Great North Run to miners’ strike misery
Nostalgia Editor THEY’RE just some of our images from South Tyneside in the 1980s...
The national miners’ strike, the first Great North Run, and charity collector ‘Big Hec’.
But first, it’s worth remembering that as the ’80s dawned, South Tyneside as a location on the map had only come into existence six years earlier
n April 1, 1974, the old boroughs of South Shields and Jarrow, along with the urban districts of Hebburn and Boldon were merged into one new “super” borough.
They had all been County Durham.
Taken largely from the Chronicle archive, the photographs here reflect a decade in which South Tyneside very much had its ups and downs.
If 1986 marked the 50th anniversary of the Jarrow Crusade, that fact that the town and borough were in once again blighted by long-term unemployment - there was a second march for jobs this year - was a damning indictment of the economic policies of successive governments.
Generations of male school-leavers had left school and ‘done their time’ at one of the shipyards of the Tyne; or maybe Westoe or Boldon Colliery; or maybe one of the area’s many factories.
But, come the 1980s, Tyneside’s traditional industries were approaching the end of their lives.
And coupled with the right-wing economic polices of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, they were usually left to die.
The resultant long-term unemployment - sometimes affecting whole families - with associated social and welfare implications cast a long shadow over areas of South Tyneside during the decade.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom in 1980s, however.
In June 1981, Olympic medal-winning, long-distance athlete and former Hebburn school-teacher Brendan Foster came up with the idea of a 13-mile road race between Newcastle and South Shields.
Thirty-six years later, the annual Great North Run remains a landmark event which enjoys an international profile.
Meanwhile, if heavy industry and manufacturing were having a difficult time three decades ago, the folk of the borough could always console themselves with a good night out.
In South Shields, young. er revellers might flock to nightclubs like Rupert’s, Buddy’s or Banwell’s.
Just up the road in Jarrow town centre, pubs such as the Viking, Cottage and Borough did a roaring trade at weekends, while a doner kebab eaten as you staggered around the streets was the post last-orders food of choice! Lots of chilli sauce, please!
Sometimes, day-to-day might be tough back then, but a night at Leroy’s in Hebburn dressed like a Spandau Ballet or Bananarama reject could be fun.
Front: Dusty Bin and friends sweep the streets of South Shields and Jarrow, 1982; the first Great North Run, 1981; goods train in danger of toppling on to a house in Concorde Way, Jarrow, 1984; Red Rum opens Rum Runner nightclub, South Shields, 1981
Above, the finish of the Great North Run at South Shields, early 1980s; left, young musicians at Springfield Comprehensive School, Jarrow, 1983