FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 29 SEPT - 5 OCT 1975
This week's many stories include the closure of a naughty knickers shop, the new bus shelter in Kiln Lane that was blamed for causing accidents, the small garages caught in a petrol price-cutting war, the tree planting campaign, the Sefton Arms' Christmas dinners and the opening of the Wharton Day Unit to free up bed space at St Helens Hospital.
We begin on the 29th when St Helens Council's Leisure and Recreation Committee met and heard how a combination of vandals and Dutch Elm disease was savaging the town's tree population. But the council was hitting back with a campaign of tree planting, something that was far less common in the 1970s than today.
In April 1975, as a result of lobbying by Windle Parish Council, a new bus shelter had been erected at the junction of Kiln Lane and Coronation Road to replace the existing one that had fallen into disrepair. An advertising company had agreed to pay for the shelter's erection in return for the right to place advertisements on it.
The shelter was made of glass and so in theory caused no obstruction to car drivers. But as soon as the ad firm stuck their posters on one side of the shelter, the view of motorists turning into Kiln Lane was heavily obstructed. It was now being described as a hazard to motorists and on the 29th at a Windle Parish Council meeting, Councillor Bob Greener stated, "There have been several accidents at that junction and the poster adds an extra problem to an already dangerous traffic hazard." And so the councillors decided to write to St Helens Council to see if the bus stop could be moved further down Kiln Lane.
Apparently The Yetties (pictured above) took their name from the Dorset village of Yetminster and on the 29th the band performed their brand of English folk at the Theatre Royal in St Helens.
Denis Healey was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1975 and he had recently made an announcement that £30 million was being made available for job creation schemes. In today's money that's over £400 million and the St Helens Reporter described on October 3rd how St Helens Council wanted to get their hands on some of the cash to support the many jobless school leavers in the town.
But Town Hall officials and local Employment Department staff were being hampered by a lack of detailed information from the government. The paper said nobody in Whitehall had been able to state how the scheme would operate but more details were expected next week.
Under the front page headline of "Getting To The Bottom Of It . . .", the Reporter wrote: "Has St. Helens seen the last of the scanty panties? Is the sexy garter a non-starter? Do girls need something thicker than the frilly knicker…? Reporter Iain Webster reveals all on the front page of Section Two."
Those readers who rushed to find the piece in Section 2 of the paper might have been a tad disappointed. It simply told how a Swiss businessman called Frank Goldman had closed his "naughty knickers" shop in St Mary's Market called Vallerina because of a lack of sales. "They don't know what they are missing," said Mr Goldman, who had twenty other shops in the North West. "The people of St. Helens should take more interest in exciting underwear. After all, there is no harm in it."
The Reporter also described how a newly-completed £71,000 "super ward" was to be opened to public inspection in a week's time as part of an Open Day at St Helens Hospital. The Wharton Day Unit in the hospital's Peasley Cross wing was going to put the emphasis on preparing elderly patients for everyday life.
The ward was fitted with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen to reproduce the domestic environment that patients may have missed during long stays in hospital. The end result, claimed the St Helens and Knowsley Area Health Authority, was that people would be able to return to their homes far more quickly and so free up bed space. The Authority also had an advert in the paper promoting their Open Day that bore the headline "How Are The Old Folk Cared For In Hospital?"
The Ravenhead Action Committee was still fighting to save the jobs of the 465 workers at their loss-making TV glassware factory. Pilkington's had announced its closure next March after the government had refused to provide a temporary subsidy, essentially because they felt the plant could never become profitable. But the Action Committee thought differently, with their solution being to stop the cheap imports of TV tubes and sets from abroad.
The Reporter said that the committee had set up a meeting with Peter Shore, the Minister of Trade, in London to discuss the situation. Twenty of their members had attended the recent Labour Party Conference to lobby delegates and had received sympathetic hearings from Clive Jenkins and their MP Leslie Spriggs.
"The Dilemma Of The Small Garage Man" was the headline to a Reporter article that discussed how small petrol stations were dealing with the current fuel price war. As petrol prices were continuing to rise overall, the larger garage owners were cutting prices or offering promotions to tempt drivers to visit their pumps. And smaller ones had to decide whether to follow suit and cut their profit margins down to the bone or stand fast and hope their sales did not suffer.
William Beswick ran Station Garage in Rainhill and said he would not be joining in the cut-price battle, believing that how a garage treated its customers was a more important factor, saying: "You lose money if you cut prices, and you might lose custom if you don't. But I haven't lost much custom. A lot of my sales are credit sales so there isn't much point in me going cut-price. I can't see the cut-price battle going on for ever, when a lot of garages have fizzled out the prices will go back up again."
But most garages in the district were slashing their petrol prices, such as Brook Bridge Garage in Prescot, which was knocking 2p off each gallon and giving away trading stamps. Owner John Middlehurst said: "We have cut our profit margins down to nil. We are just about holding our own at the moment. We are just hoping the market will sort itself out soon."
David Taylor was the MD of Whiston Autopoint in Warrington Road and he said: "Everybody is suffering. We aren't making what we used to and there is no way that everybody is going to make money, particularly people like us, and the small, singly-owned garages. We are fighting the war on our own – the companies certainly aren't subsidising us."
The Reporter also described how a fleet of TV detector vans were to be drafted into St Helens next week for a big crackdown on licence dodgers. And how later in the month, St Helens Council's new mobile book library would be taking to the road. The aim of the service was to visit the rural areas of the district, although urban places where no adequate library was available would also be included in the fortnightly visits.
The Sefton Arms had an advert in the Reporter advertising their Christmas dinner, which would be available daily from December 8th. With fruit juice as a starter, there was turkey, creamed potatoes, stuffing and veg on the menu, along with Christmas pudding, mince pies and coffee for the princely sum of £2.
The murder of Warwickshire hairdresser Tom Walker and the dumping of his car in Rainford by his presumed killers had been a big story earlier in the year. The police had been involved in extensive searches and had asked the public in Rainford and St Helens for their assistance, including, rather oddly, any information they held on homosexuals known to frequent the area. But it appears that those involved in the murder had no connection with St Helens, as the Reporter stated that two men from London and Hertfordshire had now both been charged with committing the crime.
On the 3rd Reginald Dixon returned to St Helens to perform at the Theatre Royal. The Reporter had previously called the organist "Mr Blackpool" after his popular shows at the Tower Ballroom. Two days later over 800 men, youths and boys walked the main streets of St Helens in the 15th annual Catholic Rosary procession.
And from the 5th, 'The Godfather Part II' starring Al Pacino and Robert Duval replaced 'The Eiger Sanction' at the ABC Savoy. Meanwhile at the Capitol, 'Swedish Love Games' was replaced by 'M*A*S*H', as it was spelt in the Reporter, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the staggering cost of vandalism in St Helens, the pony that was trapped in an Eccleston swimming pool, the demolition of Rainhill's eyesore and the huge number of cars that were stolen in St Helens.
We begin on the 29th when St Helens Council's Leisure and Recreation Committee met and heard how a combination of vandals and Dutch Elm disease was savaging the town's tree population. But the council was hitting back with a campaign of tree planting, something that was far less common in the 1970s than today.
In April 1975, as a result of lobbying by Windle Parish Council, a new bus shelter had been erected at the junction of Kiln Lane and Coronation Road to replace the existing one that had fallen into disrepair. An advertising company had agreed to pay for the shelter's erection in return for the right to place advertisements on it.
The shelter was made of glass and so in theory caused no obstruction to car drivers. But as soon as the ad firm stuck their posters on one side of the shelter, the view of motorists turning into Kiln Lane was heavily obstructed. It was now being described as a hazard to motorists and on the 29th at a Windle Parish Council meeting, Councillor Bob Greener stated, "There have been several accidents at that junction and the poster adds an extra problem to an already dangerous traffic hazard." And so the councillors decided to write to St Helens Council to see if the bus stop could be moved further down Kiln Lane.
Denis Healey was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1975 and he had recently made an announcement that £30 million was being made available for job creation schemes. In today's money that's over £400 million and the St Helens Reporter described on October 3rd how St Helens Council wanted to get their hands on some of the cash to support the many jobless school leavers in the town.
But Town Hall officials and local Employment Department staff were being hampered by a lack of detailed information from the government. The paper said nobody in Whitehall had been able to state how the scheme would operate but more details were expected next week.
Under the front page headline of "Getting To The Bottom Of It . . .", the Reporter wrote: "Has St. Helens seen the last of the scanty panties? Is the sexy garter a non-starter? Do girls need something thicker than the frilly knicker…? Reporter Iain Webster reveals all on the front page of Section Two."
Those readers who rushed to find the piece in Section 2 of the paper might have been a tad disappointed. It simply told how a Swiss businessman called Frank Goldman had closed his "naughty knickers" shop in St Mary's Market called Vallerina because of a lack of sales. "They don't know what they are missing," said Mr Goldman, who had twenty other shops in the North West. "The people of St. Helens should take more interest in exciting underwear. After all, there is no harm in it."
The Reporter also described how a newly-completed £71,000 "super ward" was to be opened to public inspection in a week's time as part of an Open Day at St Helens Hospital. The Wharton Day Unit in the hospital's Peasley Cross wing was going to put the emphasis on preparing elderly patients for everyday life.
The ward was fitted with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen to reproduce the domestic environment that patients may have missed during long stays in hospital. The end result, claimed the St Helens and Knowsley Area Health Authority, was that people would be able to return to their homes far more quickly and so free up bed space. The Authority also had an advert in the paper promoting their Open Day that bore the headline "How Are The Old Folk Cared For In Hospital?"
The Ravenhead Action Committee was still fighting to save the jobs of the 465 workers at their loss-making TV glassware factory. Pilkington's had announced its closure next March after the government had refused to provide a temporary subsidy, essentially because they felt the plant could never become profitable. But the Action Committee thought differently, with their solution being to stop the cheap imports of TV tubes and sets from abroad.
The Reporter said that the committee had set up a meeting with Peter Shore, the Minister of Trade, in London to discuss the situation. Twenty of their members had attended the recent Labour Party Conference to lobby delegates and had received sympathetic hearings from Clive Jenkins and their MP Leslie Spriggs.
"The Dilemma Of The Small Garage Man" was the headline to a Reporter article that discussed how small petrol stations were dealing with the current fuel price war. As petrol prices were continuing to rise overall, the larger garage owners were cutting prices or offering promotions to tempt drivers to visit their pumps. And smaller ones had to decide whether to follow suit and cut their profit margins down to the bone or stand fast and hope their sales did not suffer.
William Beswick ran Station Garage in Rainhill and said he would not be joining in the cut-price battle, believing that how a garage treated its customers was a more important factor, saying: "You lose money if you cut prices, and you might lose custom if you don't. But I haven't lost much custom. A lot of my sales are credit sales so there isn't much point in me going cut-price. I can't see the cut-price battle going on for ever, when a lot of garages have fizzled out the prices will go back up again."
But most garages in the district were slashing their petrol prices, such as Brook Bridge Garage in Prescot, which was knocking 2p off each gallon and giving away trading stamps. Owner John Middlehurst said: "We have cut our profit margins down to nil. We are just about holding our own at the moment. We are just hoping the market will sort itself out soon."
David Taylor was the MD of Whiston Autopoint in Warrington Road and he said: "Everybody is suffering. We aren't making what we used to and there is no way that everybody is going to make money, particularly people like us, and the small, singly-owned garages. We are fighting the war on our own – the companies certainly aren't subsidising us."
The Reporter also described how a fleet of TV detector vans were to be drafted into St Helens next week for a big crackdown on licence dodgers. And how later in the month, St Helens Council's new mobile book library would be taking to the road. The aim of the service was to visit the rural areas of the district, although urban places where no adequate library was available would also be included in the fortnightly visits.
The Sefton Arms had an advert in the Reporter advertising their Christmas dinner, which would be available daily from December 8th. With fruit juice as a starter, there was turkey, creamed potatoes, stuffing and veg on the menu, along with Christmas pudding, mince pies and coffee for the princely sum of £2.
The murder of Warwickshire hairdresser Tom Walker and the dumping of his car in Rainford by his presumed killers had been a big story earlier in the year. The police had been involved in extensive searches and had asked the public in Rainford and St Helens for their assistance, including, rather oddly, any information they held on homosexuals known to frequent the area. But it appears that those involved in the murder had no connection with St Helens, as the Reporter stated that two men from London and Hertfordshire had now both been charged with committing the crime.
On the 3rd Reginald Dixon returned to St Helens to perform at the Theatre Royal. The Reporter had previously called the organist "Mr Blackpool" after his popular shows at the Tower Ballroom. Two days later over 800 men, youths and boys walked the main streets of St Helens in the 15th annual Catholic Rosary procession.
And from the 5th, 'The Godfather Part II' starring Al Pacino and Robert Duval replaced 'The Eiger Sanction' at the ABC Savoy. Meanwhile at the Capitol, 'Swedish Love Games' was replaced by 'M*A*S*H', as it was spelt in the Reporter, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the staggering cost of vandalism in St Helens, the pony that was trapped in an Eccleston swimming pool, the demolition of Rainhill's eyesore and the huge number of cars that were stolen in St Helens.
This week's many stories include the closure of a naughty knickers shop, the new bus shelter in Kiln Lane that was blamed for causing accidents, the small garages caught in a petrol price-cutting war, the tree planting campaign, the Sefton Arms' Christmas dinners and the opening of the Wharton Day Unit to free up bed space at St Helens Hospital.
We begin on the 29th when St Helens Council's Leisure and Recreation Committee met and heard how a combination of vandals and Dutch Elm disease was savaging the town's tree population.
But the council was hitting back with a campaign of tree planting, something that was far less common in the 1970s than today.
In April 1975, as a result of lobbying by Windle Parish Council, a new bus shelter had been erected at the junction of Kiln Lane and Coronation Road to replace the existing one that had fallen into disrepair.
An advertising company had agreed to pay for the shelter's erection in return for the right to place advertisements on it.
The shelter was made of glass and so in theory caused no obstruction to car drivers. But as soon as the ad firm stuck their posters on one side of the shelter, the view of motorists turning into Kiln Lane was heavily obstructed.
It was now being described as a hazard to motorists and on the 29th at a Windle Parish Council meeting, Councillor Bob Greener stated, "There have been several accidents at that junction and the poster adds an extra problem to an already dangerous traffic hazard."
And so the councillors decided to write to St Helens Council to see if the bus stop could be moved further down Kiln Lane.
Apparently The Yetties (pictured above) took their name from the Dorset village of Yetminster and on the 29th the band performed their brand of English folk at the Theatre Royal in St Helens.
Denis Healey was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1975 and he had recently made an announcement that £30 million was being made available for job creation schemes.
In today's money that's over £400 million and the St Helens Reporter described on October 3rd how St Helens Council wanted to get their hands on some of the cash to support the many jobless school leavers in the town.
But Town Hall officials and local Employment Department staff were being hampered by a lack of detailed information from the government.
The paper said nobody in Whitehall had been able to state how the scheme would operate but more details were expected next week.
Under the front page headline of "Getting To The Bottom Of It . . .", the Reporter wrote:
"Has St. Helens seen the last of the scanty panties? Is the sexy garter a non-starter? Do girls need something thicker than the frilly knicker…? Reporter Iain Webster reveals all on the front page of Section Two."
Those readers who rushed to find the piece in Section 2 of the paper might have been a tad disappointed.
It simply told how a Swiss businessman called Frank Goldman had closed his "naughty knickers" shop in St Mary's Market called Vallerina because of a lack of sales.
"They don't know what they are missing," said Mr Goldman, who had twenty other shops in the North West. "The people of St. Helens should take more interest in exciting underwear. After all, there is no harm in it."
The Reporter also described how a newly-completed £71,000 "super ward" was to be opened to public inspection in a week's time as part of an Open Day at St Helens Hospital.
The Wharton Day Unit in the hospital's Peasley Cross wing was going to put the emphasis on preparing elderly patients for everyday life.
The ward was fitted with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen to reproduce the domestic environment that patients may have missed during long stays in hospital.
The end result, claimed the St Helens and Knowsley Area Health Authority, was that people would be able to return to their homes far more quickly and so free up bed space.
The Authority also had an advert in the paper promoting their Open Day that bore the headline "How Are The Old Folk Cared For In Hospital?"
The Ravenhead Action Committee was still fighting to save the jobs of the 465 workers at their loss-making TV glassware factory.
Pilkington's had announced its closure next March after the government had refused to provide a temporary subsidy, essentially because they felt the plant could never become profitable.
But the Action Committee thought differently, with their solution being to stop the cheap imports of TV tubes and sets from abroad.
The Reporter said that the committee had set up a meeting with Peter Shore, the Minister of Trade, in London to discuss the situation.
Twenty of their members had attended the recent Labour Party Conference to lobby delegates and had received sympathetic hearings from Clive Jenkins and their MP Leslie Spriggs.
"The Dilemma Of The Small Garage Man" was the headline to a Reporter article that discussed how small petrol stations were dealing with the current fuel price war.
As petrol prices were continuing to rise overall, the larger garage owners were cutting prices or offering promotions to tempt drivers to visit their pumps.
And smaller ones had to decide whether to follow suit and cut their profit margins down to the bone or stand fast and hope their sales did not suffer.
William Beswick ran Station Garage in Rainhill and said he would not be joining in the cut-price battle, believing that how a garage treated its customers was a more important factor, saying:
"You lose money if you cut prices, and you might lose custom if you don't. But I haven't lost much custom. A lot of my sales are credit sales so there isn't much point in me going cut-price.
"I can't see the cut-price battle going on for ever, when a lot of garages have fizzled out the prices will go back up again."
But most garages in the district were slashing their petrol prices, such as Brook Bridge Garage in Prescot, which was knocking 2p off each gallon and giving away trading stamps.
Owner John Middlehurst said: "We have cut our profit margins down to nil. We are just about holding our own at the moment. We are just hoping the market will sort itself out soon."
David Taylor was the MD of Whiston Autopoint in Warrington Road and he said:
"Everybody is suffering. We aren't making what we used to and there is no way that everybody is going to make money, particularly people like us, and the small, singly-owned garages. We are fighting the war on our own – the companies certainly aren't subsidising us."
The Reporter also described how a fleet of TV detector vans were to be drafted into St Helens next week for a big crackdown on licence dodgers.
And how later in the month, St Helens Council's new mobile book library would be taking to the road.
The aim of the service was to visit the rural areas of the district, although urban places where no adequate library was available would also be included in the fortnightly visits.
The Sefton Arms had an advert in the Reporter advertising their Christmas dinner, which would be available daily from December 8th.
With fruit juice as a starter, there was turkey, creamed potatoes, stuffing and veg on the menu, along with Christmas pudding, mince pies and coffee for the princely sum of £2.
The murder of Warwickshire hairdresser Tom Walker and the dumping of his car in Rainford by his presumed killers had been a big story earlier in the year.
The police had been involved in extensive searches and had asked the public in Rainford and St Helens for their assistance, including, rather oddly, any information they held on homosexuals known to frequent the area.
But it appears that those involved in the murder had no connection with St Helens, as the Reporter stated that two men from London and Hertfordshire had now both been charged with committing the crime.
On the 3rd Reginald Dixon returned to St Helens to perform at the Theatre Royal. The Reporter had previously called the organist "Mr Blackpool" after his popular shows at the Tower Ballroom.
Two days later over 800 men, youths and boys walked the main streets of St Helens in the 15th annual Catholic Rosary procession.
And from the 5th, 'The Godfather Part II' starring Al Pacino and Robert Duval replaced 'The Eiger Sanction' at the ABC Savoy.
Meanwhile at the Capitol, 'Swedish Love Games' was replaced by 'M*A*S*H', as it was spelt in the Reporter, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the staggering cost of vandalism in St Helens, the pony that was trapped in an Eccleston swimming pool, the demolition of Rainhill's eyesore and the huge number of cars that were stolen in St Helens.
We begin on the 29th when St Helens Council's Leisure and Recreation Committee met and heard how a combination of vandals and Dutch Elm disease was savaging the town's tree population.
But the council was hitting back with a campaign of tree planting, something that was far less common in the 1970s than today.
In April 1975, as a result of lobbying by Windle Parish Council, a new bus shelter had been erected at the junction of Kiln Lane and Coronation Road to replace the existing one that had fallen into disrepair.
An advertising company had agreed to pay for the shelter's erection in return for the right to place advertisements on it.
The shelter was made of glass and so in theory caused no obstruction to car drivers. But as soon as the ad firm stuck their posters on one side of the shelter, the view of motorists turning into Kiln Lane was heavily obstructed.
It was now being described as a hazard to motorists and on the 29th at a Windle Parish Council meeting, Councillor Bob Greener stated, "There have been several accidents at that junction and the poster adds an extra problem to an already dangerous traffic hazard."
And so the councillors decided to write to St Helens Council to see if the bus stop could be moved further down Kiln Lane.
Denis Healey was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1975 and he had recently made an announcement that £30 million was being made available for job creation schemes.
In today's money that's over £400 million and the St Helens Reporter described on October 3rd how St Helens Council wanted to get their hands on some of the cash to support the many jobless school leavers in the town.
But Town Hall officials and local Employment Department staff were being hampered by a lack of detailed information from the government.
The paper said nobody in Whitehall had been able to state how the scheme would operate but more details were expected next week.
Under the front page headline of "Getting To The Bottom Of It . . .", the Reporter wrote:
"Has St. Helens seen the last of the scanty panties? Is the sexy garter a non-starter? Do girls need something thicker than the frilly knicker…? Reporter Iain Webster reveals all on the front page of Section Two."
Those readers who rushed to find the piece in Section 2 of the paper might have been a tad disappointed.
It simply told how a Swiss businessman called Frank Goldman had closed his "naughty knickers" shop in St Mary's Market called Vallerina because of a lack of sales.
"They don't know what they are missing," said Mr Goldman, who had twenty other shops in the North West. "The people of St. Helens should take more interest in exciting underwear. After all, there is no harm in it."
The Reporter also described how a newly-completed £71,000 "super ward" was to be opened to public inspection in a week's time as part of an Open Day at St Helens Hospital.
The Wharton Day Unit in the hospital's Peasley Cross wing was going to put the emphasis on preparing elderly patients for everyday life.
The ward was fitted with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen to reproduce the domestic environment that patients may have missed during long stays in hospital.
The end result, claimed the St Helens and Knowsley Area Health Authority, was that people would be able to return to their homes far more quickly and so free up bed space.
The Authority also had an advert in the paper promoting their Open Day that bore the headline "How Are The Old Folk Cared For In Hospital?"
The Ravenhead Action Committee was still fighting to save the jobs of the 465 workers at their loss-making TV glassware factory.
Pilkington's had announced its closure next March after the government had refused to provide a temporary subsidy, essentially because they felt the plant could never become profitable.
But the Action Committee thought differently, with their solution being to stop the cheap imports of TV tubes and sets from abroad.
The Reporter said that the committee had set up a meeting with Peter Shore, the Minister of Trade, in London to discuss the situation.
Twenty of their members had attended the recent Labour Party Conference to lobby delegates and had received sympathetic hearings from Clive Jenkins and their MP Leslie Spriggs.
"The Dilemma Of The Small Garage Man" was the headline to a Reporter article that discussed how small petrol stations were dealing with the current fuel price war.
As petrol prices were continuing to rise overall, the larger garage owners were cutting prices or offering promotions to tempt drivers to visit their pumps.
And smaller ones had to decide whether to follow suit and cut their profit margins down to the bone or stand fast and hope their sales did not suffer.
William Beswick ran Station Garage in Rainhill and said he would not be joining in the cut-price battle, believing that how a garage treated its customers was a more important factor, saying:
"You lose money if you cut prices, and you might lose custom if you don't. But I haven't lost much custom. A lot of my sales are credit sales so there isn't much point in me going cut-price.
"I can't see the cut-price battle going on for ever, when a lot of garages have fizzled out the prices will go back up again."
But most garages in the district were slashing their petrol prices, such as Brook Bridge Garage in Prescot, which was knocking 2p off each gallon and giving away trading stamps.
Owner John Middlehurst said: "We have cut our profit margins down to nil. We are just about holding our own at the moment. We are just hoping the market will sort itself out soon."
David Taylor was the MD of Whiston Autopoint in Warrington Road and he said:
"Everybody is suffering. We aren't making what we used to and there is no way that everybody is going to make money, particularly people like us, and the small, singly-owned garages. We are fighting the war on our own – the companies certainly aren't subsidising us."
The Reporter also described how a fleet of TV detector vans were to be drafted into St Helens next week for a big crackdown on licence dodgers.
And how later in the month, St Helens Council's new mobile book library would be taking to the road.
The aim of the service was to visit the rural areas of the district, although urban places where no adequate library was available would also be included in the fortnightly visits.
The Sefton Arms had an advert in the Reporter advertising their Christmas dinner, which would be available daily from December 8th.
With fruit juice as a starter, there was turkey, creamed potatoes, stuffing and veg on the menu, along with Christmas pudding, mince pies and coffee for the princely sum of £2.
The murder of Warwickshire hairdresser Tom Walker and the dumping of his car in Rainford by his presumed killers had been a big story earlier in the year.
The police had been involved in extensive searches and had asked the public in Rainford and St Helens for their assistance, including, rather oddly, any information they held on homosexuals known to frequent the area.
But it appears that those involved in the murder had no connection with St Helens, as the Reporter stated that two men from London and Hertfordshire had now both been charged with committing the crime.
On the 3rd Reginald Dixon returned to St Helens to perform at the Theatre Royal. The Reporter had previously called the organist "Mr Blackpool" after his popular shows at the Tower Ballroom.
Two days later over 800 men, youths and boys walked the main streets of St Helens in the 15th annual Catholic Rosary procession.
And from the 5th, 'The Godfather Part II' starring Al Pacino and Robert Duval replaced 'The Eiger Sanction' at the ABC Savoy.
Meanwhile at the Capitol, 'Swedish Love Games' was replaced by 'M*A*S*H', as it was spelt in the Reporter, starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the staggering cost of vandalism in St Helens, the pony that was trapped in an Eccleston swimming pool, the demolition of Rainhill's eyesore and the huge number of cars that were stolen in St Helens.