent assault on Lennon's supermarket managers, Pilks close one of its glass tanks in St Helens, a boost for Bold Colliery and the "regional revolution" that took St Helens out of Lancashire and into Merseyside is announced.
A few days ago three assistant managers of Lennon's supermarket in Eccleston Street in Prescot had been attacked as they took their day's takings of £2,500 to the night safe of the Midland Bank. Three men armed with sticks laid into the men but were fought off after what the police described as a "fierce struggle on the pavement". However two of the three managers were badly hurt with William Hudson suffering severe head injuries.
On the 15th the Guardian reported that Terence Lennon – the managing director of Lennon's Supermarkets – had offered a £100 reward for information about the attackers that led to their arrest. The Manchester paper described Lennon as a "millionaire racehorse and supermarket owner of Rainford". However he had recently flogged off his small stable of horses as they'd proved a poor investment.
Terence Lennon never appeared to be out of the news – for one reason or another. Last April a clever conman posing as the businessman had taken his £12,000 Silver Shadow from Maclean and Appleton's garage in Prescot Road after the Rolls Royce had been serviced. Well he wasn't all that clever, as the man was eventually caught and given a two-year prison term.
Decimalisation or "D-Day" took place on the 15th. "It's D-for-Dotty Day", was the headline in the Daily Express, as they played on the decimal points and perhaps the confusion that some were expected to experience. "Twelve centuries of British tradition ends this morning", said the paper. "It's finally D-Day but don't worry, say the decimal chiefs, going dotty should not be all that bad." On the following day the Daily Mirror filled a page with stories of minor glitches.
Sally Moore, the "Mirror's Decimal Watchdogs Girl", wrote that: "D-Day took a lot of swallowing for hundreds of youngsters yesterday – because of the soaring price of bubble-gum". The complaint was that some gum machines had been converted from 1d to 1p without children getting anything extra for their money – as bigger-sized bubble gum had yet to arrive. An 80-year-old woman was ordered off a bus in Coventry because she only had 2d and not the new higher fare of 1p – which is, of course, 2.4d.
And there was a "bitter blow for drinkers up North" who were being made to pay an extra penny. That was because many pubs had rounded up the cost of a pint from 2s 4d to 12p, which was the equivalent of 2s 5d. But as most of the new coins had already been phased in over the past three years and there had been a massive publicity campaign, the switchover went pretty well.
Of course we in St Helens simply didn't bother with decimalisation, did we? At least that is what this overheard conversation published in the Liverpool Echo implied: "Two old dears were talking in a post office about decimal coins. One said it will be all right soon, the top people will tire of it and we will go back to the English coins again. The other said: “I am not worried about it. I am going to live in St. Helens next week”."
For many people in the town the lead story on the front page of the Liverpool Echo on the 16th was bad news. The sweeping reforms in local government that had been announced on that day would – according to the Echo – create a "powerful new Merseyside Super-council" that would from April 1974 dominate the North West. Under the headline "Superman In The Town Hall," that was something their report appeared to welcome. However for many folk in St Helens (including myself), the "regional revolution" in local administration meant a loss of Lancashire identity.
But the Echo did have some good news to impart. The powers-that-be in Whitehall had apparently decided that St Helens could still be called St Helens. How kind! The paper wrote: "Merseyside will have four districts based on Liverpool, St. Helens, Bootle and Wirral. The first three are likely to keep the names of their main towns, but the Wirral district, which includes Birkenhead and Wallasey, will have to choose a new administrative name. Lancashire is also “trimmed” by the Merseyside and Manchester super-councils, but survives as a county."
The Echo also had a picture of Brendan Hill from St Helens who they wrote was "all set to become the pin-up film star of thousands of schoolchildren who find “trig” a classroom headache." The ten-year-old had taken the leading role in a new film made by the Central Office of Information to demonstrate the use of an invention claimed as a breakthrough in teaching trigonometry. Brendan was described as being a "real whiz-kid at working out the problems with the aid of the new equipment, and has even devised his own set of tables."
On the 16th Fodens Band made a return appearance to the St Helens Theatre Royal. The brass band had originally been known as Fodens Motor Works Band, as it comprised workers from the Sandbach truck maker.
1970 had been a bad year for house building in Britain. New homes needed windows and a reduced number of new houses had the knock-on effect of reducing the demand for glass. On the 17th the Guardian reported that Pilkingtons had decided to slash its sheet glass production capacity by 20% through the closure of one of its three glass tanks in St Helens. The company was carrying a high level of sheet glass stocks through the house-building decline, along with a drop in exports. The Guardian added:
"Although the closure is undoubtedly a setback for the company, it is clear that in the longer term it is relying on float glass to take up most of the future growth in demand. Later this year, a new float glass plant will come on stream at St Helens, and it is expected to be a considerably improved version of existing plants."
On the 18th in the Runcorn Weekly News, Wimpey was advertising their new Chester Lane estate in Sutton Manor. Three bedroomed semi-detached houses were available from £4,495 and 3 bedroomed detached from £5,195.
There were two nights of opera at the Theatre Royal in Corporation Street on the 19th and 20th under the banner of 'Opera For All'. 'Madame Butterfly' was performed on the Friday night and the 'Barber of Seville' on Saturday.
It's a shame that it took so long for safety in coalmines to be given the high level of importance that it had in the 1970s. Under the National Coal Board – and its successor British Coal – competitions were now held to improve compliance of safety procedures. On the 20th the Liverpool Echo wrote that Bold Colliery (pictured above) was expected to become the first mine in the North West to achieve the double of winning the title of most improved pit and having the best accident-free record.
Prize money amounting to about £5,000 could be won next month when the winners would be announced – for which the men would share through the drawing of lots. A National Coal Board spokesman said: "Unless there is a big increase in absenteeism, or there are serious accidents, it looks likely that Bold Colliery will certainly take both awards this year. "They have an intensive safety campaign at Bold and each month they issue a safety pamphlet containing poems and limericks written about safety by the men."
On the same day a gang of four youths appeared in court after admitting raiding the Edmund Arrowsmith School in Ashton-in-Makerfield and taking teaching equipment. The main item stolen was a Bell and Howell cine-projector and upon being arrested, one boy told the police: "Yes. We did it. We used a crowbar."
The police were certainly treating the attempted robbery of Lennon's supermarket takings in Prescot seriously. During the evening of the 19th – a week after the violent event – a partial re-enactment of the crime took place and six new witnesses were found. Two of the assistant managers – who were attacked outside the Midland Bank in Eccleston Street – were still in hospital being treated for their injuries.
For 45 minutes a team of detectives and uniformed officers took up positions near the bank while the money from the supermarket was placed in the night safe in the normal way. The police stopped passers-by and motorists to ask them if they were in the vicinity at the same time last week. Another two detectives were stationed nearly a mile away, at Brook Street in Whiston, where the attackers had abandoned their stolen Ford Cortina getaway car.
And finally this warning caught my eye in the Echo this week: "If you see half naked people being chained to lampposts, prams with very large occupants being pushed along, and young men and women roped together crawling up Bold Street, don't panic. It is just Liverpool University's Panto Week with us again. This year the Panto target is to raise £10,000 for charity." That's around £150,000 in today's money, although I expect Covid-19 might well have put a stop to such stunts.
Next week's stories will include an update on the national postal strike, a rebuff for the Pilkington rebels, Prescot FC are in dire straits and Rainhill Hospital's curious treatment for compulsive gamblers centred on boredom.
A few days ago three assistant managers of Lennon's supermarket in Eccleston Street in Prescot had been attacked as they took their day's takings of £2,500 to the night safe of the Midland Bank. Three men armed with sticks laid into the men but were fought off after what the police described as a "fierce struggle on the pavement". However two of the three managers were badly hurt with William Hudson suffering severe head injuries.
On the 15th the Guardian reported that Terence Lennon – the managing director of Lennon's Supermarkets – had offered a £100 reward for information about the attackers that led to their arrest. The Manchester paper described Lennon as a "millionaire racehorse and supermarket owner of Rainford". However he had recently flogged off his small stable of horses as they'd proved a poor investment.
Terence Lennon never appeared to be out of the news – for one reason or another. Last April a clever conman posing as the businessman had taken his £12,000 Silver Shadow from Maclean and Appleton's garage in Prescot Road after the Rolls Royce had been serviced. Well he wasn't all that clever, as the man was eventually caught and given a two-year prison term.
Sally Moore, the "Mirror's Decimal Watchdogs Girl", wrote that: "D-Day took a lot of swallowing for hundreds of youngsters yesterday – because of the soaring price of bubble-gum". The complaint was that some gum machines had been converted from 1d to 1p without children getting anything extra for their money – as bigger-sized bubble gum had yet to arrive. An 80-year-old woman was ordered off a bus in Coventry because she only had 2d and not the new higher fare of 1p – which is, of course, 2.4d.
And there was a "bitter blow for drinkers up North" who were being made to pay an extra penny. That was because many pubs had rounded up the cost of a pint from 2s 4d to 12p, which was the equivalent of 2s 5d. But as most of the new coins had already been phased in over the past three years and there had been a massive publicity campaign, the switchover went pretty well.
Of course we in St Helens simply didn't bother with decimalisation, did we? At least that is what this overheard conversation published in the Liverpool Echo implied: "Two old dears were talking in a post office about decimal coins. One said it will be all right soon, the top people will tire of it and we will go back to the English coins again. The other said: “I am not worried about it. I am going to live in St. Helens next week”."
For many people in the town the lead story on the front page of the Liverpool Echo on the 16th was bad news. The sweeping reforms in local government that had been announced on that day would – according to the Echo – create a "powerful new Merseyside Super-council" that would from April 1974 dominate the North West. Under the headline "Superman In The Town Hall," that was something their report appeared to welcome. However for many folk in St Helens (including myself), the "regional revolution" in local administration meant a loss of Lancashire identity.
But the Echo did have some good news to impart. The powers-that-be in Whitehall had apparently decided that St Helens could still be called St Helens. How kind! The paper wrote: "Merseyside will have four districts based on Liverpool, St. Helens, Bootle and Wirral. The first three are likely to keep the names of their main towns, but the Wirral district, which includes Birkenhead and Wallasey, will have to choose a new administrative name. Lancashire is also “trimmed” by the Merseyside and Manchester super-councils, but survives as a county."
The Echo also had a picture of Brendan Hill from St Helens who they wrote was "all set to become the pin-up film star of thousands of schoolchildren who find “trig” a classroom headache." The ten-year-old had taken the leading role in a new film made by the Central Office of Information to demonstrate the use of an invention claimed as a breakthrough in teaching trigonometry. Brendan was described as being a "real whiz-kid at working out the problems with the aid of the new equipment, and has even devised his own set of tables."
On the 16th Fodens Band made a return appearance to the St Helens Theatre Royal. The brass band had originally been known as Fodens Motor Works Band, as it comprised workers from the Sandbach truck maker.
1970 had been a bad year for house building in Britain. New homes needed windows and a reduced number of new houses had the knock-on effect of reducing the demand for glass. On the 17th the Guardian reported that Pilkingtons had decided to slash its sheet glass production capacity by 20% through the closure of one of its three glass tanks in St Helens. The company was carrying a high level of sheet glass stocks through the house-building decline, along with a drop in exports. The Guardian added:
"Although the closure is undoubtedly a setback for the company, it is clear that in the longer term it is relying on float glass to take up most of the future growth in demand. Later this year, a new float glass plant will come on stream at St Helens, and it is expected to be a considerably improved version of existing plants."
On the 18th in the Runcorn Weekly News, Wimpey was advertising their new Chester Lane estate in Sutton Manor. Three bedroomed semi-detached houses were available from £4,495 and 3 bedroomed detached from £5,195.
There were two nights of opera at the Theatre Royal in Corporation Street on the 19th and 20th under the banner of 'Opera For All'. 'Madame Butterfly' was performed on the Friday night and the 'Barber of Seville' on Saturday.
Prize money amounting to about £5,000 could be won next month when the winners would be announced – for which the men would share through the drawing of lots. A National Coal Board spokesman said: "Unless there is a big increase in absenteeism, or there are serious accidents, it looks likely that Bold Colliery will certainly take both awards this year. "They have an intensive safety campaign at Bold and each month they issue a safety pamphlet containing poems and limericks written about safety by the men."
On the same day a gang of four youths appeared in court after admitting raiding the Edmund Arrowsmith School in Ashton-in-Makerfield and taking teaching equipment. The main item stolen was a Bell and Howell cine-projector and upon being arrested, one boy told the police: "Yes. We did it. We used a crowbar."
The police were certainly treating the attempted robbery of Lennon's supermarket takings in Prescot seriously. During the evening of the 19th – a week after the violent event – a partial re-enactment of the crime took place and six new witnesses were found. Two of the assistant managers – who were attacked outside the Midland Bank in Eccleston Street – were still in hospital being treated for their injuries.
For 45 minutes a team of detectives and uniformed officers took up positions near the bank while the money from the supermarket was placed in the night safe in the normal way. The police stopped passers-by and motorists to ask them if they were in the vicinity at the same time last week. Another two detectives were stationed nearly a mile away, at Brook Street in Whiston, where the attackers had abandoned their stolen Ford Cortina getaway car.
And finally this warning caught my eye in the Echo this week: "If you see half naked people being chained to lampposts, prams with very large occupants being pushed along, and young men and women roped together crawling up Bold Street, don't panic. It is just Liverpool University's Panto Week with us again. This year the Panto target is to raise £10,000 for charity." That's around £150,000 in today's money, although I expect Covid-19 might well have put a stop to such stunts.
Next week's stories will include an update on the national postal strike, a rebuff for the Pilkington rebels, Prescot FC are in dire straits and Rainhill Hospital's curious treatment for compulsive gamblers centred on boredom.
This week's many stories include updates on the violent assault on Lennon's supermarket managers, Pilks close one of its glass tanks in St Helens, a boost for Bold Colliery and the "regional revolution" that took St Helens out of Lancashire and into Merseyside is announced.
A few days ago three assistant managers of Lennon's supermarket in Eccleston Street in Prescot had been attacked as they took their day's takings of £2,500 to the night safe of the Midland Bank.
Three men armed with sticks laid into the men but were fought off after what the police described as a "fierce struggle on the pavement".
However two of the three managers were badly hurt with William Hudson suffering severe head injuries.
On the 15th the Guardian reported that Terence Lennon – the managing director of Lennon's Supermarkets – had offered a £100 reward for information about the attackers that led to their arrest.
The Manchester paper described Lennon as a "millionaire racehorse and supermarket owner of Rainford".
However he had recently flogged off his small stable of horses as they'd proved a poor investment.
Terence Lennon never appeared to be out of the news – for one reason or another.
Last April a clever conman posing as the businessman had taken his £12,000 Silver Shadow from Maclean and Appleton's garage in Prescot Road after the Rolls Royce had been serviced.
Well he wasn't all that clever, as the man was eventually caught and given a two-year prison term.
Decimalisation or "D-Day" took place on the 15th. "It's D-for-Dotty Day", was the headline in the Daily Express, as they played on the decimal points and perhaps the confusion that some were expected to experience.
"Twelve centuries of British tradition ends this morning", said the paper. "It's finally D-Day but don't worry, say the decimal chiefs, going dotty should not be all that bad."
On the following day the Daily Mirror filled a page with stories of minor glitches.
Sally Moore, the "Mirror's Decimal Watchdogs Girl", wrote that: "D-Day took a lot of swallowing for hundreds of youngsters yesterday – because of the soaring price of bubble-gum".
The complaint was that some gum machines had been converted from 1d to 1p without children getting anything extra for their money – as bigger-sized bubble gum had yet to arrive.
An 80-year-old woman was ordered off a bus in Coventry because she only had 2d and not the new higher fare of 1p – which is, of course, 2.4d.
And there was a "bitter blow for drinkers up North" who were being made to pay an extra penny.
That was because many pubs had rounded up the cost of a pint from 2s 4d to 12p, which was the equivalent of 2s 5d.
But as most of the new coins had already been phased in over the past three years and there had been a massive publicity campaign, the switchover went pretty well.
Of course we in St Helens simply didn't bother with decimalisation, did we? At least that is what this overheard conversation published in the Liverpool Echo implied:
"Two old dears were talking in a post office about decimal coins. One said it will be all right soon, the top people will tire of it and we will go back to the English coins again.
"The other said: “I am not worried about it. I am going to live in St. Helens next week”."
For many people in the town the lead story on the front page of the Liverpool Echo on the 16th was bad news.
The sweeping reforms in local government that had been announced on that day would – according to the Echo – create a "powerful new Merseyside Super-council" that would from April 1974 dominate the North West.
Under the headline "Superman In The Town Hall," that was something their report appeared to welcome.
However for many folk in St Helens (including myself), the "regional revolution" in local administration meant a loss of Lancashire identity.
But the Echo did have some good news to impart. The powers-that-be in Whitehall had apparently decided that St Helens could still be called St Helens. How kind! The paper wrote:
"Merseyside will have four districts based on Liverpool, St. Helens, Bootle and Wirral. The first three are likely to keep the names of their main towns, but the Wirral district, which includes Birkenhead and Wallasey, will have to choose a new administrative name.
"Lancashire is also “trimmed” by the Merseyside and Manchester super-councils, but survives as a county."
The Echo also had a picture of Brendan Hill from St Helens who they wrote was "all set to become the pin-up film star of thousands of schoolchildren who find “trig” a classroom headache."
The ten-year-old had taken the leading role in a new film made by the Central Office of Information to demonstrate the use of an invention claimed as a breakthrough in teaching trigonometry.
Brendan was described as being a "real whiz-kid at working out the problems with the aid of the new equipment, and has even devised his own set of tables."
On the 16th Fodens Band made a return appearance to the St Helens Theatre Royal.
The brass band had originally been known as Fodens Motor Works Band, as it comprised workers from the Sandbach truck maker.
1970 had been a bad year for house building in Britain. New homes needed windows and a reduced number of new houses had the knock-on effect of reducing the demand for glass.
On the 17th the Guardian reported that Pilkingtons had decided to slash its sheet glass production capacity by 20% through the closure of one of its three glass tanks in St Helens.
The company was carrying a high level of sheet glass stocks through the house-building decline, along with a drop in exports. The Guardian added:
"Although the closure is undoubtedly a setback for the company, it is clear that in the longer term it is relying on float glass to take up most of the future growth in demand.
"Later this year, a new float glass plant will come on stream at St Helens, and it is expected to be a considerably improved version of existing plants."
On the 18th in the Runcorn Weekly News, Wimpey was advertising their new Chester Lane estate in Sutton Manor.
Three bedroomed semi-detached houses were available from £4,495 and 3 bedroomed detached from £5,195.
There were two nights of opera at the Theatre Royal in Corporation Street on the 19th and 20th under the banner of 'Opera For All'.
'Madame Butterfly' was performed on the Friday night and the 'Barber of Seville' on Saturday.
It's a shame that it took so long for safety in coalmines to be given the high level of importance that it had in the 1970s.
Under the National Coal Board – and its successor British Coal – competitions were now held to improve compliance of safety procedures.
On the 20th the Liverpool Echo wrote that Bold Colliery (pictured above) was expected to become the first mine in the North West to achieve the double of winning the title of most improved pit and having the best accident-free record.
Prize money amounting to about £5,000 could be won next month when the winners would be announced – for which the men would share through the drawing of lots.
A National Coal Board spokesman said: "Unless there is a big increase in absenteeism, or there are serious accidents, it looks likely that Bold Colliery will certainly take both awards this year.
"They have an intensive safety campaign at Bold and each month they issue a safety pamphlet containing poems and limericks written about safety by the men."
On the same day a gang of four youths appeared in court after admitting raiding the Edmund Arrowsmith School in Ashton-in-Makerfield and taking teaching equipment.
The main item stolen was a Bell and Howell cine-projector and upon being arrested, one boy told the police: "Yes. We did it. We used a crowbar."
The police were certainly treating the attempted robbery of Lennon's supermarket takings in Prescot seriously.
During the evening of the 19th – a week after the violent event – a partial re-enactment of the crime took place and six new witnesses were found.
Two of the assistant managers – who were attacked outside the Midland Bank in Eccleston Street – were still in hospital being treated for their injuries.
For 45 minutes a team of detectives and uniformed officers took up positions near the bank while the money from the supermarket was placed in the night safe in the normal way.
The police stopped passers-by and motorists to ask them if they were in the vicinity at the same time last week.
Another two detectives were stationed nearly a mile away, at Brook Street in Whiston, where the attackers had abandoned their stolen Ford Cortina getaway car.
And finally this warning caught my eye in the Echo this week:
"If you see half naked people being chained to lampposts, prams with very large occupants being pushed along, and young men and women roped together crawling up Bold Street, don't panic.
"It is just Liverpool University's Panto Week with us again. This year the Panto target is to raise £10,000 for charity."
That's around £150,000 in today's money, although I expect Covid-19 might well have put a stop to such stunts.
Next week's stories will include an update on the national postal strike, a rebuff for the Pilkington rebels, Prescot FC are in dire straits and Rainhill Hospital's curious treatment for compulsive gamblers centred on boredom.
A few days ago three assistant managers of Lennon's supermarket in Eccleston Street in Prescot had been attacked as they took their day's takings of £2,500 to the night safe of the Midland Bank.
Three men armed with sticks laid into the men but were fought off after what the police described as a "fierce struggle on the pavement".
However two of the three managers were badly hurt with William Hudson suffering severe head injuries.
On the 15th the Guardian reported that Terence Lennon – the managing director of Lennon's Supermarkets – had offered a £100 reward for information about the attackers that led to their arrest.
The Manchester paper described Lennon as a "millionaire racehorse and supermarket owner of Rainford".
However he had recently flogged off his small stable of horses as they'd proved a poor investment.
Terence Lennon never appeared to be out of the news – for one reason or another.
Last April a clever conman posing as the businessman had taken his £12,000 Silver Shadow from Maclean and Appleton's garage in Prescot Road after the Rolls Royce had been serviced.
Well he wasn't all that clever, as the man was eventually caught and given a two-year prison term.
"Twelve centuries of British tradition ends this morning", said the paper. "It's finally D-Day but don't worry, say the decimal chiefs, going dotty should not be all that bad."
On the following day the Daily Mirror filled a page with stories of minor glitches.
Sally Moore, the "Mirror's Decimal Watchdogs Girl", wrote that: "D-Day took a lot of swallowing for hundreds of youngsters yesterday – because of the soaring price of bubble-gum".
The complaint was that some gum machines had been converted from 1d to 1p without children getting anything extra for their money – as bigger-sized bubble gum had yet to arrive.
An 80-year-old woman was ordered off a bus in Coventry because she only had 2d and not the new higher fare of 1p – which is, of course, 2.4d.
And there was a "bitter blow for drinkers up North" who were being made to pay an extra penny.
That was because many pubs had rounded up the cost of a pint from 2s 4d to 12p, which was the equivalent of 2s 5d.
But as most of the new coins had already been phased in over the past three years and there had been a massive publicity campaign, the switchover went pretty well.
Of course we in St Helens simply didn't bother with decimalisation, did we? At least that is what this overheard conversation published in the Liverpool Echo implied:
"Two old dears were talking in a post office about decimal coins. One said it will be all right soon, the top people will tire of it and we will go back to the English coins again.
"The other said: “I am not worried about it. I am going to live in St. Helens next week”."
For many people in the town the lead story on the front page of the Liverpool Echo on the 16th was bad news.
The sweeping reforms in local government that had been announced on that day would – according to the Echo – create a "powerful new Merseyside Super-council" that would from April 1974 dominate the North West.
Under the headline "Superman In The Town Hall," that was something their report appeared to welcome.
However for many folk in St Helens (including myself), the "regional revolution" in local administration meant a loss of Lancashire identity.
But the Echo did have some good news to impart. The powers-that-be in Whitehall had apparently decided that St Helens could still be called St Helens. How kind! The paper wrote:
"Merseyside will have four districts based on Liverpool, St. Helens, Bootle and Wirral. The first three are likely to keep the names of their main towns, but the Wirral district, which includes Birkenhead and Wallasey, will have to choose a new administrative name.
"Lancashire is also “trimmed” by the Merseyside and Manchester super-councils, but survives as a county."
The Echo also had a picture of Brendan Hill from St Helens who they wrote was "all set to become the pin-up film star of thousands of schoolchildren who find “trig” a classroom headache."
The ten-year-old had taken the leading role in a new film made by the Central Office of Information to demonstrate the use of an invention claimed as a breakthrough in teaching trigonometry.
Brendan was described as being a "real whiz-kid at working out the problems with the aid of the new equipment, and has even devised his own set of tables."
On the 16th Fodens Band made a return appearance to the St Helens Theatre Royal.
The brass band had originally been known as Fodens Motor Works Band, as it comprised workers from the Sandbach truck maker.
1970 had been a bad year for house building in Britain. New homes needed windows and a reduced number of new houses had the knock-on effect of reducing the demand for glass.
On the 17th the Guardian reported that Pilkingtons had decided to slash its sheet glass production capacity by 20% through the closure of one of its three glass tanks in St Helens.
The company was carrying a high level of sheet glass stocks through the house-building decline, along with a drop in exports. The Guardian added:
"Although the closure is undoubtedly a setback for the company, it is clear that in the longer term it is relying on float glass to take up most of the future growth in demand.
"Later this year, a new float glass plant will come on stream at St Helens, and it is expected to be a considerably improved version of existing plants."
On the 18th in the Runcorn Weekly News, Wimpey was advertising their new Chester Lane estate in Sutton Manor.
Three bedroomed semi-detached houses were available from £4,495 and 3 bedroomed detached from £5,195.
There were two nights of opera at the Theatre Royal in Corporation Street on the 19th and 20th under the banner of 'Opera For All'.
'Madame Butterfly' was performed on the Friday night and the 'Barber of Seville' on Saturday.
It's a shame that it took so long for safety in coalmines to be given the high level of importance that it had in the 1970s.
Under the National Coal Board – and its successor British Coal – competitions were now held to improve compliance of safety procedures.
Prize money amounting to about £5,000 could be won next month when the winners would be announced – for which the men would share through the drawing of lots.
A National Coal Board spokesman said: "Unless there is a big increase in absenteeism, or there are serious accidents, it looks likely that Bold Colliery will certainly take both awards this year.
"They have an intensive safety campaign at Bold and each month they issue a safety pamphlet containing poems and limericks written about safety by the men."
On the same day a gang of four youths appeared in court after admitting raiding the Edmund Arrowsmith School in Ashton-in-Makerfield and taking teaching equipment.
The main item stolen was a Bell and Howell cine-projector and upon being arrested, one boy told the police: "Yes. We did it. We used a crowbar."
The police were certainly treating the attempted robbery of Lennon's supermarket takings in Prescot seriously.
During the evening of the 19th – a week after the violent event – a partial re-enactment of the crime took place and six new witnesses were found.
Two of the assistant managers – who were attacked outside the Midland Bank in Eccleston Street – were still in hospital being treated for their injuries.
For 45 minutes a team of detectives and uniformed officers took up positions near the bank while the money from the supermarket was placed in the night safe in the normal way.
The police stopped passers-by and motorists to ask them if they were in the vicinity at the same time last week.
Another two detectives were stationed nearly a mile away, at Brook Street in Whiston, where the attackers had abandoned their stolen Ford Cortina getaway car.
And finally this warning caught my eye in the Echo this week:
"If you see half naked people being chained to lampposts, prams with very large occupants being pushed along, and young men and women roped together crawling up Bold Street, don't panic.
"It is just Liverpool University's Panto Week with us again. This year the Panto target is to raise £10,000 for charity."
That's around £150,000 in today's money, although I expect Covid-19 might well have put a stop to such stunts.
Next week's stories will include an update on the national postal strike, a rebuff for the Pilkington rebels, Prescot FC are in dire straits and Rainhill Hospital's curious treatment for compulsive gamblers centred on boredom.