The 1954-55 FA Cup semi-final farce between Sunderland and Manchester City

Sunderland has never played Manchester City in the final of a major competition. The sides did though clash in the semi-final of the FA Cup in the 1954-55 season. City triumphed 1-0 on a pitch unfit for play and Sunderland thus missed out on a chance to play Newcastle at Wembley. In his CAPTAIN OF THE NORTH autobiography, written with the assistance of Sunderland fanatic Mark Metcalf, Stan Anderson had this to say about what was a disappointing day for Sunderland.

We had beaten Manchester City 3-2 at home in December in the league and so were confident. In goal City had Bert Trautmann, a real character who following his time as a prisoner of war stayed in Britain rather than return to Germany. he was a goalkeeper I always rated. 

At number nine there was Don Revie, who had followed the Hungarian tactics of the time by playing a deep-lying role rather than staying up front facing the centre-half as was the tradition.

I was to get to know Don pretty well when he signed for Sunderland before falling out with him when one of his Leeds players broke the leg of a Newcastle lad. 

Shack was fully fit and the team stayed at Buxton in the week leading up to the match. One good performance and we’d be running out in front of 100,000 in May. It was a great thought - and then there was the prospect of playing Newcastle in the final. They were favourites to reach Wembley. Manchester City, Sunderland Newcastle and York in the semifinals of the FA Cup - it might be sometime before that happens again!

What happened next was a farce. When Saturday arrived the heavens opened and from Buxton to Aston Villa there were floods of water everywhere. Villa Park was in a dreadful terrible state and try as they might the groundsmen were making no impression on the pitch.

Bill Murray called us all together to say that it looked likely that the game would be called off but the referee was prepared to inspect the pitch half an hour later. As it just kept pouring down no one seriously expected him to do anything except postpone the match. It was a shock therefore to be told the referee intended starting the game but if it got worse he would abandon it. Obviously this was not the right sort of atmosphere to be playing a semi-final.

It seemed the only reason for starting the game was that spectators had travelled long distances away. It stills seems a daft decision to play the game. 

It was farcical. George Aitken, a big strong left wing half, tried to hit a ball upfield and managed to shift it only five yards. Despite the conditions I felt we were the better side and only a fluke prevented us taking the lead. Shack wriggled his way past the City defence to the byline and squared the ball across to Charlie Fleming who we hit it powerfully enough. Trautmann, in a desperate attempt to block the shot, actually slipped and his momentum helped stop the ball and it dropped just over the bar for a corner. 

This was a time when you didn’t argue with referees but at half-time, as we walked down the tunnel, players from both sides asked him to call it off. Ironically, as neither side looked as if they would score the tie seemed certain to be settled another day anyway. 

However, early in the second half City’s left winger Roy Clarke beat Bill Fraser with a header to give his team the lead. There was no way the referee was going to call the game off now and try - Shack especially worked tirelessly to fashion an equaliser - we couldn’t recover. We just didn’t have enough up front to punish Manchester City. It was a very quiet dressing room afterwards. 

Workload drives social workers to quit

Social workers are rejecting lucrative rates of pay to quit the profession amidst fears at being unable to cope with an exhaustive workload of serious cases.

This is the view of Hull’s Ian Newton, who a decade ago used the funds from DUSTBINGATE, his best-selling comedy book featuring John Prescott, to quit his night-shift factory job and train as a social worker. 

Higher pay 

Newton was employed mainly in mental health, learning disability and with older people and adults. As a contract social worker, 18 local authorities hired him, usually at much higher rates of pay than permanent staff because of urgent vacancies to fill.  But he has seen the profession radically change in eight years and he quit at Christmas and since when he has been bombarded with job offers

Bureaucratic nightmare 

“I quit because social work has become a bureaucratic nightmare in which clients’ needs have been lost,” said Newton.

“When I started it was about 25% paperwork and 75% working with the client. Now it is 85% paperwork. 

“Some of the increase is the result of the introduction of direct payments and personal budgets, which work well for some clients. The mental capacity act in 2005 also opened up a Pandora’s box of complexity and resulted in endless meetings, more paperwork and yet again more computer work and assessment heaped upon assessment. 

“The 2003 Laming inquiry following the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie also led to reforms of the social care system that prioritised paperwork 

“You are still expected to find time to help clients by dealing with their often complex needs,” said Newton, two of whose former colleagues, more experienced than him, have recently quit to fill shelves at Asda.

“Work overload means you are terrified about losing sight of the client and they harm themselves and you land up in a coroner’s court or before a professional body. 

‘Difficult relationships’

“Every social worker has at least two clients they fear will end up dead because they don’t have the time to fully attend to them. ”

Recently Newton also became dispirited at having to tell his clients that cuts were being made to their care packages. He said: I found myself constantly telling parents or the clients there will be less financial support. 

Instantly you are no longer a social worker but the enemy, an accountant. Relationships become difficult and in order to keep social workers safe there are restrictions imposed on client visits to our offices.”

As part of a long term case review, retired social worker Celia Stubbs recently returned to her former workplace at Islington Council. “I was horrified to see social workers sitting at their computers hour after hour. Our offices were open plan and user friendly. They are like prisons now with locked doors everywhere.

“There are few resources and there appears be no contact between the different council departments. Yet you need a joined up approach to complex cases. I am not surprised people are leaving the profession.”

Northern police oppose use of controversial anti-riot water cannon

Northern police oppose use of controversial anti-riot water cannon

From the current issue of the Big Issue in the North magazine, please buy a copy when you see a seller. 

Police in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire have refused to authorise the use of water cannon across England and Wales.

The three forces have all opposed the plans amid concerns that the equipment would be costly, ineffective, and damaging to community relations.

Lancashire and Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioners Clive Grunshaw and Tony Lloyd both said there was “no convincing argument” as to how water cannon would improve policing or community safety.

Lloyd, the former Manchester Central MP, added the method would have been “completely ineffective” during the 2011 riots in Manchester and Salford.

West Yorkshire PCC Mark Burns Williamson said: “The level of disorder that would warrant the use of cannon has not been seen in West Yorkshire, and contributing to such equipment at a time of government cuts should not be a priority for West Yorkshire Police.

Disorder

“We need to protect frontline policing and the neighbourhood policing teams to help prevent the level of disorder leading to the use of water cannon.”

London Mayor Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police Chief Constable Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe have, however, voiced their support for the introduction of the new equipment.

Johnson backed the deployment of water cannon “for those circumstances where its absence would lead to greater disorder or the use of more extreme force”.

Safety

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), a not-for-profit private company that acts as a forum for chief police officers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, wants the cannon to be available “to support public order and public safety operations”.

It cites their use in Northern Ireland since the late 1990s and states that water cannon could have been used during the 2011 riots to “support police lines and create distance between police and protesters.”

Theresa May, the home secretary, will be approached in the coming months to make a decision on the introduction of water cannon. If she agrees to the policy, water cannon could soon be rolled out throughout England and Wales.

A briefing paper, written by the College of Policing and Acpo, has asked chief constables to discuss water cannon with their commissioners. The paper was drawn up as part of a much broader research programme into public order and safety.

‘Deterrent effect’

Acpo, which is funded by the Home Office and profits from commercial activities, claims that a water cannon, costing between £600,000 and £1 million, can help “exert control from a distance... by providing a flexible application of force ranging from spray to forceful water jets. The mere presence of water cannon can have a deterrent effect.”

Acpo claimed water cannon will help prevent the need for tactics like baton rounds – which have never been used outside Northern Ireland but are authorised for use in the UK – and mounted officers, vehicles, police dogs or even firearms.

It has, however, accepted that a 9,000-litre water cannon can cause serious injury or death.

In 2002, the Defence Scientific Advisory Council’s sub-committee on the medical implications of less lethal weapons told the Northern Ireland Office: “The impact of a high-pressure jet from a water cannon is a high momentum event, and may therefore lead to the displacement of the body. In certain scenarios (such as people close to solid obstacles), the potential for an increased risk of injury exists.”

In May 2013, an unnamed Turkish protester in Istanbul was hit with a high velocity jet from a water cannon and was killed when his head hit the ground after his feet were taken from under him.

Sixty years ago and Len Shackleton rips apart Arsenal

When Sunderland travelled to Arsenal in January 1954 they were struggling against relegation and lay just one spot outside the drop zone. It had therefore come as something of a shock when manager Bill Murray had allowed such a lethal goalscorer as Trevor Ford to leave the club and sign for Cardiff. The striker was replaced by Birmingham City’s Ted Purdon, who by scoring after just ten seconds of the match at Highbury became the fastest to net in Sunderland’s history.

Just why did Murray replace Ford with Purdon?  Stan Anderson’s biography, Captain of the North, explains more.

‘There was generally a good spirit in the dressing room in the early 50s with one exception: the relationship between Fordie and Shack. This was a shame. They were the mainstays of the side: Shack was the provider and Ford the scorer. If they’d played together, as they should have done, then we would have won the league. 

One of the problems was that Ford was very friendly with a director, W.S Martin, and I think Shack took umbrage, thinking, ‘Does he think he’s better than the other lads?’ It  became an issue. 

Also Ford would stand in front of the mirror, combing his hair, and say: ‘You must be the best looking player in the game’ - it was only partly in jest! Shack used to cringe. He’d say, ‘Look at that silly bastard’, 

So Shack didn’t like him;  if he liked you he’d tell you. He didn’t like Ford and the feeling was mutual. There wasn’t really room for both of them in the dressing room. Now I have nothing against Ted Purdon but he was nowhere near as good as Trevor Ford. 

Shack played his finest game of the season in the 4-1 victory at Highbury. Shack was brilliant. Typically, he couldn’t keep himself from taking the mickey out of the Arsenal defenders. If only he had played like that every week away from home. In fact Len’s attitude to away games was very different to playing at Roker Park, and he wasn’t the only one. Many of the more experienced players had the attitude that as long as you did well in front of your own spectators then that was good enough.

In the Highbury win he had the ball out on the wing with the Arsenal and Wales fullback Walley Barnes twenty five yards away. Shack kept moving the ball halfway over the touchline and then back. He did this a few times as the linesman watched intently to see if the whole of the ball had gone over the line. Finally an exasperated Barnes decided to attempt to win the ball and Shack just waltzed past him and ran away up the wing. What made it better in Shack’s eyes was that this took place in front of the main stand, so the Arsenal management and dignitaries were closest to the action. He enjoyed that because he was always angry that the Londoners had turned him down as a schoolboy in the spring of 1939, only months before the start of the war. 

As is well known, Len did not think highly of directors at any club. His autobiography, Clown Prince of Soccer, famously had a chapter entitled ‘The Average Director’s Knowledge of Football’ followed by a page containing only a note at the bottom which read: ‘This Chapter has deliberately been left blank in accordance with the author’s wishes.’

There is something in Len’s book that i have never seen mentioned but which I think is worth raising. It concerns a part of the book in which Len praises two of the Sunderland directors, Bill Ditchburn and W.S Martin, for their ‘progressive approach.’ I am convinced that Len was in fact having a laugh at them, and Ditchburn in particular.

In 1953-54, when the side was playing so desperately badly despite the big-money signings such as Ray Daniel, Bill Murray said that Ditchburn wanted to speak to us. This was very unusual. Directors speaking to players - never! 

We trooped through to the away dressing room where Ditchburn said, ‘Well I don’t know what’s gannin on. It’s a poor show, but I think I know what’s the problem. It’s yer boots. I’ve had a look at them, and you’ve hammered doon the toes.’ 

Amazingly, this was true. In those days you’d get a pair of boots two sizes too small for you, put them on and sit in a hot bath to soften the leather. Then you’d hammer down the tin toecaps.

“But Mr Chairman you don’t kick the ball with your toes.’ replied Len.

‘Oh, aye, I see. Well I just think it’s a queer thing, that’s all I thought,’  said the now somewhat bemused chairman. 

Len couldn’t possibly have forgotten that incident when he wrote the book. Neither would he have forgotten that Martin had been very close to Trevor Ford. Len wasn’t daft - he didn’t name anyone in his book!’

Canal trust's tunnel vision

From the current edition of the Big Issue in the North magazine. Please help the sellers and buy 

the magazine when you have the chance to do so. 

Canal boat owners believe the government’s decision in 2012 to transfer public ownership of England and Wales’s canals to a charitable national trust is working out a success.

Two years ago, the website Narrowboatworld.com expressed fears that the Canal & River Trust (CRT) would fail to find alternative funds to replace the annual government grant to British Waterways (BW), the public body that spearheaded the revival in the inland waterway system after it fell into disarray following the arrival of railways and the automobile.

The new body has had its annual government funding cut until 2027, by which time it’s intended for CRT to be self- financing. Without guaranteed funds Narrowboatworld.com believed CRT would be unable to properly maintain the 2,000-mile canal and river system. But CRT is now able to raise money itself, through rents on properties, and is free from any further government cuts.

‘Unique opportunity’

Canal users believe the new arrangement is bearing fruit. Les Etheridge, chair of the Inland Waterways Association, which has 16,000 members, said:

“The canal system is over 200 years old and inevitably has unpredictable problems. But when I first started boating in the early 1980s there were much more regular tunnel closures.”

Nigel Stevens, owner of Sowerby Bridge narrow boat holiday company Shire Cruisers and CRT executive council member, said: “There is a unique opportunity to plan for the long term future. That would not have been the case if the canals remained under government control.

“The change is concentrating minds and I am certain that
in the end the waterways will become sustainable.”

Seventy-year old Ken Hall, a narrowboat owner in Hebden Bridge, said: “The outlook for canals is good.

“Generally when tunnels collapse they don’t take too long to repair.”

Maintenance

However Narrowboat.com continues to express concerns about “crumbling waterways” and said CRT should spend more on maintenance.

A spokesperson for CART said: “Not everything is perfect. But the canal structures in the worst condition have halved to 15 per cent in the last decade. The future of the canal network is the best for generations, especially as we have recruited many volunteers, including 250 lock keepers, without impacting on the numbers of staff, who have retained their terms and conditions.”

1964 FA Cup fifth round: Sunderland 3 Everton 1

The front cover of the book on
Charlie shows him leading the Sunderland
side out prior to the cup tie with Everton in
1964 

The fifth round FA cup tie on February 15^th 1964 attracted what is officially Sunderland’s last ever 60,000 plus home crowd to date with 62,817 passing through the turnstiles, a quarter of them from Liverpool. 

At the time the Sunderland team used to run out of the tunnel to the music from the popular Police TV series Z cars. The music was intended to inspire the team, but as Everton also used the same tune at Goodison Park before their home matches it was decided to drop the tune for the game. The replacement was Charlie is m’Darling, but he was not to be for the Everton forwards. 

The Merseysiders were to be well beaten by a rampant Sunderland side skippered by an inspirational Hurley who had the joy of watching as his charges scored three in the first thirty-two minutes. Hurley’s partner Jimmy McNab had the pleasure of scoring the first in the third minute in front of the Fulwell End; Hurley scored the second in the twenty-sixth minute ‘after a corner, which West missed, the ball bounced off Usher to Hurley who hit it first time and it deflected off Harris over the line,’ reported the Liverpool Echo. Brian Harris did score a beauty for Everton from a free-kick but Sunderland ran out worthy winners by three goals to one. 

Hurley was simply sublime. It was one of his finest ever performances in a Sunderland strip and in his Monday match report, the Liverpool Echo reporter remarked that Jimmy Gabriel, normally a wing-half but standing in at centre forward, missed an eighth minute chance, ‘the only time Gabriel was able to escape the magnificent Hurley, the best centre-half I’ve ever seen since T.G.Jones.’ Jones is an Everton legend who made over 400 appearances in the 1950s. 

Hurley remembers the match well: “They stuck Jimmy Gabriel up front, he was midfield player who’d been doing well, I thought ‘well Jimmy, it’s going to be a different game today, son’. I scored and Jimmy Mac scored and our third goal was an own goal from Mick Meagan, another wing half…all the goals were scored by half backs.

It was as good a display as any we ever made when I was at Sunderland. It was a tremendous day, and the fans went crazy.” 

The Sunderland team had taken to visiting Wetheralls, the first night club in the north-east, after Hurley had found out about it. 

“Oh yes. Wetheralls was a very pokey little place. My wife and I have always loved going out; we love socialising. We always dig out these places, and I found out about this one. It was a membership place so I got all the players free memberships be because we were very popular. 

The club became very successful. After the Everton match I remember the manager phoned my house to see if we were going in on the night. They’d been inundated by calls from members asking if the players were coming in and he said if we did then there’d be a meal and free champagne. So all the lads went - we had dinner, champagne all night, Tom Jones was on, place was packed and we were all sitting together, signing autographs. It wasn’t fans and players, we were all part of the same club. The ‘60s were a good time to be around and the players at Sunderland got on well with each other. We also had Crossan and Mulhall at the time, who were a great comedy duo!

It would be nice today if players today had more contact, I think they’re missing out today on that with the fan. After all these players have to realise that if these supporters don’t come in then there would be no £10,000, £20,000 a week wages, I think fans are now being priced away from the game, the danger is that the game will kill itself. You might end up with a Premier League and a lot of the smaller clubs will go out of business, I think that the players have lost their way, I read their comments in the papers about financial matters, it just seems football has turned into a pound note, multi-pound notes, no great camaraderie between the fans and the players, you’ve got to remember, without the fans you’ve got nothing.“ 

Sunderland's finest footballer signs autographs for the fans. 

Alice Wheeldon - peace activist, socialist and suffragette who was wrongly convicted

Alice Wheeldon – peace activist, socialist and suffragette

In 2013 Derby City Council and Derby Civic Society erected a Blue Plaque as a memorial to Alice Wheeldon at her home on 29 Pear Tree Road, Derby. This was public recognition for the campaign, instigated by the Derby People’s History Group, to clear Wheeldon and her daughter and son-in-law, Winnie and Alf Mason, of their convictions for conspiracy to murder Prime Minister Lloyd George and his cabinet minister Arthur Henderson in 1917. Sentences of ten, five and seven years were imposed after a swift trial that gripped the nation.

Alice Wheeldon was a socialist who was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union until the outbreak of the First World War when along with the rest of her family she began sheltering young men fleeing conscription.

In 1917, Alex Gordon, a MI5 secret agent with a lengthy list of previous criminal convictions, stayed the night at the Wheeldon home after claiming he was a conscientious objector. Gordon constructed an elaborate plot to fabricate evidence that the Wheeldon family were intent on murdering some of the most prominent politicians of the day.

When case came to the Old Bailey the Attorney General, F E Smith, led the prosecution and at the trial he refused to call Gordon, who had twice previously been diagnosed as criminally insane, as a witness. The agent later emigrated to South Africa. This prevented cross-examination of the key witness and a fair trial.

Following her conviction, Alice was sent to Aylesbury Prison, where she went on hunger strike in protest at her innocence. When her health quickly deteriorated the authorities feared she might die in prison and become a martyr in a period when increasing numbers of people were beginning to question the continuing slaughter in the trenches. She was released on 31 December 1917 but Alice never recovered from her ordeal and she died of flu during the 1919 pandemic. A red flag was placed on her coffin at the funeral. Her daughter and son-in-law were released at the conclusion of the War in 1918.

Two years ago a campaign was launched to clear the names of Alice Wheeldon, Winnie and Alf Mason. Counsel has been fully briefed to make an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and in early February 2014 the stage where the material upon which the application will be founded is only weeks away from completion. This preparation has been made possible through legal research by University of New South Wales, Australia where Deirdre and Chloe Mason; Alice Wheeldon’s living descendants live.

The case of the Wheeldon’s featured on 10 February 2014 in Jeremy Paxman’s BBC TV series Britain’s Great War and you can find out more on the campaign to clear their names at www.alicewheeldon.org