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threegee

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  1. James David Millne I

    Mining engineer who managed the Doctor Pit for the Bedlington Coal Company.  Officially employed as under-manager (assistant manager), he held a full manager's qualifications, and turned down offers from other regional coal companies wanting him to manage collieries for them in favour of remaining in Bedlington.  He worked together with Mr Cruddace (junior), who's responsibility was to manage (again officially under-manage) the 'A' Pit at Bedlington Station. Mr Cruddace (senior) held overall management responsibility for both collieries.

    "David" also held public office as a JP (Justice of the Peace), and served on the board of the Bedlington Cooperative Society, amongst other local duties.  He was known to many Bedlingtonians as the lay preacher at The Church of Christ (Baptists) on Front Street West.  It is largely unknown what he did in his spare time!

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  2. The Austin Sheerline A125 of the very early 1950's.

    Reportedly only around 8000 were ever built and sold worldwide. This one was Bedlington's example (often seen parked in The Marketplace), and was borrowed by Lord Ridley for electioneering.

    It had a luxury hard wood interior, and there was even a matching fully fitted picknick case built in to the rear seating.

  3. Just a stab in the dark here, but this looks very like Eileen Brown (nee Purvis) the vicar's daughter and Dr Brown's wife.  I never dreamed she would might have been a cyclist - but maybe before the Buckfast Tonic Wine (as a medical requirement, of course).

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  4. Mary and "Jimmy" Millne.  Nice hat, but the car is really the star here. What is it?  Not the contemporary Austin Sheerline I think - heck I should know, but don't!  Many mentions of a stylish Packard, but I think that was a lot earlier. Another Austin, or could it simply be one of Billy Elliot's Fords?

  5. Laird's House Garden behind Front Street West around 1957/58. This is looking East by a little bit North. This is the access road and car park now.  The lawn was always set out as a putting green by the Bedlington Coal Company managers lived there before WWII, so the little chap was probably the last person ever to use them.  Too smudgy to be sure but the "little chap" is likely me!

  6. 1 minute ago, threegee said:

    There'd need to be more detail to date this one more accurately, but from a close-up of the roofline in the foreground it's surprisingly no earlier than the very late 1950's (1959) and more likely the early to mid 1960's - from the TV aerials of course.

     

  7. Yes, of course it's Roy.  Thanks for the correction.  Think I identified Roy on pix elsewhere in the gallery some time ago as still going strong! :)

     

    Fancy mixing up a militant Marxist extremist with a "cuddly right winger"!  Must have had far too much vino that night, or maybe I was just trying to wind-up HPW? :D

     

    P.S. I deeply and genuinely sympathise HPW, but the fact is you were taken for a ride. I've covered this elsewhere so won't repeat myself.  There was right and wrong on both sides, but by refusing to hold a ballot Scargill automatically put himself on the wrong side of the law. The present-day NUM takes a much more objective view of your hero. You've misidentified your villains, and another of those could well be Ted Heath, who didn't act like a proper national leader when tested.

     

    I agree with you that the McGregor + Tyler book is a good insightful read, but it's certainly not his biography.

     

    Attempting to imposing modern standards on centuries-old history, and cherry-picking facts, are favourite practices of Marxists.  The popular capitalism you condemn has been responsible for the social improvements, whereas Scargill's Marxism enslaved the people it pretended to liberate, and surely (to mis-quote Marx) "contains the seeds of its own destruction".

  8. NUM Yorkshire President Arthur Scargill, caught in the Market Place between Millne House and The Market Tavern in the year before his taking over as President of the NUM.

    Four years later Arthur would attempt to bring down the government with the disastrous 1984–1985 miners' strike. This would prove to be the final nail-in-the-cofin for the UK mining industry, and have a profound effect on mining communities like our town's.

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