Living history: miners’ strike
STUDYING THE 1984 MINERS’ STRIKE and its impact on the North-East is captivating enough, but learning about it from Bill Dick, Dave Douglass and Kath Cotterill, who all experienced the hardships first-hand, really brought it to life. Bill was a miner at Wearmouth Colliery and Dave, a senior member of the NUM. Both were among the 160,000 who engaged in strike action. Kath gave an insight into the role of women during the strikes – providing food and moral support, maintaining their roles as mothers, and joining the miners on the picket lines, chaining themselves to colliery gates.
We are grateful for so many opportunities for students to visit historical sites – everywhere from Hadrian’s Wall to Rome and Berlin. Two sixth-formers recently visited Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust, which was a deeply moving experience. The visit prompted thought, debate, and real emotion, which is, after all, what the study of history is all about. IT HAS BEEN A YEAR TO REMEMBER for the F1 in Schools team, with success for Team Unity not only on the national stage but also internationally, where we established a reputation as one of the best teams in the world!
In March 2018, we qualified for the UK National Final, and battled against 34 other teams for the prestigious title of UK National Champions. We excelled in our verbal presentation in front of industry professionals from companies such as Jaguar Land Rover and Red Bull, and our car, powered by a small CO2 gas cylinder, rocketed down the track in the fourth fastest time, giving us a great score from racing. When the awards were announced, we were thrilled to have won the Best Engineered Car… and the title of UK National Champions. This meant we had earned a place at the 2018 World Finals in Singapore!
Being UK National Champions earned us something of a reputation at the World Finals; many teams came to talk to us about our ‘winning formula’ – but it was nice to engage with students of the same age about a field we all want to enter. There were many sleepless nights during our stay, as we grappled with the complexity of our verbal presentation, but as we would soon find out, it would be worth it in the end...
In the racing, we finished 14th overall, recording our fastest-ever car times, which showed our efforts had really paid off. We were nominated for the Social Media Award and we were thrilled to win the Best Verbal Presentation, a very prestigious award. Overall in the competition we finished seventh out of 55 teams, something of which we were all extremely proud. Our sincere thanks go to all of our sponsors and the Technology department at Emmanuel College for their invaluable support.