Related article: Hitting the campaign trail

I did mention this assignment in a previous post about covering general elections but I thought I would revisit in more detail after being reminded of the actor and campaigner Ricky Tomlinson yesterday.

A general election had been called in 2001 and Arthur Scargill, who still the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), was standing as a candidate in the Hartlepool constituency against the then sitting MP Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson was the architect of the New Labour brand but had recently been forced to resign over his involvement with a dodgy passport application of a billionaire businessman.

Having said that he was re-elected in 1997 with a massive majority of 17,508 but by 2001 the local paper, The Hartlepool Mail, was predicting that he would have to fight for his seat and Labour had also lost control of the local council.

While Mandelson reacted to the news by claiming that Scargill was the man “who destroyed the coal industry and betrayed every man and woman in Britain in the process” the union leader still had strong support in the former mining communities of the north east of England.

Having said that, I reckon the real architects of the downfall of the industry were Margaret Thatcher and Sir Ian Kinloch MacGregor but that is another story and says a lot about Mandelson’s commitment wot the working class of this country.

However, at the time it was documented that Scargill’s fundamentalist socialist politics may have kept many mainstream Labour supporters supporting Mandelson.

Scargill was due to speak in Hartlepool and I was working that weekend so I was sent to cover the event.

He had a long standing friendship with the actor Ricky Tomlinson, who was well known for his roles in Brookside and The Royle Family, but he had previously been a union activist.

He joined the flying pickets in a building workers’ dispute and, following allegations of violence during the protest, in 1973 he was charged with conspiracy to intimidate as one of the so-called Shrewsbury Two.

He pleaded his innocence but was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison, alongside fellow picket Des Warren.

It was during this time that he met Scargill and, following his release from prison, he tirelessly campaigned to get the convictions overturned.

He was at the meeting to support his friend’s campaign and I have to admit I found their speeches quite compelling.

I snapped a few pics and patiently waited until the end to get a picture but Scargill was quite dismissive. However the actor stepped in and said: “Come on Arthur give the lad a break he has waited all this time.”

The union leader saw the light and let me take these photos which were used by both the Daily Express and the Northern Echo. It was also one of my early attempts at using the emerging digital technology.

And Tomlinson was kind enough to sign this photo for me which I still have to this day.