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Tommy Simpson: A day of tragedy
1967 Tom Simpson was a flier from the age of 12 when he started riding with the Harworth and District Cycling Club at Doncaster. In 1952, the 14-year-old Tom had his first season of time trials racing with the club who always encouraged junior talent. At 18, he won bronze in the 4,000 metres Team Pursuit in the 1956 Olympics in Australia.
Tom Simpson won a world title and eventually gave up his job as a draughtsman and went to live in France.
He got married, settled in Paris and as the first Englishman ever to wear the leader's yellow jersey in a Tour de France seemed set for future triumphs. Then in the burning heat of a July day on the slopes of a French mountain, disaster struck.
This is how we reported it on July 14:
"TOMMY SIMPSON, aged 29, Britain's former World Professional Road Race Champion, died in hospital at Carpentras, France last night after being overcome by heat exhaustion in the Tour de France Cycle Race, says a Reuter report from southern France. Simpson, Britain's best known racing cyclist, abandoned the tour on the steep slopes of the 6,000ft. Mount Ventoux. He had been in seventh position in the overall placings after 12 stages of the tour.
Simpson was born in Durham, but lived at Harworth, a mining village, near Doncaster, for most of his life. He went to the Continent in 1959 to seek his fortune as a professional rider, and was possibly at the peak of his racing career.
He was the first Englishman to wear the yellow jersey as overall leader in a Tour de France, and his triumphs in the road racing field have become a legend in British cycling. Simpson had been going well on the early part of the Ventoux climb, but with less than a mile to go to the summit he slumped over his cycle and fell off.
The British team car went to his aid and Simpson, though obviously in great distress, gasped: "Put me back on the bike".
He was helped back on the machine, but then collapsed again. He had difficulty with his breathing and was given oxygen before being picked up by the helicopter and taken to hospital.
Known abroad by countless thousands of cycling fans as "Mr Tom", he first came to the forefront of top class racing in 1961 when he won the Belgium Classic, the Tour of Flanders.
From that time on his racing made history all along the line. He won many classic races for the first time by an English rider, and he won the World Professional Road Title in 1965. At his semi detached council home in Festival Avenue, Harworth, last night, Tommy's father, Mr Thomas Simpson, said: "This has come as a tremendous shock and my wife is in a state of collapse. We are considering whether or not to travel to France." The first news his parents had of the tragedy was when they switched on the television to see if he had improved on his overnight position in the race. Tommy moved to the village with his parents when he was 12 and because his father could not afford to buy him a bicycle of his own Tommy took a job as a butcher's rounds boy so he could have regular use of a machine.
Married in 1961, Tommy made his home in Ghent, Belgium, and had bought a house in Tickhill ready for his retirement from racing. He has two children, Jane and Joanne.
Brian Robinson, of Mirfield, former professional cyclist and the first Briton ever to win a stage of the Tour, was close friend of Simpson's. He said last night: "Tommy was in his prime; he was well liked as a man for his character and his ability. I know the place well where Tom died. It is a hill of death."
The four remaining members of the British team decided last night to continue the Tour. The team manager, Alec Taylor, said: "I knew Tommy very well and I am sure that this is what he would have wanted." Mr Taylor said Simpson's widow would leave Corsica, where she and her children had been on holiday, to fly to Marseilles today.
A minute's silence will be observed in Simpson's memory before the Tour resumes today."
A post-mortem report said Tommy Simpson had taken amphetamines.
Live Aid rocks all over the world to fight famine
1985 At Wembley stadium, 72,000 people turned up to help Live Aid make millions for Africa. Television pictures were also beamed to over 1.5bn people in 160 countries making it the biggest broadcast ever known.
The Live Aid concert raised three times the 10m expected, with Britain contributing 1,100,000 to the global total of 30m.
Described as the Woodstock of the Eighties, the world's biggest rock festival was organised by Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof and began in London's midday sunshine with a fanfare for Prince Charles and Princess Diana and Status Quo performing Rocking All over the World. Stars were helicoptered into the arena in a line-up that included David Bowie, Wham and royal favourites Dire Straits.
Frequent appeals by Bob Geldof reminded viewers of the motive for the occasion: "Don't go to the pub tonight. Please stay in and give us your money. There are people dying now."
He took the call from the ruling family in Dubai who made the biggest single donation of 1m.
Across the UK eight appeal centres were set up with 200 phone lines to handle – mainly credit card – donations of up to 2,000.
In the US 22,000 pledges were received within five minutes of the Beach Boys taking to the stage in the simultaneous concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. The 16-hour music marathon was completed there that night with acts including Bob Dylan, Duran Duran and Paul Simon.
Nine months after the droughts, disease and famine in north eastern Africa were brought to the media's attention the UN warned that 160 million people were still affected.
Governments began a global relief operation but there are still problems of distribution in the worst hit areas – mainly Sudan and Ethiopia.
On the Monday morning, the Yorkshire Post's leader column said:
"It's only Rock and Roll," sang Mick Jagger and Tina Turner in the
John F Kennedy stadium in Philadelphia. True enough, but the Live Aid concert from midday Saturday until Sunday morning was all that and much else besides.
It was as Bob Geldof so aptly described it, "the greatest gig in the galaxy"...
Yet doubtless it crossed the minds of many at Wembley and Philadelphia and those at home that there are serious distortions in a world where TV pictures can be beamed by satellite across continents where pop stars can fly from one venue to the next by Concorde but where people are dying of hunger. The attempt to reconcile these extremes of human experienece gave the Live Aid concert dramatic and affecting poignancy. But if there is one single message to emerge from the Live Aid initiative it is that millions of peope simply will not tolerate children dying of starvation in this modern world. Live Aid proves that there is a will to fight famine – finding a way to do so ought to be the easy part... Bob Geldof's gifts are a bulging address book and an ability to twist arms but his inspiration and sense of mission reflects nothing but credit to the good name of rock and roll."
Live Aid eventually raised 40m. Half of the money was spent on food and half on long-term development.
Bob Geldof was given an honorary knighthood in 1986. In spite of these efforts 1.2 million people starved to death in Africa in the 1984-85 famine.
King is killed in Iraq coup
1958 A coup in Iraq on July 14 sparked jitters in the Middle East as a group of Iraqi army officers overthrew the monarchy. King Faisal was reported killed along with Nuri es Said, the prime minister of the Iraq-Jordan Federation. The body of the Crown Prince, the powerful uncle of the 23-year-old King Faisal, was reported hanging outside the Defence Ministry for all to see.
Crown Prince Abdul Illah Major-General Abdul Karim el Qasim was now Iraq's new prime minister, defence minister and commander-in-chief. Baghdad Radio announced the Army had liberated the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by "imperialism". The country was declared a republic and 12,000 Iraqi troops based in neighbouring Jordan were ordered to return.
The British embassy in Baghdad was ransacked and set on fire as Iraqis celebrated on the streets of the capital.
Fears over dock strike
1970 On July 16, the Home Secretary Reginald Maudling declared a state of emergency to deal with strikes at UK ports. It was the first national dock strike since 1926 and involved about 47,000 dockworkers across the country.
British dockers' representatives voted 48 to 32 in favour of a strike to raise their basic wage from 11 a week.
The Army ordered 36,000 troops – including the Royal Navy and RAF – to be on standby to handle cargo from the 150 ships affected.
The government expected the stoppage would hold up 75 per cent of UK imports and exports and asked strikers to return to work as a court of inquiry considers their grievances.
Great Yorkshire Show letters
One visit and I was hooked
From: Colin Newsome, Crescent Grange, Leeds.
My first visit to the Great Yorkshire Show was way back in 1949 when the show was held at Wakefield.
I was about to start work alongside my late father in a mill at Dewsbury. On the Monday prior to the show he told me he was taking me to the show the
following day, at the time I wondered how he could afford the cost as he only earned about 5 or 6 a week.
But he had a friend who worked at the Inland Waterways Office in Leeds and he had complimentary tickets from BOCM Selby.
Their stand stood proud at the end of the arena and, once inside, as my father and his friend found the bar, I was directed to the food table. Imagine my delight when told "get what you want lad". I must admit I stuffed myself. But that day I was hooked and visited the show most years afterwards.
For the last 24 years I have been on duty with the Corps of Commissionairs at the show and look forward each year to cleaning my brass buttons and polishing my shoes ready for duty at the show, the sounds and smells of the animals and the familiar voice of Christine Moor over the tannoy is wonderful and my thoughts always go back to that day in 1949 at Wakefield, what I would have missed if my father hadn't taken me there.
Food that cooked in the car boot
From: Ruth Mary Bryan Smith, Beverley Road, Anlaby, Hull.
You were asking for memories of the Yorkshire Show. I have two which stand out. First, as a schoolgirl in the early 1950s, I was at a boarding school in Pateley Bridge and on the middle day of the show we were allowed to go to the show providing we were met by our parents.
This was a big treat which we all enjoyed and coming from a farming family enjoyed seeing the animals.
The second, many years later when I visited the show with my husband and three children, we took a picnic all packed in the boot of the car.
It was such a hot day the box of butter completely melted and the tomatoes cooked: my children still occasionally comment on the day the food melted and
cooked.
I love the Yorkshire Post, I have grown up with it, and remember it coming to our farm each morning by post.
What a lovely special supplement for 250 years!
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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