Ousted, but never forgotten

The chapel and the railwaymen's union were quite familiar, it was the Socialism - his father publicly preached it from the market cross - that made them stand out. They may also have been the only family in town to buy the Daily Herald.

Sid, said in his youth to have borne a marked resemblance to James Cagney, simply followed on the family footplate. His grandfather was a passenger guard and helped form Northallerton Co-op, his father was a signalman who became a member of the NUR national executive.

Sid began as a fireman, became an engine driver in his early 20s, carried particularly fond memories of the Wensleydale branch, of kippers cooking on the fireman's shovel and of gale blasts at Garsdale.

In those days there were 15 signal boxes within a five mile radius of Northallerton and 450 NUR members in the branch of which he became secretary. When he wrote the book there were 90 members. It's the RMT now and precious few may remain.

Sid also warned in 1984 of the problems facing the industry, of lack of investment and of a dispirited workforce. "The system is struggling, and losing, in a battle to cope with a massive backlog of renewals in track and signalling," he wrote 18 years ago.

"There is no fulfilment in working in an industry which appears to be slipping down the drain with governments' blessings."

WEIGHELL, said to have "an extreme hatred of extremism", was also an active front-line campaigner in the fight to win a reprieve for 2,600 jobs at Shildon wagon works - three miles from where he'd played Northern League football for West Auckland.

His efforts were acknowledged in a framed poem - The Weighell Thing, they might have called it - presented to him at the Shildon Civic Dinner in November 1982 and reproduced at the start of the book. One verse talked of his attempts to avoid confrontation, another of his efforts for the County Durham railway town:

For all you've done for Shildon, we send to you our thanks,

When the chips were down, you led the way, in front of all the ranks;

We hope that things will brighten, and work will come our way,

When you shall be our honoured guest, on that auspicious day.

"He loved coming to Shildon, fought a very determined campaign for us and had friends in some very high places," recalls former wagon works personnel officer Jim Reid, who wrote the poem and much else and is still a stalwart of Cockerton Methodist church in Darlington.

Weighell hung the poem in the study of his home at Beckwithshaw, near Harrogate, though it misspelt his first name as "Syd". The error may nonetheless have pleased his old mum, said to have wanted to name him after the Sydney Harbour Bridge - commissioned from Teesside in the year of his birth - but refused by an officious registrar.

Shildon's civic dinner was just weeks after the Labour Party conference at which Weighell had undemocratically changed the NUR's card vote - "an arrogant move" concedes Jim Reid - provoking outrage in the union.

He lasted just two more months before formally being ousted at a special NUR conference; Shildon Wagon Works hung on until June 1984 before it, too, faded hammer and tongs into history.

MOST of Sid Weighell's obituarists mentioned beer and sandwiches with Harold Wilson at 10 Downing Street, his refusal in 1978 to accept a 27.5 per cent across the board pay rise because railwaymen wanted 30 per cent and his two youthful years with Sunderland Reserves.

Sid, it was widely reported, considered himself the second best inside left in the North-East. The best, he conceded, was the legendary Raich Carter - who happened to be in the first team.

Only The Guardian recorded that in 1983, shortly after losing the NUR post, he sought the Labour candidacy in the re-established Sedgefield constituency, was nominated by Ferryhill branch NUR but gained no other backing.

Among the other hopefuls who received just a single nomination, from the ASTMS union, was Hilary Armstrong - now MP for NW Durham and government Chief Whip. Joel Barnett, later Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was also on the 17-long short list.

"We were a new seat and the last in the country to choose its candidate. Everyone who hadn't secured a candidacy was having one last try," recalls constituency agent John Burton. "Sid wasn't very well at the time, as I remember, and didn't do a lot of canvassing. Finally he withdrew by telephone"

The night before the final selection, Burton had persuaded party members to add an extra name to the list. It was an ambitious young barrister called A C L Blair.

BY the 1950s, Northallerton had at least two Labour party activists. The other, as capital F flamboyant as Sid Weighell was small C conservative, Pat Lisle.

Pat, a former artificial inseminator who succeeded Maurice Weighell - Sid's brother - as NUR branch secretary, was a wartime evacuee from Gateshead who squeezed his 27 stone frame into a 1949 Bentley to drive to work at the remote Welbury signal box.

Sid Weighell had been Labour's agent for the Richmond constituency in the 1945 election. With the slogan "Never fear, Patrick's here", Pat fought the Tory stronghold in 1966 and was filmed by the BBC's Trevor Philpott for a Man Alive programme.

"Will I be getting your support, sir?" he asked a long toothed Swaledale farmhand. "Will thoo hellers like," the old lad replied, and bet him half a crown at 500-1 that he'd lose his deposit. He held it, gaining both 2/6d and nearly 25 per cent of the vote.

"Sid and his family were quite helpful to me during the campaign," he recalls, though he claimed to be glad not to have been elected.

"The way they drink in Parliament, I'd be dead," he said at the time.

For 11 years he was also the only Labour member of Northallerton Rural District Council. They made him chairman of road safety.

Whilst a £10 9s a week goods porter in 1968, he owned three betting shops, followed by a bakery, a drapery and a racehorse called Belfry. He ran the Tan Hill Inn and other pubs at Rookhope and Thornley, tilted at ever turning windmills, had precious few dull moments.

Pat is now 72 and lives quietly at Piercebridge, near Darlington where, despite considerable local controversy, he failed to gain election to the parish council. He has been seriously ill, acknowledges his gratitude to Darlington Memorial, looks forward to the two robins which greet him on the window sill every morning.

The long promised autobiography remains unscripted. "Right now," says Pat, "I'm just glad to wake up alive."

OTHER matters, and firstly an invitation from the magnificent Nellie Bowser MBE to a bitter-sweet little do - "cup of tea and a sticky bun" - at Tindale Crescent hospital, near Bishop Auckland.

It's closing after 102 years. Nellie, and until recently her dear departed soul mate Mary Hodgson, were involved with the hospital "Friends" - and none better - for over half a century.

The original building cost £7,000, plus £60 to build an ambulance, £20 for pneumatic tyres - lest the patients be dead on arrival - and a few bob more to hire the horse.

Elsie Bridges, the first matron, received £50 a year and £4 towards her uniform.

At the tea party on March 16, Nellie - Winnie the Witch, she styles herself - will hand over a box of memorabilia for display in the new Tindale Crescent unit at Bishop General. "It's been a lovely little hospital; people are going to miss it no end," she says.

The hospital is expected to close in mid-May. A new use has yet to be identified.

LAST week's column on Lord Dormand of Easington reminded Ron Hails of a cricket match in which they were opposed - the then Jack Dormand for Houghton Rugby Club CC, Ron for Hartlepool Rovers (another rugby club with summertime on its hands.)

Ron bowled off spin, the Rovers skipper curiously deciding to place just one fielder - "a lumbering prop forward" - on the leg side.

Jack helped himself in the wide open spaces - "at a rough guess, about half a mile" says Ron - between fine leg and long on.

"This chap's being let down by his field setting. He must be bowling for catches," observed the eminent batsman to Ron's friend and team mate Albert Kelleher, querulously keeping wicket.

"Nah," said Albert, "he's bowling for bloody ruptures."

LONG in Lowestoft, late of Littleburn - a forgotten pit village near Durham - 75-year-old Frank West sends an amusing chronicle of his life and times which, inevitably, is too long even to summarise.

We can only recount the story of Laura May So-and-So, daughter of his wartime landlady in Gateshead, whose opinion of her otherwise ne'er-do-well father changed when he brought home a bone china cup engraved with her initials.

"How different," writes Frank, "if she'd realised that he nicked it from the restaurant car of the London Midland and Scottish Railway."

...and finally, a request from Alan Archbold in Sunderland with which we are not able fully to comply. Suffice that Kirsten is an anagram of stinker, and also (coincidentally) the name of the last minute German who equalised against the glorious Gunners on Tuesday evening. He can do his own dirty work after that.