The retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his interview in the early 1960s with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said: "January and February 1947 was the worst weather any of us had experienced. Freezing cold, thick snow, electricity off for most of the day, little coal and food shortages..
"Old people and kiddies too were dying. I saw Jimmy up at the Mile End Cemetery, he'd buried one of the old dears who looked after a couple of his houses. He was angry."First thing he did was visit some West End houses that night. They all had electric fires, none had trickled through to us. Next morning there was a free distribution across the manor.
"He took the lads for a day out in Kent, place near Deal called Betteshanger. The coal lads were having a laugh, off 'sick' half the time, playing cards down the mines. They had just been nationalised and the unions were in clover.
"Big fight broke out in the social club and the 'sick' blokes went back to work. Jimmy and One-Line went for a walk in the snow with some of the union top nobs. Coal deliveries improved out of sight with lorry-loads turning up in Poplar. Jimmy stored it on the bomb sites and we all had blazing fires for the rest of that winter."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colour-Lemon-Surrender-1940-ebook/dp/B008USR7FA
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