The Royal Family is not the only large organisation that has been putting out the bunting, for its Golden Jubilee celebrations this year. Another establishment figure, perhaps not as lovingly treasured as dear old Queenie, but one facing equal concerns with regards to its relevance in the 21st century, also celebrates the big five-o this year.
The New Musical Express, or to give its more pithier title the NME, celebrates 50 years in circulation, with a series of events to celebrate this momentous occasion. With it comes the re-launch, with a glossier smaller cover, one that has seen the movement from the bottom shelf to amongst the other glossy music titles.
The re-launch prompts discussions with regards to the state of the weekly music press, often dubbed the ‘inkies.’ Pessimists will offer up the closure of the Melody Maker, just before Christmas 2000, after 73 years in circulation as evidence that re-launches, do not always work.
The last few years in circulation for the Melody Maker, where problematic, with its various re-launches and re-branding, which resulted in the watering down of the content of the paper; as well as the change from an A5 inkie to a Smash Hits styled glossy magazine.
At the time of its closure, the Melody Makers circulation was down to about, 32,500, (down 14.9% on the previous years figures) the lowest in its history. IPC, the Melody Makers owners, ironically the owners of the NME too, closed the Melody Maker, as it was then felt to be no longer sustainable.
In the end its decline was inevitable. The magazine was struggling to get interviews with front line bands. Most bands preferred to be interviewed by the NME. There were few big name writers left, either most having been poached or defected to other publications. Also few bands bothered to advertise because the readership was so low.
The Melody Maker may be no more, but its name still lives on in some form. Its huge archive has been transferred to its sister paper, the NME’s website. Also transferred were some of the regular features that have appeared in the Melody maker throughout the years.
So what of the NME? First reflections may be that it should be in a position of strength, having seen off its nearest rivals but the most recent figures published by the Audit Bureau of Circulation have seen the circulation decline to 70,003.
Recent figures have also shown that Kerrang, the rock music equivalent, has pushed out its market share also. Though Kerrang is not strictly a weekly music publication as it is published twice a month, it still competes for a similar readership and bands as the NME.
IPC Music and Sport director Mike Soutar said the company intended to continue to broaden the appeal of the NME,
“The NME has about 40% command of the rock magazines sold in the UK and plans are to look at the options of being the only weekly in the market. We have spent the sort term building nme.com, but now the focus would return to the magazine”
Where does this leave the NME? In the current climate the NME has no direct competitors in the weekly press. Having seen off rivals such as Record Mirror, Sounds and of course Melody Maker in the last ten years.
At fifty it may be sustainable in the present cutthroat world of publishing, but is it still relevant? This is a question that no doubt prompted the recent talk at the Flying Picket, In Liverpool, as part of the yearly, Writing On the Wall festival, entitled ‘Wake up NME, you are dead’ question marks have been raised with regards to its credibility and not its sustainability. The Writing on the Wall talk proclaimed the NME as,
“Once the radical voice of British popular music the NME has sold its soul to global multi-media interests. Today’s NME is timid, conservative and bland.”
The talk at the Picket attracted big names from the papers history, as well current journalist such as Steven Wells and former journalist and current musician, John Robb, who is well versed in looking at the state of the weekly music press from both perspectives.
Steven Wells, current NME writer – outspoken to the last - came up with the following point of view in relation to the fact that the NME has seemingly sold out,
“I feel your pain, I really do. But in the modern business environment we have all to move with the times. We have to adapt. We have to change with the times. Look at it this way: NME is like a shark. It either keeps going forward or, it dies.”
No doubt with tongue firmly in check he added with regards to the take over of IPC by Time Warner he added,
“We are all HUGE, HUGE, HUGE, fans of Time Warner and we are too damn honest and bursting with journalistic integrity to let a silly thing like a corporate takeover stop us from carrying on praising the many fine products and services, provided by the cool folks at wonderful Time Warner.”
It would be naïve to believe, that such a takeover was the reason for any perceived problems that the NME has encountered. Even as far back as its perceived heyday at the end of the 1970’s, at a time when Punk was in its infancy, the NME was a name amongst other titles. The problem that the NME faces today is one of content. The NME is a music newspaper but when the music becomes the news, like it has done recently. Where does that leave the NME?
Also technology has moved on, in the Internet age can the NME strengthen itself. Steve Sutherland a former editor of the NME, who is now brand director for IPC Music and Sport, believes,
“That the Internet could sound the death knell of the traditional rock n roll journalist and of a rock n roll paper.”
The NME has always prided its self on the fact that it is a champion of new bands. A fact that has always been apparent, in its ‘build them up and knock them down’ attitude, that appears when yesterdays big thing have served their purpose and have moved on to the to the next thing.
It’s a fickle nature but is one that has served them well down the years. But music tends to come in waves and scenes. It’s a cyclical business, which is either feast or famine. At present, there is not a scene that the NME can get behind and champion. More often than not the NME is accused of making scenes and hyping bands.
The last two big music scenes came at the start of the Nineties, with the Madchester scene, which heralded the emergence of bands such as the Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, and The Charlatans.
The Mid Nineties saw the Britpop years with bands such as Oasis, Blur, Elastica, Pulp and the re-emergence of the Stone Roses, bands who all sought their influence from bands of the past such as the Beatles and The Kinks. Britpop was a scene that indiscriminately lumped British bands into one scene by virtue of a geographical positioning than by any uniformity of music.
Britpop was big news and stories that would have previously been the domain of the NME, became big news with the other media outlets, such as the tabloids and even with television news.
One story, which the NME covered in great detail, with its front-page depiction of two heavyweight boxers slugging it out in championship bout, was for the simultaneous release of Blur and Oasis single on the same day.
This was a prime example of music industry hyping, but was manna from heaven for the NME, as they saw a rise in their circulation as a result of the Britpop battle. Even the BBC evening news covered the story with vox pops outside music stores, capturing record buyers asking whom there money was on.
This event showed that the music and stories that had only been a traditionally NME only occurrence, was now in the public domain. People didn’t need to go to the NME for news of their favourite band; they could see them in the tabloids. The problem that the NME faces is one of where does it reposition it’s self now with regards to the tastes and styles of its readership.
Speaking in the 40th anniversary edition of the NME the then editor Danny Kelly, repeated the mantra that has served them well down the years.
“ All we’ve done over the last forty years is not as important as what we do next week and the week after that.”
Written in 1992, Kelly seemingly for saw the proliferation of other media getting in on the act his response at the time served as something of a rallying call.
“The other thing that knockers are fond of saying is that as more and more media get to grips with rock and pop, so NME, will wither and to that I say bring ‘em on.”
The NME has always evolved with regards to its content; the NME of the 1950’s was certainly a different beast to the one of today. The launch issue was that of a Big Band paper and saw its typical reader as a musician, than that of a fan. Throughout the years the NME has covered Rock n Roll, the Traditional Jazz movement of the early sixties. As well as the Mersey beat era of Pop, Rock, Heavy Rock, e.g. Led Zeppelin, Prog rock, New wave, New Romantic, Pop, Indie, Madchester, Acid House, Dance grunge and Britpop.
Throughout the years Melody Maker and the NME had their heyday, in an age where rock n roll was an entity for a single constituency. But the growing fragmentation of the music market has eaten away at the audiences at these once popular magazines.
In line with this fragmentation in the styles of music, there has also been something of a fragmentation in the music press. In the 1980’s, Smash Hits came along and dented a big proportion of the readership. Whilst at the time the NME, was dabbling in other areas, other than music such as fashion and an ideology crusade on behalf of black musicians, with a barely disguised contempt for mainstream rock.
The NME was alienating its readership. Further attacks on the papers circulation came in the late 1980’s with the launch of Q magazine. Q interviewed stars that the NME had long since not cared to Interview and with nothing much new musically happening at the time, the NME was struggling.
With the varying different genres and sub-genres of music titles having come and gone the NME has faced some difficult competition.
Steve Sutherland, NME brand director doesn’t believe that these magazines are direct competition for the NME
“ I don’t compare us with those other magazines. For a start we’re a weekly, with on-the-ball news stories and reviews. And we’ve consistently written about the bands that other magazines have then latched on to. I’ve always seen monthly magazines like the Face and Q as essentially luxury purchases, normally following up on what we have discovered first.”
Steve Sutherland’s claim that the NME has ‘taken on an identifiable brand name’ almost as an institution isn’t entirely to be disregarded. Music has become sub-divided into smaller categories people are more eclectic in their listening, Its always going to be harder to appeal to a whole cross-section of readers every week. He further argues that with the Internet,
“Opinionated rants that have characterised music journalism for the past 30 years may not be appropriate in the Internet age.”
The future of the NME brand in the long-term may be with its Internet site NME.com that has 1.30 million unique users and that traffic is growing at almost 5-10% per month. So perhaps the future for the NME, may rest with its Internet website.
The last few years, has seen the NME repositioning itself as a more mainstream music title. To survive magazines need investment, they also need to move on and they need to reflect the changing lifestyle patterns of the readership. This has generally been well received with readership figures remaining relatively constant.
The NME has always prided itself on being interactive way before the days that interactive were inextricably linked with the Internet and new technologies. Angst is the letters page, dedicated to reader’s rants and ruminations of the NME populace.
It is a good measure of the changes that have taken place within the NME. It is apparent that over the last year scanning through the pages there has seemingly been a change in editorial policy of the paper, with the Introduction of new editor, Ben Knowles.
The typical NME concerns of Indie bands – typically white Middle Class as well as dance music, where joined by more mainstream acts from the popular music scene such as RnB and Garage acts to the Pop stars and Pop idol phenomena. This was not universally well-received one apoplectic reader Richard Gillings, Colchester wrote in 21ST April 2002.
“ There used to be four weekly music magazines. And then there was one. But for how long? It is changing out of all recognition, with the likes of Hear’ Say and Mrs Beckham reviews and Interviews. Since when did the NME readers want to read about this.
And what has happened to the Indie charts? In the last few weeks there have just been the official charts, i.e. wall-to-wall shite. NME needs to decide what kind of readership it’s really after it truly is a music paper.”
I could have included other letters, but this one typifies the seemingly anger and betrayal of a readership. Another such letter highlighting the anger and betrayal of the readership was posted to the NME by Victor Mildew, of
Namchester (sic) complaining about the issue NME, April 28.
“I found out the corner was adorned with a picture of Destiny’s Child. If I wanted to read about this sort of rubbish, I’d go out and spend my money on a teen-mag.”
In response to this and other letters on the subject, Neil Thompson who no doubt echoed the sentiments of his fellow NME writers edited the angst page that week.
“ What’s the big problem that so many of you have with Destiny’s Child? The above is one of the least offensive of the tirades sent in this week. Just realise that there are no rules any longer and NME is not and never has been a platform for snobbish prejudice, just a vehicle for great music.
The past six months have seen Wu-Tang clan, Amen, Daft Punk, The Manics, Missy Elliot and Mogwai all on our cover. The Indie fan is an endangered species. Its time to get your head out of the sand and into the clouds. Lets get it together people – stop complaining and start embracing all the diverse and brilliant music there is around”
Even attempts at incorporating Politics into the paper have fallen foul of Mr Irate of Colchester. The typical complaint being of “you’re a music paper – not a newspaper”, have been the typical complaints voiced Whilst trying to cover the May Day riots last year as well, the abolition of tuition fees, and the front page with the London Mayor as well as the on going legalisation of cannabis debate, It has seen a fairly apathetic response.
Seemingly the comments have been taken into consideration as the recent issues of the NME have seemingly reverted to the archetypical bands that have served the NME down the years. Angst has reverted to its usual type of ‘my band is better than your band’ type debates, than the recent concerns questioning the actual content of the publication.
It remains to be seen what the future will hold for the NME one thing is for certain the mythical great age that everyone talks about has for certain disappeared. Society has changed. Listening and reading habits have changed and also. Added to this technology has moved on. The Internet has replaced the main reason for purchasing the NME in the first place. Whether or not people use the nme.com or other sites. The need for the NME may be no more if the current circulation figures drop any further.
The weekly music press may be on its last legs, but the NME name may live on, as it strives for the same of credibility that it has always strived for.
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Going underground: ‘The Mole of Edge Hill’
Liverpool is renowned for its numerous innovators and eccentrics, who have carved their name in the pages of history down the years.
One such innovator, and no less of an eccentric is Joseph Williamson. His name has been surrounded in mythology and speculation for numerous years but has lived on through the legacy that surrounds his greatest work – The Williamson Tunnels.
Joseph Williamson’s name is synonymous with the tunnels, which zigzag underneath the streets and surrounding areas of the Edge Hill district of Liverpool. Unfortunately, until now Williamson’s work has been referred to fleetingly in the history of Liverpool.
Without the work of organisations such as the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels, Williamson’s work would have remained merely a footnote in Liverpool’s history.
The FOWT have taken this a step further and are bringing the Tunnels to the surface of the consciousness of the people of Liverpool. The FOWT is a voluntary organisation and also the biggest local history society in Britain
It has certainly been a labour of love for the volunteers of the FOWT and it is without doubt that their endeavours are equal to the effort of the original workers, who excavated the tunnels in the 19th century.
August 2002 will see the culmination of years of hard work with the opening of the first phase of the tunnels to the general public. Following a major excavation and renovation exercise, two of the tunnels in the original stable yard on Smithdown Lane section of the labyrinth will be open to the public as a permanent tourist attraction.
Although some of the tunnels have been lost over the years and are unable to renovated. Many of the original tunnels still exist today under the now largely residential area of Edge Hill.
The opening will be testament to the hard work of people such as Gabriel Mews, who has lived in the Edge Hill area all his life. Gabriel Mews is one of the local residents who has pushed for the opening of the tunnels for the last six years. He and other volunteers have painstakingly been excavating the tunnels in conditions similar to that of Williamson’s day
It has been a difficult process in the renovation and excavating the site. Dave Bridson, of FOWT highlighted some of the problems faced by the Volunteer workforce,
“Illegal fly tipping has filled a majority of the tunnels. Some of it is building rubble ash and Clinker. There is a whole mix of stuff. This was the trouble when the building work started above.”
The renovation process has also faced problems due to the fact that the pattern of the tunnels follows no logical course and that there are no plans or documents in existence to guide their renovation. It has become apparent that no such plans may ever have existed. Such a document would have a shed a better light on the existence of the Tunnels.
To gain an insight and an understanding into why the tunnels where built in the first place, Its important to find out more of the life of the man whose name has been given to these tunnels and a man who spent the latter part of his life dedicated to the completion of the tunnels.
Many of the details of Williamson’s life are shrouded in mystery, and this has no doubt fuelled the fascination that has grown up surrounding the history of the tunnels.
Joseph Williamson was born on 10th March 1769. It is widely assumed that he was born in Warrington, but that has not been proven. He was born into a poor family and at the age of 11 he moved to Liverpool in search of work.
The Liverpool to which Williamson arrived in 1780 was a relatively prosperous city; due to its thriving seaport he would have had little difficulty in securing gainful employment. He eventually secured work for the tobacco and snuff firm Richard Tate, which was based in Parr Street, adjacent to Wolstenholme Square, near the city centre.
It was a family business and Williamson prospered during his time with the company and he was eventually promoted from runner to a clerk. As well as progressing through Tate’s, he also set up in partnership with Mr Joseph Leigh, as a merchant.
Williamson married Elizabeth Tate in 1802, Thomas Tate’s the sister of the owner of Tate’s. After Williamson’s inauspicious start in life he had started to reap the rewards of a working career that began at the age of 11. Things where going so well for Williamson, that a year after his marriage he bought Tate’s.
Tate’s prospered in Williamson’s ownership and the wealth generated from the success of the businesses that Williamson had built up kick started his move into property development.
The area of Edge Hill that Williamson lived at the time was pretty much under developed. Williamson built his own house on the land at Mason Street and soon after other dwellings followed. The houses that he built were very much typical of the properties of the era, with cellars and large gardens at the rear.
At the back of each of the dwellings there was a large amount of space, but the sandstone bedrock dropped about twenty feet down to the same level as Smithdown Lane. Williamson had his men build brick arches in the sandstone bedrock. The building of these arches is significant, as it was the first part of the completed Williamson Tunnels to be put in place.
From what is known of the layout of the tunnels, it is assumed that Williamson had no clear vision for the tunnels. One idea that has been put forward is that Williamson saw the building of the tunnels as something of a philanthropic gesture on his part, given the hardship that he had endured whilst he grew up. It was around the time of the Napoleonic wars that he started the tunnels as a sort of job creation scheme for soldiers returning from the wars.
Another idea that has been suggested is that he built the tunnels out of a religious fervour and the tunnels where to be a haven underground for an apocalyptic Armageddon forecast for 1841 by a mystery soothsayer.
Frank Hodges from the FOWT takes up the story.
“One of the features of the tunnels is that the brickwork is admired by people in their trade. The accepted story of why he built the tunnels was purely functional to support terrace gardens.
“Another theory is that his wife fell under the spell of a preacher in Hope Street who predicted a holocaust would hit the city. On September 1840. She persuaded Joseph to build the tunnels to provide shelter for the people of Liverpool. Until after the holocaust.”
Like most of the tales surrounding the project, stories like this have probably been exaggerated down the years. It has possibly been exaggerated that he employed thousands of workers at any one time There is no doubt a fair number of men came forward to offer their services.
It is thought that when the process of building on Mason Street was adequately staffed, that he would send the additional men into the arches to extend them by cutting into the bedrock perhaps so that they meet up with the house cellars, to provide a convenient exit to Smithdown Lane.
By the time Williamson retired and sold the tobacco firm, this gave him more time to concentrate on the ever-expanding tunnels. With unemployment rife in the city at the time, he had no other justification for the continuing of the work other than giving work to the unemployed of Liverpool.
Even on the occasions where there was not enough work to do on the tunnels Williamson would still pay and employ the men. It is believed that he would get men to move rocks from one place to another and then get them to move them back again.
In parts of the tunnels, which are accessible today, there is evidence of tunnels being built and immediately bricked up again, alongside fine arches that lead nowhere. All this was purely to keep the men busy, but perhaps Williamson was also getting satisfaction from the opulent surroundings that he was fashioning for himself.
The conditions that the workers often worked in were not easy; it was often dark, dusty, noisy, cold in winter and hot in the summer. The rock men worked with picks shovels and barrows, while the carpenters used axes and saws to build formers for the bricklayers to lay arches underground. Added to these conditions the men often worked by candlelight.
The 1830’s saw the excavation of the Liverpool to Manchester railway line underneath the Edge Hill district, through to Lime Street. It has been documented that Williamson’s tunnels met up with the team excavating the railway line much to each other’s surprise. A tunnel can be witnessed on a train journey into Liverpool Lime Street today.
It may also be the case that the men who served their apprenticeship working on Williamson’s tunnels may well have also found employment cutting the Liverpool to Manchester tunnel through the sandstone of Edge Hill.
Elizabeth Williamson died in 1822, and as a result of her death, Joseph Williamson turned his attentions, even more vehemently to the completion of his tunnels and continued his work for the rest of his life. Williamson eventually died aged 76 on 1st May 1840.
With Williamson’s death also came the end of the excavation of the Tunnels.
The project may well have died but the knowledge of the existence of the tunnels never really died. Most of the Mason Street area was demolished at the turn of the 20th century, and was replaced by the residential property that can be witnessed today. Though some of the tunnels throughout the years where quite visible down Smithdown Lane nothing constructive had been done to them since Williamson’s death.
Even after years of neglect enthusiasts have tried to raise the profile of the tunnels and this interest has culminated in the current chapter in the tunnels fascinating history. Its hard to know what Williamson’s vision was, but after years of construction building by his original workforce, together with meticulous renovation by the volunteer army of the FOWT. August 2002 will see the official opening to the public for the Williamson tunnels.
The tunnels had been expected to open in June, to coincide with the Queens visit to Liverpool, but last minute safety work to the scaffolding inside the tunnels, delayed its opening. A third of this work has now been completed thanks to the Metalworkers and fabricators from Merseyside and Manchester who donated time and materials for free. Chairman of the John Williamson Society, who will run the visitors centre said
“ We have completed the final safety checks and we are finishing off the tunnel bar, which will serve refreshments to the visitors.”
The first section of Williamson’s Tunnels to be opened will be at the old stables site on Smithdown Lane. Only part of the complex will be opened, but it does include the ‘double tunnel’ with its intricate deep workings at the end corner.
The Williamson’s Tunnels is an on going project and is reliant on financial support and other support of such as people helping excavate the site.
Now that the tunnels are near completion, the Joseph Williamson Society who run the visitors centre, are now looking for tour guides, ticket sellers and other volunteers who can help with the site.
The opening of the site is just the end of the first stage of the project. Long term plans and funding will allow the opening up of further tunnels on the stable yard site and on the other side of the railway lines in Mason Street, opposite the Banqueting Hall at Williamson’s House.
Funding for the work has come from sources including the FOWT, European Regional Development Fund, loans from Liverpool City Council and the Community Loan fund. The private sector and individual organisation have also provided sponsorship. Applications have also been, made to branches of the lottery for further assistance with building work and additional disabled recourses. Some donations have also been promised from museums across the country.
It was an entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit, which created jobs and prosperity for the Edge Hill area of the city back in the 1800’s, this spirit, certainly lives on today. Area councillor Frank Doran, from Liverpool City Council believes that Tunnels have been good for the area and will be for some time to come,
“The Heritage Centre is a showcase of the tunnels it will attract people who will spend money, buy books and visit the city. So its inward investment into the local economy.”
After many years of rumour and intrigue the people of Liverpool and from far wide can at last see what folklore said existed, but has been unable to explain or work out why it exists. The fact that members of the public can witness this great site is testimony to the great work of the Friends of the Williamson’s Tunnels and the Joseph Williamson Society. It is also at last long last, recognition of the great work for one of Liverpool’s greatest benefactors to the unemployed of this city.
Sadly no monument exists for this man’s achievements or a grave for people to pay respects to. He sadly lies in an unmarked grave under a car park at the junction of Paradise Street and Park Lane opposite Merseyside Police Headquarters. The fact that his eccentric vision has been lovingly and pain stakingly restored is no doubt a fitting memorial for the vision of the great Joseph Williamson.
One such innovator, and no less of an eccentric is Joseph Williamson. His name has been surrounded in mythology and speculation for numerous years but has lived on through the legacy that surrounds his greatest work – The Williamson Tunnels.
Joseph Williamson’s name is synonymous with the tunnels, which zigzag underneath the streets and surrounding areas of the Edge Hill district of Liverpool. Unfortunately, until now Williamson’s work has been referred to fleetingly in the history of Liverpool.
Without the work of organisations such as the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels, Williamson’s work would have remained merely a footnote in Liverpool’s history.
The FOWT have taken this a step further and are bringing the Tunnels to the surface of the consciousness of the people of Liverpool. The FOWT is a voluntary organisation and also the biggest local history society in Britain
It has certainly been a labour of love for the volunteers of the FOWT and it is without doubt that their endeavours are equal to the effort of the original workers, who excavated the tunnels in the 19th century.
August 2002 will see the culmination of years of hard work with the opening of the first phase of the tunnels to the general public. Following a major excavation and renovation exercise, two of the tunnels in the original stable yard on Smithdown Lane section of the labyrinth will be open to the public as a permanent tourist attraction.
Although some of the tunnels have been lost over the years and are unable to renovated. Many of the original tunnels still exist today under the now largely residential area of Edge Hill.
The opening will be testament to the hard work of people such as Gabriel Mews, who has lived in the Edge Hill area all his life. Gabriel Mews is one of the local residents who has pushed for the opening of the tunnels for the last six years. He and other volunteers have painstakingly been excavating the tunnels in conditions similar to that of Williamson’s day
It has been a difficult process in the renovation and excavating the site. Dave Bridson, of FOWT highlighted some of the problems faced by the Volunteer workforce,
“Illegal fly tipping has filled a majority of the tunnels. Some of it is building rubble ash and Clinker. There is a whole mix of stuff. This was the trouble when the building work started above.”
The renovation process has also faced problems due to the fact that the pattern of the tunnels follows no logical course and that there are no plans or documents in existence to guide their renovation. It has become apparent that no such plans may ever have existed. Such a document would have a shed a better light on the existence of the Tunnels.
To gain an insight and an understanding into why the tunnels where built in the first place, Its important to find out more of the life of the man whose name has been given to these tunnels and a man who spent the latter part of his life dedicated to the completion of the tunnels.
Many of the details of Williamson’s life are shrouded in mystery, and this has no doubt fuelled the fascination that has grown up surrounding the history of the tunnels.
Joseph Williamson was born on 10th March 1769. It is widely assumed that he was born in Warrington, but that has not been proven. He was born into a poor family and at the age of 11 he moved to Liverpool in search of work.
The Liverpool to which Williamson arrived in 1780 was a relatively prosperous city; due to its thriving seaport he would have had little difficulty in securing gainful employment. He eventually secured work for the tobacco and snuff firm Richard Tate, which was based in Parr Street, adjacent to Wolstenholme Square, near the city centre.
It was a family business and Williamson prospered during his time with the company and he was eventually promoted from runner to a clerk. As well as progressing through Tate’s, he also set up in partnership with Mr Joseph Leigh, as a merchant.
Williamson married Elizabeth Tate in 1802, Thomas Tate’s the sister of the owner of Tate’s. After Williamson’s inauspicious start in life he had started to reap the rewards of a working career that began at the age of 11. Things where going so well for Williamson, that a year after his marriage he bought Tate’s.
Tate’s prospered in Williamson’s ownership and the wealth generated from the success of the businesses that Williamson had built up kick started his move into property development.
The area of Edge Hill that Williamson lived at the time was pretty much under developed. Williamson built his own house on the land at Mason Street and soon after other dwellings followed. The houses that he built were very much typical of the properties of the era, with cellars and large gardens at the rear.
At the back of each of the dwellings there was a large amount of space, but the sandstone bedrock dropped about twenty feet down to the same level as Smithdown Lane. Williamson had his men build brick arches in the sandstone bedrock. The building of these arches is significant, as it was the first part of the completed Williamson Tunnels to be put in place.
From what is known of the layout of the tunnels, it is assumed that Williamson had no clear vision for the tunnels. One idea that has been put forward is that Williamson saw the building of the tunnels as something of a philanthropic gesture on his part, given the hardship that he had endured whilst he grew up. It was around the time of the Napoleonic wars that he started the tunnels as a sort of job creation scheme for soldiers returning from the wars.
Another idea that has been suggested is that he built the tunnels out of a religious fervour and the tunnels where to be a haven underground for an apocalyptic Armageddon forecast for 1841 by a mystery soothsayer.
Frank Hodges from the FOWT takes up the story.
“One of the features of the tunnels is that the brickwork is admired by people in their trade. The accepted story of why he built the tunnels was purely functional to support terrace gardens.
“Another theory is that his wife fell under the spell of a preacher in Hope Street who predicted a holocaust would hit the city. On September 1840. She persuaded Joseph to build the tunnels to provide shelter for the people of Liverpool. Until after the holocaust.”
Like most of the tales surrounding the project, stories like this have probably been exaggerated down the years. It has possibly been exaggerated that he employed thousands of workers at any one time There is no doubt a fair number of men came forward to offer their services.
It is thought that when the process of building on Mason Street was adequately staffed, that he would send the additional men into the arches to extend them by cutting into the bedrock perhaps so that they meet up with the house cellars, to provide a convenient exit to Smithdown Lane.
By the time Williamson retired and sold the tobacco firm, this gave him more time to concentrate on the ever-expanding tunnels. With unemployment rife in the city at the time, he had no other justification for the continuing of the work other than giving work to the unemployed of Liverpool.
Even on the occasions where there was not enough work to do on the tunnels Williamson would still pay and employ the men. It is believed that he would get men to move rocks from one place to another and then get them to move them back again.
In parts of the tunnels, which are accessible today, there is evidence of tunnels being built and immediately bricked up again, alongside fine arches that lead nowhere. All this was purely to keep the men busy, but perhaps Williamson was also getting satisfaction from the opulent surroundings that he was fashioning for himself.
The conditions that the workers often worked in were not easy; it was often dark, dusty, noisy, cold in winter and hot in the summer. The rock men worked with picks shovels and barrows, while the carpenters used axes and saws to build formers for the bricklayers to lay arches underground. Added to these conditions the men often worked by candlelight.
The 1830’s saw the excavation of the Liverpool to Manchester railway line underneath the Edge Hill district, through to Lime Street. It has been documented that Williamson’s tunnels met up with the team excavating the railway line much to each other’s surprise. A tunnel can be witnessed on a train journey into Liverpool Lime Street today.
It may also be the case that the men who served their apprenticeship working on Williamson’s tunnels may well have also found employment cutting the Liverpool to Manchester tunnel through the sandstone of Edge Hill.
Elizabeth Williamson died in 1822, and as a result of her death, Joseph Williamson turned his attentions, even more vehemently to the completion of his tunnels and continued his work for the rest of his life. Williamson eventually died aged 76 on 1st May 1840.
With Williamson’s death also came the end of the excavation of the Tunnels.
The project may well have died but the knowledge of the existence of the tunnels never really died. Most of the Mason Street area was demolished at the turn of the 20th century, and was replaced by the residential property that can be witnessed today. Though some of the tunnels throughout the years where quite visible down Smithdown Lane nothing constructive had been done to them since Williamson’s death.
Even after years of neglect enthusiasts have tried to raise the profile of the tunnels and this interest has culminated in the current chapter in the tunnels fascinating history. Its hard to know what Williamson’s vision was, but after years of construction building by his original workforce, together with meticulous renovation by the volunteer army of the FOWT. August 2002 will see the official opening to the public for the Williamson tunnels.
The tunnels had been expected to open in June, to coincide with the Queens visit to Liverpool, but last minute safety work to the scaffolding inside the tunnels, delayed its opening. A third of this work has now been completed thanks to the Metalworkers and fabricators from Merseyside and Manchester who donated time and materials for free. Chairman of the John Williamson Society, who will run the visitors centre said
“ We have completed the final safety checks and we are finishing off the tunnel bar, which will serve refreshments to the visitors.”
The first section of Williamson’s Tunnels to be opened will be at the old stables site on Smithdown Lane. Only part of the complex will be opened, but it does include the ‘double tunnel’ with its intricate deep workings at the end corner.
The Williamson’s Tunnels is an on going project and is reliant on financial support and other support of such as people helping excavate the site.
Now that the tunnels are near completion, the Joseph Williamson Society who run the visitors centre, are now looking for tour guides, ticket sellers and other volunteers who can help with the site.
The opening of the site is just the end of the first stage of the project. Long term plans and funding will allow the opening up of further tunnels on the stable yard site and on the other side of the railway lines in Mason Street, opposite the Banqueting Hall at Williamson’s House.
Funding for the work has come from sources including the FOWT, European Regional Development Fund, loans from Liverpool City Council and the Community Loan fund. The private sector and individual organisation have also provided sponsorship. Applications have also been, made to branches of the lottery for further assistance with building work and additional disabled recourses. Some donations have also been promised from museums across the country.
It was an entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit, which created jobs and prosperity for the Edge Hill area of the city back in the 1800’s, this spirit, certainly lives on today. Area councillor Frank Doran, from Liverpool City Council believes that Tunnels have been good for the area and will be for some time to come,
“The Heritage Centre is a showcase of the tunnels it will attract people who will spend money, buy books and visit the city. So its inward investment into the local economy.”
After many years of rumour and intrigue the people of Liverpool and from far wide can at last see what folklore said existed, but has been unable to explain or work out why it exists. The fact that members of the public can witness this great site is testimony to the great work of the Friends of the Williamson’s Tunnels and the Joseph Williamson Society. It is also at last long last, recognition of the great work for one of Liverpool’s greatest benefactors to the unemployed of this city.
Sadly no monument exists for this man’s achievements or a grave for people to pay respects to. He sadly lies in an unmarked grave under a car park at the junction of Paradise Street and Park Lane opposite Merseyside Police Headquarters. The fact that his eccentric vision has been lovingly and pain stakingly restored is no doubt a fitting memorial for the vision of the great Joseph Williamson.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Casualisation kills: The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign
“People like Simon Jones get killed at work all the time and nothing gets done about it. Not this time”
It’s a sad statistic, but in the last ten years more than 3,000 people have died as a result of injuries suffered at work and a further 200,000 have suffered serious injuries. Every day workers are sent into situations without the necessary skills and training to work in environments such as the one that Simon Jones faced.
Simon was a 24 year old from the Sussex University. He was taking a year out from the course he was studying - Social Anthropology. Under pressure from his local benefits office to take a job, he went to the Personnel Selection recruitment agency, in Brighton. They sent him to work as a Stevedore at the Shoreham dockyard West Sussex for the Dutch-based firm Euromin.
Despite the fact that he had no training or experience and very little in the way of protective clothing, He was assigned the job of unloading; a Polish cargo ship that had docked that day. His job was to attach bags to chains hanging from the inside of the grab, which was open.
This was a highly irregular practice (the subsequent court case criticised the company for doing this). Simon died when the lever that operated the grab got caught in the clothing of the crane operator, causing the jaws to close around Simon’s head.
This tragic event has been a strain on the parents of Simon, Ann and Chris Jones, but their anguish has been heightened by the seeming disregard for their son’s life. For the first few days after the death they had no idea as to how Simon had been killed. It was only a chance meeting with one of Simon’s friends and a colleague that day that they found out the true course of events.
Enraged by this disregard for a life and a sense that justice must prevail. The friends and family of Simon Jones set up The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign. This campaign was set up to bring justice to the people they felt were responsible for Simon’s death.
The campaign is also fighting for recognition of a law of corporate manslaughter that would help in cases such as Simon’s. It has also highlighted the unlawful deaths of workers resulting from the increased casualised nature of work today. They did not want Simon’s death to become another statistic of a work related fatality.
The campaign has been an ongoing process and was started soon after the death of Simon. It has taken its case to the courts despite the avenues seemingly blocked at every point. It has also protested in the form of direct action, which has been a great help in raising the public’s awareness of the case.
The cause has been given prominence by writers and people in the public eye. Julie Birchall, in her ‘Weekend Guardian’ column highlighted the campaign and Mark Thomas, the comedian, raised the awareness of the campaign on his TV show, ‘The Mark Thomas’ product and his column in the New Statesman.
The campaign has recently produced a film called ’Not this time – The story of the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign’, which chronicles Simons first day as a casual worker and shows the campaign as it develops, involving direct action against the government agencies and departments that have thwarted their quest for justice.
The 25-minute film has recently gone on a 20-date tour, as a further way of increasing the awareness of the campaigns aims. The first date was at the Glastonbury festival, on 29th June on the same bill as Billy Bragg and Mark Thomas. Unions, safety campaigners, friends, direct action groups and many more organisations, have responded to campaign by setting up showings in halls, churches, cinemas and community centres across the country.
Colin Chambers, of the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign says that;
“The unique thing about this film tour is that it’s only happening because so many groups approached us wanting to show the film. There is a genuine concern in this country that the government isn’t doing nearly enough to protect passengers and workers from profiteering companies who don’t really care about anything but making a profit.
“ Simon’s death, and recent deaths of both passengers and casual workers on the railways, shows that casualisation kills. A lot of people find that unacceptable.”
One of the sad ironies of Simon’s death concerns the fact Simon was politically motivated throughout his life and he was keen activist and he campaigned on behalf of the Liverpool Dockers in their fight against the casualisation of its workforce.
He was also was a keen writer for SchuNews, the direct action’s weekly newsletter. Simon believed that if you sat back and waited for politicians you would have a very long wait. This is one of the beliefs that the memorial campaign has adopted with regard to the continuation of its struggle.
In 1998, the year of Simon’s death, there were 374 work related deaths in this country. It was witnessing figures like this, was no doubt inspired the formation of the memorial campaign, in the hope that Simon’s death would not just be another statistic alongside the other deaths of that year.
Sadly British law is such, that it is relatively difficult to prosecute any company or individual under the charge of corporate manslaughter. Having tried to seek recourse through the British courts, The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign has engaged in a course of direct action that has complemented its legal battles.
Earlier this year, David Blunkett, the home secretary, decided that passengers injured in rail crashes and workers hurt in industrial accidents will not be treated as victims of crime in the same way that other victims of crime are.
David Bergman, the director of the centre for corporate accountability says that victims of workplace and railway crashes are as much victims as much as someone who is a victim on the street.
“ Many of them suffer injuries, nevertheless it seems that not seen as a crime at the Health and Safety crime, though are promoting new rights to be extended to victims of road traffic accidents.”
The Home Office issued a statement, in which they claimed,
“ We are not bringing in a health and safety victims law at this stage although we have not ruled them out. After consulting our ministers we have decided to extend the bill of rights to the victims of road accidents because the implications are profound and far ranging.”
The introduction of a Corporate Manslaughter Act had been a manifesto pledge of the Labour Government; with it would bring the introduction of some form of policy for corporate accountability in relation to industrial injuries victims. We still wait for this to be introduced let alone to be discussed.
The odds have always been stacked against the campaign from the beginning. Before April 1998, the police were not formally required to investigate workplace deaths.
In this case, the local police had yet to be trained and the investigation started six weeks late. Investigations traditionally fall under the remit of the health and safety executive (HSE) but only 30% of the workplace deaths end in a prosecution. The HSE is chronically under-resourced and often criticised for its delays and a lack of transparency. Prosecutions usually have to focus on the culpability of companies rather than individuals, which lets them plead guilty and escape with relatively small fines while their directors remain unaccountable.
Cases that fall between the HSE and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), if the police decide that there is a criminal case to answer corporate manslaughter is difficult to prosecute.
In the last 50 years, there have been only three successful prosecutions in this country. Under current laws, a company can only be convicted of manslaughter, if a senior manager is prosecuted and found guilty as an individual.
Early in 1999, the Police had completed their investigation. At the start of April, the CPS announced, that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Euromin or any senior manager for manslaughter. The HSE had also by this time completed its inquiries, but despite countless approaches, would not give reasons why Euromin had been allowed to operate in such a dangerous manner; why had it not been properly inspected and why it had been allowed to remain open?
The campaign approached Louise Christian, the solicitor who had had worked on a number of high-profile corporate manslaughter cases including the Ladbroke Grove and Paddington rail disasters, who decided to fight the case on behalf of the campaign.
Leave was granted in September 1999 and the following March, in a landmark case two high court judges overturned the CPS’s decision claiming that it had behaved irrationally in insisting that there was no realistic prospect of conviction they ordered it to reconsider its original verdict.
After a previous attempt to bring Euromin and James Martell to trial, November 7, 2001, saw the trial of James Martell the general manager of Euromin. The trial took place at the Old Bailey. On the November 29, Martell and Euromin where cleared of manslaughter by a majority verdict; but the company was found guilty of two lesser charges of breaching health and safety regulations, and fined £50,000.
Speaking after the courts verdict the campaign released a statement, putting forward their disappointment of the verdict,
“ We would not be human if we were not disappointed by the today’s not guilty verdicts. We had wished that James Martell and Euromin, would have been found guilty of Simon’s manslaughter and they have not.
They have however, been found guilty of serious crimes that show their criminal negligence led directly to Simon’s death. Some people may say these are minor crimes. We would say that there is nothing minor about crimes, that lead to the death of workers like Simon.”
They added, highlighting the success of the direct action campaigns,
“ Without direct action James Martell and Euromin would never have faced prosecution in the High Court for Simons death. This prosecution only took place because Simon’s family and friends broke the law.
As long as this government and its agencies, refuse to take action against companies that profit from casualisation at the expense of their workers lives, we will continue to break the law so that justice will prevail.”
As result of the case, the campaign now hope that the law is improved in the future by making it easier for similar work related deaths can be dealt with by the courts and hopefully lead to prosecutions.
Future plans for the campaign include looking at the possibility of prosecuting Personnel Selection, the recruitment agency that sent Simon to a work in an environment that was unsuitable for him to do so.
Without much help from the so-called ‘proper channels’. The campaign has resorted to direct action in trying to increase the awareness of the campaign as well as trying to present their case to the relevant agencies.
The first direct action took place on 1st September 1998, on what would have been Simon’s 25th birthday, 30 protesters occupied the Shoreham dock where Simon was killed. They unfurled banners bearing the logo ‘casualisation kills, this action resulted in the closure of the dock for a day and the casual workforce was sent home on full pay.
Two days later, the Brighton office of Personnel Selection, was also occupied and again resulted in the closure of the office for the day. Passers by where leafleted and no doubt managed to spot the ‘murderers’ banner that was unfurled from the first floor office.
On 3rd March, the Labour MP George Galloway tabled a question in the House of Commons concerning the casualisation of labour. He spoke at length about the case. The same day the DTI buildings where occupied by the campaigners and all workers where evacuated when a fire alarm was ‘some how activated’ this enabled campaigners to leaflet the bemused staff of the DTI who where mingling outside the office.
Then one year after the death of Simon Jones. The campaign descended on the Health and Safety Executive, to put their case forward.
Having written to the Health and Safety Executive, on numerous occasions, with no response. The campaign decided to protest outside the Health and Safety Executive. Ann Jones, Simons mother laid a wreath at the doorway. When their request to speak to Jenny Bacon, the Chief Executive of the Health and Safety, fell on deaf ears, the 30 campaigners walked on to Southwark Bridge, and stopped the traffic for three hours. Jenny Bacon finally relented to an audience with Ann Jones, who bafflingly said to Ann ‘Why didn’t you write.’
Little by little this direct action has brought the campaign to the consciousness of a largely ignorant nation. The direct action campaign indeed brought about the Crown Prosecution Services u-turn as to whether they had a case that could be brought before a court of law. Colin Chambers, friend and campaigner, highlights the need for direct action,
“ Direct action basically grew out of the inaction of the left and the unions. As one of the Liverpool Dockers said when we occupied Euromin, ‘A few years ago it would have been workers coming out that shut that dock, not protesters going in.’
Direct action is seen as something slightly eccentric, admirable, but ‘single-issue’, cut off from real politics. Where as in fact that it’s just doing what working class and progressive organisations have always done, but have now been effectively stopped from doing with a carrot and stick.
Its pretty scary that protesting when some capitalist bastard kills your mate is considered as unusual.”
Another sad irony for the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign is that no one has been arrested for the death of Simon. But that four protesters have been committed for trial as a result of their part in a protest at Shoreham Dock, which was staged to draw attention to the ongoing concerns with regards to health and safety at the Euromin owned dock.
Farah Bishani, Crispin Dowler, Sarah McLaughlin, and Carly North all from Brighton, have been charged under section 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (consolidation) Act 1992 following the protest on 3rd December 2001. Originally the date of the trial was 29th July, but this has been adjourned until September. If convicted they face up a maximum six months sentence.
Colin Chambers of the Memorial Campaign believes,
“ This dock is a death trap and now four people face going to jail for trying to get the authorities to do something about it. When we approached the Health and Safety Executive with first hand evidence of their own safety rules being broken. We were told we were ‘wasting a lot of their time with this’. ”
He further adds,
“It’s almost impossible to end up in court for killing your employees in this country. Since Simon’s death n 1998 over 2000 people have been killed at work and no director has gone to jail.
Now we see Thatcher’s anti-picketing laws being used against campaigners for who are trying to get safety laws enforced. We don’t think that trying to save lives is a crime and that is a point we will be making very forcibly in court”
Like the campaigners in the Hillsborough fight for justice campaigns the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign having sought recourse to the British Law, have yet to have their questions answered. One thing that the campaign knows is that they cannot bring Simon back, but what they can do is stop the same thing happening to future Simon Jones’s.
The sad fact that it is still happening today, as the Guardian of Saturday 24th August 2002, reports another workplace fatality of a 38 year old, man in Bradford. It is a fact that people are employed to carry dangerous jobs and that accidents can happen. But when corners are cut for the sake of profit, then it is hard to call it an accidental death.
It’s a sad statistic, but in the last ten years more than 3,000 people have died as a result of injuries suffered at work and a further 200,000 have suffered serious injuries. Every day workers are sent into situations without the necessary skills and training to work in environments such as the one that Simon Jones faced.
Simon was a 24 year old from the Sussex University. He was taking a year out from the course he was studying - Social Anthropology. Under pressure from his local benefits office to take a job, he went to the Personnel Selection recruitment agency, in Brighton. They sent him to work as a Stevedore at the Shoreham dockyard West Sussex for the Dutch-based firm Euromin.
Despite the fact that he had no training or experience and very little in the way of protective clothing, He was assigned the job of unloading; a Polish cargo ship that had docked that day. His job was to attach bags to chains hanging from the inside of the grab, which was open.
This was a highly irregular practice (the subsequent court case criticised the company for doing this). Simon died when the lever that operated the grab got caught in the clothing of the crane operator, causing the jaws to close around Simon’s head.
This tragic event has been a strain on the parents of Simon, Ann and Chris Jones, but their anguish has been heightened by the seeming disregard for their son’s life. For the first few days after the death they had no idea as to how Simon had been killed. It was only a chance meeting with one of Simon’s friends and a colleague that day that they found out the true course of events.
Enraged by this disregard for a life and a sense that justice must prevail. The friends and family of Simon Jones set up The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign. This campaign was set up to bring justice to the people they felt were responsible for Simon’s death.
The campaign is also fighting for recognition of a law of corporate manslaughter that would help in cases such as Simon’s. It has also highlighted the unlawful deaths of workers resulting from the increased casualised nature of work today. They did not want Simon’s death to become another statistic of a work related fatality.
The campaign has been an ongoing process and was started soon after the death of Simon. It has taken its case to the courts despite the avenues seemingly blocked at every point. It has also protested in the form of direct action, which has been a great help in raising the public’s awareness of the case.
The cause has been given prominence by writers and people in the public eye. Julie Birchall, in her ‘Weekend Guardian’ column highlighted the campaign and Mark Thomas, the comedian, raised the awareness of the campaign on his TV show, ‘The Mark Thomas’ product and his column in the New Statesman.
The campaign has recently produced a film called ’Not this time – The story of the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign’, which chronicles Simons first day as a casual worker and shows the campaign as it develops, involving direct action against the government agencies and departments that have thwarted their quest for justice.
The 25-minute film has recently gone on a 20-date tour, as a further way of increasing the awareness of the campaigns aims. The first date was at the Glastonbury festival, on 29th June on the same bill as Billy Bragg and Mark Thomas. Unions, safety campaigners, friends, direct action groups and many more organisations, have responded to campaign by setting up showings in halls, churches, cinemas and community centres across the country.
Colin Chambers, of the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign says that;
“The unique thing about this film tour is that it’s only happening because so many groups approached us wanting to show the film. There is a genuine concern in this country that the government isn’t doing nearly enough to protect passengers and workers from profiteering companies who don’t really care about anything but making a profit.
“ Simon’s death, and recent deaths of both passengers and casual workers on the railways, shows that casualisation kills. A lot of people find that unacceptable.”
One of the sad ironies of Simon’s death concerns the fact Simon was politically motivated throughout his life and he was keen activist and he campaigned on behalf of the Liverpool Dockers in their fight against the casualisation of its workforce.
He was also was a keen writer for SchuNews, the direct action’s weekly newsletter. Simon believed that if you sat back and waited for politicians you would have a very long wait. This is one of the beliefs that the memorial campaign has adopted with regard to the continuation of its struggle.
In 1998, the year of Simon’s death, there were 374 work related deaths in this country. It was witnessing figures like this, was no doubt inspired the formation of the memorial campaign, in the hope that Simon’s death would not just be another statistic alongside the other deaths of that year.
Sadly British law is such, that it is relatively difficult to prosecute any company or individual under the charge of corporate manslaughter. Having tried to seek recourse through the British courts, The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign has engaged in a course of direct action that has complemented its legal battles.
Earlier this year, David Blunkett, the home secretary, decided that passengers injured in rail crashes and workers hurt in industrial accidents will not be treated as victims of crime in the same way that other victims of crime are.
David Bergman, the director of the centre for corporate accountability says that victims of workplace and railway crashes are as much victims as much as someone who is a victim on the street.
“ Many of them suffer injuries, nevertheless it seems that not seen as a crime at the Health and Safety crime, though are promoting new rights to be extended to victims of road traffic accidents.”
The Home Office issued a statement, in which they claimed,
“ We are not bringing in a health and safety victims law at this stage although we have not ruled them out. After consulting our ministers we have decided to extend the bill of rights to the victims of road accidents because the implications are profound and far ranging.”
The introduction of a Corporate Manslaughter Act had been a manifesto pledge of the Labour Government; with it would bring the introduction of some form of policy for corporate accountability in relation to industrial injuries victims. We still wait for this to be introduced let alone to be discussed.
The odds have always been stacked against the campaign from the beginning. Before April 1998, the police were not formally required to investigate workplace deaths.
In this case, the local police had yet to be trained and the investigation started six weeks late. Investigations traditionally fall under the remit of the health and safety executive (HSE) but only 30% of the workplace deaths end in a prosecution. The HSE is chronically under-resourced and often criticised for its delays and a lack of transparency. Prosecutions usually have to focus on the culpability of companies rather than individuals, which lets them plead guilty and escape with relatively small fines while their directors remain unaccountable.
Cases that fall between the HSE and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), if the police decide that there is a criminal case to answer corporate manslaughter is difficult to prosecute.
In the last 50 years, there have been only three successful prosecutions in this country. Under current laws, a company can only be convicted of manslaughter, if a senior manager is prosecuted and found guilty as an individual.
Early in 1999, the Police had completed their investigation. At the start of April, the CPS announced, that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Euromin or any senior manager for manslaughter. The HSE had also by this time completed its inquiries, but despite countless approaches, would not give reasons why Euromin had been allowed to operate in such a dangerous manner; why had it not been properly inspected and why it had been allowed to remain open?
The campaign approached Louise Christian, the solicitor who had had worked on a number of high-profile corporate manslaughter cases including the Ladbroke Grove and Paddington rail disasters, who decided to fight the case on behalf of the campaign.
Leave was granted in September 1999 and the following March, in a landmark case two high court judges overturned the CPS’s decision claiming that it had behaved irrationally in insisting that there was no realistic prospect of conviction they ordered it to reconsider its original verdict.
After a previous attempt to bring Euromin and James Martell to trial, November 7, 2001, saw the trial of James Martell the general manager of Euromin. The trial took place at the Old Bailey. On the November 29, Martell and Euromin where cleared of manslaughter by a majority verdict; but the company was found guilty of two lesser charges of breaching health and safety regulations, and fined £50,000.
Speaking after the courts verdict the campaign released a statement, putting forward their disappointment of the verdict,
“ We would not be human if we were not disappointed by the today’s not guilty verdicts. We had wished that James Martell and Euromin, would have been found guilty of Simon’s manslaughter and they have not.
They have however, been found guilty of serious crimes that show their criminal negligence led directly to Simon’s death. Some people may say these are minor crimes. We would say that there is nothing minor about crimes, that lead to the death of workers like Simon.”
They added, highlighting the success of the direct action campaigns,
“ Without direct action James Martell and Euromin would never have faced prosecution in the High Court for Simons death. This prosecution only took place because Simon’s family and friends broke the law.
As long as this government and its agencies, refuse to take action against companies that profit from casualisation at the expense of their workers lives, we will continue to break the law so that justice will prevail.”
As result of the case, the campaign now hope that the law is improved in the future by making it easier for similar work related deaths can be dealt with by the courts and hopefully lead to prosecutions.
Future plans for the campaign include looking at the possibility of prosecuting Personnel Selection, the recruitment agency that sent Simon to a work in an environment that was unsuitable for him to do so.
Without much help from the so-called ‘proper channels’. The campaign has resorted to direct action in trying to increase the awareness of the campaign as well as trying to present their case to the relevant agencies.
The first direct action took place on 1st September 1998, on what would have been Simon’s 25th birthday, 30 protesters occupied the Shoreham dock where Simon was killed. They unfurled banners bearing the logo ‘casualisation kills, this action resulted in the closure of the dock for a day and the casual workforce was sent home on full pay.
Two days later, the Brighton office of Personnel Selection, was also occupied and again resulted in the closure of the office for the day. Passers by where leafleted and no doubt managed to spot the ‘murderers’ banner that was unfurled from the first floor office.
On 3rd March, the Labour MP George Galloway tabled a question in the House of Commons concerning the casualisation of labour. He spoke at length about the case. The same day the DTI buildings where occupied by the campaigners and all workers where evacuated when a fire alarm was ‘some how activated’ this enabled campaigners to leaflet the bemused staff of the DTI who where mingling outside the office.
Then one year after the death of Simon Jones. The campaign descended on the Health and Safety Executive, to put their case forward.
Having written to the Health and Safety Executive, on numerous occasions, with no response. The campaign decided to protest outside the Health and Safety Executive. Ann Jones, Simons mother laid a wreath at the doorway. When their request to speak to Jenny Bacon, the Chief Executive of the Health and Safety, fell on deaf ears, the 30 campaigners walked on to Southwark Bridge, and stopped the traffic for three hours. Jenny Bacon finally relented to an audience with Ann Jones, who bafflingly said to Ann ‘Why didn’t you write.’
Little by little this direct action has brought the campaign to the consciousness of a largely ignorant nation. The direct action campaign indeed brought about the Crown Prosecution Services u-turn as to whether they had a case that could be brought before a court of law. Colin Chambers, friend and campaigner, highlights the need for direct action,
“ Direct action basically grew out of the inaction of the left and the unions. As one of the Liverpool Dockers said when we occupied Euromin, ‘A few years ago it would have been workers coming out that shut that dock, not protesters going in.’
Direct action is seen as something slightly eccentric, admirable, but ‘single-issue’, cut off from real politics. Where as in fact that it’s just doing what working class and progressive organisations have always done, but have now been effectively stopped from doing with a carrot and stick.
Its pretty scary that protesting when some capitalist bastard kills your mate is considered as unusual.”
Another sad irony for the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign is that no one has been arrested for the death of Simon. But that four protesters have been committed for trial as a result of their part in a protest at Shoreham Dock, which was staged to draw attention to the ongoing concerns with regards to health and safety at the Euromin owned dock.
Farah Bishani, Crispin Dowler, Sarah McLaughlin, and Carly North all from Brighton, have been charged under section 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (consolidation) Act 1992 following the protest on 3rd December 2001. Originally the date of the trial was 29th July, but this has been adjourned until September. If convicted they face up a maximum six months sentence.
Colin Chambers of the Memorial Campaign believes,
“ This dock is a death trap and now four people face going to jail for trying to get the authorities to do something about it. When we approached the Health and Safety Executive with first hand evidence of their own safety rules being broken. We were told we were ‘wasting a lot of their time with this’. ”
He further adds,
“It’s almost impossible to end up in court for killing your employees in this country. Since Simon’s death n 1998 over 2000 people have been killed at work and no director has gone to jail.
Now we see Thatcher’s anti-picketing laws being used against campaigners for who are trying to get safety laws enforced. We don’t think that trying to save lives is a crime and that is a point we will be making very forcibly in court”
Like the campaigners in the Hillsborough fight for justice campaigns the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign having sought recourse to the British Law, have yet to have their questions answered. One thing that the campaign knows is that they cannot bring Simon back, but what they can do is stop the same thing happening to future Simon Jones’s.
The sad fact that it is still happening today, as the Guardian of Saturday 24th August 2002, reports another workplace fatality of a 38 year old, man in Bradford. It is a fact that people are employed to carry dangerous jobs and that accidents can happen. But when corners are cut for the sake of profit, then it is hard to call it an accidental death.
Monday, July 29, 2002
Hey! Mr Music Man
You may never of heard of him but that does not matter. For the last forty years Liverpool’s Billy Stratton, aged 63, has made a living from the notoriously fickle music industry and after all these years in the business, is now willing to impart the benefit of his knowledge to the future generation of the cities talent. Following the recent success of the Billy Stratton Workshop, which took place in the aptly titled Sessions pub, he is now looking to develop these workshops further.
This brief introduction does not give justice to the journey; some would say an odyssey that has been Billy’s Life. Its been a story of ups and downs, near misses and ultimately of bad health, which saw Billy being given only two years to live back in 1987 – just as he was on the verge of making it in Hollywood. After all that Billy has been through it would be easy to have a jaundiced view of life but that is not Billy’s way at all and, despite everything he has been through he still has dreams and ambitions, with which he wants to fulfil.
I met up with Billy in the basement cellar of his Kirkdale home, which he has converted into a studio and which sees the operation of his Moonrock Publishing Company, which he runs with his wife Linda.
Like any journey the best place to start is obviously at the beginning. Billy recalled his first gig way back in 1959, at the Old Swan British Legion Club, as an 18-year-old guitarist sitting down at the back of the stage as the band belted out skiffle numbers by Lonnie Donegan.
Billy remembered that first night vividly,
“ We did a couple of country numbers and an instrumental. Me and the Drummer did ‘Steppin Out With My Baby’ – it went down really well. In the meantime the singer’s in the back and he looks like Marty Wilde.
He had a pair of old Dockers gloves that we painted white and he put a trilby on and his collar up and when he finished that I started the Into to Mack the Knife. That was my first taste of what was to come.”
The Liverpool Music scene has obviously changed down the years and in some cases not for the best. It is also a possible reason why he is trying to develop and nurture the talent of today. How did he find playing in Liverpool in 1959?
“That’s why I feel sorry for the kids, because when I played in the early Sixties, the Echo used to have two pages of gigs – 500 on a page- it was easy to play, I played every night. Though it affected my marriage the only time I saw her was when I was running after the ambulance for the maternity ward!”
It has certainly been an enjoyable experience for Billy and he echoes the famous quote ‘that if you can remember the sixties you weren’t there’, when asked to recollect his experiences of the period,
“The first thing people say is How old are you and what was the sixties like? I just say one thing. I played a gig on New Years Eve 1959 – I got pissed and I woke up in 1968. What happened in between I haven’t got a clue.”
Like many Liverpool musicians at the time Billy was able to go to Germany to ply his trade. Billy’s career has also seen him travel the length and breadth of the British Isles, as well as places farer a field such as Belgium. Holland and a even few gigs in America. The American gigs also fulfilled Billy’s childhood ambition to travel at sea,
“When I was younger I stowed away on a ship called the Slovania and I played the Jack Dempsey’s bars I can’t remember how old I was. All my friends where seafarers and that’s what I wanted to do, but I got married at 17.”
It was like a marriage for Billy, with regards to his love of Music, but with out his music his life could have been a little different for Billy. His ambitions of being a seafarer now curtailed, a different avenue could have been taken by Billy. By his own admission he was a little bit of A rebel at school but the reason for this was Billy’s inability to read or write as Billy says the teachers at his school they gave up on him.
So with out much direction in his life Billy had one of those chance encounters that more often than not become life altering, he explains,
“I remember one night at the top of Sandhills and what we used to do as kids was to jump on the wagons going to the docks and throw the gear off. This particular day we were getting chased by the police – I ran into the doorway of a pub. It was a place called City Whites, at the bottom of Regent Street.
When everything died down a bit, I stood there and I heard this music. There was a fella playing called Billy Witty. He was playing Jimmy Rogers songs that was about 1956, 1957 – I was sold then.”
So with the notion that Billy was going to be a musician, Billy trudged off to the local pawnshop at the top of his road to purchase his first guitar for five pounds – the problem was that Billy could not play it.
In another quirk of fate, that owes much to that fateful night at City Whites, Billy went to a party where a chance meeting with a girl, revealed that she happened to know Billy Witty’s wife. So out of chance meeting, Billy got a foothold into the music business and Billy Witty gave Billy a chance, as well as five guitar lessons to the fledgling musician.
Billy believes that this meeting not only gave him the chance to forge a career in something interesting, but it saved him from an alternative that could have been a reality,
“Soon as I started to play the guitar. Out of 8 mates I was the only one that never went to jail I put it down to the guitar. I just practised and practised.”
In the 1970’s, he was fronting his own band the Eugene Stratton’s Rock and Blues band. The band consisted of seven members. This band took Billy back to Germany where he toured Germany’s NATO bases. Sadly this band soon broke up due to the usual distractions that effect rock bands.
Music has remained a constant in Billy’s life, though he did put his guitar down, for a time during the Seventies where he took up alternative careers as a window cleaner, after buying someone’s window cleaning round. He also had business-renovating furniture and he had a job as a demolition man. But after all this Billy came back to what he knew best…music.
After his last tour at the end of the 1970’s, he came back to a different Liverpool. The early 1980’s were a time of the Toxteth Riots and this event inspired Billy to write a song called ‘The Crowd Outside’. These events inspired Billy to branch out into a different avenue. As Billy explains,
“I got in with some fellas I knew from a few years earlier – ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ came around. In one of the episodes there is a character called Shake hands. He came round to our house one day to ask me to write a song. I put one of my other songs on the b-side and I had ‘nine months of Beatlemania. I had an agent and everything. Everywhere I went it was the Shake hands character, everyone loved him.”
Things where seemingly heading in the right direction for Billy. A chance meeting with an associate from the Sixties called Jimmy Wide saw him and Billy set up their own company enabling them to produce plays that they had written. Everything appeared to going okay even a move to Los Angles transpired, as the newly formed company tried to sell their plays to the American moguls. Again just a things where going right. Billy had a breakdown.
“I was in the house and I just blacked out and they told me I was a diabetic. It was so bad that the doctor told me that I only had two years to live that was in 1987. He told me you couldn’t drink or smoke anymore.”
Sadly this was not the end of Billy’s health problems
“ I had that and I thought that I’d got over everything. Then In 1990 I had a stroke. I had a series of little ones. Thank god, it wasn’t a massive one, but the last one I had was when I was living in London. I was waiting on the platform of a tube station and I nearly went under a tube. That’s when they told me that the last one had left me with brain damage. To this day my left hand side is numb.”
Prior to the first attack in America Billy, was in fairly good health so his health problems came as a bit of a shock to him. During his time in LA, even though he was doing well with the play at the time, Billy likened the experience to a year’s extended holiday and by his own admission it was a time that he spent most of his time drunk.
The 1990’s saw a further period of ill health for Billy. He was in and out of hospital all the time. In 1994, he than developed trouble with his kidneys and the likelihood was that Billy might loose a kidney. After a series of operations, it was found to be a kidney stone. This required him to have surgery. Whilst in the hospital recovering Billy set his mind to other things
“I was in the recovery room and they had a jazz station on and I heard them saying that no one was writing jazz anymore. So I went home and wrote twenty songs.”
Billy’s efforts at trying to publish his album of jazz songs, led him to the setting up of his own publishing company after a chance meeting with a friend who told him that with all his knowledge he should put it to use. He did and Moonrock productions, was formed. And with it saw the release of the album ‘Melodies of Billy Stratton’.
With setting up his new company this looked like aiding Billy back to full health but a visit to the hospital told him otherwise,
“I learnt to play the piano. I started to write more songs and people than started to send us tapes. Then I went to hospital and they said to me your body is not accepting the insulin. So they put me on pills. Then two years ago – I didn’t know that my blood pressure was 200 over 100.
As a result, I had a further stroke and I lost my memory I was crying for two weeks. I would see a guitar but I couldn’t work out what it was for, Gradually as my wife Linda started put on my old records and I went to the library to re-learn stuff my memory gradually returned.”
This latest attack shook Billy up so much so that he realised that everything that he had learnt through out the years would be lost. This is partly the reason that he set up his music workshop at the Sessions pub, just down the road from his home in Kirkdale. The workshops where funded by Liverpool City Council’s Millennium awards scheme. The scheme funded projects that specialised in skill sharing.
Billy believed that the workshop worked as a two way process. Firstly, he was able to help budding talent from the city but also it acted as a sort of therapy for him after all his recent health scares. Billy was really pleased with the outcome of the course as he explains,
“We got the right crowd everyone of them was good. We put out a CD of seven singles and for a period of 10 weeks – 4 hours a week – It’ brought me right back.”
So what of the future for Billy? Still ambitious as he has ever been is seeking further funding for possible future courses. Sadly the Millennium awards, has now come to an end, so Billy is seeking funding for other projects. One of the immediate projects is working with one of the performers from the music workshop.
“I’m working with one of the guys now called Paul Hoult on an album – It’s inspired me because I’m writing his style of music now. For someone who has been playing for forty years I’m happy, It’s the best cure it’s the best relaxation.”
Typically for Billy not everything has been running smooth as he would like it be. He has started sending out demo copies of Paul’ s work to the contacts that he has amassed over the numerous years, he has spent in the business but so far without much luck,
“I’ve been sending it out, but all the guys I new years ago are either dead, divorced or skint so its back to square one. I’ve sent an ep out to a few contacts and no one has sent it back without any positive comments.”
From speaking to Billy and witnessing his work at close hand, you get the impression that Billy is deriving as much satisfaction and pleasure from what he is doing today than anything he has done in the previous forty years. I do not believe that Billy has wasted a single day on this planet but with what has happened to him in the last fifteen years everyday is a bonus for Billy and he is helping people who are grateful to him for sharing his wisdom and experience.
This brief introduction does not give justice to the journey; some would say an odyssey that has been Billy’s Life. Its been a story of ups and downs, near misses and ultimately of bad health, which saw Billy being given only two years to live back in 1987 – just as he was on the verge of making it in Hollywood. After all that Billy has been through it would be easy to have a jaundiced view of life but that is not Billy’s way at all and, despite everything he has been through he still has dreams and ambitions, with which he wants to fulfil.
I met up with Billy in the basement cellar of his Kirkdale home, which he has converted into a studio and which sees the operation of his Moonrock Publishing Company, which he runs with his wife Linda.
Like any journey the best place to start is obviously at the beginning. Billy recalled his first gig way back in 1959, at the Old Swan British Legion Club, as an 18-year-old guitarist sitting down at the back of the stage as the band belted out skiffle numbers by Lonnie Donegan.
Billy remembered that first night vividly,
“ We did a couple of country numbers and an instrumental. Me and the Drummer did ‘Steppin Out With My Baby’ – it went down really well. In the meantime the singer’s in the back and he looks like Marty Wilde.
He had a pair of old Dockers gloves that we painted white and he put a trilby on and his collar up and when he finished that I started the Into to Mack the Knife. That was my first taste of what was to come.”
The Liverpool Music scene has obviously changed down the years and in some cases not for the best. It is also a possible reason why he is trying to develop and nurture the talent of today. How did he find playing in Liverpool in 1959?
“That’s why I feel sorry for the kids, because when I played in the early Sixties, the Echo used to have two pages of gigs – 500 on a page- it was easy to play, I played every night. Though it affected my marriage the only time I saw her was when I was running after the ambulance for the maternity ward!”
It has certainly been an enjoyable experience for Billy and he echoes the famous quote ‘that if you can remember the sixties you weren’t there’, when asked to recollect his experiences of the period,
“The first thing people say is How old are you and what was the sixties like? I just say one thing. I played a gig on New Years Eve 1959 – I got pissed and I woke up in 1968. What happened in between I haven’t got a clue.”
Like many Liverpool musicians at the time Billy was able to go to Germany to ply his trade. Billy’s career has also seen him travel the length and breadth of the British Isles, as well as places farer a field such as Belgium. Holland and a even few gigs in America. The American gigs also fulfilled Billy’s childhood ambition to travel at sea,
“When I was younger I stowed away on a ship called the Slovania and I played the Jack Dempsey’s bars I can’t remember how old I was. All my friends where seafarers and that’s what I wanted to do, but I got married at 17.”
It was like a marriage for Billy, with regards to his love of Music, but with out his music his life could have been a little different for Billy. His ambitions of being a seafarer now curtailed, a different avenue could have been taken by Billy. By his own admission he was a little bit of A rebel at school but the reason for this was Billy’s inability to read or write as Billy says the teachers at his school they gave up on him.
So with out much direction in his life Billy had one of those chance encounters that more often than not become life altering, he explains,
“I remember one night at the top of Sandhills and what we used to do as kids was to jump on the wagons going to the docks and throw the gear off. This particular day we were getting chased by the police – I ran into the doorway of a pub. It was a place called City Whites, at the bottom of Regent Street.
When everything died down a bit, I stood there and I heard this music. There was a fella playing called Billy Witty. He was playing Jimmy Rogers songs that was about 1956, 1957 – I was sold then.”
So with the notion that Billy was going to be a musician, Billy trudged off to the local pawnshop at the top of his road to purchase his first guitar for five pounds – the problem was that Billy could not play it.
In another quirk of fate, that owes much to that fateful night at City Whites, Billy went to a party where a chance meeting with a girl, revealed that she happened to know Billy Witty’s wife. So out of chance meeting, Billy got a foothold into the music business and Billy Witty gave Billy a chance, as well as five guitar lessons to the fledgling musician.
Billy believes that this meeting not only gave him the chance to forge a career in something interesting, but it saved him from an alternative that could have been a reality,
“Soon as I started to play the guitar. Out of 8 mates I was the only one that never went to jail I put it down to the guitar. I just practised and practised.”
In the 1970’s, he was fronting his own band the Eugene Stratton’s Rock and Blues band. The band consisted of seven members. This band took Billy back to Germany where he toured Germany’s NATO bases. Sadly this band soon broke up due to the usual distractions that effect rock bands.
Music has remained a constant in Billy’s life, though he did put his guitar down, for a time during the Seventies where he took up alternative careers as a window cleaner, after buying someone’s window cleaning round. He also had business-renovating furniture and he had a job as a demolition man. But after all this Billy came back to what he knew best…music.
After his last tour at the end of the 1970’s, he came back to a different Liverpool. The early 1980’s were a time of the Toxteth Riots and this event inspired Billy to write a song called ‘The Crowd Outside’. These events inspired Billy to branch out into a different avenue. As Billy explains,
“I got in with some fellas I knew from a few years earlier – ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ came around. In one of the episodes there is a character called Shake hands. He came round to our house one day to ask me to write a song. I put one of my other songs on the b-side and I had ‘nine months of Beatlemania. I had an agent and everything. Everywhere I went it was the Shake hands character, everyone loved him.”
Things where seemingly heading in the right direction for Billy. A chance meeting with an associate from the Sixties called Jimmy Wide saw him and Billy set up their own company enabling them to produce plays that they had written. Everything appeared to going okay even a move to Los Angles transpired, as the newly formed company tried to sell their plays to the American moguls. Again just a things where going right. Billy had a breakdown.
“I was in the house and I just blacked out and they told me I was a diabetic. It was so bad that the doctor told me that I only had two years to live that was in 1987. He told me you couldn’t drink or smoke anymore.”
Sadly this was not the end of Billy’s health problems
“ I had that and I thought that I’d got over everything. Then In 1990 I had a stroke. I had a series of little ones. Thank god, it wasn’t a massive one, but the last one I had was when I was living in London. I was waiting on the platform of a tube station and I nearly went under a tube. That’s when they told me that the last one had left me with brain damage. To this day my left hand side is numb.”
Prior to the first attack in America Billy, was in fairly good health so his health problems came as a bit of a shock to him. During his time in LA, even though he was doing well with the play at the time, Billy likened the experience to a year’s extended holiday and by his own admission it was a time that he spent most of his time drunk.
The 1990’s saw a further period of ill health for Billy. He was in and out of hospital all the time. In 1994, he than developed trouble with his kidneys and the likelihood was that Billy might loose a kidney. After a series of operations, it was found to be a kidney stone. This required him to have surgery. Whilst in the hospital recovering Billy set his mind to other things
“I was in the recovery room and they had a jazz station on and I heard them saying that no one was writing jazz anymore. So I went home and wrote twenty songs.”
Billy’s efforts at trying to publish his album of jazz songs, led him to the setting up of his own publishing company after a chance meeting with a friend who told him that with all his knowledge he should put it to use. He did and Moonrock productions, was formed. And with it saw the release of the album ‘Melodies of Billy Stratton’.
With setting up his new company this looked like aiding Billy back to full health but a visit to the hospital told him otherwise,
“I learnt to play the piano. I started to write more songs and people than started to send us tapes. Then I went to hospital and they said to me your body is not accepting the insulin. So they put me on pills. Then two years ago – I didn’t know that my blood pressure was 200 over 100.
As a result, I had a further stroke and I lost my memory I was crying for two weeks. I would see a guitar but I couldn’t work out what it was for, Gradually as my wife Linda started put on my old records and I went to the library to re-learn stuff my memory gradually returned.”
This latest attack shook Billy up so much so that he realised that everything that he had learnt through out the years would be lost. This is partly the reason that he set up his music workshop at the Sessions pub, just down the road from his home in Kirkdale. The workshops where funded by Liverpool City Council’s Millennium awards scheme. The scheme funded projects that specialised in skill sharing.
Billy believed that the workshop worked as a two way process. Firstly, he was able to help budding talent from the city but also it acted as a sort of therapy for him after all his recent health scares. Billy was really pleased with the outcome of the course as he explains,
“We got the right crowd everyone of them was good. We put out a CD of seven singles and for a period of 10 weeks – 4 hours a week – It’ brought me right back.”
So what of the future for Billy? Still ambitious as he has ever been is seeking further funding for possible future courses. Sadly the Millennium awards, has now come to an end, so Billy is seeking funding for other projects. One of the immediate projects is working with one of the performers from the music workshop.
“I’m working with one of the guys now called Paul Hoult on an album – It’s inspired me because I’m writing his style of music now. For someone who has been playing for forty years I’m happy, It’s the best cure it’s the best relaxation.”
Typically for Billy not everything has been running smooth as he would like it be. He has started sending out demo copies of Paul’ s work to the contacts that he has amassed over the numerous years, he has spent in the business but so far without much luck,
“I’ve been sending it out, but all the guys I new years ago are either dead, divorced or skint so its back to square one. I’ve sent an ep out to a few contacts and no one has sent it back without any positive comments.”
From speaking to Billy and witnessing his work at close hand, you get the impression that Billy is deriving as much satisfaction and pleasure from what he is doing today than anything he has done in the previous forty years. I do not believe that Billy has wasted a single day on this planet but with what has happened to him in the last fifteen years everyday is a bonus for Billy and he is helping people who are grateful to him for sharing his wisdom and experience.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
England’s Chances at the World Cup
What with the injuries and the lack of anyone tipping them to win the World Cup, England with possibly their most talented squad of recent years it’s also the least hyped. What are the chances of England causing a surprise?
It’s simple really all they have to do is top their group, avoid France in the second round and a semi-final place is there for the taking. Easy isn’t it?
Not for England it’s not – heartbreak is always only a kick off away. Even England’s most blinkered supporter cannot see the prospect of us beating both Argentina and France to win the Cup.
But what about this sequence of results? Argentina currently struggling for goals, draw with Sweden and England. England are also held to a draw by Sweden but beat Nigeria by a bigger margin than Argentina. That leaves Sven’s men in a better position at the top of the group and the French are avoided in the next round.
Told you it’s easy – a dream but you never know. The feeling that this Championship is one too early for the talent Sven has on offer, so this time England doesn’t expect. Like they didn’t in Munich last September.
It’s simple really all they have to do is top their group, avoid France in the second round and a semi-final place is there for the taking. Easy isn’t it?
Not for England it’s not – heartbreak is always only a kick off away. Even England’s most blinkered supporter cannot see the prospect of us beating both Argentina and France to win the Cup.
But what about this sequence of results? Argentina currently struggling for goals, draw with Sweden and England. England are also held to a draw by Sweden but beat Nigeria by a bigger margin than Argentina. That leaves Sven’s men in a better position at the top of the group and the French are avoided in the next round.
Told you it’s easy – a dream but you never know. The feeling that this Championship is one too early for the talent Sven has on offer, so this time England doesn’t expect. Like they didn’t in Munich last September.
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