Dennis Skinner - Sailing Close to the Wind: Reminiscences

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Quercus

This edition first published in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
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7th Floor, South Block
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Copyright 2014 Dennis Skinner

The moral right of Dennis Skinner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 158 8
Print ISBN 978 1 78206 156 4

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For all my friends and family, past and present.

In producing this book I have finally succumbed to the demands of all those Labour and trade union friends up and down the country to provide them with a few written reminiscences.

Whenever I have addressed meetings Ive heard a familiar question: When are you going to write a book? My answer for the first thirty years was always something like: Thanks, I will think about it. I always knew I could tell a good story on a platform, in a room of trade unionists or sometimes in Parliament. There is, however, a vast difference between making people laugh, cry and think at a Labour movement function and on the printed page.

But in the last ten years the social media phenomenon has turned those requests into a clamour from people who could not understand my reluctance to put pen to paper.

I know in my heart that I cannot make words as exciting on the printed page but Ive made a decision to relate a few stories that characterise my upbringing; my time on Clay Cross council; some of the more exciting moments in the Palace of Varieties; and, most important of all, my involvement in the trade union and Labour movement rallies, meetings and strikes!

This book is not intended to be anything other than a response to that clamour, to the din and demand from friends near and far who believe I should heed their requests.

Dennis Skinner, 2014

The place is Clay Cross, a small pit town in Derbyshire. The year is 1932 and I was born on 11 February in a long terrace of two up-two down houses, a tin bath hanging from a nail in the backyard, on Waterloo Street. The street was known, for some unfathomable reason, as Monkey Hollow. When I was still in the pram, we moved to John Street at the other end of the pit tip.

My mother, Lucy, always had a song on her lips. She took in laundry and cleaned for other people to scrape a living. My father, Edward, who was also called Tony for reasons I never quite fathomed, was a coal miner, as I was to become. A resourceful man, hed been blacklisted for six years when I arrived. The pit bosses branded him a troublemaker after the General Strike of 1926 and Dad wasnt allowed to go back down a mine and earn a wage packet until the thirst for energy to power British rearmament against Hitler meant the employers couldnt sustain their discrimination against him. He was a union man, but like all union men he was a grafter, instilling in all of his children a strong work ethic.

At the corner of John Street, the pit tip soared more than 150 feet into the sky and, on most days, would be partly enveloped by a yellow sulphurous cloud that blotted out the summit. Over the road, pollution burst out of the coke ovens at the Clay Cross Works many times each day, floating past the football ground and over our house before enshrouding the tip. You could smell it, taste it, almost physically feel the gas which tinged the air. How we yearned for the wind to blow the cloud towards the home of General Jackson, owner of the coke plant and seven collieries within a five-mile radius. Needless to say, General Jackson didnt live on John Street. He resided in an extremely large house a mile away from the pollution factory while his kids, including Guy Jackson who captained Derbyshire at cricket, and Bridget, who stood for Parliament as a candidate of the Conservative Party, lived even further away.

The rock and slag from the nearest pit were carried in massive industrial buckets hanging on cables in the air, crossing the football field before dumping the waste on the top of an ever-expanding pile. These vast metal containers would criss-cross their way back and forth noisily all day long and, naturally, there would be a spillage from time to time. When, much later, I discussed planning applications and health and safety issues as a local councillor, Id often reflect on my early childhood. Id recall the buckets that occasionally turned over and dropped debris where people walked or played. The influence of General Jacksons Clay Cross Company was an early lesson in the power that money can buy. The firm possessed real muscle in the town and almost certainly Whitehall too, a firm used to getting what it wanted. No wonder that in those days the common phrase Where theres muck theres brass sounded as if it had been coined for General Jacksons empire.

When I was old enough to get out of the pram, that pit top was to become my adventure playground. With other lads on the street, I climbed regularly to the summit. We sledged down in winter when it snowed. After the Second World War began, we played soldiers in the 200-yard-long trench dug across the top by the Home Guard to fight the Germans on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets and on the slopes and summit of Clay Cross pit tip. When finally the company was required to dismantle the pylons and the buckets, they deposited the industrial waste on another tip 300 yards away. The western side became covered in gorse, blackberry bushes and willow herb. Linnets nested and we enjoyed butterflies in abundance. I knew every inch of the hills. When I became a school cross-country champion, I owed a lot of my stamina to running yes, running up and down that pit tip.

This is my story, the tale of a man whose life was shaped by the pit environment and the Second World War. I grew up in a mining community as Hitler hammered on Britains door. From the age of 10, I did a newspaper round every day. I devoured every one of the eight pages that each wartime title was permitted. I scoured the Empire News, Sunday Pictorial, News Chronicle and the rest before pushing them through the doors. I wanted to discuss the progress of the war, particularly with friends of my parents. I vividly recall saying excitedly to Bal Parker, a workmate of my father: Weve captured Benghazi! He answered dourly: Yes, Son, but well lose it next week. And we did.

Naturally, I discussed the football results in the North and South Leagues which operated during that period. The horserace meetings too, limited to five racecourses with the rest requisitioned by the RAF or used for other activities to boost the war effort. Taking in all this information, and discussing it with adults, was an education in itself and developed my good memory. I was to pass the 11-plus at the age of 10 and found myself told to stand in front of the class to recite times tables backwards. Reading the papers and debating issues in my early years, particularly with my father, also helped me recognise that things didnt have to be the way they were. That we could improve lives and create a better world.