Wednesday, 3 June 2026
The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass - Benny Rothman
It was 115 years ago on Monday that Benny Rothman was born and to celebrate a blog piece on his Anti-Fascist work was published at:-
https://writemark.blogspot.com/2026/06/born-115-years-ago-today-kinder-scout.html
This was taken from the booklet BENNY ROTHMAN –a fighter for the right to roam, workers’ rights and socialism.
Read at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-benny-rothman.pdf
Today it is a chance to recall the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass and for which Benny is best known,
The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass
The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass of 1932 is for what Benny Rothman
is internationally known and which he covered in his The 1932 Kinder Scout Mass
Trespass book first published in 1982.
The protest played a significant part in the ultimately
successful campaign for public access to moors and mountains. To celebrate the
70th anniversary of the trespass, writer Roly Smith, who is the current Vice
President of the Outdoor Writers' and Photographers' Guild, wrote the following
piece in 2002 and which Unite is grateful for allowing to be republished here.
William Clough, the site of the conflict between ramblers, police and land owners on 24th April 1932 - Photograph is copyright Mark Harvey
Forgive us our trespasses
Sunday, April 24, 1932 dawned fine and clear: a perfect day
for enjoying that away-from-it-all, top-of-the-world feeling uniquely and so
easily available to ramblers on the high moorland of Kinder Scout. But 70 years
ago, the highest and wildest moorland of the Peak remained frustratingly out of
bounds to the growing army of walkers who had joined the huge rambling craze in
the surrounding cities.
Only a dozen footpaths of two miles or more crossed the open
moorland of the Peak District, and not one crossed the 15 square miles of the
ramblers’ Holy Grail, the 2,000-foot summit of the Kinder Scout plateau.
Britain was then “bumping along the bottom” of the depths of an abysmal
depression, and nothing that Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Government could do
seemed to help. Dole queues stretched in the streets of Manchester and
Sheffield, and the newspapers were full of reports of demonstrations by the
unemployed, as the jobless total topped three million. The Great Escape offered
by the misty, inviting moors of the Peak, just a sixpenny (2.5p) bus ride away
from the grimy, back-to-back terraces, was a magnetic temptation; a chance to
recreate in the true sense of the word.
Many were prepared to risk an encounter with the burly
gamekeepers who jealously guarded the moors for their grouse-shooting masters.
Trespassing had become a popular sport, adding an extra frisson of excitement
to a moorland ramble. G.H.B.Ward, the King of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers,
had dubbed the pastime, “the gentle art of trespass,” and gained the dubious
distinction in 1923 of having a writ served on him making him apologise for
past trespasses on Kinder, and promise not to trespass again. “But the
gamekeepers are not always there,” he gleefully reported in the 1952-53 Clarion
Handbook, “and after a while, the amount of general trespassing did not
decrease.” He regarded the writ as “a greater honour than any OBE,” and added:
“May Kinder be ‘free’ in 1953, and may those who never knew this fight for
Liberty deserve the Victory by their use of, and behaviour on, Kinder Scout.”
It was against this kind of background that the famous Mass
Trespass on Kinder Scout took place. There can be no doubt now that the
trespass was politically motivated. But it was born out of a mounting sense of
frustration felt by many young outdoor people at the apparent lack of progress
made by the rambling establishment towards the long standing goal of obtaining
free access to Britain’s mountains and moorland – a goal now within sight after
the recent passing of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. Intellectuals like
Prof. C.E.M. Joad and Prof. G.M.Trevelyan appeared to support the idea of
trespass. Joad, addressing a ramblers’ rally in The Winnats, Castleton, had
told his audience: “If you want the moors to be free, you must free them for
yourselves.” Most interpreted that as an invitation to trespass, although Joad
later denied this.
The rambling federations of Manchester and Sheffield were
opposed to the use of direct action. Both Harold Wild of the Manchester
federation and Stephen Morton of the Sheffield group went on record as saying
that they believed the trespass had put back the access campaign by 20 years.
It came at a time when they genuinely believed they were at last beginning to
break the power of the landowners by getting them to agree to meet around the
conference table.
Access campaigner Tom Stephenson, while opposing the tactic
of mass trespass, thought this was nonsense. The cynical emasculation in
Parliament of the 1939 Creech Jones Access to Mountains Bill showed how little
reasonable hope there was for access legislation at the time. Stephenson
acknowledged that the 1932 Mass Trespass was the most dramatic incident in the
long access campaign. “Yet it contributed little, if anything, to it,” he
claimed. Edward Royce, access secretary of the Manchester federation and a
leading champion of the access cause, was equally dismissive. “The year 1932
will not be remembered as a red letter year for the rambler,” he wrote soon
afterwards. “It has been a period of more than the usual froth and bubble.”
Royce’s successor as access secretary was Philip Daley,
later to become national chairman of the Ramblers’ Association and chairman of
the Access and Footpaths Committee of the Peak District National Park authority
for 19 years. As such, he was closely involved in the negotiations for the
first access agreements with the landowners in the Peak, and said he found the
mass trespass was invariably used as an argument against public access. “Such
access as we have gained,” he wrote, “owes nothing whatever to the mass
trespass….and I can say quite categorically without fear of contradiction that
the mass trespass was a positive hinderance and deterrent to the discussion and
negotiations to secure the freedom of the hills.”
The idea of a mass trespass originated during the Easter
1932 weekend camp of the Communist-inspired British Workers’ Sports Federation
held at Rowarth, on the western edge of Kinder Scout. A visiting group of
London based BWSF walkers had been turned back by abusive and threatening
gamekeepers at Yellowslacks, on the western approach to Bleaklow from Glossop.
Back at the campsite, it was agreed that if enough ramblers had been there, no
number of keepers could have turned them back. “We decided then and there to
prove the point,” recalled Benny Rothman, then secretary of the Lancashire
district of the BWSF.
Which was why that sunny Sunday morning found Rothman, then
a 20-year-old unemployed motor mechanic, and his best friend Woolfie Winnick,
cycling out of Manchester to the friendly village of Hayfield, which shelters
under the western ramparts of Kinder Scout. They were already wanted men,
having used their bikes to avoid police waiting at Manchester’s London Road
station with a restraining injunction against the event, which had been
deliberately well-publicised by Rothman in the Manchester newspapers. The bells
of St. Matthews Georgian parish church were ringing out as Benny and Woolfie planned
the event which was to change the course of rambling history over a cup of tea
in the village tearoom.
What happened next is now firmly established as part of
rambling folklore. The march of about 400 ramblers from Hayfield Recreation
Ground to Bowden Bridge quarry, (where a plaque unveiled on the 50th
anniversary now commemorates the event); the impromptu speech by Rothman when
the main speaker failed to arrive; the joyful, arm-in-arm, singing procession
up the Kinder Road by Nab Brow above the reservoir and into Wiliam Clough; and
the sudden break-out onto the forbidden ground of Sandy Heys at the prearranged
signal of three blasts on Woolfie’s whistle.
Tom Stephenson always
insisted that the trespassers never reached the summit of Kinder Scout, which
is two miles away and about 400 feet higher, and the available evidence seems
to bear him out. Rothman himself said that the body of ramblers was about
halfway up William Clough on the Hayfield to Snake Inn public footpath, which
had been negotiated by the Hayfield and Kinder Scout Ancient Footpaths
Association as long ago as 1897, when the trespass actually began.
At Woolfie’s signal, they started to scramble up the steep
slopes of Sandy Heys in open formation. A line of between 20 and 30 keepers was
waiting for them on the brow of the hil. The few, undistinguished scuffles
which fo lowed resulted in one temporary keeper, Edward Beevers, being knocked
to the ground, injuring an ankle. Press photographs taken at the time actua ly
show concerned ramblers coming to his assistance. John Watson, one of the group
of stick-wielding keepers waiting on Sandy Heys said afterwards: “We could hear
them cheering and yeling as if they had achieved something, when they had
achieved nothing at al. They had only trespassed about 100 yards – they never
got halfway up the clough.”
Rothman later agreed with Stephenson that the so-called
“victory meeting,” when the Hayfield group met up with others from Sheffield,
who had come by the much more difficult route across Kinder’s peaty plateau
from Edale, was held near Ashop Head, at least two miles north west of Kinder’s
hard-to-find summit. But in the end, what was more important was that they had
trespassed in such a public and positive way, rather than how far they had
trespassed.
The trespassers agreed that they would march back to
Hayfield “with their heads held high” and not disperse like a band of
criminals. “It was a demonstration for the rights of ordinary people to walk on
land stolen from them in earlier times,” Rothman was to write later. “We were
proud of our effort and proudly marched back the way we had come.”
The police, who had declined to take part in the scramble up
Kinder’s steep flanks, were waiting in a line across Kinder Road when the
trespassers returned. Five people were arrested, in addition to John Anderson,
a rambler actually opposed to the trespass who had just come along to see what
would happen, but was apparently arrested when he went to assist the injured
Beevers. They were variously charged with public order offences such as riotous
assembly, but significantly, not with trespass.
The story of the
trial of the trespassers at Derby Assizes is as riddled with the same kind of
class prejudice as the rest of the event. The judge, Sir Edward Acton, was true
to the best traditions of English justice. When it was revealed that a copy of
a book by Lenin had been found in the possession of one of the accused (Tona
Gilett) when arrested, he innocently enquired, to the merriment of the court:
“Isn’t that the Russian gentleman?”
Rothman’s self-conducted defence, prepared in the darkness
of a Leicester prison cell, was a masterpiece of open-air, working-class
rhetoric. “We ramblers, after a hard week’s work in smoky towns and cities, go
out rambling for relaxation, a breath of fresh air, a little sun shine,” he
told the court. “But we find when we go out that the finest rambling country is
closed to us, just because certain individuals wish to shoot for about ten days
a year.”
Ironically, it was the severity of the sentences handed down
by the judge on the five young defendants – ranging between two and six (*)
months’ imprisonment – which was to unite the ramblers’ cause. Even those
implacably opposed to the trespass were appalled by the “savage” sentences, and
the Manchester federation were among many who appealed to the Home Secretary
for a remission. A writer in the Manchester Guardian compared the affair to a
university student rag, pointing out that people arrested during rags were not
usually sent to prison. The Clarion Handbook of 1933-34, reported that the
stiff sentences handed out “did not bring laurels to the other side” and
thousands of ramblers were reported to have gone to view the scene of the
trespass immediately after the event.
The annual ramblers access demonstration in The Winnats a
few weeks later drew a record 10,000 people, and further mass trespasses
followed at Abbey Brook in the Upper Derwent, and on Stanage Edge, but
significantly, no arrests were made. Indisputably, the mass trespass on Kinder
in 1932 bought the access issue to a head, and acted as an important catalyst
to the whole National Parks and access to the countryside campaign which
eventually led to legislation in 1949. When the Peak District National Park authority
came into being in April, 1951, it lost no time in addressing the access
problem, and it was no accident that the first-ever access agreement allowing
walkers the freedom to roam was signed just a year later, covering 5,780 acres
of Kinder Scout and Broadlee Bank Tor. Today, more than 80 square miles of
moorland are covered by such agreements.
The “Right to Roam” Countryside and Rights of Way Act of
2000 can be seen as the crowning culmination of the efforts of those brave
pioneering trespassers, though few will live to see its enactment. There can be
little doubt either, that the Kinder trespass has entered the realms of the
mythology of the outdoor movement, giving its few survivors a totally unsought
aura of martyrdom.
Roly Smith
* John Anderson received the longest sentence for assaulting
the gamekeeper, a charge he disputed to the end of his life and one which
Derbyshire’s Chief Constable publicly stated in 1994 he was innocent of.
Who else attended the Trespass?
Jimmie Miller was there. He is better known as Ewan MacColl,
the singer who wrote and recorded The Manchester Rambler. MacColl later married
Peggy Seeger.
AJP Taylor, who in 1932 was a Manchester University
lecturer, later became a distinguished historian.
Clem Beckett Clem ‘Dare Devil’ Beckett, the man who rode the
Wall of Death on his motorbike.
Benny Rothman is, of course best, and widely known, for the
mass trespass. Yet according to Harry Rothman “my Dad barely mentioned it as he
always had too much on. He knew it was important but he was engaged in things
that were immediately important such as trade union and Communist Party work.”
Although Benny had not chosen to go to prison he did utilise his time there productively by learning shorthand. This was to prove a very useful skill when he became a workplace union representative, allowing him to constantly challenge management when they changed their attitudes during negotiations and sought to dispute they had previously concluded an agreement.
Monday, 1 June 2026
Born 115 years ago today: KINDER SCOUT HERO BENNY ROTHMAN ON FIGHTING FASCISM
KINDER
SCOUT HERO BENNY ROTHMAN – FIGHTING FASCISM
This work and many others can be accessed at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/home-2/
Any readers wanting to help fund this expanding site is
welcome to do so. M C Metcalf sort code 60-09-27 77358244
Born on 1 June 1911, Benny Rothman is best known for his
major role in the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass of April 1932 that paved the way
for the 1949 National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act that ultimately
led to the ‘Right to Roam’ Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000.
For more on this watch https://markwrite.co.uk/2018/11/29/mass-trespass/
Benny though was much more than just the Trespass.
So on the 115th anniversary of his birth then on
my blog at https://writemark.blogspot.com
there will be a number of articles from
my 2016 booklet on Benny and which will be republished later this year in a new
format. It can be read at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-benny-rothman.pdf
Readers can listen to the book at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/benny-rothman.mp3
We start with his fight against fascism across Manchester
in the 1930s when he particularly successfully organised Jewish working class
youth.
Blacklisted
When Benny came out of prison in 1933 following the Kinder
Scout Trespass the continuing high levels of unemployment meant he could not
find work locally as the negative publicity also meant he was blacklisted. The
Young Communist League (YCL) proposed and he agreed to go to Burnley with Ernie
Regan, an Openshaw lad of Irish extraction, where the pair would be involved in
the struggle across North East Lancashire by clothing workers who were on a
prolonged strike against the “more-loom system.” The aim was to build a YCL
group but this proved almost impossible as any previous organisation had become
defunct.
Benny found the poverty in Burnley to be much worse than in
the Manchester area. Interviewed years later he recalled a young married man in
his early 20s. The couple were living in a little terraced house and had a
table but only one chair and a couple of boxes to sit on. They may have had one
or two cups, but they were living in abject poverty. His wife was expecting a
baby and he went to the hospital to arrange for her to go into hospital to have
the baby. He was told she could only go in when she went into labour. At one
point they thought she was going into labour and they rang for an ambulance but
were told they had to make their way to hospital on their own. They set off to
the hospital which was at the top of a long hill and as they were walking the
last lap she collapsed on the pavement. A tram driver stopped his tram and took
the couple as near as possible to the hospital. The baby was lost and the tram
driver got into very serious trouble for doing what he did because he had
breached regulations. “That was an indication of the atmosphere at the
time," said Benny.
A sporting breakthrough
Attempts to get young people from the mills into a political
movement floundered as meetings were very poorly attended. More successful was
the establishment of a Sunday Football League but when the football authorities
said they would exclude any football team who played in it from the ordinary
normal competitions then this broke up. It was also possible to get a small
rambling club started. But these were no consolation for the failure to build a
political organisation. Benny returned to Cheetham after 4 to 5 months away,
stating later “I wasn’t cut out for what I had been asked to do as I wasn’t
previously that much involved directly in politics.”
Communist Branch revived
On his return home, he helped resurrect the Cheetham YCL
branch in 1933 and became its first secretary. This was to become one of the
two largest YCL branches in the country – the other being in another large
Jewish area, Stepney. Later in the year, Benny helped set up the Challenge Club
on Herbert Street, Cheetham. Challenge was the name of the YCL paper. The club,
which eventually shared a healthy number of its 400-plus members and facilities
with Cheetham YCL branch, offered an impressive range of activities including
rambling, cycling, a boxing club, gymnastics and even Sunday evening dances
that because of its amplified music became very popular with local young
people. The club was to become the hub of anti-fascist activities in Manchester
over the next few years.
Meanwhile the act of combining social with political
activity meant the YCL branch grew to over 200 dwarfing the local CPGB
membership itself which was less than double figures. Such growth failed to
prevent Benny being criticised with his opponents fiercely arguing he was not
engaging in political but social activity. Benny in 1933 at High Tor, Matlock.
He was returning from the Clarion Cycling Club AGM in Nottingham.
Fighting MOSLEY
A former Conservative MP, Sir Oswald Mosley had been a
minister in the Labour Government of 1929-31 but, inspired by Benito Mussolini
in Italy, he helped found the BUF in October 1932. Taking advantage of the
desperate economic climate right across Lancashire, Mosley aimed to make
Manchester an important centre of his activities. He blamed the Depression on
minorities, including Jews, and left-wing and communist movements, rather than
on the capitalist system. Mosley was successful in obtaining the backing of
the Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and at one point the BUF claimed to
have 50,000 members, including a corps of black shirted paramilitary stewards,
nicknamed the Blackshirts.
Fascism became visible in Britain at the same time as Adolf
Hitler began to consolidate power in Germany after he became Chancellor on 30
January 1933. He then eliminated all political opposition prior to becoming
dictator of Germany. Daily Worker reports on the battle against Nazi terror in
Germany. In Manchester the BUF set up its headquarters in the Northumberland
Street and Tyson Street areas where many Jewish people lived.
According to Benny
the BUF drew their membership from "lots of unemployed people who got a
uniform and a club where they could box...there was a lot of antisemitism at
the time." According to Manchester Chief Constable John Maxwell, the
fascists adopted a "policy of deliberate provocation of the
Jews...visiting the Jewish quarter to make insulting remarks which lead to
outbreaks of disorder." The Jewish Chronicle of 24 July 1936 reported how
fascists had appeared outside a Cheetham cinema that was frequented by many
Jewish people and began selling their newspaper, Action, whilst shouting out
“the only paper in the country not financed by Jews.”
Faced with such intimidation, Benny helped organise local
opposition.
“The battles with Mosley’s Blackshirts started when they
tried to go into Cheetham and were driven out by the YCL. We eventually made it
impossible for them to hold an event. At one meeting we turned their van over
and at any event they organised we turned up and heckled. On one occasion I was
arrested but the charge was later dropped.”
However the fascists were able to hold weekly meetings in
other parts of Manchester and they distributed literature door-to-door that
sought to divide the working class on religious and ethnic lines. Eighteen new
BUF branches were established locally in 1933 and 1934. The largest BUF
activities were mass meetings and rallies, which were designed to demonstrate
its invincibility to its opponents and potential supporters.
A large rally was held on 12 March 1933 at the Manchester
Free Trade Hall and a further Manchester city centre BUF meeting was held on 29
October 1933. Benny Rothman was amongst the anti-fascists who physically
opposed both meetings. At the former he was very fortunate when the event
erupted into fighting between the fascist and anti-fascists, who were mainly
Communists, and he was shoved over a balcony, only escaping serious injury when
his fall was broken by a fascist sitting below.
Daily Mirror praises Mussolini & fascism
Fascism was meanwhile gaining significant political support
and interest. The following day the Daily Mirror editorial was headed Eleven
Years of (Italian) Fascism. It concluded “Rome was not built in a day, and
Fascism, though nominally eleven years old, has its roots in the best of
Italian civilisation. It is interesting that the Duce, (Benito Mussolini) in
his message on Saturday emphasised the severity of his task before Fascism.
Whether this revolution is the "world's word of command and hope "
has yet to be proved. What will Europe be like at the end of the century?”
Then on 31 October 1933 the Daily Mirror carried an
article reporting the comments of the Nottingham Lord Mayor Mr H Seeley Whitby
headed “We need a Hitler” in which the Lord Mayor hoped for a man with “the
energy and initiative” of Hitler and Mussolini.
At Belle Vue on 29 September 1934 Mosley picked up on
Hitler's attacks on Jews by telling the audience that his opposition was
"financed by Jewish financiers" who "had stabbed our men in the
back when they were fighting in the last war." This event though proved to
be a failure for the BUF.
‘Bye Bye Blackshirt: Oswald Mosley defeated at Belle Vue
– Michael Wolf.
Reproduced thanks to Searchlight magazine.
After the notorious
brutality of the fascist meeting earlier in 1934 Mosley thought he would have a
repeat performance in Manchester. To combat this threat an anti-fascist
co-ordinating committee was created to counter the fascist thugs. A dynamic
campaign of leafleting, fly posting and public meetings were organised to
mobilise the opposition. Deputations were organised representing the broadest
possible democratic coalition to demand the banning of the fascist meeting. In
the face of all the protests the meeting was allowed, and to add insult to
injury the Chief Constable banned all marches, a decision clearly taken to make
anti fascist mobilisation more difficult.
However, the anti-fascists were determined that there would
be no repeat of fascist violence and intimidation. Saturday 29th September the
opposition mobilised.
Three marches from Openshaw, Miles Platting, and Cheetham
marched to meet the hundreds already waiting to meet them at Ardwick Green to
form a united demonstration of over 3,000 who would march along Hyde road to
join the protest meeting outside Belle Vue. The contingent from Cheetham
comprised in the main young working class Jewish activists from the Challenge
Club, the Youth Front Against War & Fascism and the Young Communist League.
Together they formed the backbone of the group that was to rout the fascists
later in the day.
When the marchers arrived at Belle Vue they were greeted by
the hundreds assembled for the protest meeting. The marchers however had not
come to listen to speeches. They had come to stop Mosley.
At the agreed time they left the meeting, crossed the road
and in orderly fashion queued up to pay their entrance fee for Belle Vue. Once
inside the amusement park scouting parties tried to find the fascists. They had
no success, as these examples of the “master race” were hiding in the halls
hired for them.
Mosley was to speak from The Gallery which was protected by
the lake, his supporters were to assemble on the open-air dance floor which was
in front of the lake. Even so the fascist leader did not feel safe and in
addition to the gang of thugs he called his bodyguard, there were wooden
barriers and the police. In case this was not enough searchlights were
available to be directed against the anti-fascists and fire engines with water
cannon at the ready. The scene was set. 500 Blackshirts marched from a hall
under The Gallery and formed up military style.
Mosley, aping Mussolini stepped forward to the microphone to
speak. He was greeted by a wall of sound that completely drowned his speech.
“Down with fascism”, “Down with the Blackshirt thugs!”, “The rats the rats
clear out the rats!”, “One two three four five we want Mosley, dead or alive!”
There were anti fascist songs, the Red Flag, and the Internationale. The sound
never stopped for over an hour. In spite of the powerful amplifiers turned up
to maximum Mosley could not be heard To quote The Manchester Guardian, “Sitting
in the midst of Sir Oswald’s personal bodyguard within three yards of where he
was speaking you could barely catch two consecutive sentences.”
Mosley tried all the theatrical tricks he knew to try and
make an impression but without any effective sound he appeared like a demented
marionette. Defeat stared him in the face and he knew it, as did his audience
which slunk away as soon as the police bodyguard was removed. The humiliation
of the fascists was complete. The only sound they could now hear was the
singing of ‘bye bye Blackshirt’ to the tune ‘bye ’bye blackbird’, a popular
song of the time.
With the fascists defeated and demoralised, the protesters
raised their banners and posters high and proudly rejoined the meeting outside
Bele Vue.
Mosley’s humiliation was complete, what was supposed to have been his most important meeting since Olympia was in fact the first of a series of defeats he was to suffer in Manchester.
DEATH TO FASCISM.
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Saturday, 30 May 2026
Roly Gregoire - a night with Sunderland’s first black footballer
Roly
Gregoire - a night with Sunderland’s first black footballer
Footballer Roland (Roly) Gregoire, the first black
footballer to play for Sunderland AFC, and film maker Jeff Brown last night
spoke to a 50-strong capacity crowd inside the Dominica Association on
Worthington Street, Bradford, Roly’s hometown. They were warmly received and
were later joined on stage by Bradford City heroes Cec Podd and Joe Cooke, the
first black footballer at Oxford United.
Also in attendance was experienced striker Ray Entwistle, a
team mate of Roly’s during his time at Roker Park. Johnny Meynell, historian
for Halifax Town, from whom Sunderland signed Roly on Guy Fawkes Day 1977, was
also present to show support and as was writer Bill Hern, co-author of
Football’s Black Pioneers – the stories of the first black pioneers to
represent the 92 league clubs.
The occasion helped highlight the launch of the Roly
Gregoire Foundation and was the result of the release of Jeff Brown’s highly
acclaimed BBC documentary film Whatever Happened to Roly Gregoire? Sunderland’s
first black player. This has already
proved a major success with over 750,000 people having watched the footage as
of Thursday (28th May) evening.
It was Jeff’s determination to find Roly that made the film
possible and it was clear at last night’s occasion that Roly – and his friends
and family – are delighted he did so. Roly told the audience “He felt a lot
happier in myself.” Well done to everyone concerned and especially Jeff, who
said he had been inundated by an overwhelming number of positive comments on
the release of his work.
I was personally delighted to tell the ex-player that I
remember watching his single first team goal for Sunderland at the ramshackle
Kenilworth Road in a 3-1 victory there in April 1978. It as a neat close-range
finish to complete the scoring not long after he had come on as a substitute. He
also played very well soon after in a 3-2 win at White Hart Lane where he did
not look out of touch when up against stars such as Glenn Hoddle or Steve
Perryman.
I was also present when Roly was very badly racially abused
in the match against Blackburn Rovers a year later. Much of this abuse came
from supporters in the Roker End and in the hours before I set off to Bradford
last night I spoke to Alan, who amazingly is in the film footage of the crowd
that attended the game at the Stadium of Light that Roly also attended, and
told him I was attending. He spoke of how he, unlike myself, had been with his
mates in the Roker End and found himself isolated on hearing the abuse as his
mates would not also speak up. It appears the incident largely ended his
relationship with these friends.
Roly had a bad game and was made the scapegoat for a defeat
for promotion chasing Sunderland against relegation bound Blackburn Rovers. His
record though with SAFC was a good one, six wins and four losses, one of which
was at the Old Den where Millwall’s team contained one its first black players
in Trevor Lee.
The ex-player spoke about this racist abuse in the film plus
an incident during a club tour of Kenya where he was deliberately ignored by
the hostess when the players visited the house of a wealthy couple. Leaving to
sit on the bus outside he was forced to wait whilst the rest of the players
enjoyed an evening of food and drink. The film also showed Roly visiting
Sunderland AFC for the first time since the late 70s. He was, especially by FA
Cup winning captain Bobby Kerr, warmly received and his daughter Akili also
approached the SAFC club owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfuss to introduce her dad to
him. Roly won’t be waiting over 46 years to revisit the club. Which is great.
Following a short presentation by Brown, the film was shown
to the audience. On its conclusion Roly spoke about how proud he was about the
work. He was also joined on stage by Cooke and Podd, who were cheered by those
present. Disappointment was expressed at how few black footballers have gone on
to be given the chance to manage top class teams.
Entwistle, Hern and Meynell all spoke briefly as did I to
praise the film whilst I also pointed out that not so long ago, SAFC appointed
a fascist as their manager in Di Canio. I suggested that once the Foundation
was up and running it should consider erecting a plaque to Willie Clarke,
Bradford City’s first black footballer and who, earlier during his time at
Aston Villa became the first black footballer to score a goal in top flight
football.
Roly did tell another few stories that are worth repeating.
The first goes back to the end of season tour in Kenya in 1978 when he starred
in the 5-0 victory against Mwenge, watched by 15,000 spectators.
The enthusiasm of the black youngsters present meant they
dashed on to the pitch at the end to mob and shake hands with the Sunderland
players. One of these was not best pleased and rubbed his hands on Roly as if
that would mean he could ger rid of the stain of having been touched by black
people. Roly did not name the player concerned. Roly was afterwards offered a
lucrative contract to play in Kenya but was tied to playing for SAFC.
Then at the end of one game at Roker Park in which he was
not playing he joined other players in a similar situation and entered the
first team dressing room to congratulate the successful side. Amongst the
victors one player was not best pleased to see him and refused his hand and called
him a black b…..d. Roly pinned him up against the locker and then left straight
after. But the incident made Roly look unhinged. The racist player was not
named. Roly criticised the directors of SAFC from the time for doing little to
challenge racism. His operation on his damaged leg that ultimately ended his promising
career very early on was also badly performed by the SAFC doctor.
Then on one occasion when the squad was training on Seaburn
Beach there was an incident when one player was picked out by the rest of the
squad for some ‘banter’ and he started chasing Roly. “He started chasing me.
Why was he chasing me, all the players and coaching staff were laughing.” He
did not catch Roly, who was probably Sunderland’s fastest player at the time. “He
knew he couldn’t catch me, if he’d chased another player he might have.”
Although by no means putting aside his past experiences,
Roly also spoke of how there were also many supporters who were supportive of
him at Sunderland back in the 70s. “I did enjoy the supporters, they were very
nice to me,” plus of how the film had given him some measure of comfort. “Three
quarters of a million, maybe more than a million now. On me! I am overwhelmed,
“ said a smiling Roly Gregoire.
The Roly Gregoire Foundation @RolyGregoireFoundation
https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Roly-Gregoire-Foundation/61590241798742/
Copyright – Mark Metcalf.
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Friday, 29 May 2026
29 May 1951 – England star takes his place amongst the crowds outside Easington Colliery as they wait news of an underground explosion
75 years ago today
29 May 1951 – England star takes his place amongst the
crowds outside Easington Colliery as they wait news of an underground explosion
75 years ago today a top flight footballer who went on to
represent England and win the FA Cup was amongst those who rushed to the gates
of Easington Colliery in the wake of the disaster that was to take the lives of
83 miners.
As a result of being a Bevin Boy (*) during WWII, Tommy
Garrett would have known personally some of those killed.
Tommy, born in South Shields in February 1926, had recently
suffered the disappointment of losing at Wembley in the FA Cup Final to
Newcastle United, for whom Jackie Milburn scored both goals in a 2-0 success. Left
full-back Tommy had earlier lost in the 1948 FA Cup Final when Manchester
United beat Blackpool 4-2.
Tommy had joined the Seasiders after playing for Horden
Colliery Welfare during WWII when he worked as a Bevin Boy at Easington
Colliery. As the youngest of seven sons from amongst 12 children he had briefly
joined his father Joseph Frederick Garrett there. According to his youngest sister,
Barbara Harle, “Tommy hated it” and whereas their dad worked all his life down
the mines the youngster, whose older brothers were miners for most of their
lives, soon moved when the war ended to play football full time.
He was though back home in Easington Colliery on the fateful
day of 29 May 1951 when an explosion ripped through the mine, killing 81 miners
and, later, two rescuers who risked all to try and save those trapped
underground. Amongst the dead were Joseph Charlton, aged 42, and Robert Noble,
aged 45, relatives of the author of this piece.
“Tommy went down to join the crowds outside the pit. People
were desperate for news of their relatives. It was a horrible time,” explains
Barbara who was working at the Co-op.
“People were coming in to buy black for funerals. It was
horrible. Every day it would be said ‘there’s another one gone’ when their
bodies were found and they’d be funerals non-stop. One day I just broke down
and cried. “
One of her friends was initially rescued. “Matthew Williams
was the only one to be brought out alive but his injuries were so severe that
he died.” Barbara attended his funeral and was heartbroken. Williams was just
18.
The bodies of many of those who were killed were badly
disfigured. Wilf Charlton, who worked in the pit baths and was charged with
cleaning down the dead bodies before their funerals, later told his grandson,
Mark Metcalf, that it was “almost impossible to recognise persons who I knew.”
Later on, 83 trees were planted close to the Welfare Ground
to remember all those who lost their lives.
Tommy was to go on to great glory. He scored a vital goal
for Blackpool when they beat Huddersfield Town 1-0 in the 4th round
of the FA Cup in 1953 and was later part of the Blackpool side that beat Bolton
Wanderers 4-3 at Wembley in ‘the Matthews Final’ at the end of the season. Barbara
attended the final. “At 3-1 down we thought Blackpool had lost. But they didn’t
give up.”
Mortensen, another
South Shields native like herself, scored three yet was overshadowed by
Matthews, who was adored by the nation.
Tommy Garrett had made his England debut in a 2-1 victory
against Scotland in April 1952 before a 134,000 crowd at Hampden Park. He later
represented his country in May 1952 in a 1-1 draw in Florence and in a 4-1 win
in Cardiff in October 1953.
After leaving Blackpool he played for Millwall.
After moving with his wife to Australia, the player died in
2006 suffering, like many older players, from dementia. Back home, 20 years on
then would it not be good if he was to be honoured by a plaque at the Welfare
Ground in Easington Colliery?
For more on the disaster go to:- Durham Mining Museum https://w.dmm.org.uk/reports/8646-05.htm
·
A Bevin Boy was a young man conscripted to work
in coal mines during WWII.
Mark Metcalf
Football historian & Sunderland fan
https://markwrite.co.uk/football/
07392 852561
Thursday, 7 May 2026
Chatterton Massacre
The unveiling of a headstone
marking the 200th anniversary of the Chatterton Massacre outside
Ramsbottom brought together a large crowd who following a colourful, musical
procession listened solemnly to speeches, dedications and songs at the exact
spot and time where the tragedy took place.
(article to follow in Landworker magazine)
Tuesday, 5 May 2026
JULIA VARLEY PLAQUE IN BRADFORD FINALLY OFFICIALLY UNVEILED
See also a short film:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpiJh_J3Awc
Former TUC President Mohammad Taj and Caroline Conway of Bradford TUC unveil Julia Varley plaque
The long-planned Julia Varley plaque dedication event on the former Bradford Trades Union Council building finally took place at 1pm on Friday 1 May, 2026, at the junction of Sackville Street and Sunbridge Road, BD1 2SX
The speakers were Mohammad Taj (TUC President 2013-14), Caroline Conway (Bradford and Shipley TUC), cllr Taj Salam (Unite), Jane Aitchison. (Leeds TUC President) It was chaired by Mark Metcalf (NUJ)
Mill worker Julia Varley was a prominent campaigner for workers’ rights during the city’s late Victorian industrial boom. She was a key figure in the infamous Manningham Mills strikes, as well as being involved in the formation of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford. Varley campaigned for better wages for workers, and was a leading figure in Bradford Trades Union Council.
As a suffragette she struggled for the Rights of Women to vote within the Women's Social and Political Union and was twice sent to prison for her commitment.
In 1909, Varley moved to Birmingham to work as a trade union organiser, firstly for George Cadbury and George Shann before joining the Workers' Union where she inspired thousands to join the trade union movement. She was key to the struggle the Cornish clayworkers in 1913 who despite being brutally attacked by Glamorgan police were to win the right to join a union. The success established unions in mid-Cornwall.
She was one of the first women to serve on the TUC general council. She later became the Chief Women's Officer of the Transport and General Workers Union. On her retirement she moved back to Bradford where she died in Hampden Street, Horton, where UNITE's Taj Salam, a speaker at the unveiling, currently serves as an Independent Councillor.
Julia Varley booklet:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-julia-varley-booklet.pdf
* The reasons for the long delay in the unveiling of the plaque will be explained on this blog in the near future. It is not a tale that has any merit for prominent individuals in parts of the Bradford Labour Party, trade union and anti-fascist movement.
The photographs are courtesy of John Mooney. I'd like to thank him for taking them.
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