How The Northern Echo defied strikers to print 2m papers

But they needed a squadron of police, armed with batons, to charge a way through the striking miners who had congregated in Priestgate to enable the delivery vans to leave, and they needed an army of drivers to speed the copies across the countryside, from Berwick to Hull, from Filey to Appleby, often avoiding deadly obstacles.

An Echo van’s broken windscreen after it was stoned in south Durham (Image: Chris Lloyd)

“In County Durham and Northumberland, in some of the pit towns and villages, aggressive spirits stopped newsagents from handling newspapers, stole and burnt their supplies and invented all sorts of devices to blockade The Northern Echo vans,” revealed the paper on May 17. “Sandbags, carts, wire ropes, railway sleepers, broken glass, sticks and stones were pressed into service.”

“Typical Durham miners reading the latest strike news in The Northern Echo” (Image: Chris Lloyd)

The ugliest scenes were in Priestgate, where rumours alleged that the paper was being produced by blacklegs: non-union members imported to keep the presses running.

With the printers on strike, the Echo becomes increasingly rudimentary as it tells the latest news of the General Strike (Image: Chris Lloyd)

“These statements are absolutely without foundation,” said the paper’s front page editorial on May 8 after several tense, intimidatory nights, involving police charges in the street outside.

But, in 12 tumultuous days, from May 3 to May 15, the Priestgate presses printed two million papers. “All classes of people, Liberal, Conservative, Socialist, Communist are clamouring for it every morning,” the editorial claimed.

In those days, of course, there was no wireless, TV or internet. Just newspapers.

As well as providing its readers with vital information in 1926, the Echo left us with a window through which we can peer back 100 years to what went on during the Great Strike…

May 4, 1926 (Image: Chris Lloyd)

How did it all pan out?

Tuesday, May 4

“THE greatest strike in world history starts”. The Echo sees it as “a national disaster” with everybody losing. It doesn’t take sides, and prints a picture of railwaymen shutting down their trains at Bank Top station, and, under the headline of “Englishmen, with the good old English smile”, it says: “There was nothing grim or sinister in the faces of these LNER drivers and firemen…”

The nation has been divided into 10 districts, each headed by a civil commissioner charged with making sure everyone has got food and law and order prevails. Sir Kingsley Wood, the health secretary, takes charge of the North East district, based in Newcastle.

The Conservative government has taken over the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) and is appealing for local volunteers to join. In Darlington, it is headed by Captain EH Pease, based at Feethams Hall, and 126 volunteers join in the first day.

The vicar of Shildon addresses a crowd of Bishop Auckland men as the strike begins (Image: Chris Lloyd)

A very human depiction of the men involved in the Great Strike in the Echo on May 4, 1926 – they are not the monsters they were being portrayed as elsewhere (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Wednesday, May 5

“NATION in grip of octopus strike”, says the Echo as “trains, buses, trams, ships and factories at standstill”. Mounted police had had to restore order in Newcastle and thousands have joined the OMS – however, it desperately needs volunteers who know how to run a railway system.

In villages, says the paper, Echo vans had been “hailed with great excitement, and the paper gave the news of the start of the great strike to the anxious inhabitants”.

The women’s section of the Labour Party marches through Cockfield. (Image: Chris Lloyd)

A one-legged volunteer takes charge of the milk depot at Newcastle station (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Thursday, May 6

A ONE-LEGGED war veteran is pictured volunteering at Newcastle station, as 30,000 shipyard workers and steelmen on Teesside join the strike. Wilson’s Forge in Bishop Auckland also closes, and in Sunderland, buses carrying workers are stoned and cars are smashed in Chester-le-Street.

In Darlington, there are nasty scenes in Leadyard as the 11.15am bus forces its way, with all its windows broken, through crowds to begin its journey to Stockton.

With all trains stopped, the price of milk in Darlington has dropped by ½d-a-pint because all the milk produced by cows for miles around has been trapped in the town.

The chilling front page picture from the Echo of May 5, 1926: police guard Downing Street (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Friday, May 7

THE front page is typewritten, as the strike tightens. In West Hartlepool, lorries have been chained across railway lines.

An amazing picture, how we wish we still had the original, of police guarding a horsedrawn food convoy as it leaves a depot in Darlington (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Saturday, May 8

MIDDLESBROUGH has been uneasy for days, and a man has been found guilty of affray by damaging a bus. Under the emergency powers adopted by the government, he is rapidly sentenced to one month’s hard labour.

A volunteer signalman helps get the railway running again at Darlington (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Monday, May 10

IN Newcastle on Saturday night, 10,000 had gathered in the Grainger Street area. Police had broken the crowd up, arresting 24 people and, said the Echo, “a few heads were broken in the charge”.

There were more disturbances in Middlesbrough, but in Darlington a march of 8,000 people, augmented by busloads of miners from colliery districts, had marched peacefully from St Paul’s Church to South Park, headed by Arthur Shepherd, the town’s first Labour MP.

More than 18,000 volunteers have joined the OMS and transport systems are beginning to come back to life.

The Bishop of Durham has written a front page article which begins: “Who can it possible gain by the continuance of the General Strike?” A few hours after writing the article, he collapsed mid service and had to be carried home.

Tuesday, May 11

“THOUSANDS on trail back to work,” says the Echo, as the strike begins to disintegrate. Its front page also records that an express train, the Flying Scotsman, has been derailed near Newcastle by strikers removing a rail – the most notorious incident of the strike.

A bus, driven by a non-union man, has also been attacked in Coundon.

The most serious incident in south Durham happened at Ferryhill (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Wednesday, May 12

AT the Dean and Chapter Colliery at Ferryhill, 400 had gathered to stop the skeleton staff at the pit from going down. When police arrived, the crowd charged them using “ugly instruments in the form of lead piping and iron bars”. “Someone in the crowd,” said the Echo, “fired four revolver shots.”

Seventeen men aged between 16 and 63 are arrested and sentenced toone or two weeks in prison. “Less than half are miners,” said the Echo, pointedly, and Supt Foster denies “the police clouted the men and rendered many unconscious. Only four of the prisoners had wounds that were bleeding”.

Every LNER branchline has at least a few trains running on it.

Men in Priestgate on May 12, 1926, learn from the Echo’s windows that the Great Strike has been called off (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Men in Priestgate on May 12, 1926, learn from the Echo’s windows that the Great Strike has been called off (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Housewives rejoice as they learn from The Northern Echo that the Great Strike is over (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Thursday, May 13

IT is all over. “Unconditional calling off of the great strike”, is the Echo’s main headline, and its editorial is headed: “Return to reason”.

The paper prints King George V’s address to the nation: “Let us forget whatever elements of bitterness the events of the past few days have created, only remembering how steady and how orderly the country has remained, though severely tested, and forthwith address ourselves to the task of bringing into being a peace which will be lasting, because, forgetting the past, it looks only to the future with the hopefulness of a united people.”

The team wot won it: the Civil Commissioner’s administrators who took over the running of the North East during the Great Strike (Image: Chris Lloyd)

But the front page also has a headline: “LNER take strong line of action – no room on staff for many of the strikers”.

The divisions caused by the General Strike will, like those caused by the 1984 Miners’ Strike, tear into communities for years to come.