Poll tax rebels jailed

POLL tax rebels David and Julie Strickland held a "going to prison" party the night before they were jailed by magistrates.

The husband and wife, of Dunsop Drive, Johnson Fold, were jailed for 14 days yesterday after they refused a last minute chance to pay up at Bolton Magistrates court. They had expected to be locked up and held a light-hearted celebration the previous evening when they wore convict suits.

25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 9, 1977

LARGE numbers of Bolton children are likely to have to travel miles across the borough when they move to new secondary schools in September. The town's Education Committee yesterday backed a move to send all unallocated pupils to schools at Farnworth and Kearsley, to fill up "significant" vacant places at two schools there.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 9, 1952

HOUSING, it is continuously repeated, is the major problem facing local authorities today, and so much emphasis is laid upon "high-speed production" and "cheapening the cost" that we may come to think of houses, if we are not careful, simply as units of accommodation. We have in this area - Bolton, Horwich, Farnworth, Westhoughton, Leigh - rows upon rows of houses built with no regard to plan but simply according to an economic plan that workers should live close to the factories in houses crowded together as thickly as possible.

We now face the task not only of replanning and rebuilding houses, but of re-educating people to live in better surroundings.

100 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, April 9, 1902

A WAR Office Committee has been engaged at the Horse Guards in examining an armoured motor car carrying four guns, which is, if satisfactory, we are told, to be despatched to South Africa for use against De Wet. A machine which will go without rails had obvious advantages over the armoured train, which it most nearly resembles, in coping with men who have shown themselves such experts in the art of removing rails and blowing up permanent ways.

We do not know whether the new machine is fitted with pneumatic tyres or not. If it is, a policy of pin-pricks may be expected to supersede the policy of abstracted rails, as the motor supersedes the train. Only it will be a little difficult beforehand to know where to put the pins. Some of our barbed wire entanglements carefully removed and laid across a broad valley, with everything but the barbs well hidden in grass or earth, would perhaps be the most effective.

It is to be hoped that the motor used is not of the loudly puffing order, or in the still veldt air the noiseless tyres will be of little avail in stalking expeditions. We shall watch the progress of the new engine of war with interest.