FROM OUR ARCHIVES

5 YEARS AGO

A bear brought to Scotland in 1946 by Polish troops returning from the Italian campaign has been honoured on the 50th anniversary of his death. Wojtek, a 500lb Syrian brown bear, helped carry ammunition at the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy and became a celebrity in Scotland when he arrived with thousands of Poles based in army camps in the Borders. The men and the bear became part of the community.

After the camps were closed in 1947 the bear was homed in Edinburgh Zoo, where it died in 1963.

10 YEARS AGO

Chancellor Alistair Darling, pictured, last night issued his toughest warning yet to banks, telling them they must treat their customers fairly and threatening fresh action if they fail to do so. In a speech to Scottish business leaders, he said: “In the same way that banks expect customers to stick to their side of the deal, customers can expect the banks to stick to theirs.” The Bank of England slashed interest rates by one percentage point, from 3-per cent to just 2-per cent, the lowest rate since 1951.

25 YEARS AGO

The Chancellor, Mr Kenneth Clarke, last night brusquely dismissed Mr Jacques Delors’s blueprint for steering Europe out of recession. After six hours of bruising exchanges during which Mr Delors’s longawaited proposals were discussed in his absence by Finance Ministers, it appeared that the 12 European Union states were hopelessly split on how to tackle soaring unemployment. This raises the prospect of Friday’s EU summit in Brussels failing to agree a common approach to job creation.

50 YEARS AGO

Parents of primary pupils in Glasgow are to have the option of sending them to school at 9.30 a.m. instead of 9.00 a.m. from next week until February 14 because of the additional morning darkness of British Standard Time. A special education sub-committee set up to consider the effects of B.S.T. agreed that parents who wish may apply to head masters for permission to send their children to school half an hour later. This applies only to primary pupils, whose classes will continue to open at 9 a.m.

100 YEARS AGO

The first draft of men from overseas for demobilisation will arrive in this country next week. The elaborate machinery for their transference to civil life will then be in full running order, and the great changeover will proceed on ordinary and welldefined lines. The men who are due next week are not the first to doff the uniform since the armistice was signed, for the “demobilisers” themselves – men, for instance, whose pre-war occupation was in Employment Exchanges –have already been released.