The local Press is in a sorry state when a story like this is ignored

KILLED: The six Royal Canadian Air Force crew members

In my most recent meanderings I bemoaned the blatant bias in a good part of our national titles (more on this below). Today I look at the sorry state of the regional and local Press. I was alerted to this by my old chum Jim Kirby, a former advertising guru, who lives in the little hamlet of Hazelbury Bryan, Dorset.

Consider the following. You are a young reporter (as we all were once) learning your trade on a local paper when the wizened old news editor tells you to get down to the front hall "because someone says he's got a story". Yes, we've all been there. So, notebook in hand, you reluctantly sally forth and this is what your informant tells you: 

In the early hours of May 29,1944 Sydney Symes of the Home Guard watched from his base in the Hazelbury Bryan village hall as a Wellington bomber flew over, engulfed in flames and losing height, almost immediately crashing in a wheat field just a few hundred yards away. Its entire crew of six from the Royal Canadian Air Force were killed, some thrown in various directions from the plane, others incinerated in what remained of the fuselage. When Sid and his platoon arrived at the scene the pilot, Flying Officer Donald McKie, was breathing his last and died in Sid's arms.

The stricken Wellington was attempting to return to its base at RAF Ossington, Nottinghamshire from a bombing mission over Nantes in north-west France but had also dropped the latest Bletchley Park code books for the French Resistance in preparation for D-Day. With the bodies scattered over a large area the men of the platoon stood watch for more than 12 hours until the RAF and Army arrived to take over. But, because it was not yet known if any of the Bletchley code books were still onboard the village was sealed off for several days until a search had established they were not.

That was the background the chap in our imaginary front hall recounted but there was more. He was — is — Godfrey Symes, nephew of Sid, and he had organised an event to mark the unveiling of a memorial at Alner's Gorse, the field where the Wellington crashed.  The unveiling was to be on May 31 last and Craig McKie, son of the pilot and now well into his 80s, was coming over from Canada to unveil the plaque. 

There were to be wreaths laid by Air Commodore Polly Miller-Perkins of RAF South-West and Lt Col James Porter of the Royal British Legion and a blessing by RAF Chaplain Bryony Morrison. Three centenarians were there coming, two of them Halifax pilots and Sheila Kempster, one of the last surviving Bletchley codebreakers.

But that was by no means all; there would be a fly-past by the Red Arrows, six Tiger Moths and a Navy Wing Harvard. And that is exactly what happened three weeks ago on a glorious sunny Saturday. Three hundred people attended in a village of barely twice that number. 

And just one photographer whose pictures have never been published.

To date there has been almost no coverage of an event that should (and once would) have filled the local and regional Dorset media. The right pictures and some decent writing might well have made it into the nationals.  The resourceful Godfrey Symes, a RAF Gulf War and Falklands veteran, made sure the forthcoming event was known about but neither the New Valley News, the Gillingham and Shaftesbury News nor the Blackmore Vale Magazine, which 'serve' the North Dorset area, has published anything. 

Only the daily Dorset Echo belatedly — on June 11 — published a small report. But not the North Devon Gazette or the BBC's South-West TV. The Bournemouth News and Picture Agency turned up on the day but failed to have any of its stuff published.

Most of us will have spent our first years on a local newspaper, whether weekly or daily. Those times were vital and in my case they were also fun. We learned on the job and from those more senior around us. On the Belfast News Letter, the brilliant and larger than life editor Cowan Watson put me through the reporters' room, then features and finally news subs and never was there a better grounding. 

And even in my infancy as the greenest of reporters I would have recognised a story like the Wellington crash and its subsequent memorial as an event worthy of decent space. Add the Red Arrows and an old lady from Bletchley and a Spread would be almost guaranteed. 

But not apparently under the ownership of the likes of Reach (naturally) and Newsquest and the others intent on larger salaries for the managers and ever-dwindling circulations and crap websites. And a reliance on ChatGPT to fill the gaps. 

*****

Sorry about this but I feel I must return briefly to the bias I mentioned last time. Keir Starmer is no Gaitskell or Blair and he's presided over an unimpressive first year in government. But is anyone expected to believe that Telegraph headbanger Allister Heath when he writes: 'Starmer's premiership is holed below the waterline, his party is on the verge of disintegration… he could be Labour's final PM... let's hope he doesn't ruin Britain on the way out'.

As for Boris Johnson, here's the Mail heading to his latest bit of nasty nonsense: 'Starmer's leading the most craven British government of the past 100 years. They are so weak they make Neville Chamberlain look positively robust'.

Utter bollocks all round. Where are you George Gale when your country needs you...

*****

Bravo Ben Stokes and Heather Knight for trying to get our state schools behind cricket with the Knight-Stokes Cup, a T20 tournament open to kids in the state sector over the age of 15 which launches next year. Both the England captain and Knight, the former England Women's skipper, were comprehensive-educated unlike most of their team-mates.   

The vast majority of the England men who start their series against India this week went to public schools, Rugby, Whitgift, Stowe, Tonbridge and Cranleigh among them. In the case of Harry Brook (Sedbergh) and Joe Root (Worksop) they were both in the state sector when offered cricket scholarships by their respective schools. Both batsmen are as brilliant as they are in part thanks to the coaching and facilities the independent schools offer.

The good news is that the Knight-Stokes Cup, conceived by state-educated Michael Vaughan, will have the help of the independents by lending grounds and hopefully some of the very best coaches, often former Test players themselves. We need to make our greatest summer game more egalitarian (70 per cent of the England team are the product of the public schools whereas only seven per cent of Britain's kids are).

ALAN FRAME

18 June 2025