25 YEARS AGO

IRLAM steelworks is to be closed down, making 2,400 people jobless. The axe has been hanging over the steelworks since BSC announced plans for its closure in April last year. Two thousand steelmen have already lost their jobs. One glimmer of hope is the possibility of an electric arc furnace being set up in the works. This would provide employment for 300 to 500 men at the most.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 23, 1947

SEVERAL thousand mineworkers were thrown idle today and thousands of tons of coal production lost as the result of a further series of strikes of surface workers at collieries in the Manchester area. The cause was the same in each case - resentment over the interpretation of a clause in the five-day week agreement which requires surface workers to work 25 minutes longer each day, and in some cases to remain 55 minutes longer than under the old conditions.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, June 22, 1872

CONSIDERABLE interest was manifested at Farnworth on Wednesday, on the circulation of the report that Mr Crowther, agent to the Earl of Bradford, had given the whole of his lordship's farm tenants at Farnworth and district notice to quit. It is presumed that the notice is a precursor of an increase in rent. Seeing that the whole of the farming land in the Farnworth district is owned by the Earl of Bradford and the Bridgewater Trustees, the action taken by his lordship is of considerable importance not only to the farmers, but to the general public, for as a farmer on the Bridgewater estate remarked to us this morning it meant to the public an increase in the price of milk or the adding of more water.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.