FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (18th - 24th JULY 1972)
This week's 15 stories include the plans to clean up the eyesore Kimmicks, Saints captain Kel Coslett is "kidnapped", more complaints about the Four Acre Lane council estate, the new treatment unit for alcoholics at Rainhill Hospital, Rainford bans the night-time chimes from ice-cream vans and there's good news for those on the telephone waiting list as the Marshalls Cross exchange finally opens.
We begin with an announcement that St Helens planned to appoint a full-time swimming instructor for Boundary Road baths. At present the children were being taught to swim by their teachers, with the help of a baths attendant. Over 3,000 schoolchildren used the baths each week, although the new instructor would only teach beginners in the small pool. The appointment would bring the town into line with neighbouring authorities that had employed swimming instructors for some years. Warrington, for example, had appointed their first instructor in the late 1940s.
Another announcement was that the so-called Chemics (aka Kimmicks) between Borough Road and Ravenhead Road (pictured above) in St Helens were going to receive a large-scale clean up. The chemical waste tips had long been an eyesore. That was despite the fact that the alkali industry that had created them had been gone from St Helens for fifty years. The plan was for the mounds to be contoured or rounded off, covered in topsoil, seeded with grass and planted with trees.
Pilkingtons owned virtually all of the land but were expecting to have to take expert advice on the tree planting – as even with new topsoil, the chemicals that would still be stored underneath could affect tree growth. The facelift was part of a scheme to build an access road through the Chemics from Borough Road to the new Pilkington Fibreglass plant in Ravenhead.
On the 19th Pilkingtons issued their annual report covering the year to March 31st. Lord Pilkington said the glass firm had still not recovered all the business that they'd lost during the 1970 strike. Of particular concern was their loss-making Ravenhead factory that produced glassware for colour TV. Much capital had gone into the plant but it was a new industry and Lord Pilkington hoped the investment would justify itself before too long.
The firm was very dependent on royalties in which glass companies worldwide paid them to use their float glass process. Currently almost £10 million a year was received in royalties. In today's money, that’s around £150 million.
David Hall was pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 21st being presented with a tape recorder by Eric Yates of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. The nine-year-old from Charles Street in St Helens had won a road safety competition organised by the Co-op. To win, David had to answer five questions involving road safety and make up a topical slogan.
Helena House (pictured above) was advertising a special dividend stamp offer in the Reporter. Their photography department on the ground floor of their Baldwin Street store was offering 120 stamps for every roll of colour film that they developed. There were 120 divi stamps also on offer for every roll of colour film that was bought from them.
The Reporter described how masked gunmen had kidnapped Saints captain Kel Coslett this week – but nobody had been too concerned. That was in spite of the stunt holding up the rugby star's opening of a garden fete at Rainhill Hospital. Nurses John Derbyshire and Barry Owen had hijacked Kel using toy pistols but returned him safe and sound once a ransom of £10 had been raised from the crowd.
The event attracted around 2,000 people, many of them staff and patients. The attractions on the day included a Miss Rainhill Hospital contest, women's 5-a-side football, an 'It's A Knockout' competition and various stalls. The funds raised went towards the hospital's community therapy centre.
The new Marshalls Cross telephone exchange became operational on the morning of the 23rd, with 1,900 local subscribers transferred over and allocated new numbers. The exchange in Chester Lane had been created as part of plans to alleviate the lengthy waiting list for telephones in St Helens. However, many subscribers claimed that their first warning of the changeover had been only four days before when a 10-page booklet arrived in the post.
But the Post Office – which then ran the telephone network – insisted that they had written to subscribers in the Marshalls Cross area as far back as November 1971. Their follow-up letter containing the new telephone numbers had, they claimed, been dispatched nine days prior to the switchover. Presently the waiting list for the existing telephone exchange in St Mary's Street in St Helens town centre numbered 1,800, with the new exchange expected to soon wipe that out.
The St Helens Health Committee announced this week that they planned to demolish outbuildings at the Lacey Street Infant Welfare Clinic in Thatto Heath in order to defeat vandals. The clinic was due to close in 18 months time when a new medical centre would be opened in Elephant Lane.
The existing facility was only open two days a week, which made it an easy target for vandals. Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said: "It has been damaged over a period of years. By demolishing the old pram shelter, which has a low roof, we hope to make it more difficult for vandals to get on to the roof of the clinic."
Meanwhile, at the St Helens Housing Committee meeting this week, it was revealed that new homes on two neighbouring council estates on Four Acre Lane and Bentley Street were being left empty. That was because people on the housing waiting list were refusing the offer of these properties as they considered them too far away from the centre of town.
As a result others who were prepared to live on the estates were now being allowed to jump the queue. In total there were 657 houses on the twin estates, with over 4,000 people on the council house waiting list – although many of those were deferred cases that did not immediately need a house.
The Housing Committee also discussed a petition signed by 150 residents on the new Four Acre estate who complained of too little space to peg out their family wash. Cllr. Peggy McNamara said: "There's not enough room to hang out a sheet. The space allowed at the back of the houses for drying is ridiculous". And Cllr. Martin added: "The yards are just not big enough. You couldn't get two shirts and a pair of socks on the line."
The tenants asked for their front gardens to be fenced in order to give them more room to hang their washing and give them greater privacy. They also called for a children's play area. However, Harold Kay, the council's housing manager, said such fencing of frontages would be against council policy and lead to greater expense. In the end it was decided that the Borough Engineer, George James, would be asked to look into the suggestions made and report back to the committee.
Alcoholism was beginning to be taken seriously in St Helens with the first public meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous having been held in the town in December 1970. However, there was criticism that none of the forty or so Catholic priests in the district had attended – despite invitations being despatched to all parishes. Then in February 1972, it was announced that treatment for alcoholics would soon be starting in St Helens. The twice-weekly morning sessions would be held at the clinic in Hardshaw Street with the Merseyside Council on Alcoholism estimating that there could be over 1,000 chronic alcoholics in the town.
And this week it was announced that a £75,000 unit at Rainhill Hospital was going to be opened to treat alcoholics as inpatients. John Wilson, the group secretary at Rainhill Hospital, said: "It's a massive problem. Alcoholics come from every walk of life." A small team of junior doctors and a consultant would staff the 20-bed unit with patients expected to spend 6 to 8 weeks at the hospital.
The chimes of ice-cream vans were annoying Rainford councillors this week – and they decided to take action. A local byelaw only allowed the ice-cream sellers to chime between noon and 7 pm – but that cut-off point was routinely ignored. Rather dramatically, Rainford's Chief Public Health Inspector, John Wilde, declared to its Health Committee: "I want to stop it, and stop it dead." He pointed out that there was nothing to stop the vans from selling ice-cream late at night, but they had to do so quietly without chimes.
Parents had complained of the difficulty in getting their young ones to bed when the ice-cream vans were chiming away. And so Mr Wilde was given permission to write to all the ice-cream firms warning them that they would be prosecuted if they played their chimes after the 7 o’clock embargo. "It would be more pleasant if all the notes were in tune", added Mr Wilde. "Some of the notes do tend to grate on the ear."
St Helens Police must have received countless threats over the years while making arrests. But I don't think the one that a 57-year-old Haydock man made to them would have worried the bobbies too much. In St Helens Magistrates Court this week, Inspector David Johnstone said the man from Juddfield Street in Haydock had been found drunk and disorderly in Cotham Street.
And when a policeman told him he was taking him to the police station, the man replied: "If you take me away I'll bring the Gestapo into St. Helens." In court the man sighed and said "It's no use" before being fined £10 for his 14th offence of drunkenness in just two years. A candidate, perhaps, for treatment at the new alcoholism unit?
Although Margaret Thatcher is renowned for selling off council houses to tenants at a reduced price, the Tory policy was far from new. The only difference was that she introduced a mandatory right to buy for tenants – whereas local authorities had previously been permitted to opt-out of council house sales. In 1972 the Environment Secretary was Peter Walker and his department was virtually pleading with councils to sell their homes to their tenants. This week after receiving further letters from the department, both St Helens and Whiston councils reaffirmed their decisions not to flog off any of their council house stock.
Whiston Council's clerk, Mike Carter, told a committee meeting that such sales made no economic sense. If they decided to proceed, he said, they would be obliged to sell houses at a 20% discount to tenants but then pay much higher prices to build replacement homes.
In St Helens, Cllr. Charles Martin told members of their Housing Committee that they should give consideration to the selling off of at least some of their housing stock. However, Cllr. Tom Harvey, chairman of the committee, made a prescient comment in reply, when he said: "It has not been the policy of this council to sell houses, although the Government may try to force us to sell houses in the future."
And finally, Tom Yates, the headmaster of St Luke's school in Knowsley Road for eighteen years retired this week. He said: "I'm glad to be finishing but I will miss the kiddies."
Next week's stories will include the vandalism in the town's parks, the jobs crisis for young people in St Helens, 14,000 Pilks' workers take part in a one-day strike and the St Helens MP tells the House of Commons about the stinky brook.
We begin with an announcement that St Helens planned to appoint a full-time swimming instructor for Boundary Road baths. At present the children were being taught to swim by their teachers, with the help of a baths attendant. Over 3,000 schoolchildren used the baths each week, although the new instructor would only teach beginners in the small pool. The appointment would bring the town into line with neighbouring authorities that had employed swimming instructors for some years. Warrington, for example, had appointed their first instructor in the late 1940s.
Pilkingtons owned virtually all of the land but were expecting to have to take expert advice on the tree planting – as even with new topsoil, the chemicals that would still be stored underneath could affect tree growth. The facelift was part of a scheme to build an access road through the Chemics from Borough Road to the new Pilkington Fibreglass plant in Ravenhead.
On the 19th Pilkingtons issued their annual report covering the year to March 31st. Lord Pilkington said the glass firm had still not recovered all the business that they'd lost during the 1970 strike. Of particular concern was their loss-making Ravenhead factory that produced glassware for colour TV. Much capital had gone into the plant but it was a new industry and Lord Pilkington hoped the investment would justify itself before too long.
The firm was very dependent on royalties in which glass companies worldwide paid them to use their float glass process. Currently almost £10 million a year was received in royalties. In today's money, that’s around £150 million.
David Hall was pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 21st being presented with a tape recorder by Eric Yates of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. The nine-year-old from Charles Street in St Helens had won a road safety competition organised by the Co-op. To win, David had to answer five questions involving road safety and make up a topical slogan.
The Reporter described how masked gunmen had kidnapped Saints captain Kel Coslett this week – but nobody had been too concerned. That was in spite of the stunt holding up the rugby star's opening of a garden fete at Rainhill Hospital. Nurses John Derbyshire and Barry Owen had hijacked Kel using toy pistols but returned him safe and sound once a ransom of £10 had been raised from the crowd.
The event attracted around 2,000 people, many of them staff and patients. The attractions on the day included a Miss Rainhill Hospital contest, women's 5-a-side football, an 'It's A Knockout' competition and various stalls. The funds raised went towards the hospital's community therapy centre.
The new Marshalls Cross telephone exchange became operational on the morning of the 23rd, with 1,900 local subscribers transferred over and allocated new numbers. The exchange in Chester Lane had been created as part of plans to alleviate the lengthy waiting list for telephones in St Helens. However, many subscribers claimed that their first warning of the changeover had been only four days before when a 10-page booklet arrived in the post.
But the Post Office – which then ran the telephone network – insisted that they had written to subscribers in the Marshalls Cross area as far back as November 1971. Their follow-up letter containing the new telephone numbers had, they claimed, been dispatched nine days prior to the switchover. Presently the waiting list for the existing telephone exchange in St Mary's Street in St Helens town centre numbered 1,800, with the new exchange expected to soon wipe that out.
The St Helens Health Committee announced this week that they planned to demolish outbuildings at the Lacey Street Infant Welfare Clinic in Thatto Heath in order to defeat vandals. The clinic was due to close in 18 months time when a new medical centre would be opened in Elephant Lane.
The existing facility was only open two days a week, which made it an easy target for vandals. Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said: "It has been damaged over a period of years. By demolishing the old pram shelter, which has a low roof, we hope to make it more difficult for vandals to get on to the roof of the clinic."
Meanwhile, at the St Helens Housing Committee meeting this week, it was revealed that new homes on two neighbouring council estates on Four Acre Lane and Bentley Street were being left empty. That was because people on the housing waiting list were refusing the offer of these properties as they considered them too far away from the centre of town.
As a result others who were prepared to live on the estates were now being allowed to jump the queue. In total there were 657 houses on the twin estates, with over 4,000 people on the council house waiting list – although many of those were deferred cases that did not immediately need a house.
The Housing Committee also discussed a petition signed by 150 residents on the new Four Acre estate who complained of too little space to peg out their family wash. Cllr. Peggy McNamara said: "There's not enough room to hang out a sheet. The space allowed at the back of the houses for drying is ridiculous". And Cllr. Martin added: "The yards are just not big enough. You couldn't get two shirts and a pair of socks on the line."
The tenants asked for their front gardens to be fenced in order to give them more room to hang their washing and give them greater privacy. They also called for a children's play area. However, Harold Kay, the council's housing manager, said such fencing of frontages would be against council policy and lead to greater expense. In the end it was decided that the Borough Engineer, George James, would be asked to look into the suggestions made and report back to the committee.
Alcoholism was beginning to be taken seriously in St Helens with the first public meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous having been held in the town in December 1970. However, there was criticism that none of the forty or so Catholic priests in the district had attended – despite invitations being despatched to all parishes. Then in February 1972, it was announced that treatment for alcoholics would soon be starting in St Helens. The twice-weekly morning sessions would be held at the clinic in Hardshaw Street with the Merseyside Council on Alcoholism estimating that there could be over 1,000 chronic alcoholics in the town.
And this week it was announced that a £75,000 unit at Rainhill Hospital was going to be opened to treat alcoholics as inpatients. John Wilson, the group secretary at Rainhill Hospital, said: "It's a massive problem. Alcoholics come from every walk of life." A small team of junior doctors and a consultant would staff the 20-bed unit with patients expected to spend 6 to 8 weeks at the hospital.
The chimes of ice-cream vans were annoying Rainford councillors this week – and they decided to take action. A local byelaw only allowed the ice-cream sellers to chime between noon and 7 pm – but that cut-off point was routinely ignored. Rather dramatically, Rainford's Chief Public Health Inspector, John Wilde, declared to its Health Committee: "I want to stop it, and stop it dead." He pointed out that there was nothing to stop the vans from selling ice-cream late at night, but they had to do so quietly without chimes.
Parents had complained of the difficulty in getting their young ones to bed when the ice-cream vans were chiming away. And so Mr Wilde was given permission to write to all the ice-cream firms warning them that they would be prosecuted if they played their chimes after the 7 o’clock embargo. "It would be more pleasant if all the notes were in tune", added Mr Wilde. "Some of the notes do tend to grate on the ear."
St Helens Police must have received countless threats over the years while making arrests. But I don't think the one that a 57-year-old Haydock man made to them would have worried the bobbies too much. In St Helens Magistrates Court this week, Inspector David Johnstone said the man from Juddfield Street in Haydock had been found drunk and disorderly in Cotham Street.
And when a policeman told him he was taking him to the police station, the man replied: "If you take me away I'll bring the Gestapo into St. Helens." In court the man sighed and said "It's no use" before being fined £10 for his 14th offence of drunkenness in just two years. A candidate, perhaps, for treatment at the new alcoholism unit?
Although Margaret Thatcher is renowned for selling off council houses to tenants at a reduced price, the Tory policy was far from new. The only difference was that she introduced a mandatory right to buy for tenants – whereas local authorities had previously been permitted to opt-out of council house sales. In 1972 the Environment Secretary was Peter Walker and his department was virtually pleading with councils to sell their homes to their tenants. This week after receiving further letters from the department, both St Helens and Whiston councils reaffirmed their decisions not to flog off any of their council house stock.
Whiston Council's clerk, Mike Carter, told a committee meeting that such sales made no economic sense. If they decided to proceed, he said, they would be obliged to sell houses at a 20% discount to tenants but then pay much higher prices to build replacement homes.
In St Helens, Cllr. Charles Martin told members of their Housing Committee that they should give consideration to the selling off of at least some of their housing stock. However, Cllr. Tom Harvey, chairman of the committee, made a prescient comment in reply, when he said: "It has not been the policy of this council to sell houses, although the Government may try to force us to sell houses in the future."
And finally, Tom Yates, the headmaster of St Luke's school in Knowsley Road for eighteen years retired this week. He said: "I'm glad to be finishing but I will miss the kiddies."
Next week's stories will include the vandalism in the town's parks, the jobs crisis for young people in St Helens, 14,000 Pilks' workers take part in a one-day strike and the St Helens MP tells the House of Commons about the stinky brook.
This week's 15 stories include the plans to clean up the eyesore Kimmicks, Saints captain Kel Coslett is "kidnapped", more complaints about the Four Acre Lane council estate, the new treatment unit for alcoholics at Rainhill Hospital, Rainford bans the night-time chimes from ice-cream vans and there's good news for those on the telephone waiting list as the Marshalls Cross exchange finally opens.
We begin with an announcement that St Helens planned to appoint a full-time swimming instructor for Boundary Road baths.
At present the children were being taught to swim by their teachers, with the help of a baths attendant.
Over 3,000 schoolchildren used the baths each week, although the new instructor would only teach beginners in the small pool.
The appointment would bring the town into line with neighbouring authorities that had employed swimming instructors for some years. Warrington, for example, had appointed their first instructor in the late 1940s.
Another announcement was that the so-called Chemics (aka Kimmicks) between Borough Road and Ravenhead Road in St Helens (pictured above) were going to receive a large-scale clean up.
The chemical waste tips had long been an eyesore. That was despite the fact that the alkali industry that had created them had been gone from St Helens for fifty years.
The plan was for the mounds to be contoured or rounded off, covered in topsoil, seeded with grass and planted with trees.
Pilkingtons owned virtually all of the land but were expecting to have to take expert advice on the tree planting – as even with new topsoil, the chemicals that would still be stored underneath could affect tree growth.
The facelift was part of a scheme to build an access road through the Chemics from Borough Road to the new Pilkington Fibreglass plant in Ravenhead.
On the 19th Pilkingtons issued their annual report covering the year to March 31st.
Lord Pilkington said the glass firm had still not recovered all the business that they'd lost during the 1970 strike.
Of particular concern was their loss-making Ravenhead factory that produced glassware for colour TV.
Much capital had gone into the plant but it was a new industry and Lord Pilkington hoped the investment would justify itself before too long.
The firm was very dependent on royalties in which glass companies worldwide paid them to use their float glass process.
Currently almost £10 million a year was received in royalties. In today's money, that’s around £150 million.
David Hall was pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 21st being presented with a tape recorder by Eric Yates of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
The nine-year-old from Charles Street in St Helens had won a road safety competition organised by the Co-op.
To win, David had to answer five questions involving road safety and make up a topical slogan.
Helena House (pictured above) was advertising a special dividend stamp offer in the Reporter.
Their photography department on the ground floor of their Baldwin Street store was offering 120 stamps for every roll of colour film that they developed.
There were 120 divi stamps also on offer for every roll of colour film that was bought from them.
The Reporter described how masked gunmen had kidnapped Saints captain Kel Coslett this week – but nobody had been too concerned.
That was in spite of the stunt holding up the rugby star's opening of a garden fete at Rainhill Hospital.
Nurses John Derbyshire and Barry Owen had hijacked Kel using toy pistols but returned him safe and sound once a ransom of £10 had been raised from the crowd.
The event attracted around 2,000 people, many of them staff and patients.
The attractions on the day included a Miss Rainhill Hospital contest, women's 5-a-side football, an 'It's A Knockout' competition and various stalls. The funds raised went towards the hospital's community therapy centre.
The new Marshalls Cross telephone exchange became operational on the morning of the 23rd, with 1,900 local subscribers transferred over and allocated new numbers.
The exchange in Chester Lane had been created as part of plans to alleviate the lengthy waiting list for telephones in St Helens.
However, many subscribers claimed that their first warning of the changeover had been only four days before when a 10-page booklet arrived in the post.
But the Post Office – which then ran the telephone network – insisted that they had written to subscribers in the Marshalls Cross area as far back as November 1971.
Their follow-up letter containing the new telephone numbers had, they claimed, been dispatched nine days prior to the switchover.
Presently the waiting list for the existing telephone exchange in St Mary's Street in St Helens town centre numbered 1,800, with the new exchange expected to soon wipe that out.
The St Helens Health Committee announced this week that they planned to demolish outbuildings at the Lacey Street Infant Welfare Clinic in Thatto Heath in order to defeat vandals.
The clinic was due to close in 18 months time when a new medical centre would be opened in Elephant Lane.
The existing facility was only open two days a week, which made it an easy target for vandals.
Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said:
"It has been damaged over a period of years. By demolishing the old pram shelter, which has a low roof, we hope to make it more difficult for vandals to get on to the roof of the clinic."
Meanwhile, at the St Helens Housing Committee meeting this week, it was revealed that new homes on two neighbouring council estates on Four Acre Lane and Bentley Street were being left empty.
That was because people on the housing waiting list were refusing the offer of these properties as they considered them too far away from the centre of town.
As a result others who were prepared to live on the estates were now being allowed to jump the queue.
In total there were 657 houses on the twin estates, with over 4,000 people on the council house waiting list – although many of those were deferred cases that did not immediately need a house.
The Housing Committee also discussed a petition signed by 150 residents on the new Four Acre estate who complained of too little space to peg out their family wash.
Cllr. Peggy McNamara said: "There's not enough room to hang out a sheet. The space allowed at the back of the houses for drying is ridiculous".
And Cllr. Martin added: "The yards are just not big enough. You couldn't get two shirts and a pair of socks on the line."
The tenants asked for their front gardens to be fenced in order to give them more room to hang their washing and give them greater privacy. They also called for a children's play area.
However, Harold Kay, the council's housing manager, said such fencing of frontages would be against council policy and lead to greater expense.
In the end it was decided that the Borough Engineer, George James, would be asked to look into the suggestions made and report back to the committee.
Alcoholism was beginning to be taken seriously in St Helens with the first public meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous having been held in the town in December 1970.
However, there was criticism that none of the forty or so Catholic priests in the district had attended – despite invitations being despatched to all parishes.
Then in February 1972, it was announced that treatment for alcoholics would soon be starting in St Helens.
The twice-weekly morning sessions would be held at the clinic in Hardshaw Street with the Merseyside Council on Alcoholism estimating that there could be over 1,000 chronic alcoholics in the town.
And this week it was announced that a £75,000 unit at Rainhill Hospital was going to be opened to treat alcoholics as inpatients.
John Wilson, the group secretary at Rainhill Hospital, said: "It's a massive problem. Alcoholics come from every walk of life."
A small team of junior doctors and a consultant would staff the 20-bed unit with patients expected to spend 6 to 8 weeks at the hospital.
The chimes of ice-cream vans were annoying Rainford councillors this week – and they decided to take action.
A local byelaw only allowed the ice-cream sellers to chime between noon and 7 pm – but that cut-off point was routinely ignored.
Rather dramatically, Rainford's Chief Public Health Inspector, John Wilde, declared to its Health Committee: "I want to stop it, and stop it dead."
He pointed out that there was nothing to stop the vans from selling ice-cream late at night, but they had to do so quietly without chimes.
Parents had complained of the difficulty in getting their young ones to bed when the ice-cream vans were chiming away.
And so Mr Wilde was given permission to write to all the ice-cream firms warning them that they would be prosecuted if they played their chimes after the 7 o’clock embargo.
"It would be more pleasant if all the notes were in tune", added Mr Wilde. "Some of the notes do tend to grate on the ear."
St Helens Police must have received countless threats over the years while making arrests.
But I don't think the one that a 57-year-old Haydock man made to them would have worried the bobbies too much.
In St Helens Magistrates Court this week, Inspector David Johnstone said the man from Juddfield Street in Haydock had been found drunk and disorderly in Cotham Street.
And when a policeman told him he was taking him to the police station, the man replied:
"If you take me away I'll bring the Gestapo into St. Helens."
In court the man sighed and said "It's no use" before being fined £10 for his 14th offence of drunkenness in just two years. A candidate, perhaps, for treatment at the new alcoholism unit?
Although Margaret Thatcher is renowned for selling off council houses to tenants at a reduced price, the Tory policy was far from new.
The only difference was that she introduced a mandatory right to buy for tenants – whereas local authorities had previously been permitted to opt-out of council house sales.
In 1972 the Environment Secretary was Peter Walker and his department was virtually pleading with councils to sell their homes to their tenants.
This week after receiving further letters from the department, both St Helens and Whiston councils reaffirmed their decisions not to flog off any of their council house stock.
Whiston Council's clerk, Mike Carter, told a committee meeting that such sales made no economic sense.
If they decided to proceed, he said, they would be obliged to sell houses at a 20% discount to tenants but then pay much higher prices to build replacement homes.
In St Helens, Cllr. Charles Martin told members of their Housing Committee that they should give consideration to the selling off of at least some of their housing stock.
However, Cllr. Tom Harvey, chairman of the committee, made a prescient comment in reply, when he said:
"It has not been the policy of this council to sell houses, although the Government may try to force us to sell houses in the future."
And finally, Tom Yates, the headmaster of St Luke's school in Knowsley Road for eighteen years retired this week. He said: "I'm glad to be finishing but I will miss the kiddies."
Next week's stories will include the vandalism in the town's parks, the jobs crisis for young people in St Helens, 14,000 Pilks' workers take part in a one-day strike and the St Helens MP tells the House of Commons about the stinky brook.
We begin with an announcement that St Helens planned to appoint a full-time swimming instructor for Boundary Road baths.
At present the children were being taught to swim by their teachers, with the help of a baths attendant.
Over 3,000 schoolchildren used the baths each week, although the new instructor would only teach beginners in the small pool.
The appointment would bring the town into line with neighbouring authorities that had employed swimming instructors for some years. Warrington, for example, had appointed their first instructor in the late 1940s.
The chemical waste tips had long been an eyesore. That was despite the fact that the alkali industry that had created them had been gone from St Helens for fifty years.
The plan was for the mounds to be contoured or rounded off, covered in topsoil, seeded with grass and planted with trees.
Pilkingtons owned virtually all of the land but were expecting to have to take expert advice on the tree planting – as even with new topsoil, the chemicals that would still be stored underneath could affect tree growth.
The facelift was part of a scheme to build an access road through the Chemics from Borough Road to the new Pilkington Fibreglass plant in Ravenhead.
On the 19th Pilkingtons issued their annual report covering the year to March 31st.
Lord Pilkington said the glass firm had still not recovered all the business that they'd lost during the 1970 strike.
Of particular concern was their loss-making Ravenhead factory that produced glassware for colour TV.
Much capital had gone into the plant but it was a new industry and Lord Pilkington hoped the investment would justify itself before too long.
The firm was very dependent on royalties in which glass companies worldwide paid them to use their float glass process.
Currently almost £10 million a year was received in royalties. In today's money, that’s around £150 million.
David Hall was pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 21st being presented with a tape recorder by Eric Yates of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
The nine-year-old from Charles Street in St Helens had won a road safety competition organised by the Co-op.
To win, David had to answer five questions involving road safety and make up a topical slogan.
Their photography department on the ground floor of their Baldwin Street store was offering 120 stamps for every roll of colour film that they developed.
There were 120 divi stamps also on offer for every roll of colour film that was bought from them.
The Reporter described how masked gunmen had kidnapped Saints captain Kel Coslett this week – but nobody had been too concerned.
That was in spite of the stunt holding up the rugby star's opening of a garden fete at Rainhill Hospital.
Nurses John Derbyshire and Barry Owen had hijacked Kel using toy pistols but returned him safe and sound once a ransom of £10 had been raised from the crowd.
The event attracted around 2,000 people, many of them staff and patients.
The attractions on the day included a Miss Rainhill Hospital contest, women's 5-a-side football, an 'It's A Knockout' competition and various stalls. The funds raised went towards the hospital's community therapy centre.
The new Marshalls Cross telephone exchange became operational on the morning of the 23rd, with 1,900 local subscribers transferred over and allocated new numbers.
The exchange in Chester Lane had been created as part of plans to alleviate the lengthy waiting list for telephones in St Helens.
However, many subscribers claimed that their first warning of the changeover had been only four days before when a 10-page booklet arrived in the post.
But the Post Office – which then ran the telephone network – insisted that they had written to subscribers in the Marshalls Cross area as far back as November 1971.
Their follow-up letter containing the new telephone numbers had, they claimed, been dispatched nine days prior to the switchover.
Presently the waiting list for the existing telephone exchange in St Mary's Street in St Helens town centre numbered 1,800, with the new exchange expected to soon wipe that out.
The St Helens Health Committee announced this week that they planned to demolish outbuildings at the Lacey Street Infant Welfare Clinic in Thatto Heath in order to defeat vandals.
The clinic was due to close in 18 months time when a new medical centre would be opened in Elephant Lane.
The existing facility was only open two days a week, which made it an easy target for vandals.
Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said:
"It has been damaged over a period of years. By demolishing the old pram shelter, which has a low roof, we hope to make it more difficult for vandals to get on to the roof of the clinic."
Meanwhile, at the St Helens Housing Committee meeting this week, it was revealed that new homes on two neighbouring council estates on Four Acre Lane and Bentley Street were being left empty.
That was because people on the housing waiting list were refusing the offer of these properties as they considered them too far away from the centre of town.
As a result others who were prepared to live on the estates were now being allowed to jump the queue.
In total there were 657 houses on the twin estates, with over 4,000 people on the council house waiting list – although many of those were deferred cases that did not immediately need a house.
The Housing Committee also discussed a petition signed by 150 residents on the new Four Acre estate who complained of too little space to peg out their family wash.
Cllr. Peggy McNamara said: "There's not enough room to hang out a sheet. The space allowed at the back of the houses for drying is ridiculous".
And Cllr. Martin added: "The yards are just not big enough. You couldn't get two shirts and a pair of socks on the line."
The tenants asked for their front gardens to be fenced in order to give them more room to hang their washing and give them greater privacy. They also called for a children's play area.
However, Harold Kay, the council's housing manager, said such fencing of frontages would be against council policy and lead to greater expense.
In the end it was decided that the Borough Engineer, George James, would be asked to look into the suggestions made and report back to the committee.
Alcoholism was beginning to be taken seriously in St Helens with the first public meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous having been held in the town in December 1970.
However, there was criticism that none of the forty or so Catholic priests in the district had attended – despite invitations being despatched to all parishes.
Then in February 1972, it was announced that treatment for alcoholics would soon be starting in St Helens.
The twice-weekly morning sessions would be held at the clinic in Hardshaw Street with the Merseyside Council on Alcoholism estimating that there could be over 1,000 chronic alcoholics in the town.
And this week it was announced that a £75,000 unit at Rainhill Hospital was going to be opened to treat alcoholics as inpatients.
John Wilson, the group secretary at Rainhill Hospital, said: "It's a massive problem. Alcoholics come from every walk of life."
A small team of junior doctors and a consultant would staff the 20-bed unit with patients expected to spend 6 to 8 weeks at the hospital.
The chimes of ice-cream vans were annoying Rainford councillors this week – and they decided to take action.
A local byelaw only allowed the ice-cream sellers to chime between noon and 7 pm – but that cut-off point was routinely ignored.
Rather dramatically, Rainford's Chief Public Health Inspector, John Wilde, declared to its Health Committee: "I want to stop it, and stop it dead."
He pointed out that there was nothing to stop the vans from selling ice-cream late at night, but they had to do so quietly without chimes.
Parents had complained of the difficulty in getting their young ones to bed when the ice-cream vans were chiming away.
And so Mr Wilde was given permission to write to all the ice-cream firms warning them that they would be prosecuted if they played their chimes after the 7 o’clock embargo.
"It would be more pleasant if all the notes were in tune", added Mr Wilde. "Some of the notes do tend to grate on the ear."
St Helens Police must have received countless threats over the years while making arrests.
But I don't think the one that a 57-year-old Haydock man made to them would have worried the bobbies too much.
In St Helens Magistrates Court this week, Inspector David Johnstone said the man from Juddfield Street in Haydock had been found drunk and disorderly in Cotham Street.
And when a policeman told him he was taking him to the police station, the man replied:
"If you take me away I'll bring the Gestapo into St. Helens."
In court the man sighed and said "It's no use" before being fined £10 for his 14th offence of drunkenness in just two years. A candidate, perhaps, for treatment at the new alcoholism unit?
Although Margaret Thatcher is renowned for selling off council houses to tenants at a reduced price, the Tory policy was far from new.
The only difference was that she introduced a mandatory right to buy for tenants – whereas local authorities had previously been permitted to opt-out of council house sales.
In 1972 the Environment Secretary was Peter Walker and his department was virtually pleading with councils to sell their homes to their tenants.
This week after receiving further letters from the department, both St Helens and Whiston councils reaffirmed their decisions not to flog off any of their council house stock.
Whiston Council's clerk, Mike Carter, told a committee meeting that such sales made no economic sense.
If they decided to proceed, he said, they would be obliged to sell houses at a 20% discount to tenants but then pay much higher prices to build replacement homes.
In St Helens, Cllr. Charles Martin told members of their Housing Committee that they should give consideration to the selling off of at least some of their housing stock.
However, Cllr. Tom Harvey, chairman of the committee, made a prescient comment in reply, when he said:
"It has not been the policy of this council to sell houses, although the Government may try to force us to sell houses in the future."
And finally, Tom Yates, the headmaster of St Luke's school in Knowsley Road for eighteen years retired this week. He said: "I'm glad to be finishing but I will miss the kiddies."
Next week's stories will include the vandalism in the town's parks, the jobs crisis for young people in St Helens, 14,000 Pilks' workers take part in a one-day strike and the St Helens MP tells the House of Commons about the stinky brook.