Teenage recollections!

As I listened recently to the women who walked to the Durham miners gala to show solidarity with the men I remembered how few females existed in the Rochdale Labour Party when I was a teenager.
I was voted into being the secretary of my ward Labour Party when I was 15. We actually got our first Labour councillor elected that year. I was still in school.
When my headmistress called me into her study I stood outside her door with some trepidation. She had a fearsome reputation.
In fact after a brief telling off she revealed how much she knew about me. My alcoholic father, my then boy friend Jack...her pride in my place on the Trades and Labour Council. Her delight in getting a new councillor in place.
To say I was dumbfounded is definitely an understatement.
She wanted to see me to make sure I wouldn’t give up on my schooling...It was important to go on to further education for girls like me.
I went on but only until I’d collected enough exam results to get me into college.
At college I remembered Bugs with gratitude. Her name was Miss Keating.
As the only girl there who knew all the words of "The red flag" I taught it all my friends with pride...and thought of Bugs!
It was a different world back then..it is definitely better now in all sorts of ways...but the Durham miners gala goes on!


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