MEMORIES 221 was full of men and marches as hundreds of Shildon Wagon Works employees tried to save their jobs in the early 1980s.

They walked behind banners, bands, MPs and trade union officials. There was even an 1983 picture of Tony Blair, only six weeks after he was first elected as MP for Sedgefield, standing on the back of a low loader along with Derek Foster, the Bishop Auckland MP, addressing a rally at the Masons Arms level crossing outside the Shildon shops.

Billy Neilson, who later became Mr Foster’s agent, remembers that there were three large marches: Shildon and Darlington, and then in London from Kings Cross to the Houses of Parliament. There was also a rally at the Labour conference in Brighton.

It was the picture of the Darlington rally that caught Billy’s eye. It was held on March 13,1983, during the Darlington by-election which had been caused by the sudden death of the sitting Labour MP, Ted Fletcher. As the marchers marched, the Conservative candidate, Michael Fallon, toured the town centre with a megaphone, broadcasting an alternative message.

Billy spotted on the front row of the march Roland Boyes, who was then the Durham MEP but within three months would become the MP for Houghton and Washington. Next to him was Ossie O’Brien, the Darlington Labour candidate who would win the by-election but only held his seat for 11 weeks and a day – one of the shortest Parliamentary careers in history.

Beside Mr O’Brien is Mr Foster, and then comes Peter Snape, the MP for West Bromwich East, who was a railwayman by trade and is now Lord Snape.

Over Mr Foster’s shoulder is a shadowy character in sunglasses and a bowler hat – it is Billy Neilson himself.

His apparel was a mocking tribute to Lord Hailsham whom, during the previous round of rail cutbacks in the 1960s, had been made Overlord of the North by the Conservative government. Hailsham had arrived in the North-East in February 1963 to revive the ailing economy wearing a cloth cap – as he had only previously been seen in a bowler hat, this was regarded as a patronising photo-stunt.

He offered a variety of excuses - he'd left his bowler in his car in London, found Newcastle so cold that he'd bought a cloth cap to replace the one he'd been wearing for 25 years when shooting - but the cap became the enduring image of his mission.

Therefore, 20 years later, as a reverse political ferret, Billy decided to don a bowler hat.

He also remembers that after the Shildon march on February 21, 1983, there was a rally on the town’s football ground. “I was the last speaker,” he says. “I was told to keep it short, so I only spoke three words: Save Our Shops. This became the headline in the Evening Despatch newspaper and the slogan for the campaign.”

Unfortunately, the campaign was unsuccessful. The wagonworks closed on June 29, 1984, with the loss of 1,750 jobs – a blow from which it took Shildon’s economy a decade to recover.

OTHER Shildon pictures in Memories 221 were connected to the 1975 cavalcade which celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, with an exhibition of locos in the wagonworks.

“The exhibition was opened by the politician William Whitelaw, one of whose relatives – also William Whitelaw – had been chairman of the North British Railway and after the amalgamation of 1923 became the first chairman of the London and North Eastern Railway, a position he held until 1938. One of Gresley's A4 locomotives was named after him,” writes David Shevels.

“At the opening in 1975, Mr Whitelaw named an LMS locomotive George Stephenson – in Shildon of all places!

“A temporary station was installed near the Masons Arms for steam engines to haul a few coaches with passengers down to the marshalling yards nearly to the cattle bridge and back. Two engines were used one at each end. One of the engines used was Raveningham Hall, the engine in your photograph.”

IN Memories 222, there was “a ripple in the reservoir” – the story of Sadberge’s reservoir and the large boulder that was found within it. The reservoir’s role was to store water from the reservoirs of upper Teesdale so that it could be easily accessed by the thirsty industries of Teesside.

From 1971 to 1999, Beatrice Cuthbertson was Sadberge’s representative on Darlington Borough Council and in 1987-88 she was the town’s mayor. Still living in Sadberge, she has a connection with the Teesdale reservoirs that were constructed in the 20 years before the First World War.

“My grandfather, James Harvey, was in charge of the building of Grassholme, Hury, Blackton and Selsett reservoirs,” she says. “They brought labourers over from Ireland and installed them in a temporary village beside the reservoir.

“I remember grandfather telling me about Pincher Paine who had a shop in the village, and every Friday night the shop’s windows were battened up because the Irish would go drinking and wreck the place.

“He said Pincher Paine’s wife would have to be taken home in a wheelbarrow.”