by Beezy Marsh
The excitement of Mam making her wedding dress seemed to lighten the atmosphere at home and even Da was whistling to himself as he sat on the netty in the back yard these days.
He’d given his permission for Harry to propose, as she was not yet twenty-one. It seemed like a miracle had happened, because not only had Da said ‘yes’, but he seemed genuinely happy for them. He was a lot less moody when Harry was around. Maybe it was just being able to talk man to man, but Harry liked a good chinwag and Da spent ages talking about politics with him. Harry was a very clever man, Ethel was certain of that.
He’d read loads of books about communism and all sorts of other things that Ethel wasn’t remotely interested in. Not only that, he’d got himself quite involved in the union at work and was always going off for meetings. Some of that was just an excuse to nip to the pub for a sly pint because Da was teetotal and wouldn’t approve of that. But Harry had his ear because he’d fought in the trenches during the Great War and Da respected that. He never wanted to talk about what he had done over there in France and Ethel had seen enough wounded soldiers around the city, just quietly getting on with their lives, to know that this was simply the way things were. Nobody wanted to look back to that time. A whole generation had been wiped out and, as Ada told her ruefully the other day, there were so few fellas, Ethel should count her lucky stars to be walking up the aisle with one.
Harry had wanted them to live over in Heaton, at his mother’s house, but Da wouldn’t hear of it.
‘You’ll live here, Harry!’ he said, thumping his fist on the table. ‘Surely you can see it makes sense? Ethel will want to be near her mam when there’s the patter of tiny feet, won’t you, pet?’
Ethel hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest, but she knew it was best to keep the peace, for everybody’s sake, so she nodded in agreement. Harry caught the look in her eye.
‘If that’s what Ethel wants, then that’s what we’ll do,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s settled then,’ said Da, taking a slurp of his tea which was as brown as boot polish. ‘You can have our room, we’ll get a bed for the front room and then the grandbairns can have Ethel’s old room. One happy family!’
Mam gave them all a weak smile. Da had Ethel’s family life all planned out. Ethel caught her mother’s eye for a split second but said nothing. It was better for all of them if she went along with his plans. She just wanted to be happy, that’s all, and nothing was going to spoil her big day.
A wedding date had been set for April and all the shop girls at Fenwick’s shared in the excitement of how Ethel’s dress was coming along. Da had given her a couple of pounds that he’d been saving up for this day since she was born, so that she could look every bit as beautiful as one of the film stars at the talkies; Da let her go out courting properly with Harry now, with barely a word said about it.
For her big day, she’d got herself a pair of cream satin shoes and the dress would be made of yards of cream silk that she’d bought from Fenwick’s. The excitement of cutting that bolt of cloth and feeling the softness of it between her fingers was like nothing else. Miss Simpson wrapped it for her, personally, and wished her the very best of luck.
The biggest surprise came on her last day at the shop, when Ada, who was going to be her bridesmaid, and the others presented her with some lace and trimmings that they’d all chipped in to buy on their tea break.
‘Your life’s ganna change now, Ethel, you’ll be a married woman. It’s like a dream come true.’
As she rang the last customer’s shopping through the till that afternoon, Ethel glanced around the shop floor. It had been the only real excitement in her world until now but she was moving on to bigger and better things. Being married to Harry was going to give her everything she needed now and more, she felt certain of that.
Her veil hung almost to the floor and was held in place by a garland of white roses.
Mam had made the dress with a stunning square neckline and there was a tiered drop waist edged with lace which was set off by her train. Benwell had never seen anything like it and an excited crowd of kids bobbed about by her front door as the wedding car arrived. Da had pulled out all the stops and even spent some of their health insurance money to make sure everything was perfect.
As they stood in the hallway, Da lifted her veil, put his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. ‘I am so proud of you. Promise me you will honour and respect him as much as you do me and the good Lord himself.’
Ethel’s voice quavered a bit as she made her vow. ‘I will.’
16
Ethel
Newcastle upon Tyne, May 1926
The General Strike was the biggest walkout the country had ever seen.
Harry had left his work at Hawthorn Leslie early with the other union men from the street, to gather in the city centre and try to persuade scabs not to drive any trams or trains.
‘Don’t worry, pet,’ he’d told Ethel, kissing the baby tenderly on the cheek before he left. ‘Nothing bad’s going to happen. We’re all sensible people. We just want to make a point to the blacklegs that this will all be over more quickly if they join us. You’ll be fine to go up the shops later.’
He seemed relaxed enough, but she couldn’t help noticing his jaw had set firmly, as if he were quite determined that this cause was worth fighting for. What’s more, she’d overheard Da and Harry discussing the emergency powers that the police had been given to arrest anyone who looked like a troublemaker for the duration of the strike.
The shipyards, the factories and stations were all deserted as thousands of men downed tools to stand shoulder to shoulder with the miners, who’d been locked out of the pits in a dispute over their pay.
‘Just be careful, won’t you?’ she said, ignoring the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Little William was coming up to a year old now and he was the apple of Harry’s eye. He had Harry’s jet-black hair and grey eyes and such a sweet smile. Da doted on him and was often to be found proudly dandling him on his knee on the front step and praising every sound that escaped the child’s lips, as if he were holding the future prime minister in his arms.
‘Oh, he’s bright as a button!’ he’d cry, clapping his hands as William held a bobbin between his chubby fingers. ‘Look at that!’
Mam could barely keep her hands off the baby either and she carried him around on her hip until Da would tell her to hand the bairn over. ‘It’s not good for a boy to spend so much time tied to his grandma’s apron strings,’ he’d say with a laugh. ‘You want your grandad, don’t you, little man?’
The whole house had come alive thanks to William, who’d already brought so much happiness to them in his short life. Of course, it was hard work having a bairn, but Mam helped with all the washing: boiling the copper, washing the nappies and the baby’s clothes and running them through the mangle before hanging them on the line in the back yard.
As Ethel left the house, all the other housewives were nattering to each other on their doorsteps. She liked to pass the time of day with them, especially having a brew when William was asleep in his pram outside, but she knew they viewed her with suspicion. She’d worked at Fenwick’s, her husband was a union shop steward and her sister-in-law was a journalist. Their family was a cut above in the pecking order of such a close-knit community.
It’s not that she minded too much, she’d always been set apart from the rest by her father growing up, but it did mean she was often last to hear about the gossip. The thing she secretly missed was the excitement of working in the department store: knowing what all the fashions were, seeing all the posh ladies dolled up. It made her feel part of a bigger world, away from Benwell with its greasy cobbles and grim rows of terraces with their ‘backs’ full of screaming bairns. The city had so much more to offer, if only she could grasp it. Now she had her hands full with the little one, there wasn’t much chance of that. Ada had promised they wouldn’t be strangers, but they’d seen le
ss and less of each other and every time they got together Ethel felt a little stab of jealousy that her friend was still enjoying her dancing days.
William slept peacefully in his pram as she hurried along the Westgate Road to get to the grocer’s shop before all the food ran out. Mam had bustled out of their terraced house earlier, to go to the butcher’s for the same reason. At least if they split up, they’d have more chance of getting something in for their supper.
As she rounded the corner of the Westgate Road to go up to the shops on Grainger Street, she couldn’t help noticing that the clatter of daily life had disappeared. But it had been replaced by another sound – of men shouting; it was a real din and it was getting closer.
‘One Out! All Out!’ and ‘Not a penny off the pay! Not a second on the day!’
She quickened her pace as dozens of men in flat caps hove into view, waving home-made placards with the messages ‘MUST THE MINERS STARVE?’ and ‘DEFEND THE WORKERS’. The metal studs on the soles of their boots struck at the cobbles as they approached, seeming to swell their numbers. There were women among them too, with pinched faces, drab shawls pulled tightly around their shoulders. Ethel knew they were the poorest in the city because some of them had clogs on their feet. They were the dockers’ wives, the kind who had to live by the dozen in a two-up, two-down; whose kids went without shoes all summer and who relied on handouts from the Poor Law to put food on their table.
Out of nowhere, a line of bobbies appeared behind her, at the bottom of Grainger Street, walking slowly in front of a bus with their batons raised. Ethel could see the driver; he was a young lad – he couldn’t have been much more than eighteen. But he was posh, with a neatly cut suit and his hair parted and slicked down to one side. He had the same look about him as all the wealthy blokes she’d served in Fenwick’s, except he was white with fear.
A murmur ran through the crowd of strikers and before Ethel knew what was happening, a few of them had broken away from the main group and were running down the hill towards her. Some of the men at the front of the crowd shouted, ‘Good order! Keep good order!’ but their pleas fell on deaf ears. The dockers’ wives followed, the struggle of their daily lives plain for all to see as they screamed, ‘Scab! Scab!’
As one of them passed Ethel, she stopped, turned to her and gently said, ‘Go home, pet.’
But it was too late.
Shopkeepers the length of the street yanked down their blinds and locked their doors. Ethel heaved the pram into the nearest doorway and hammered on the glass for all she was worth, tears streaming down her face. ‘Please, let me in! I’ve a bairn with me!’
There was no reply. William woke up and started to cry.
Ethel turned and watched in horror as the two sides met in a tangle of fists and the sickening thud of baton strikes. Placards were splintered. The bus was surrounded, and the strikers started to rock it from side to side. Hatred burned in the women’s eyes as they pulled stones from their aprons and lobbed them at the policemen and the bus. As they hit their targets, the sound of shattering glass brought a cheer from the crowd.
A policeman staggered forward, towards Ethel, clutching his nose, which was spurting blood. It spilled onto the blue serge of his tunic with its shiny buttons before splashing onto the cobbles at his feet. A split second later, horses came cantering down the road as mounted bobbies joined the fray, cutting through the strikers like a knife through butter. Men fell, women screamed, and people ran in all directions.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. Ethel waited for the last of the shouts to die away before pulling the pram back into the deserted street with shaking hands, and hurrying home to the safety of Normanton Terrace.
‘What in God’s name were you thinking?’
Anger blazed in Da’s eyes and he raised his hand to slap her but thought better of it. She’d never heard him take the Lord’s name in vain, not in all her born days.
‘Leave her be!’ cried Mam, putting her arms around Ethel’s shoulders, which were still shaking. ‘Can’t you see she’s had a terrible shock?’
‘You should have stayed home, Ethel; you can’t risk my grandson like that.’
Harry appeared in the doorway, his face ashen, and said quietly, ‘He’s our son, Nathan. Don’t talk to Ethel like that.’
He went to Ethel’s side. ‘Are you all right, pet? Were you or the baby hurt?’
‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘We’re fine. A bit shaken, that’s all.’ Tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Harry, it was terrible, I was so scared. There was a fist fight and blood and everything.’
She felt the beating of his heart as he pulled her to him. ‘You’re safe now. It’s best if you stay home. Things are getting ugly and we don’t know how long it’s going to go on.’
Ethel glanced up and saw Da glaring at her, the colour rising in his cheeks. Then he looked away, stalked out into the yard and banged the netty door shut behind him. Ethel felt sick to the pit of her stomach about what Da might do but Harry held her tightly and whispered, ‘Don’t be scared, pet, I will handle him. You’re safe now.’
Harry sat at the kitchen table reading the strikers’ newspaper, The British Worker.
At Newcastle the stoppage is complete! Reports to the HQ of the Northumberland miners show a staunch determination to stand fast. Good order prevails.
Middlesbrough is a dead town. Thirty thousand iron and steel workers are out. Tram and bus services have ceased. The railway station is closed. At Sunderland the stoppage of the railways, trams and buses is complete and the docks stand idle.
The strike had been going on for five full days and the government had even sent a warship to Newcastle. It loomed large and grey over the Tyne, like an unwelcome visitor. There had also been scuffles down at the docks where the authorities wanted to unload supplies of food under armed guard.
Next to Harry’s steaming mug of tea on the table sat the government’s official newspaper, The Gazette. He picked it up, tutted, and put it back down again.
Ethel hated it when he got round to reading The Gazette because it put him in a very bad mood indeed. The word was that the government had even dropped a load of copies on the collieries by aeroplane; miners were using them as firelighters.
‘It’s all nonsense, pet,’ he said, peering at her over the top of the paper. ‘The government says it’s an attack on the constitution, but it isn’t. It’s a lawful strike, not a revolution.’
Da and he weren’t seeing eye to eye any more because Da had decided that the strikers should listen to the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and go back to work. Things were getting out of hand, with strikers chaining lorries to the railways in Middlesbrough to stop the trains running. People involved with the British Worker in London had been arrested by the police.
‘All this law-breaking doesn’t sit well with me, Harry,’ said Da, wandering in from the back yard.
‘The unions want good order, the police have been heavy-handed with the strikers,’ Harry countered. ‘And milk supplies are getting through. No one wants to stop people having food, there’s no question of that.’
Ethel couldn’t help wondering whether Da’s sudden change of heart about the strike had something to do with Harry standing up to him the other day, though.
Da threw up his hands and went back out through the yard and across the road to the allotment. He seemed to be spending more time in his shed there than he did in the house. Mam didn’t seem to mind, in any case.
Harry got up and the chair screeched on the tiled floor. He pulled on his jacket. ‘I’m off for a union meeting, I’ll see you later. Kiss the boy for me.’ And with that, he was gone.
Ethel knew that meant he was going to meet some work colleagues down the pub. Beer was still available despite the shortages of food, and men liked a pint, didn’t they?
One afternoon a couple of days later, Ethel had just put William down for a nap when there was a knock at the door.
She came down the hallway and opened
it to find Kitty standing there, glancing nervously up and down the street. A few women were peering out of their windows to see who this stranger was; it wasn’t often that you got well-heeled women down their way.
‘Not at work today?’ said Ethel, who was rather wrong-footed by her sister-in-law turning up on her doorstep. She hadn’t called round once since the wedding.
‘No,’ said Kitty. ‘I had a terrible headache, so I’ve taken a few days off. Mr Philpott understands.’
‘Would you like to come in?’ said Ethel, hastily pulling off her apron to make herself a bit more presentable.
‘I can’t stop,’ said Kitty. ‘But I need you to give these to Harry.’
She opened her handbag and pulled out a sheaf of printed pamphlets.
‘Where did you get these?’ said Ethel, as she read ‘British Worker, Official Strike News Bulletin’ and emblazoned above it in bold type ‘NEWCASTLE EDITION’. Across the bottom of the front page was written, ‘Pass this on, or post this up.’
‘I found them lying around in the street,’ said Kitty airily. ‘I thought Harry might like to read them. Now, I must be getting on. And Ethel’ – she laid a gloved hand on Ethel’s arm – ‘best not to say to anyone that I was here. Do you understand?’
Ethel’s mouth fell open. ‘Yes, Kitty,’ she said.
Ethel understood perfectly.
Union men were being arrested for speaking out and Harry told her the authorities would get more heavy-handed now, especially because some strikers had derailed the Flying Scotsman as it was coming in to Newcastle. There were more than three hundred people on board at the time. Thankfully no one was hurt but the engine and several carriages went right off the rails and tipped over. Ethel had seen the picture in The Gazette. Da had used it as further evidence that the strike had lost its way and was now calling the whole protest ‘sinful’.
Ethel watched Kitty picking her way over the greasy cobbles, back to whatever it was she’d been doing on her day off sick. Although they didn’t get on, Ethel had to admit, Harry’s sister was cut from a different cloth.
