Former Notttingham Evening Post staff are organising a reunion of journalists who were sacked by the paper after going on strike in the late 1970s.

It is now 30 years since 28 reporters and subs at the Post’s Forman Street offices took part in a National Union of Journalists’ national strike of provincial journalists.

They never returned to the paper – after the then managing director Christopher Pole-Carew sacked them for being “disloyal.”

The Post, then owned by T. Bailey Forman, was the only paper in the country not to take back its journalists when the strike ended.

They remained on strike for three years, bringing out their own newspaper, the Nottingham News, and selling it in the streets.

But eventually, they all moved to other jobs.

Now, after four of the 28 took part in a Radio Nottingham programme on the strike, they’re organising a reunion in Nottingham on 7 March.

Most of those who took part in the strike will be attending, but there are still five names on the where-are-they-now? list.

They are Peter Anderson, once of the Loughborough Echo, Robin Anderson, last heard of working in Northumberland, Steve Clark, who has worked for Al Jazeera, Paul Cowan ex-editor of the Stornoway Gazette, and Jim Mercer, who came from Long Eaton.

Anyone who can help locate them should contact organiser Terry Wootton on [email protected] or phone 0115 912 3018.

Comments

MAH (17/02/2009 09:22:32)
Good luck to you all. There are those of us who still remember whip-rounds and charging up to join the picket. And I STILL refuse to supply anything for the Post, long after TBF!!

P.Our2thePpull (17/02/2009 09:25:45)
No credible, comprehensive news service could possibly write a story like that without listing all 28 names! Come on, let’s have them…

Hot Metal (17/02/2009 09:56:41)
Exactly…. who are they? Where are they now?

Peter Anderson (16/03/2009 14:11:26)
I had never realised I was lost! I now work in internal comms for Milton Keynes Council. As the only one of the 28 to be arrested on the picket line I was later acquitted) I have fond memories of sharing a cell with the then editor of the Journalist and getting my photo on the front page of The Militant being frogmarched from the scene.
Arthus Scargill joined us on one famous occasion. I think the recent anniversary of his strike got a tad more attention than our small effort!