Pages in a life

A reporter remembers

Graham Bradshaw

• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781528907064
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies

Pages in a Life charts the encounters in courtrooms, council chambers and sports fields that helped to start a young journalist's career. His journey reflects his work in a vibrant and lively town in the Nottinghamshire coalfield and a path filled with laughs and surprises, taking in everything from the cricket star Harold Larwood to the notorious 'Black Panther' Donald Neilson.

1 Black Panthers and Blue Noses

Roger, the photographer, bounced up and down a couple of times while I did an elegant dance, like somebody trying to put out a fag end with each foot. Come to think of it, I wished one of the three of us was a smoker; maybe all of us could have huddled round a glowing coffin nail for warmth. Not for the first time Steve, the other photographer, remarked that the night air was bracing in the extreme although, being a poetic soul, he may have quoted the immortal line, we thought, from Steptoe & Son: “I’m colder than the icicle on a penguin’s chuff.”

And, not the first time, I thought that the fact that I was standing in a freezing courtyard behind Mansfield police station in the middle of a winter night instead of being tucked up in a warm bed was my own damned fault.

I had been finishing off some stuff in the office about teatime when Steve came in. “Are you going to the press conference?” he asked.

“What press conference?”

He raised his eyes to heaven. “Only the bloody Black Panther bloody press conference.”

Rumours and details of the story had been emerging all day. Two local coppers in a Panda car had been held at gunpoint before arresting a man who had been hunted throughout the country. Never mind all this fair trial malarkey, Steve was sure it was the notorious Black Panther, as suspected.

I had been working on the Mansfield Chronicle Advertiser – or CHAD as it was known in the town – for several years but one of my colleagues had spent many more years reporting for the Nottingham Evening Post before joining us. He had been out keeping up on developments.

“Where’s Albert gone?” asked Steve. Another good question to which I had no answer. “There’s going to be a press conference about 8.30 at the cop shop: surely we’ve got to have somebody there.” I could only agree.

Plan A had been that I would end the working week by meeting a couple of friends, Paul and Martin, for a beer. I rang them and said that I was considering passing on the social invitation. Both said that working on a local weekly paper it was by far the biggest story I would be likely to be involved with, even if peripherally, and I wouldn’t forgive myself for missing out. The Black Panther had committed about seven post office robberies, killing anyone who got in his way, before he kidnapped and killed the teenager Lesley Whittle. It would be good experience, they said, which rather worried me. It was an continuing trend that whenever a job was ‘good experience’ it seemed to involve me being bored out of my brain, half-drowned, frozen to death or a combination of them all. I told them an outline of the details that we had so far and it only tended to confirm my view that I should join our photographers at the press conference.

It was to prove a somewhat cagey affair because what was said had to conform to the rule that someone was innocent until proved guilty in a court of law. However, the officers who had led the hunt for the Panther had travelled to Mansfield and all the indications were good that a massive hunt had finally yielded results.

The local policemen involved in the capture were Stuart McKenzie and also Tony White, the latter of whom I knew at least by sight. He once flagged down my car as I was starting to drive home in the late evening. I wound down the window and he said, “It’s OK, it’s just that I knew it was your car and I wanted to make sure it was you driving it and not a car thief.” It struck me as good policing as well as being very courteous to me. I was very grateful for being stopped like that and gave him my thanks, which was better than having a shotgun stuck up his nose. Whatever else was in doubt about that night, what was sure is that those two local coppers were heroes and made our streets safer for everyone.

The two officers were perhaps lucky to escape at least serious injury as the Panther’s gun went off when Tony saw his chance and pushed away the shotgun, which had been jammed in his colleague’s armpit as the Panda was travelling through Rainworth. The two found allies in two men from the queue for the local chippy. Together they got the Panther handcuffed to railings.

Local legend is that one of the have-a-go heroes suggested that the coppers might like to take the opportunity, while they waited for back-up, to get revenge on the man who had subjected them to a terrifying ordeal. When he was told they could not do that he is alleged to have said, “Well, I friggin’ can.” Certainly, when a picture the Panther could be published later, his face showed some wear and tear. Probably it was inflicted during the struggle, but if not nobody in the crowd at the scene that night would have worried too much.

Later, after the trial verdict, I had moved on to sub-editing and we laid out a spread about the Panther. One of the illustrations was a cartoon from a copper who was obviously something of an artist too – showing a panda upper-cutting a panther.

The plan was to take the suspect – shortly to be confirmed as Donald Neilson – to Kidsgrove, where Lesley Whittle had been kidnapped. So a phalanx of journalists filed out into the station yard and the wait began.

The yard out the back was ringed with garages and the gaggle of journos took what shelter they could find. We were under cover at least, but there were no doors, and setting a cop car on fire for the warmth did not seem to be a good idea. So we settled down and waited… and waited… and… well, you get the idea.

Finally we got some relief as a police van swept into the yard. Two coppers got out and threw open the back doors. The flash of camera bulbs lit up the entire yard like a mix of Christmas decorations and the Blackpool Illuminations. In the centre of this pool of light was the figure of a Mansfield pisshead. He stood blinded and bemused and then an enormous grin spread across his face and he spread his arms wide. He continued to grin as the coppers helped him to wobble into the station to go and sleep it off, along with waving like the Pope bestowing benedictions. He was followed by an enthusiastic round of applause.

If his wife or partner needed any proof of where he was that night there were hundreds of pieces of photographic evidence available.

Then we all stopped chuckling and went back to waiting. As I did so I mused about the future. Even if this bloke was not the Panther, he was definitely a bad ’un. We later learned that apart from the shotgun he had a whole load of knives and equipment for doing no good. There would eventually be a trial and the hope was that he would be behind bars for life. I, of course, am not a vindictive man but I dearly hoped his cell would be cold.

Eventually the back door to the police station opened. This was promising. There had been no reason, apart from boredom, why we had previously got so excited about a vehicle coming into the station yard since it was hardly likely to be involved with the main business. This time a whole crowd of policemen emerged and formed up into the tunnel, several deep. They were certainly taking no chances. Then they joined us in another wait.

I ended up standing behind a young copper who proved friendly and chatty and had obviously been involved with the suspect. “I’ll say one thing for the bastard,” he said. “He’d certainly kept himself in shape. He has the body of a much younger man.” He looked down wistfully at his own physique. I’m sure he could handle himself when the need arose, but I would call his stature portly rather than athletic. Being more along the lines of an under-nourished whippet myself, I sympathised.

We have all viewed scenes of crime suspects emerging from or being put into police vehicles with the cliché of a blanket over their head, but this one felt very different. Probably it was just that I was close to the action this time. The fact that it was dead of night and the flashbulbs were made so blinding that added to the drama. Whatever, after so much time crawling by, it seemed to be quickly finished – the clump of car doors, the roar of an engine and the brief flare of a vehicle’s lights and then a strange quiet followed.

Steve and Roger got their gear together. Our conflab on events was over pretty quickly as well. They would have film to develop, I would have notes to sort into order and we would all have tales to tell.

At the time I was scrounging off my parents in Nottingham. I thought about going back into the office, but not for long. It was an advantage to be working on a weekly newspaper. I jumped in my car, turned the heater up full blast and headed for home.

2 In Your Own Words

“Are you an extrovert or an introvert?” the editor had asked during my interview for the role of junior reporter.

“Pervert” was the true answer, according to another reporter when she later heard of the conversation. The problem with that was that I never did detect any trace of a sense of humour in the bloke who was deciding my fate.

I remember that as I said introvert I was convinced that the truth would cost me dear. To my surprise and relief he said that was good. “Any idiot can wander about with a notebook asking questions but it’s what happens in front of a typewriter that matters.”

Well, this particular idiot begs to differ. It was going out and meeting people and finding the right questions to ask and the right approach that I sometimes had trouble with.

The job I came to hate the most was attending the annual dinner of various clubs and organisations. I was OK on reporting the speeches but first I had to sit through a meal I didn’t particularly want among people who, while generally very welcoming, I had never met.

Certainly my interviewing career had its ups and downs.

The passage of time dims memories. I don’t really remember all the details of an interview I conducted with a tall, imposing and distinguished man but I bitterly remember the feeling.

He explained slowly and carefully to me about how he had solved something by harnessing all the best qualities of a ‘grangejabbitoscillator’ and asked if I followed him. I assured him, airily, that I had three at home and asked my next questio...