YEARS IN FOCUS
LOCAL NEWS AND EVENTS OF THE 1950s

On Saturday, for the second time in five years, Pontefract saw the massive spectacle of the annual demonstration and gala of the Yorkshire Area, of the National Union of Mineworkers. It is five years to the day since the gathering was last held in the town but there was one big difference. Saturday 16 June 1951 was a hot, sunny day. This year, the weather was more suggestive of late October. A cold wind and grey skies brought showers and a chilly atmosphere. Light rain fell during the procession, and later became persistent, and ruined the gala in the Park after the demonstration. In consequence, the greater part of the vast crowds had left the Park by mid-afternoon.

The customary Saturday morning bustle in the Market Place and Corn Market was enlivened from about 9am. by the strains of martial music as the contingents of Yorkshire branches of the union arrived in the town, many of them accompanied by their bands. Already crowds were beginning to line the route of the procession from the Fairground and Horsefair, through the Market Place, Beastfair and Corn Market to the Park racecourse, where the meeting was being held. By 10.30, when the long procession moved off, the pavements were lined two or three deep in places. The big thrill of the annual demonstration for the spectators is the sight of the huge, multicoloured, illustrated banners carrying slogans and mottoes, and nowadays often carried on wheeled bogies; and also the martial bearing of the bandsmen in their distinctive uniforms.

This year was no exception, and in the procession were between 20,000 - 25,000 miners and their wives and friends, representing over 100 branches, and accompanied by 41 bands including some famous broadcasting and championship bands. They formed an impressive spectacle.

Congratulations are due to the officials who arranged and marshalled the long procession, which took three-quarters of an hour to pass a given point. It moved off promptly on time, led by a police car and mounted policemen, followed by the Dagenham Piper’s Band. Behind them were miners officials, Civic dignitaries, a number of Yorkshire Members of Parliament, and speakers who were to take part in the gathering on the racecourse. And then, endlessly, it seemed, came the banners, the bands and the miners. Many of them reached the Park before the thousands in the procession had moved off from the town assembly point. Although it was the bands that took the eye, there were amusing diversions by two men in fancy dress; ‘Billy Bunter’ the fat schoolboy hero of generations, and ‘The Wild Man of Borneo’.

For sometime after the procession had left the town, the streets were still thronged, and there were large queues at the bus stops in Corn Market and Beastfair. The Chairman moved a resolution, part of which was to affirm, "That we shall use our power to maintain and improve our living standards and to assist in the struggle for high pensions and payments for the sick, injured and aged". The resolution also called for the "end of conscription, and a reduction in our crippling expenditure on arms to enable us to give economic aid to the poverty-stricken people of Asia and Africa." It also affirmed that the miners of Yorkshire and their wives demand that the production and usage of hydrogen and atom bombs be outlawed by all the nations of the world. He regretted that the American Government had refused permission to Mr. Paul Robeson, the coloured international singer, to attend the demonstration but read a message received from him.

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