FROM OUR ARCHIVES

5 YEARS AGO

James Crosby, the former chief executive of HBOS, has been formally stripped of his knighthood at his own request after a scathing Westminster report into the collapse of the Scottish bank. It follows a meeting of Whitehall’s Honours Forfeiture Committee where Mr Crosby’s move to shed his honour, bestowed in 2006 for services to the finance industry, was accepted. Mr Crosby asked to have the honour removed after the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards claimed he had been the “architect of the strategy that set the course for disaster” in his handling of HBOS, which went on to receive a bailout of almost £30 billion of public funds.

10 YEARS AGO

Gordon Brown’s eclectic musical taste has veered back to his roots with the disclosure that his latest favourite song is a Harry Lauder classic. The embattled Prime Minister, pictured, may be signalling a new mood of defiance with his choice of Keep Right on to the

End of the Road. The song was written by Lauder shortly after his son was killed in action during the First World War and, poignantly, its lyrics urge “Tho’ you’re tired and weary still journey on”. Mr Brown declared his choice in a letter to pupils at Sidlaw Primary School in Dundee.

25 YEARS AGO

The Department of Transport has been forced to abandon its plan to impose a reduced system of safety broadcasts about the movement of Royal Navy submarines in and around the Clyde. The Subfacts scheme, drawn up in the wake of the accidental sinking of the Carradale trawler Antares with the loss of four lives in 1990, is to continue indefinitely until Scottish fishermen have been consulted and agree to a new safety agenda. The Department intended to end the current four-hourly broadcasts by the coastguards and transfer the service to British Telecom’s coastal relay stations without involving either the trawlermen or the submariners at the RN’S Faslane base.

50 YEARS AGO

President Johnson’s latest attempt to introduce a tougher gun control law was defeated yesterday in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee by a 16-16 tied vote. At the White House, the President called on the committee to reconsider promptly what he called “this shocking blow to the safety of every citizen in this country.” The chairman, Mr Emanuel Celler (Democrat-new York) held out hope for a favourable vote next week, however.

The Bill, submitted by the Administration yesterday would forbid the mail order sales of rifles and shotguns as well as of hand guns.