Keithbarrett

The miners in this country should have been given medals for what they have done for Britain. They kept this country warm and running for over 200 years, working in the most appalling inhuman conditions. They should have been given medals for their fathers and their father’s fathers and for all the thousands of miners who were killed and injured over the many years. Not forgetting medals for the mining community’s fatherless children and the miners who died from mining related illnesses. My wife’s Grandfather who was a miner in Burnley died of emphysema. And how were they thanked? Margaret Thatcher had their heads beaten into the ground with truncheons. Miner's blood flowed. It was an absolute national disgrace that she was allowed to do it, and we as a nation stood by and let this mad woman destroy communities and turn father against son. When Thatcher became responsible for stopping the children’s school milk we should have heard alarm bells then, we should have seen it as warning to what this megalomaniac was capable of implementing. She wept when she was leaving Downing Street; she wept for herself, but never shed a single tear for the miners and their wives and families.

Black Boy House, Turner Lane, Halifax, where John Christie was born was an Inn before Christie's birth, the family moved to Haley Hill, Halifax when Christie was a boy. His future wife Ethel lived a few streets away; which does make it quite a coincidence that he met her later in Sheffield? In the winter of 1966/67 I played with a group in Notting Hill in the Ladbroke Hotel (demolished in the 1970s slum clearance). A local lad gave us a lift home one Sunday afternoon and enroute he asked us if we would like to see Rillington Place. We parked at the end of Rillington place and looked down this foreboding Street. We could clearly see number 10 at the far end on the left. I must say it was one of the grimmest places I have ever seen, of course taking its past into consideration. The street seemed to be occupied by mainly West Indians. Where was Rillington Place? The whole area, streets and all, was demolished (when the film 10 Rillington Place was filmed, the street was waiting to be demolished), Rillington Place was replaced by, finally, Bartle Road. I have looked at old and new maps and I have found the position of Christie’s back garden which can be seen from Lancaster Road. If you find Wesley Square the garden was at the far end from Lancaster Road.