Peter Sands, editor from 1990 to 1993, recalls the moment his reporters came face-to-face with a gunman, and tells of his conversations with Princess Diana and Michael Fallon.
I WAS driving to work when the radio told me that three people had been shot near Consett. I knew immediately what had happened.
The story of Albert Dryden and his bungalow, built without planning permission in Butsfield, had been rumbling on for a year and today was the day it was being bulldozed. The media, including Echo reporter Mark Summers and photographer Mike Peckett, were all there.
Now three people had been shot – at least one of them was dead. It was a moment that hit me like a train. Had I sent two young men to their deaths?
I drove to the Darlington offices trying to calculate the odds – how many people would have been there, how close would Summers and Peckett be to the shooting?
I questioned whether I had done my due diligence.
Dryden had given warnings – he said he had “something in mind” and that he would “burn” anyone who knocked down his house.
In the office there was a long half hour where I came face-to-face with the real responsibility of editing.
The relief, when Peckett rang from a callbox and spoke to news editor Peter Barron, was huge.
The journalism soon took over the day.
Peckett’s pictures were shocking and we ran a sequence on page 1.
It was June 1991 and I had been editing the Echo for a year-and-a-half. It had been a whirlwind, working long hours, launching new supplements, shining lights in dark corners but this was the first big sobering moment of my editorship...one that has shaped my approach to journalism ever since.
The other life-changing event of my tenure came almost a year later with the General Election of 1992 (the one Neil Kinnock failed to win).
The week began with a bang.
Darlington was a marginal seat so I had commissioned a Mori Poll which said that the sitting MP Michael Fallon would lose with a seven per cent swing. We ran the results on the Monday.
Fallon, later to be Defence Secretary, was unhappy and came into the office to tell me, in no uncertain terms, just how unhappy he was.
The bigger moment, though, came on election night itself. The Echo had decommissioned its press in Darlington and had moved printing to our sister offices in York.
The new press, which gave us much-needed colour, was simply not good enough for the Echo’s six editions. There had been times when the paper was late and the pages blurred. I had crossed swords with the York management, accusing it of a cavalier attitude and “vandalising my paper”.
On election night our coverage had gone really well. By last edition we had all the results, reaction and graphics. We worked through the night – then there was the inevitable printing problem. It was heartbreaking.
I had organised breakfast for all the staff at the Golden Cock. I left the pub at 8.30am, went to the newsagents opposite and asked for an Echo. It wasn’t there. “Not coming out apparently.”
They offered me a Teesside Gazette with all of the results.
I went home, showered, returned to the office and wrote my resignation letter. I was persuaded to stay, but that night was a catalyst in my career. I left the following year.
Apart from those two landmark moments, editing the Echo was a dream. I regularly had to pinch myself to remember I was sitting in the same chair as Harold Evans, who had been my journalistic idol since I was a teenager.
I inherited an Echo that was in great shape with a vibrant newsroom from Allan Prosser and I set about taking it to the next stage.
The introduction of colour, despite the press problems, meant we could add supplements. Seven Days was a TV magazine, Echoes was aimed at our older readers and we did one-offs – not least for the Gulf War of 1991 – all graphic-heavy.
Sometimes I got carried away with the ideas of ‘specials’.
When Margaret Thatcher stood down as Prime Minister in 1990, she did so at 9am. Everyone headed into the office and I had the bright idea that we should do an afternoon edition. We threw all our efforts into a broadsheet paper with no advertising and no means of distribution to readers who weren’t expecting it.
Once we had finished, I thought “now what do we do”?
We had spent lots of money, used all our material and, on a huge story, we were starting the paper three hours later than usual.
Still, I will perhaps go down as the only editor to publish an evening Echo!
The paper had a big campaigning tradition and I was determined to carry that on.
We organised a charity football match at Ayresome Park to raise money for a girl who had lost her legs after being mown down by a drink-driver in South Bank. Kevin Keegan brought players from Newcastle to play a Boro all-stars team.
We also threw our weight, and a lot of cash, behind Durham’s successful bid for first class cricket status.
We went to Romania with Convoy Aid, taking supplies and a copy of the Echo printed in Romanian, we supported a leukaemia unit and fought for compensation for people infected by contaminated blood transfusions.
I was also happy to take on the law, particularly when it put restrictions on naming criminals purely because of their choice of victim.
Twice I was threatened with jail for contempt of court. The first time, I missed my eldest son's first day at school in Gainford as I was at Newcastle Crown Court. The second time, I was summoned to the Royal Courts of Justice in London, accused of publishing the previous convictions of an IRA terrorist after he had been arrested for the murder of a special constable in Tadcaster.
I am happy to report that I was found not guilty in both cases.
For a working class lad from Tyneside, editing The Great Daily Of The North was an honour and it allowed me to do things I never dreamed would be possible.
I was regularly on TV and radio. I even starred in a Tyne Tees version of Have I Got News For You, which readers delighted in telling me was the worst half hour's television they had ever seen.
I had lunch with Prime Minister John Major at 10 Downing Street, met Princess Diana who gave me an award for our coverage of disabled sport (and I got told off by an aide for chatting to her for too long) and had drinks with my then hero, Kevin Keegan.
The Echo won countless awards including the National Design Award, and we overtook the Yorkshire Post as the country’s biggest-selling regional newspaper.
It was hard work, but I met amazing people, including lifelong friends, and we had a lot of good times.
In the end, with the press problems and our GP describing my wife as a one-parent family, I reluctantly took the decision to move on.
It marked the end of a real adventure. I had turned up in Darlington as a 23-year-old single man just out of his traineeship and left in 1993 as a married father-of-three.
It was a privilege, it was fun and it was 15 years that shaped everything I have since done…both personally and professionally.
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