A Token for True East Leeds Grit

A Token for True East Leeds Grit
By David Harris
You may remember Dave (Old St Hilda’s lad) regaled us with the tale of ‘The Glencoe Railway Children’ way back in November 2016 here he is with another tale of true East Leeds grit.
1963 was one of the two worst winters in our life time, 1947 was the other but while 1947 was still in the days when we were young enough to enjoy sledging and snowball fighting by 1963 we were of an age where we had to go out into the world and earn a living. In 1963 I was a joiner working on the Merrion Centre which was still at ground level; I was working along with a few mates from East Leeds. Then it started to snow and it snowed and snowed for a full week. Snow was thick everywhere and ice on the pavements, there was no local sport and no matches at Elland Road for around twenty weeks, all work on building sites stopped.
We were told to go sign on at the labour exchange down near the Marquis of Granby pub for a pittance or volunteer for snow shifting with the Leeds City Council which was what we decided to do, there were four of us from the Glencoe’s two from ‘Mulligan’s Mansions’ and one lad from East End Park. We stayed together all the way though. You would clear the snow away one day and it would be back again the next day. The Council yard was in Dock Street down near the river – the Adelphi Pub was at the end of the road. There would be what seemed to be a couple of thousand queueing so you had to be early to get a start but the money was good for the time at thirty bob a day.
The system was: you showed your dole card at the window and they gave you a big token you took this token to the place where the brushes and shovels were kept and they took your token and gave you a brush or a shovel and a small token which you had to keep safe for at the end of the shift you had to take your brush or shovel back and they would take you small token off you and give you your big token back with which you could go to the kiosk and hand the big token in and draw your wage if you lost your brush or shovel and did not have one to take back you could not retrieve you big token and did not get paid, so if someone pinched you brush or shovel you had to make sure you pinched someone else’s or you had worked all day for nothing.
We were placed into gangs of around twenty each with a ganger and driven off by lorry to the area we would be clearing. The best area was the centre of town where at dinner time – we had an hour for dinner – we could nip into the ‘Horse and Trumpet’ or we had arrangement with the commissionaire at the News Theatre, we gave him ten bob and he would let us put out shovels and brushes in a little cubby hole and watch the cartoons, mainly however our area seemed to be Hunslet. The snow was so deep one time my mate Joe Moran lost his watch in the snow and we never found it. Mainly we were clearing the footpaths of ice and gritting over them but we were true East Leeds gents if we saw on old lady or gent struggling to cross the road we would help them the guy in charge of us didn’t mind us doing that, on one occasion an old lady on the other side of the road got her bag snatched and cried out but the guy didn’t get far we caught up with him and gave him a bit of East Leeds justice which included a couple of black eyes.
We six had a system four of us would clear the ice and snow and two would do the gritting when the gritters got too cold we would swap over this way we could keep going all day but it was so cold and they didn’t provide us with any protective clothing not even gloves we just arrived in our jeans and a pull over and our own shoes and we had to walk all the way to Dock Street on a morning before it got light and home again at night but it was so cold and we were usually wet but as the saying goes, ‘when the going gets tough the tough get going.’ But it was often it was too much for the older guys and they often collapsed on the job,
I was standing in the queue towards the end of the freezing weather when this ‘dodgy’ looking lad came up to me and said, ‘I see you have got your big token why don’t you just shoot off home and come back at 3.45 (the time we finished) show your big token and draw you wages, you didn’t draw your tools so you won’t have to book them back in so nobody will be the wiser and you can spend the day at home.’ Did I take advantage of this seemingly fool-proof wheeze? Ah well! That’s for me to know and you to wonder but two or three days later the snow cleared itself away anyway, but we had volunteered in true East Leeds fashion, would that have happened today? When I think back, was it an experience or just a dream?