"Stop everything on wheels!"
“London express wrecked: dastardly outrage in North”, screamed the Daily Graphic newspaper's front-page headline of 11 May 1926.
This wasn't a report of mindless hooliganism or football-related violence on the nation’s railway, but the derailment of the famous Flying Scotsman passenger service, on 10 May, by eight striking miners during the UK General Strike of 1926.
The location of this apparent ‘dastardly’ deed? The mining village of Cramlington, Northumberland. The furthest north!
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Power in the hand of the worker
For nine dramatic days in May 1926 (4-12), roughly 2 million of the country's workers demonstrated their collective strength - a general strike - in solidarity with the coal miners, whose conditions and pay had worsened since the end of World War I in November 1918.
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"I used to say we were slaves. We were getting starvation wages"
- William Muckle, interviewed by the BBC in 1969, describing the treatment of miners in 1920's Cramlington.
On 10 May 1926, eight striking miners accidentally derailed the southbound Flying Scotsman passenger service, pulled by the No.2565 Merry Hampton* locomotive, at Cramlington. "Stop everything on wheels!" had been the command given in a union meeting. The miners wrongly believed the Flying Scotsman was a coal service undermining the strike.
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"Past me father coming up. He says, 'You've done it this time'. Which we had"
- Robert Harbottle, interviewed by the BBC in 1969, recounting the derailment of the Flying Scotsman.
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The entire train left the tracks due to a removed rail and turned onto its side (the miners watched from behind a bush!). The crash resulted in one injury - to a man's foot - and spilt milk churns in a goods van. An official Ministry of Transport report was published on 27 May 1926.
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After weeks of silence, in a display of loyalty by the village, the miners were eventually arrested. Their ensuing court case in Newcastle upon Tyne and convictions relied on the betrayal of friends who "turned King's evidence". The trial’s outcome captured international attention, with reports appearing in The Uralla Times newspaper, Uralla, NSW, Australia, on 5 July 1926 and the United States Virgin Islands' St. Croix Avis newspaper on 10 August 1926.
Crash! The famous Flying Scotsman passenger service derailed at Cramlington, Northumberland, on 10 May 1926.
(Image credit: The Northern Echo)
At London's Paddington Station, passengers stream off trains driven by strikebreakers during the UK General Strike of 1926.
(Image credit: UK Photo & Social History Archive)
Political prisoners
The Cramlington miners served their sentences at Maidstone Prison in Kent, a considerable and expensive journey for the families now facing destitution with the imprisonment of their breadwinners.
Fortunately, financial and legal assistance was provided by the International Class War Prisoners Aid, a society supporting working-class political prisoners, who paid the families' travel expenses to visit the prison and fought for the miners’ release.
"We were getting the same treatment as what murderers were getting and people that was incest[uous] with their own daughters"
- Thomas Roberts, interviewed by the BBC in 1969, describing imprisonment in Maidstone Prison.
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Release
On 1 September 1928, after two years and three months into their sentences, William "Bill" Muckle, William "Willy" Baker and Oliver "Ollie" Sanderson were released.
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The following year, after serving three years, William "Billy" Stephenson and James "Jimmy" Ellison were released on 11 July.
In the December, the last of the Train Wreckers - Thomas “Tommy” Roberts, Robert “Bob” Harbottle and Arthur Wilson - celebrated Christmas 1929 as free men. Their early release, agreed by the recently elected Labour Government of Ramsay McDonald, was on the condition that no political demonstrations would be held in the capital.
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This did not prevent celebrations at Newcastle's Central Station upon their return to the North East.
​Three released Cramlington miners:
William “Bill” Muckle (centre) with his mother - William “Billy” Baker (right) with his wife - Oliver “Ollie” Sanderson (left) with his wife.
(Image credit: Working Class Movement Library (WCML), Manchester)
Media
A 1969 BBC Two documentary, Yesterday's Witness: The Cramlington Train Wreckers, directed by Michael Rabiger, features rare footage of a long-gone rural Cramlington village and surrounding area, before 'new town' expansion, and interviews with the remaining train-wrecking miners.
The miners - William Muckle, Thomas Roberts, Robert Harbottle and Arthur Wilson - interviewed on camera, defended their actions in May 1926.
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"[W]e were respected by everybody... because it was took as a political crime"
- Thomas Roberts describing the attitude toward the 'Train Wreckers' after their release from prison.
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After the film was televised on 15 February 1970, it remained in the BBC archive for 53 years until a special public screening at Cramlington's Community Hub in July 2023.
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The 1976 novel Lightning in May, by the internationally renowned novelist and playwright Gordon Parker, was a fictionalised account of the Cramlington Train Wreckers. In May 1976, it was serialised in The Journal newspaper (Newcastle) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Flying Scotsman derailment.
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In 1981, William Muckle released his aptly titled book No Regrets. The book's historical content and message reportedly influenced Arthur Scargill, the former President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) (1982-2002), who led the union through the equally bitter and divisive 1984-85 miners' strike. "A civil war without bullets".
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*On 26 October 1947, the Merry Hampton (then No.66) derailed near Goswick, Northumberland, killing 28 passengers. Footage of the rescue can be viewed here.