penninemagazine

Suggest a trip to Hebden Bridge this weekend and the only problem you’re likely to encounter is finding a place to park. Part of the attraction is the amazing range of independent, specialist shops which won the town top spot in a list of least-cloned towns in Britain.

Another reason is Hebden Bridge’s undeniably off-beat residents. This harks back to when property prices were low and hippy-ish people came here to settle from all over the country. The rich creative life they have established in the town saw it acclaimed in British Airways Inflight magazine as “fourth funkiest town in the world” – top in Europe.

Yet things weren’t always like this.

If you’d suggested that trip to Hebden Bridge four decades ago, the chances are that people would have thought you were barmy.

The town then was more dead than dying, young people left as a matter of routine, the houses were becoming derelict and the mills had already beaten them to it.

In a room in a former Baptist chapel, in summer 1979, a group of people were determined to change this. Indeed, they had already begun that process and what they were debating now was the launching of a magazine that would help change people’s attitudes and promote regeneration; not just in Hebden Bridge but across the whole of the South Pennines.

The group was the conservationist charity Pennine Heritage, and prominent among its members were David Fletcher and David Ellis, then polytechnic lecturers, and accountant David Shutt, now ennobled and a Liberal Democrat whip in the House of Lords.

The magazine was called Pennine and its famously black and white pages would be adorned by such luminaries as Alan Bennett, novelist Glyn Hughes, Austin Mitchell, Bernard Ingham (then Margaret Thatcher’s right-hand man), photographer Martin Parr and even, by way of a rarely granted interview, JB Priestley.

Richard Catlow was very much a junior member of the group, but as the only person with journalistic experience – a newly-qualified reporter on a local paper – became editor. There were no paid staff or contributors and even the mighty Mr Bennett received exactly the same as the editor – nothing.

In October, with minimal promotion and even less money, the magazine launched in the same week that billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith brought out the first issue of his Now magazine – it was to be the British equivalent of America’s Time – backed by plenty of both.

One magazine quickly folded, the other went on, boosted by word-of-mouth and a loyal and growing band of contributors, to achieve more than respectable sales, a sort of cult status (just go to a book fair and there’s always someone selling back issues) and, most importantly I believe, to help build a new South Pennine region

Pennine Magazine Issue 1

After three years the following editorial appeared, which sums up perfectly what the magazine was all about.

It’s Pennine’s third birthday and the  pangs of birth (it was rather a painful  delivery) and the triumphs of learning  to crawl, then walk and even occasionally run, are behind us.

Three’s not much of an age perhaps,  but it’s time enough to put the past  into some sort of perspective. It seems  right to remind our long-standing  readers just how Pennine came about,  how it comes out and, indeed, why it  appeared at all, and to let our newer  readers, who must have guessed  there’s something a little different  about this publication, know just what  this difference is.

First came conception in some  darkened room, I forget where now.  People who had come together in the  Pennine Park Association and other  voluntary groups thought a magazine  could put across their message.

Put simply, the message was — and  IS — that the central Pennines with its  gritstone hills and textile towns is more  than just a sandwich filling between  the limestone slices of the Yorkshire  Dales and the Peak District.

We live and work here because we  like it — not because we have to. We  enjoy being here. Where else can you  be within walking distance of wilderness and bustling town centres? Where  else has such a wealth of history, unappreciated though it may have been?

It seemed fairly obvious to us that  places like Huddersfield and Halifax,  Burnley and Oldham had a lot in  common — they shared the same  problems and the same opportunities.  But people on each side of the Pennines were going about their business  in virtual ignorance of what was  happening just a few miles over the  hill.

The Pennines might no longer be a  barrier to travel, but as far as the spread  of information was concerned they  were a veritable Iron Curtain. On the  Lancashire side you watch Look North  West and Granada Reports from  Manchester. It’s Look North and Calendar for Yorkshire folk.

Radio stations go up to the Pennine  watershed and then stop dead. The  national newspapers editionise on a  Lancashire and Yorkshire basis. The  local newspapers are what they say — local and other magazines are firmly  based on their counties.

That’s where Pennine came in.  

But it’s one thing to have a bright  idea. It’s quite another to put it into  practice.

There we were, sat round the table  with no money and no experience of  running magazines. There was no-one  who had ever sold an advert, no-one  who knew how you went about circulating a magazine and no-one who had  much of a clue about printing.

The money came with a loan from  the Joseph Rowntree Social Service  Trust, the knowledge from reading,  asking and by simply going ahead and  finding out. Any expert would tell you  it was a recipe for disaster — but we’re  still here and more people buy every  issue that we produce.

We got offices, we got a secretary  who has been run off her feet, but, for  almost everyone else, producing Pennine has been an unpaid part-time job  on top of doing a full-time job elsewhere or the equally time-consuming  task of bringing up young children.

People ring up asking to speak to the  editor or one of the reporters, or  wondering if we can send a photographer round to see them that afternoon. After the initial shock of being  told none are there, most people adapt  quite happily to being interviewed at  evenings or some odd hour at weekend.

Many even enter into the spirit and  offer to take photographs themselves  or suggest someone they know who  would be willing to compile the article.  It not only works— it works very well.  People are getting the idea that Pennine isn’t something which belongs to  a few of us and which you can read, but  something which belongs to all who  live in or care about the Pennines.

When the first unsolicited articles  began to arrive it was almost a matter  of drawing straws to decide who was to  tell these folk that we were happy (if  the article was good enough) to print  it, but that we wouldn’t be paying them  anything.

The letters went out. We waited,  baited breath. Then the answers came.  Almost all of them said “use my article  by all means” or something of that  sort.

And so it has gone on. Every article  that has ever appeared in Pennine — and among the writers have been  famous names from every walk of life  and some of the best writers in the  business — has been contributed freely.  The same goes with the photographs.

Still, there’s not many publications  where everyone gets the same rate as  the editor!

You might think a set-up like this  would lead to amateurishness in the  worst sense of that word. But we’ve  found that people willing to do something for nothing are often of the highest possible calibre.

Now we’re coming to a stage where  rising sales means the old free-wheelin’  days could come to an end. But I fancy  we might lose more than we’d gain by  that course.

Time alone will tell. But I wouldn’t  be surprised if things stay much the  same and in three years from now we  had  salesfigures that would be  envied by anyone and a wage bill they  just wouldn’t believe!