John North: The pacifist who helped fettle a croc

MEMORY Lane led from Shildon railway station, up past Tunnel Top to the long-time home of Cyril A Mitchinson, former clerk - or "clurk", as probably we used to say in Shildon - to the Urban District Council.

Nominally "Independent", truthfully a bit further from the fence, I'd been a member from 1970-73, Mr Mitchinson a model of both equanimity and impartiality. Whenever you met, he'd shake hands. It was an urbane district council, too.

He's 90 now, no longer getting away all that clever (as probably they also say in Shildon) but mentally as bright as a civic sixpence.

Though the conversation ranged widely and amicably, he'd rung following recent reference hereabouts to the closure, a year short of its centenary, of the Friends' Meeting House in Shildon.

Once Quaker gatherings in the town might attract 150. At the end, Mr Mitchinson was the only member, compelled by infirmity to hold Sunday morning "Meetings for Worship" in the solitude of his own home.

"I told them there was no point in keeping a Meeting House open for a feller who couldn't even get there," he says.

Youngest of eight children, he was born in Durham City, was a staff sergeant with Wingate's Chindits during the Second World War, became a Quaker - self-disciplined, contemplative, pacifist - in 1948, though his thoughts had long been in that direction.

"If I'd become a member earlier I could have joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit," he supposes. "They still went behind enemy lines, still dragged for mines.

"I'd had three brothers in the First World War and I thought England was going to be invaded. Things were very different then."

He trained at Catterick, served in Nigeria, was sent to India. Still he recalls being surrounded by baboons ("grit big teeth") and that his unit was asked to seek and destroy a man-eating crocodile.

"We fettled it in the end," he says, and keeps a photograph of the jungle fighters with their blood curdling trophy.

Back home he worked for Durham City Council, moved to Shildon as deputy clerk, was told by a Durham alderman that if he'd stopped he could have been deputy up there.

Mr Mitchinson quoted the alderman Matthew 13 - "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house" - but was also told at Shildon that he'd never progress unless he joined the Labour party.

He remained, as they say, unaffiliated except to the Quakers. "Durham City at the time was red-hot Tory, Shildon was red-hot Labour. I always kept myself neutral.

"I never went drinking with councillors because I didn't drink, they never came to my house and I never went to theirs.

"My predecessor was a very nice man, but he used to go drinking with the councillors at night and they wiped the floor with him."

He remains in his first council owned semi, the sanitary inspector (as then they were called) next door. The surveyor lived next to the council offices, his wife - perish the thought - a Conservative.

In the 1950 General Election, she even put a photograph of Winston Churchill in the house window. Though hostilities had officially ceased five years earlier, there was war on.

His bureau, as meticulously kept as a former town clerk's should be, still holds mementoes of Chindit action, of local government service - there's a splendid 1940s cartoon of Durham City clerk George Carpenter, looking rather like Rumpole of the Bailey - and of almost 60 years as a Friend indeed.

Cyril Mitchinson never compromised, addressed everyone except the sanitary inspector by their rank or title - "Well, Ken did live next door" - retired when local government was re-organised in 1974.

When she died 11 years ago this week, he'd been married to his wife Nancy - fellow Quaker, true friend - for 54 years, and every night they prayed. "Who prays together, stays together," he says.

Mrs Mitchinson was also a leading member of the British Red Cross, a knowledgeable gardener and in 1966 became a much respected JP at Bishop Auckland.

It was the bench which 300 years earlier had fined, hounded and imprisoned Quakers and other dissenters in the south Durham area - but that's the other part of the story.

IF Cyril Mitchinson is the last of Shildon's Quakers, the first was Lt Col John Lilburn - the great Dissenter and Parliamentarian and regarded in the time of Charles II and Oliver Cromwell as leader of the Levellers' campaign for social and democratic change and abolition of the British class system.

Flogged, fined, pilloried, imprisoned and ultimately impeached in the Tower for high treason, Lilburn - born at East Thickley, Shildon - remained in prison until after Cromwell's death.

"Before becoming a Friend," recorded an early 20th century historian, "Lilburn was of such a quarrelsome nature that it was said of him that if he was alone in the world, John would argue with Lilburn and Lilburn with John."

The same history notes that Anne Audland - "a comely matron of 27" - became in 1653 the first Quaker to preach in Bishop Auckland, was thrown into the "town goal" for her troubles and continued her exhortations through the barred window.

Her husband died at 34, his life shortened by "persecution and hardship"; she herself was later found by George Fox, regarded as the founder of the Quaker movement, living rough in fields near Cabin Gate.

Though they could be heavily fined whenever they attended a meeting - in some areas the penalty was three months imprisonment for a first offence, seven years transportation for a second - Quakers' numbers grew, particularly around Heighington and Evenwood.

Before their first meeting house was built, Shildon's Quakers would be taken to the Bishop Auckland meetings in one of Timothy Hackworth's dandy carts, threepence a time. Wheel full circle, Shildon's meeting house closed, a monthly Quaker meeting has again been established in St Anne's church, Bishop Auckland.

Cyril Mitchinson, of course, has faced none of the pioneers' privations. "I have had a good life, been very fortunate," he says. "I can have no complaints at all."

Jimmy puts his holy hat on

JIMMY Cricket - "D'you mean that bloke in the funny hat?" folk ask - gets serious for a while on Saturday when he appears at the seventh Whitby Gospel Music Convention.

After Cinderella at the Playhouse pantomime in Weston-Super-Mare, Jimmy - a committed Roman Catholic - will be running through his comedy repertoire, then answering questions on his faith.

Other headline acts include multiple award-winning American duo The Hemphills and George Hamilton IV, who's become a Whitby regular. The Stockton Salvation Army band are pretty familiar, too.

Organiser Paul Wheater, the Esk Valley-based country and gospel singer, reports ticket sales well up on last year. "It's fitting that Whitby, with its early Christian history, should be the venue," he says.

Jimmy Cricket, meanwhile, has just written a musical about Leading Seaman Jim Magennis, a diver and limpet mine fixer who became the only Northern Irishman to win a World War II VC. After much campaigning, a statue was erected in Belfast in 1999.

After Whitby he's off to a summer season in Clacton, co-starring with Ivor Biggun (illusionist.)

l The Gospel Music Convention runs from tomorrow evening to Sunday afternoon - concerts individually priced, or £32 for a weekend ticket. Details on www.paulwheater.com

THE train to Shildon was different, more comfortable, perhaps even lost. It had "Sheffield to Leeds fast service" emblazoned on the side, together with some images of places on that White Rose route. No matter, the return from North Road is just £2 50 an d that's 50p less than the single fare by bus. Use it or lose it, as someone probably said before.

STILL on track, Leyburn railway station opened 150 years ago tomorrow, the occasion to be marked by special trains from Leeming Bar, and much else.

The first's away at 10.35, Lord Bolton and Leyburn Band awaiting its arrival at 11.14. There's also a weekend long exhibition (10-4pm each day) with photographs, memorabilia, fairground organ and refreshments.

The American connection

YESTERDAY'S news that Sunderland and Washington DC are signing an "Agreement of friendship" perturbed Stockton historian Bob Harbron. "Are we losing out yet again?" he asks, after Locomotion chuffered off to Shildon.

Hartburn, Stockton, was the Washington family's original home, says Bob, Sir William de Hartburn moving at Bishop Skirlaw's request to the manor of "Whessington, near Durham". The family took its name from the manor, the first "true" Washington - says Bob - Gilbert de Washington in 1490.

Family members then upped and offed to Virginia. George Washington, pictured left, good Stockton stock, became president of the US in 1789.

...and finally, last week's note on Peter Murray's planned sponsored trek through the Sinai Desert prompts an e-mail from Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool, who'd been there last year - "fantastically beautiful, lots of rocks to smite." Mind, adds Chris, she still doesn't understand how the Children of Israel managed to get lost for 30 years.