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Thanks Berenice, looking forward to seeing the statue in place in the near future now that they have exceeded their monetary target. It's a real shame that there are some real lowlifes in the community and here we are talking about the 1960's.

Trev

I'm not trying to condone theft, but living in Hartlepool from the 1960s on must have been pretty grim for a lot of people there, almost like being back in the 1930s. Successive governments seem to have completely ignored the area.

"Historically, the town’s economy was based on the port and coal exporting trade of the nineteenth century. This gave rise to iron and steel, shipbuilding and engineering industries which continued to flourish until the second half of the last century until the decline in heavy industries such as ship building, steel fabrication and manufacturing in the 1960s and 1970s.
Within this period, the Borough’s economic landscape dramatically changed with major job losses in these key industrial sectors. As a consequence, in 1985, unemployment peaked at 25%, an all time high for the Borough with 10,000 adults claiming unemployment benefits. Educational standards were very low and not improving: only around a quarter of school leavers obtained five GCSEs. The physical infrastructure of the town was in decline. There were large areas of derelict land, most notably the South Docks. Many major town centre buildings stood empty and almost one quarter of the shops in the town’s only significant shopping centre were unlet. As a consequence the town suffered with a poor image both locally and nationally."
www.northeastjobs.org.uk

The finished statue, not yet erected in the park.