Danger waste to be moved: The week that was February 7 to 13, 1992

Rotherham Council was negotiating to buy the premises of Wath Recycling Limited, where 500 tonnes of dangerous chemicals had been stored in sealed containers for two-and-a half years.

Council officials said a purchase agreement would include the safe disposal of the waste which had been shipped to Wath from the US by parent company FMC and was the subject of a legal battle in America. The council said it was prepared to issue a compulsory purchase order to buy the site if talks broke down.

The authority wanted to acquire the land as part of its plan to regenerate a 1,000-acre area – including the derelict Wath Manvers complex – believed to be the country’s largest land reclamation scheme. Local campaigners had been fighting to get the toxic waste removed since its arrival in 1980.

A plea for an end to homophobia in the Church of England was made by Bishop of London David Hope.

But gay clergy – of whom there were thought to be a large proportion in the Church – still needed to set “high standards” said Dr Hope, a former Bishop of Wakefield.

Interviewed for a BBC documentary, he called for “decorum” where homosexuality was concerned, and said: “I think there is a considerable amount of homophobia about, not only in the Church but in society more generally. Christians ought to be affirming the value and dignity of each and every human being.”

Meanwhile, ministers from the 12 countries in the European Community took another step towards political and economic union in Maastricht.

The foreign and finance ministers of the EC member states signed the Treaty On European Union and the Maastricht Final Act, agreed in the Dutch town the previous December after years of debate.

The EC would henceforward be known officially as the European Union, with a definite framework for economic and monetary union now established.

New figures revealed the parlous state of recession-hit corporate Britain, in which company insolvencies had leapt by 45 per cent in a year. The national picture was more or less mirrored in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Almost 22,000 companies – around one in 48 active British firms – had gone into liquidation, according to the Department of Trade and Industry. Individual insolvencies grew by 83 per cent to 25,640 in the same period.

Peter Coles-Johnson, regional secretary of the Yorkshire and Humberside Chambers of Commerce, said the national trend was reflected in this region and proved that “...we are still at the bottom of the recessionary cycle.”

However, there was a tiny glimmer of hope, in that the rate of company failures had slowed perceptively towards the end of 1991.

A farmers’ leader dished out some tough love this week, when he told the National Farmers’ Union that it was time the organisation shed its image as an “elitist club of middle-aged men”.

NFU president David Naish said the union must allow women and younger farmers to play a much bigger role.

On the eve of the union’s annual conference he said that farming was a family business and all members of the family should be able to participate in the NFU’s activities.

Not a single woman had a place on the union’s 105-seat ruling council, although there would be at least two female farmers at the meeting