The 1970s: Hot Pants and Top of the Pops, Maxi Skirts, the Osmonds and Bay City Rollers, the Sex Pistols, Space Hoppers, Chopper Bikes, decimalisation, the first woman PM Margaret Thatcher, Bovver Boots and Bovver Boys, platform shoes, Pans people, Lulu and Maurice Gibb, Skinheads, Triumph Stags and Concorde.
The Parkinson Show, Jackson 5, Band on the Run, playboy George Best, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, striking miners and Saltley Colliery, Hippies and Rock festivals, Ronnie Wood joins the Stones, Mastermind, Mick Jagger and Bianca, John Conteh and David Bedford, Simon Dee, Bob Stokoe and dancing at Wembley, Kevin Keegan and Alf Ramsey, Jackie Stewart, Donny Osmond, Mark Bolan and T Rex.
Princess Anne and Mark Philips, James Hunt, Elton John, David Cassidy, Ford Capris, Joe Bugner and Muhammed Ali, The Goodies and Tiswas, Labour and Harold Wilson, Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, Nastase and Borg, Liverpool win the European Cup, Nottingham Forest win the European Cup, Punk and rebellious youth, striking firemen, test tube babies, The Sweeney, Seve Ballesteros.
Morecambe and Wise, Christmas Specials, Abba and Johnny Rotten, N Ireland troubles, Mountbatten murdered, Fawlty Towers, Coronation Street and Hilda Ogden, President Nixon, Watergate, Barbie Dolls, NASA space journeys, Hurricane Agnes, Vietnam war, Cod Wars, Uganda and Idi Amin.
1972 and how soon we forget the things that were happening then: Monty Python, Dad’s Army, The Benny Hill Show, Sesame Street, The Brady Bunch, Hawaii Five-0, The Godfather, Fiddler on the Roof, Diamonds Are Forever, Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange; The Eagles, Supertramp and Led Zeppelin.
It was possibly the worst ever year in the story of the conflict in Northern Ireland. A total of 467 people including 103 British soldiers lost their lives. The year had opened with ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Derry when 13 civilians were shot dead and the repercussions were huge especially as it happened in full view of the media. July 21 became known as Bloody Friday when 19 bombs exploded in Belfast killing nine and injuring 130. Little by little the British regained control and by the end of this horrendous year the violence had been halved.
1972 and Britain entered Europe. The six became ten when the UK was one of four more countries to sign up to the Treaty of Brussels although one of them, Norway, almost immediately, opted out. Many people in Britain believed that they too like the Norwegians should have had a referendum to vote on membership. Joining the EU was a triumph for Prime Minister Edward Heath who had advocated membership since 1963. A referendum in 1975 confirmed membership following a lavishly funded pro-membership campaign. Since then the EU has grown and grown, has assumed huge powers, hugely altered our daily lives, bombarded us with rules and regulations, and has cost the UK billions.
Space travel continued. The heroic age of the 1960’s was over and there was now cooperation between the two space superpowers. The last moon landing took place in 1972 and from then on the Soviets and the US turned their attention to investigating the solar system with unmanned but more cost-effective missions. NASA launched Pioneer 10 an unmanned mission to Jupiter.
The 1972 Olympics saw terror and mayhem when masked Palestinian gunmen entered the building where the Israeli team were staying. Two Israelis were killed immediately in the struggle and nine others were taken hostage. The rescue plan was an unmitigated disaster when it was agreed that the gunmen and hostages would be taken to a military airport to be flown out of the country. The plan was that marksmen would kill the Palestinians as they boarded the ‘plane. Only three were killed, however, and the rest engaged in a gunfight during which a grenade was lobbed into the helicopter where the Israelis hostages were trussed up. All of them were killed whilst two more terrorists were killed and three were captured. All of this totally overshadowed the Games and the winners that included Mark Spitz and his seven gold medals in the swimming, Britain’s Mary Peters and her gold in the Pentathlon, and Olga Korbut the winner of three gymnastic golds.
In the USA the World Trade Centre was opened in New York; The Waltons and M*A*S*H made their debut on US television. Five intruders were arrested in the Democratic Party HQ in Washington and this became the beginning of the Watergate Scandal and the eventual resignation of President Nixon.
The appalling Vietnam War continued. US B52s bombed Hanoi and North Vietnamese planes bombed US ships. The US then blockaded North Vietnamese ports. A final attempt by the North Vietnamese to invade South Vietnam was repulsed and the North Vietnamese proposed peace talks and a cease-fire. By August the last US combat troops had left Vietnam and President Nixon finally agreed to the end of the Vietnam War so that a peace agreement was signed in Paris in January 1973.
In the UK there were over 1,000,000 unemployed.
The beginning of the year saw the miners on strike. As we were writing this book in December of 2015, the last deep mine colliery in the UK closed at Kellingley. Miners wept as the final shift ended and they reached the surface. You could argue that coal-mining as an industry began its final path to disappearance when the miners triumphed against Edward Heath in 1972 and Margaret Thatcher probably decided then that should they ever take on the Government again, it would be the Government that would be the winners.
The belief has grown that it was Thatcher alone that destroyed the coal industry but pits had already been closing through the 50’s and early 60’s, over 300 pits closed between 1951 and 1964. The Labour Government closed more between ’64 and 1970 so it was never true that it was solely due to Margaret Thatcher. But what she probably did take heed of was the picketing of the Saltley Coke Depot that resulted in Heath’s surrender. Thatcher considered it a big mistake by Heath and was determined that she would not make any similar error and in so doing she hammered the final nails into the coffin of the industry.
It was a rock-solid strike that shook the un-prepared Tory Government and was instrumental in the defeat of the Tories in the ’74 general Election. It was a period of high inflation and miners’ pay was falling behind that of other workers so that the mood was militant amongst rank and file miners. They were asking for a £9 a week rise to add to the basic wage of £25 a week.
Prior to the strike there had been a two-month overtime ban but a near 60% yes-vote called for a full strike. The Yorkshire coalfield workers were the most militant and flying pickets became a big feature so that these were extended nationally when it became clear how effective they were. The movement of coal was stopped to already under-stocked power stations, and other trade unionists refused to cross the picket lines. Heath considered using troops to undermine the pickets but realised that this would inflame workers everywhere and the initiative remained with the miners.
By mid-February the situation was critical and the BBC reported that homes and businesses could be without power for up to nine hours a day following warnings of coal shortages from the Central Electricity Generating Board. By now the miners were in the sixth week of their strike and were picketing power stations as well as their own collieries. The shortage of electricity forced more and more businesses and factories to close; the Government had already imposed a three-day week and a Times report suggested that 1.2million workers had been laid off as a result. It was also reported that many gasworks were within a week of closing down.
On February 9 a state of emergency was declared and two days later a committee of enquiry was set up under Lord Wilberforce. On February 19 a deal was finally reached although the £95million package was less than the reported £120million the miners were claiming. The miners returned to work on February 25 with claims that they had won an overwhelming victory. It would be 1984 when the NUM was ultimately destroyed when strikes led by Arthur Scargill were crushed and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dominated proceedings.
Because it had closed the year before, Bank Hall Colliery where Roy had worked was unaffected by the strike; but he well remembers the events in Burnley, especially the 571 jobs lost at just this one pit. The men who worked at Bank Hall would see other pits closing and say, ‘It’ll not be long before we close too.’
The Hapton Colliery disaster was a number of years prior to this and it was a pit that Roy had been down as an apprentice miner. The impact on the town was enormous and Roy had made a conscious decision that this was not a pit he wanted to work in. Whereas Bank Hall was dry and dusty, Hapton was always wet and smelled with some miners claiming that it was because the water seeped from a cemetery somewhere above. As a trainee he had been down several mines and it was a time when you could choose the one you wanted to work in. It was a fortunate decision for the disaster killed 19 miners 750 feet below the surface where 170 men were working that day in 1962. It was never called Happy Valley again. The mine closed in 1982.
1972 and things at Turf Moor weren’t exactly rosy. Burnley had been relegated the season before Roy commenced work and there was discontent with both manager Jimmy Adamson and Bob Lord. Promises by Adamson that this would be the ‘Team of the Seventies’ had been hollow; Adamson had been mocked for this wild claim. On the strength of the big expectations, the club had demolished the old stand along Brunshaw Road in readiness for a new one. Burnley had been through a dreadful season and had been hugely criticised for the poor play. Adamson in particular bore the brunt of it, to such an extent that the players had written to the local paper to express their solidarity and support for the manager. There was no win until the fifteenth game of the season. Roy, during this period, was still working for the Council Parks and Gardens Department and the workforce there talked constantly of the plight that the club was in whilst it struggled to win one single game.
The local Press announced that this was a side and a season with relegation written all over it in ‘large, ugly, black letters.’ In 16 games they had scored just eight goals. Nevertheless with 15 games remaining they were only one point away from safety and there was still time to stage a comeback. But it was not to be and Roy who went to many of the games watched them floundering further so that with a defeat at Arsenal the relegation was confirmed.
‘I accept the whole blame,’ said Adamson but Bob Lord stood by him, adding that the sale of star player Ralph Coates at the end of the season had been one of the finest pieces of business ever conducted by the club. Supporters simply saw it as another nail in the coffin.
You could argue that injuries (Martin Dobson had broken a leg), and the sale of crowd favourite Brian O Neil to Southampton were key factors in the relegation but Bob Lord had refused to ‘panic buy’ although with 12 games to go he did sanction the purchase of centre forward Paul Fletcher from Bolton Wanderers. It made no difference. Roy, like so many others, watched the inexorable slide into the Second Division. The final relegation was a constant topic of conversation amongst his disgruntled workmates. Many of the staff there were passionate supporters and it was hard coming to terms with the club’s fall from the top table. It was difficult for all supporters, this was the club that had won the title in 1959/60, competed in the European Cup, reached Wembley, had almost won the title again in 1965/66 until the team faded at the end of the season. There had been a procession of wonderful players and when the Youth team won the FA Youth Cup in 1968 on a night of pouring rain and thick, glutinous mud, the future seemed assured when those supremely talented youngsters trooped off a sodden field at the end.
But reality decided otherwise and to add to the general gloom of relegation, at the end of the season it was Tottenham that bought Ralph Coates in a cloak and dagger deal that would have made a wonderful ‘Carry On’ script. It was a defining moment. He was the talisman and everybody’s favourite player but the club was losing money. Gates had shrunk, but the wage bill (and Bob Lord paid well), had stayed the same. Burnley had been in the top flight for 24 seasons and now it was over.
By the time Roy joined the Burnley FC groundstaff there were still regular cries of ‘Adamson out.’ Nobody at the start of the season had assumed that Burnley would automatically return to the First Division. There had been a £27,000 loss over the relegation season. The plan for a new entertainment centre was put on hold whilst a new incentivised wage structure swallowed up all available finance.
Behind the scenes Roy learned his new trade from John Jameson with one side of the ground where the old stand had been screened off by the huge wooden boards. Few people knew that a structural report had condemned this stand and according to his daughter Barbara, Bob Lord had spent sleepless nights worrying about the state of the twisted iron girders and supports. Accusations that the new stand when it was eventually built was simply a vanity project were far from the truth.
John Jameson had no car and travelled into work on the bus every day from Accrington for as long he worked at Turf Moor and Roy can still clearly remember the first words he ever said to him on his first day:
‘If you’ve got any college books you can throw ‘em away. He then pointed to the sky and said that’s what decides everything and it’s been perfectly true ever since. No college book prepares you for when two hours before kick-off it pours down relentlessly, the ref has just arrived and the fans are on their way. What did I do? I just prayed a lot.’
‘John’s simple philosophy was, “keep it porous, the ground needs to breathe.”’
‘Once I knew what I was doing John tended to work at Gawthorpe until he retired and I looked after the Turf Moor pitch. A guy I spoke to a lot was Arthur Riley, the groundsman at Anfield. I’d never met him, but because I’d originated from Liverpool I still had feelings for the city so I just thought I’d ring him up one day to talk. He was the third generation to be groundsman there and his heart and soul was in the place. We spoke regularly for years and yet I never ever got to meet him face to face. He was a typical, droll, funny Scouser and worshipped Bill Shankly. When Shankly arrived at the club he had vowed to give Arthur all the help he needed because he realised that a good football team needed a good football pitch. Arthur told me that he well remembered walking out onto the pitch with him when Shankly arrived at Liverpool and Shankly had said to him that no-one could play football on a pitch that looked like a ploughed field.
‘It was Arthur who told me all about Central Park in New York where the grass got such a hammering from constant use from people playing all kinds of sports 12 months of the year. Arthur had heard about this and that the tough grass they had withstood constant use in all weathers. So, someone brought him some of the grass seed back and they called it Manhattan Seed. Whether it was actually called Manhattan Seed I don’t know but that’s what Arthur labelled it. But the problem with it was it was always such a poor colour. Now if there’s one thing chairmen want, especially Bob Lord, it’s a bright green pitch so Arthur experimented at the Liverpool training ground and mixed Manhattan Seed with the regular seed he got from Fissons. And what it produced, he told me, was a good, tough, hard wearing playing surface with a nice colour.
‘Well, he told me all about this and I decided it sounded just the job for me as well. At that time the director in charge of the ground was quite good with me so I explained all this to him and he said he would bring it up at the next Board meeting. The answer came from Bob Lord:
‘“Tell ‘im it’s too expensive, we can’t afford it.” So that was the end of that.’’
On a matchday Roy watched from a bench that was positioned just to the left of the players’ tunnel. He sat with Jeff Haley and the club electrician, Fred Shaw. He was within easy reach for any referee who needed a net mending or a penalty spot re-marking. If it was the latter he always carried tape to get the distance right and a bucket of lime until it was banned. That in fact posed a problem if he now had to use white marker on wet mud it either disappeared in the rain again or spread to make a white spot that was far too big. Eventually a plasticised paint was used that could be used on wet ground and the rain just ran off it.
There was one occasion when the game was played on snow and Roy used blue paint to mark out the pitch.
‘George Courtney was referee and we had to hand-paint all the lines literally on our hands and knees because we couldn’t use the line markers with it. We went out on the morning of the game and bought blue emulsion paint from a shop in town. It was a slow, painstaking job mostly done by the apprentices, following the faint outline of the old white lines that we uncovered beneath the thin layer of rolled snow. Courtney went out to test the pitch rolling and bouncing the ball and then had a few of the apprentices don their boots and show him they could pass, run, twist and turn safely.’
Ice was always a problem and Roy remembers it was the manager of Birmingham City who came one day and asked him to his disbelief would it melt the snow quicker if the floodlights were switched on early and help thaw the hard surface.
It was Harry Potts, when Roy came back for his second spell at the club that organised a line of apprentices to ferry buckets of hot water out onto the frozen side of the pitch, then to lob it on the ground in an attempt to thaw things out. Harry then realised that this was clearly not the best thing to do as it immediately froze on impact.
One thing that makes him laugh to this day was when he suspects it was the Everton fans that smuggled a little dog into the ground and let it loose on the pitch whereupon it chased the footballs in the goalmouth during the warm-up and in so doing chewed through a small section of the netting.
At reserve games with fewer support staff present one of his jobs was to help with the stretcher if there was any serious injury and when the occasion arose that centre-half Vince Overson went down at the far end of the ground the stretcher was needed, or so Roy thought. Puffing away on a Woodbine cigarette still in his mouth he sprinted the whole length of the field carrying the stretcher and arrived puffing and panting and wheezing. By the time he got there he was fully aware of how unfit he was and that running whilst gasping on a fag is not the most sensible thing to do. When Overson then got up and pronounced himself OK – ‘God did I curse him,’ said Roy.
In his little room come office, Roy entertained most of the referees that came with a brew. Jack Taylor, George Courtney and Keith Hackett were three of the bigger names that he met. There was a story at the time that Taylor always liked a little nip of whisky with his officials before a game and would then take the bottle home that had been left for him by Bob Lord. But Roy had no recollection of the bottle being removed before full-time one game because Taylor had not best pleased Lord with some of his decisions. A similar story concerned a basket of meat that was left for one referee, but was then removed by half-time because the referee in question had been having such a poor game.
There were two rooms in fact, one for tools and equipment and machinery at the end of the stand, and then the little ‘rest’ room deeper inside the stand near the laundry. There were just four plastered walls without windows, but Roy eventually covered them with player pictures, mostly of Liverpool players, John Barnes a great favourite of his, Kevin Keegan and Mark Lawrenson but none of Burnley. It was hardly luxurious with a lino covered floor that was grimy and muddy from years of being trampled on by players in boots. A table and three chairs were the only furniture. On the table there were packets of tea, the teapot, mugs, and sugar and on a good day, biscuits.
Back then in the early 70s the big day was FA Cup draw day and if any players were at the ground they would troop in and listen to the draw on the radio with him crowding round the wooden table. A whole group came in one January, Paul Fletcher, Frank Casper, Alan Stevenson and a host of others. Fletcher, always the joker, the extrovert, pulled one of Roy’s hats off the peg, stuck it on his head, walked off with it, and Roy has never seen it since.
‘Standing round that table with them waiting for the draw was always special. There was something magical about the Cup back then. Now it’s just not the same with games spread over the whole weekend and managers playing weakened teams like Liverpool playing a team of kids at Exeter. The draw is on The One Show at 7 o’ clock on Monday night. It’s just not the same and I think back to when we squeezed into that little room full of excitement and anticipation. They were different times.’
There was a constant procession of people in and out of that little room coming in for a warm and a brew, although the warmest room in fact was the laundry so they would often make a brew and then go into the laundry to drink it with laundry lady Violet Thompson. Anybody looking for somebody would inevitably head for Roy’s room assuming that Roy would know where they were. Bob Lord wandered in every now and then, but never had a brew.
It was Denis Law who joined Roy one Saturday after the game in the brew-room when he was working for Granada TV. It was an occasion when Roy was featured on the TV slot the next day because it was one of the few games that had escaped the weather and so was a featured game. He had a mike fixed to his jacket, an earpiece in his ear, a battery round his waist and he had to talk into the mike as he came down the tunnel to describe how he had got the game on. From somewhere in the stands Elton Welsby asked him the questions.
Law approached him after the game: ‘Are we having a brew then?’ he asked in his rich Scottish accent. The tea made, Law took out a little flask of brandy from his pocket and offered a nip to Roy. ‘Ey no I’m working,’ said Roy and thanked him very much.
Afterwards someone slipped him £15 into his pocket. ‘Hey very nice,’ he said,’ I could do with that every week.’ A week later a cheque for £15 arrived from Granada TV.
Having arrived in October ’72 from his place on the bench by the tunnel, Roy never heard the cries of ‘Adamson out, Adamson out,’ ringing round the ground especially after Burnley lost to Hull City at Turf Moor. But he did recall the abusive treatment dished out to a young full back, Harry Wilson and Jimmy Adamson’s angry reaction. The Turf Moor crowd could be unforgiving, said Roy and goalkeeper Peter Mellor was sold to Fulham with Adamson saying that this was because the crowd were so critical of him.
With Bob Lord continuing to support Adamson publicly during the relegation season there was certainly no chance that large swathes of supporters would get their wish and see him dismissed. Adamson persevered and at last there were signs at the end of the season that he might have a succeeded in developing a team that could go on to better things. The final six games of the season were all wins but these were tempered by the news that Steve Kindon was the next to be sold. He was a huge favourite with ex-manager Harry Potts and the Burnley crowd. But Potts had been shunted ‘upstairs’ to a position that was hazy and almost inconsequential in order to clear the way for Adamson. He had no influence whatsoever and was now marginalised by Jimmy Adamson who even asked him not to visit Gawthorpe, the training ground.
Potts departed to take up the managerial job at Blackpool just before Roy took up his new post but Roy knew of the position that Potts had been placed in and found it hard to comprehend. Here was the man who had done so much for the club and now no-one mentioned his name. In his final few months at Turf Moor Potts led a thoroughly lonely and dejected existence without any clear role and with few if any people that he now felt comfortable with, or could even trust. In Roy he would have found a sympathetic friend with whom he could have talked.
They had in fact already met but this had been many, many years earlier when Roy was just a boy at Rose Grove School and in those days there were regular nit inspections when the school nurse would come in and look at everyone’s hair. At Rose Grove the boys called her Nitty Nora and this was none other than Nurse Margaret Hollinrake who at that time was courting with Burnley’s golden-haired, favourite player, Harry Potts. They would marry in 1948 and she would become Mrs Margaret Potts. To their astonishment Harry Potts was actually with her in the school waiting for her to finish so just about every boy was quite awe-struck, so much so that those that were football mad, including Roy, when they had been seen by Margaret went to the back of the queue to be seen a second time so they could have a better look at their idol, Harry.
‘Once we knew she was Harry Potts’s girlfriend we treated her with new respect and never again called her, Nitty Nora the bug explorer,’ Roy recalled.
Roy remembers Steve Kindon fondly. Kindon was big, brave and bullish with just one thought in mind whenever he had the ball; punt it and chase, using his bulk and speed to brush aside any defender. For a big man he was extraordinarily fast with terrific acceleration and for any defender or goalkeeper facing him, the sight of this huge man approaching at pace could be quite nerve-wracking. Harry Potts had a simple tactic to make best use of him while he was still manager. Along the perimeter of the ground were various advertising boards one of them for a local building society.
‘Aim for the ‘B’ in Building Society with the ball,’ he would tell other players so it could be met by Kindon steaming down the wing at full speed and then taking the ball in his stride. Or at least that was the theory. Centre-half Colin Waldron, no great admirer of Potts, remembers making huge fun of this crude tactical advice, yet in essence it was brilliantly simple.
Ask Roy how many top players and managers and referees came in to his little room over the ensuing years for a mug of tea during the time he was at Burnley and he will say he has no idea there were so many. But what he will say is that this was a time when Burnley was a family club and Roy is just one of those people who are welcoming, friendly and approachable with a rich Burnley accent that exudes warmth. The players were always in and out, you could talk to them any time back in those simpler times. His room was one of those open places to which people seem to gravitate.
‘Happy days,’ he said with a gentle smile on his face as we sat and chatted in the front-room of his cosy bungalow with the rain outside hammering on the window, ‘And just so nice to be able to talk about them all.’