What can you remember about your school lessons?
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'I liked English, I was always top in that--or second. Les Rowley was always top in the latter end, but the last couple of years I was pretty good, composition and writing. Maths, I used to hate them. Couldn't get on with them. Not when they started, they used to have these two sticks. What the hell do you call them? Logarithms. I could never get away with this algebra, never get away with that--the letters you know. Never get away with it. But ordinary addition, division and multiplying and that, I was spot on. But I couldn't get away with that algebra, couldn't. I used to go to night classes, my father made me go.'
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After you left school?
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'Fourteen. Just starting work. Oh, aye, still had to go there, though. They were supposed to be in building, construction. If you went on, you could get your City and Guilds and Higher Nationals and Ordinary Nationals and things like that. Why they used to get you a good job. That's how Les [Rowley] got his surveyor's ticket. Because he passed his written exam for Wellfield but he failed the interview. If you were a Catholic you had
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very little chance of getting in.'
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There was a Catholic grammar school then?
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'No, they didn't have their own secondary school. You used to go to Henry Smiths or St Josephs at Hartlepool. That's where Jack Kirk went. But you could pay to go there. John Callaghan, he went there, Henry Smiths. That's where you used to get your School Certificates. If you could get two or three of them you could get a good job. Why, Cally, he started in the dole office at Easington Village and he went from there and he finished up at County Hall and when he retired he was like a head of a department. They used to go to Sunderland, there was one at Sunderland. Our Gene went there. My father sent our Gene--but I think he used to pay for him--why I'm ten years older than him. He sent him there, but he wouldn't have it, so he got a job at the pit.'
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So there wasn't much chance of passing the 11 plus back then?
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'You had a chance, but you just had to look at the entrants into Wellfield. I mean, all the butchers and tradesmen in Thornley, they all had lads my age. Hanleys, Hills. Jack Hill's brother, he got away there, he finished up as a doctor, I think.'
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So Catholics could go to Wellfield then, too?
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'Oh, you could go to Wellfield.'
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And if you didn't?
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'You stopped on. Tommy Carr, he was the only one in our lot that got away. He just died there last year. He finished up working at the pit. Why, he was an Overman at the finish. He had a good job.'
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Did you want to go to Wellfield?
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'I wasn't bothered.'
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But you knew you didn't want to go down the pit?
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'Oh, aye! Well, that was the only thing there was, man. There was hell on when I left school and started work. See, our Hubert, he left
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five years before me and he got a job on the council because me father was on the council.
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'It was bad to get work then. But your granddad was on the council, see. He got our Hubert on the council but he stopped me. You
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couldn't have two sons out of one family, they made a rule and that’s
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how I got on for Jack Walton.
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NEXT: more on starting work
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