Chronicle chief reporter Jack Tolson takes a look back to what was making the news in March 1979.
THEY SAY HE’S MAD BUT PAUL STICKS TO UNITED TRAIL
His friends say he’s mad but that doesn’t stop 21-year-old Paul Govier following his favourite football team whenever it plays.
Paul, Spring Street, Barnsley, is a Manchester United supporter, and over the past six years has missed only three games and they were all played away.
In fact, with tomorrow’s game at Bristol City included, Paul will have covered 50,000 miles during the past seven years in order to see United play.
He’s even followed them abroad, and had visited Denmark, Italy, France, Holland and has been to Germany for the past three years just to see friendly matches.
His friends are also United supports and go to all the home matches, but they think Paul is mad because he never misses a game, however far he has to travel to watch it.
But there is one question that Paul, who first became a United fan in 1968 when they won the European Cup, cannot answer.
He has no idea how much his hobby has cost him in the past few years.
“I daren’t even begin to reckon it up,” he said.
SO THE MAYOR HAD TO TAKE A TAXI
THE Mayor had to hail a taxi to get to a function on Wednesday.
When picketing dustmen would not let Coun Mrs Gwen Bright’s chauffeur get out of the Highways Department garage at Smithies, he had to phone a local taxi firm to get the Mayor to the presentation at Agnes Road Infant School.
The Mayor didn’t seem too perturbed by her ‘new car’.
“I wasn’t bothered, I can ride in anything,” said Mrs Bright.
A spokesperson for the firm, Wood Brothers Taxi Ltd, of Rotherham Road, Barnsley, said: “We are here to provide a service, and Mrs Bright is only the same as anyone else.”
HANDS OFF OUR SCHOOL
CHILDREN banging drums, cymbals and tambourines led teachers and parents through a small Barnsley pit village’s streets on Tuesday to war education chiefs against closing their school.
The 101-year-old primary school at Woolley Colliery, which lies on the boundary between Wakefield and Barnsley, is under review by Wakefield Education Authority following a government White Paper forecasting a drop in school populations.
Although the three-teacher school has 59 pupils - nine more than minimum set by Wakefield - parents, teachers an school governors fear that the authority will close the school and kill the village.
Mrs June Willey, a teacher at the school for 20 years, said: “Apart from the school there is nothing left in the village at all.
“The village will lose its identity if the school goes.
“We are like a family here, and the children get more individual attention than they would from a larger schools.”
Mr Jack Mills, headmaster, said: “The school has a lot to offer and we are totally opposed to it being closed.
“We will fight closure all the way.”
