THIS WEEK IN 1961:

BECAUSE the floor needs completely stripping and strengthening by the fitting of additional support beams, Worcester City Council is having to ban the holding of dances in the “unsafe”

ballroom of the Guildhall – the upstairs Assembly Room.

The news came in a shock statement issued by town clerk Bertram Webster.

However, city councillors are anxious to avoid inconvenience to organisers of dances, who have already booked the Guildhall and as an alternative they are being offered the use of the Lower Hall. Until strengthening work is carried out, dances are prohibited but dinners, concerts and public meetings may continue in the Assembly Room, providing the number of people attending does not exceed 320.

THIS WEEK IN 1971:

FROM the leader column of Berrow’s Worcester Journal: Think decimal. The country is about to be hit by one of the biggest upheavals since the last war and, as then, the people are almost entirely unprepared for it. The articles, advertisements and other advance publicity about D-Day – Decimal Currency Day – seem to had have very little effect so far, and the betting is that 99 per cent of those asked to give the value of 29½p in relation to £ s d would fail. Of course, the correct way to tackle the problem must surely be to think decimal as quickly as possible. We still have the good old pound to cling to and the odd shaped 50p firmly established in our minds as halfway there.

Then logically it shouldn’t take all that long to evaluate the figures in between. The shopkeepers must, and surely will, be kind in the early stages, helping in particular the elderly who will be confused. Profiteering on the changeover is inevitable and it is up to us, the Press, to expose such practices. In the short interval before the bomb bursts we can only reiterate – think decimal now. It will soften the blow.

THIS WEEK IN 1981:

WORCESTER’S jobless total has more than doubled since Margaret Thatcher came to power 21 months ago. In the city, 4,180 people are out of work compared with 2,003 in April 1979. More than 1,000 women are on the dole.

Unemployment nationally in January jumped by 175,223 to a total of 2,419,452 – 10 per cent of the working population, or one in 10 people.

􀁥 County councillors finalised plans this week for the 1981 closure of four schools – Wichenford Primary, Earls Croome Primary, St Mary’s Infants at Hanley Castle, and Childswickham First.

THIS WEEK IN 1991:

WEST Mercia Police are calling for “a high state of vigilance” from the public following the outbreak of the war in the Gulf.

Contingency plans to deal with any possible terrorism attacks in the county are already in place and the police are on a high state of readiness. A West Mercia Police spokesman said:“We would certainly support the advice of Prime Minister John Major and Home Secretary Kenneth Baker that the public should maintain common sense vigilance at this time.”