School shinty
It all started in the 1840s at Maria Lee’s lodging house in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Maria, the black landlady, let the police know whenever she thought one of her lodgers was up to no good.
The police were there so often that their horse and cart came to be known as the Black Maria. Soon all vehicles for moving prisoners, in both the US and Britain, were known as Black Marias.
FORTY YEARS AGO Friday April 13, 1984 Miners’strike begins to bite
The miners’ strike, which is currently halting coal production throughout the country, is also affecting seemingly unrelated industries, even in Mid Argyll, with the sawmill at KilmichaelGlassary now completely closed, with no chance of it reopening before the strike is settled.
The strike is already severely affecting coal supplies to the area, with the local coal merchant only having a small amount of coal for old age pensioners, but the major direct sufferers are the 12-strong workforce of the sawmill, who have been laid off indefinitely.
The mill is devoted entirely to providing pit props for National Coal Board pits and with their major customers, the Scottish and Yorkshire pits, completely strikebound there has been no work for some time and the staff have been laid off.
A spokesman for the mill said this week that there was no hope of any of the 12 workers at the sawmill returning to work before the end of the strike as they were unable to deliver any pit props because of the miners’ picket lines.
He said that some pit props had been successfully delivered to the Nottingham area, where the miners are not on strike, but that this was only a one-off delivery and that until the Scottish and Yorkshire miners stopped closing the pits with picket lines there would be no work for his staff.
The various self-employed sub-contractors who fell the trees which provide the mill with its timber are still working normally, but a prolonged miners’ strike would also be likely to cast doubts over their work in the future.
Meanwhile, the local coal merchant in Lochgilphead, the Lochgilphead Coal Company, is severely hit by the strike.
A spokesman said this week that although a delivery of coal for priority customers (pensioners, etc) had been delivered, the company was otherwise completely out of coal.
They did have some supplies of smokeless coal and had also dealt with sales of firewood and peat, but the coal situation was described as being “very serious”.
The only coal merchant in the area with any house coal – as opposed to smokeless fuel – is D McNair and Son, of Campbeltown, but a spokesman for that firm said this week that their own customers – and among those, old age pensioners – were being given first priority.
The shinty season has started in earnest for Lochgilphead Primary School.
They are involved in the schools competition for the MacKay Cup. For this, the schools taking part are divided into groups, Badenoch, Lochaber and Argyll. There are six teams in the Argyll section and the winner of this section will win the Archie MacCallum Memorial Trophy.
The teams play in two groups – Appin, Rockfield (Oban) in one group and Colglen (Kilmodan School), Tighnabruaich and Lochgilphead in the other.
Lochgilphead’s first match was against Colglen and it was played in the most atrocious weather conditions with Lochgilphead emerging the winners by seven goals to one.
In the return match in Lochgilphead on a perfect evening, Lochgilphead proved they were again the better team by winning by eight goals to one. The boys look forward now to taking on the team from Tighnabruaich.
SIXTY YEARS AGO Friday April 14, 1964 Separate tax for the Highlands
A policy of regionally differentiated taxation, which takes account of the inequality of conditions in the Highlands, is suggested in a resolution framed by the Federation of Crofters Unions.
The resolution, which has been sent to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties, asserts that revolutionary policies are necessary for the solution of the chronic Highland problem.
Repeating its demand that the development of the crofting counties must be by a development authority, adequately endowed with finance, the federation warns the Government not to put all its eggs into the tourist basket.
The resolution expresses the “gravest concern” that tourism, which will be only mildly palliative against unemployment and depopulation, might form the major proposal for the crofting islands in the promised White Paper on Highland development.
In another resolution union representatives deplore “the detrimental effects of the stop-go economic cycles on the less prosperous areas of the country, particularly the Highlands and Islands of Scotland”.
“Expansion comes belatedly to this area, if 2004: Fourth year Lochgilphead High School geography students Emma Francis and Rachael McKay with some of the delicious cakes they made for the coffee morning.
at all, and the usually succeeding economic squeezes, involving a brake on public investment programmes, make the Highland area a straggler in the wake of the more prosperous, and therefore more insulated, south.”
The federation also gave its support to the proposal for a new university at Inverness, and endorses a plan submitted by the Lochaber Crofters’ Union for afforestation of crofters’
common grazings. z With reference to the photograph caption on page 9 of the Argyllshire Advertiser of March 29, the caption of the winners of the 15-17 vocal duet from Mid Argyll Music Festival should read: ‘1984: Sharon and Barbara Ann Millar were the winners of the 15-17 vocal duet section of the fifth Mid Argyll Music Festival which was held in Lochgilphead High School.’