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Print veteran Hadwin celebrates 60 years in the business

Sixty years ago this week, 16-year-old Arnold Hadwin began a career that would see him travel the world and meet some of history’s greatest movers and shakers.

To escape the drudgery and danger of a life down the mines in his native County Durham he started out as a trainee reporter at the Darlington offices of the Northern Echo on August 13, 1945.

And he is still writing.

When Arnold, (right), began his career telephones were a luxury and photographs in newspapers were rarer still.

“I was paid 15 shillings a week because the editor said I would be a nuisance for the first few weeks so I was determined then that I would be a nuisance for the rest of my days,” said Arnold.

“I remember being sent to cover Willington in the Northern League and I had to run at half-time something like three quarters of a mile to telephone the half-time scores and 150 words.

“You had to ask someone who you could rely on to tell you what went on in the first part of the second half when you got back.

“Then you had to run back at the end of the match to telephone through the goal scorers in the second half.

“It really amazes me when you see reporters using laptop computers at football matches these days.”

Arnold’s early career was interrupted by two years’ National Service in the Intelligence Section of 40 Commando, Royal Marines.

He served in Malta, Palestine/Israel and Cyprus and worked as a correspondent, which he still does to this day, for the Royal Marines newspaper Globe and Laurel.

Arnold described his equipment from 1947 to 1949 as a “notepad, pencil and a stengun” and found himself covering hangings, murders and civil unrest.

Afterwards it was back to the Northern Echo before joining the Oxford Mail in 1951.

In the 1950s and 1960s he covered major world events like the Hungarian Uprising and the Berlin Wall going up and eventually became deputy editor at Oxford.

From 1973 to 1984 he was editor of the Telegraph and Argus, in Bradford, during which time he waged a five-year campaign against the right-wing National Front which was winning council seats in the city.

“They accused me of being biased and I wrote a leader, which went around the world, saying we were biased against bigotry and intolerance.”

He believes his stance is the main reason why he was awarded an OBE for services to journalism in 1982.

Arnold was group editor of the Lincolnshire Standard Group from 1984 to 1989 until his retirement.

He said it is difficult to say who he most enjoyed interviewing over the years – from Russian president Khrushchev to the actor Anthony Quayle.

But he does fondly recall meeting ex-US President Jimmy Carter in a field of maize at the foot of Kilimanjaro.

“He was a demi-god in East Africa and he quadrupled the yield of maize and wheat and settled tribal differences throughout the Horn of Africa,” said Arnold.

Since retiring he has trained journalists in such far-flung places as Tanzania and Kazakhstan.

More recently he has written about the British Executive Service Overseas and Voluntary Service Overseas, which merged in April this year, for embassy magazines around the world.

Sadly Edna, his wife of 50 years, died in February last year.

Looking back on a remarkable career, Arnold, whose two daughters Sara Hadwin and Julie Gould both work in journalism, said: “I have never ceased to be amazed that people paid me to do things that were so exciting.

“I became a reporter 60 years ago because I wanted to change the world – I still do.

“But I now know that it is more difficult and takes longer than I thought it would when I was 16.”