"Lightning in May", by Gordon Parker (1976)

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The internationally renowned, North East author and playwright Gordon Parker writes:

 

1926. The country is at a standstill… almost! The striking miners in an East Northumberland community are desperate to preserve their livelihood. Some trains are still running, manned by amateurs far removed from the suffering working classes.

 

In a rash moment of supercharged desperation, the miners took up a section of track from the Edinburgh to London line and derailed the famous Flying Scotsman.

 

What a theme for a novel!

 

My idea was to recreate, in fictional form, these miners’ lives, loves and survival, while working at their onerous, dangerous and underpaid employment during the turbulence of the 1920s. From their creation, I try to build the reasons for this act, which could have resulted in the biggest mass murder in British history.

 

Firstly, I had to understand the underlying social and political atmosphere of the times, which meant reading many thick dusty tomes. The next task was to create a broad spectrum of characters that might populate such a North East community, from the mine owner, the schoolteacher, the doctor and the mining families themselves.

 

I managed to interview a few of the Cramlington miners during the 1970s. Still proud men, but the consequences that meant jail and a slur on their character were still lurking beneath the defiant “lightning flash” that happened in May 1926.

 

The novel had great international success. It carries a foreword by Baron Ted Willis (1914-22), the novelist, playwright and Labour Party supporter, and is still available on Amazon.

 

I hope my fictional characters reflect the true and intimate struggle of that East Northumberland community. Hopefully, future generations will read it, reflect and understand the injustices of those days almost a century ago. 

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Gordon Parker is the author of The Darkness of the Morning (1974 (a bestseller)), The Pool (1978), The Action of the Tiger (1981), A Waking of Rooks (2011 (e-book)) and The Priest and the Whistleblower (2023).