General Strike

The former public house, The Crooked Billet, has two marvellous terracotta wyverns on its gables. A crooked billet or staff was the blazon of the Hewitt family, one-time residents of the Old Hall (see the village trail on this site).

Mr Robinson: Times were hard for many following the Great War. There was much unemployment and the General Strike [1926] brought further difficulties. Although one or two trains did run on the Great Central line, those who went to school at Lutterworth either walked or went by cycle. Normally, a large contingent went to Lutterworth by the twenty to eight train. Up to the time of the General Strike, my father had been the special constable, complete with truncheon, though I could never imagine him ever using it. At the time of the General Strike, PC Gilbert was sent by the inspector of police at Lutterworth to order my father to guard the tunnel in Gilmorton Road. Asked whom he had to guard the tunnel against, PC Gilbert replied, ‘The railwaymen’. Now, all the railwaymen in Dunton were friends of ours, they wouldn’t have dreamt of damaging railway property so my father told PC Gilbert to tell the inspector he wouldn’t go. Within an hour the PC was back again with a request that my father hand in his staff and badge, and that was the end of his term of office as special constable.

©EMOHA