When Heather Lea waved goodbye to her family 50 years ago as they boarded the ferry to the Isle of Man, she couldn’t have known it would be the last time she would ever see them.
Heather’s parents, Elizabeth and Richard Cheetham, along with her little sister June, were going on holiday.
It was an annual family ritual they all looked forward to, going on a trip to the island in the Irish Sea and staying at a seafront guest house in Douglas.
Although Heather, 69, wasn’t joining this time and instead, seeing off the family alongside her husband Reg, now 79, she knew one of the highlights of their trip would be somewhere they’d all visited before – the newly opened Summerland.
A dazzling building designed to hold 10,000 tourists, the Summerland leisure complex was everything you’d want from a seaside holiday under one roof – dance halls, bars, restaurants, a bingo hall and five floors of amusement arcade games.
It was made all the more impressive by a cavernous glass structure that covered the building, a dome that made it seem ‘sunny’ all the time, no matter what the weather.
On Thursday 2 August 1973, the Cheetham family visited the complex. They never made it out alive.
The family, alongside 47 other people, including 11 children, died after a fire engulfed the entire building in under an hour in one of the biggest fire disasters since the Second World War.
“We were watching TV and we’d seen there had been a big explosion,” Heather recalls.
“The shock of seeing it on television like that… once the fire took hold, the building came down so quickly, everyone thought it was an explosion.
“A number appeared on the screen and we started dialling, but it took 12 hours for us to get through and they still couldn’t tell us whether my family was alive or dead.”
The next week, the newly married Heather and Reg lived through what they describe as a “horrendous nightmare”.
“I had a sinking feeling I would never see them again, because if they could’ve got to a phone, they would have called.”
Eventually, they were told of the deaths of Elizabeth and 13-year-old June.
Reg was asked to find the dental records of his father-in-law Richard as his body wasn’t even recognisable.
All three died of burns, according to the coroner’s office.
Image: June with her mother Elizabeth in 1972. Pic: Reg Lea
“A witness at the time said my mother and sister had gone into the building to collect some bingo winnings, and when the fire started, my dad ran into the burning building to try and save them,” says Heather.
“It’s a horrible thing to happen to anybody.”
The main causes of death for the victims were suffocation, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns and multiple injuries from falling.
A total of 102 people were injured – almost all were holidaymakers who had come for a break from the north of England.
The fire was thought to have been started by a discarded cigarette.
“We coped because we were newly married, we had a new life,” says Heather.
Reg adds that the couple stuck to their daily routine and tried to carry on as best they could.
“But I remember about two months after it happened, I went to see my doctor to ask for help, and he said, ‘is your marriage OK?’
“I had to say… ‘I’m not here for my marriage, can you help me with Summerland?'”
The couple, who now live in the Wirral, Merseyside, still find it painful to talk about the subject to this day – but it’s the findings of an investigation into the inferno that stays with them.
‘They said no villains’ were responsible
On 24 May 1974, a report was released cataloguing a series of failures regarding the Summerland disaster, from the design of the building, to the fire safety regulations.
No individuals or groups were singled out to blame for what happened, and all the deaths were ruled as “death by misadventure”.
The report said the accident was down to “human errors, a reliance on the old-boy network and poor communications”.
Dr Ian Phillips of Birmingham University, who documented the disaster in a report, says “[the ruling] was wrong”.
“They said in it that there were no villains and I believe the coroner was influenced by that line and that’s why the ruling was ‘death by misadventure’.”
A death by misadventure verdict is defined as “a death that is primarily attributed to an accident that occurred due to a risk that was taken voluntarily”. In other words, those that died were held to have been at least partly responsible for their own deaths.
The Summerland Fire Commission who investigated the incident, listed several reasons for the huge loss of life:
The evacuation of the building was delayed;
No fire alarm rang inside Summerland, even after the entire building was in flames;
The fire brigade was not called for 21 minutes after the fire began;
The internal layout didn’t take into consideration fire escape routes;
There was misuse of new building materials – Oroglas, Galbestos and Decalin.
Image: The remains of the Summerland building
What was clear from the report was just how many things had gone wrong – both on the night, and from the day the ideas for the complex were drawn up by James Phillipps Lomas and a team of architects hired by Douglas Corporation to create the leisure centre.
One element focused on was the Oroglas material. It was used by the architects for its ‘transparent effect’ to give the building its greenhouse look – but didn’t satisfy building regulations on the island.
At the time of building, the law was waivered.
Dr Phillips explains that while the waiving of building regulations isn’t entirely uncommon, other measures are usually put into place.
“Compensatory measures are usually made to make up for any potential shortcomings where fire safety was concerned – but not in this case.”
The list of failings in the report continued. The open design led to the fire spreading at speed in all directions, according to the investigators.
The person in charge of the control room on the day of the fire who needed to sound the alarms throughout the building in the event of such a blaze didn’t know how to operate the fire alarm panel.
No staff called 999 when the fire began, and the first calls came from a local taxi firm 21 minutes after it erupted – because staff had not been trained in emergency evacuation procedures. The external wall made of Galbestos wasn’t fire resistant.
Half a century later, the ruins of the site, now derelict, are still standing.
‘An insult to blame those who lost their lives’
An Apologise For Summerland campaign has been launched to fight for the ‘death by misadventure’ verdict to be overturned.
They say their support is growing in numbers, from cross-party MPs and organisations such as Grenfell United – who say the similarities are “chilling” between the Isle of Man disaster and Grenfell tower.
A spokesperson for the campaign told Sky News: “Summerland was sold as a holiday paradise. Instead, it was a death trap and yet no one was held accountable for the tragedy or has apologised for what went wrong.
“We are asking for an apology for the blatant disregard for basic fire safety, and a recognition that the ‘death by misadventure’ verdict was inappropriate.
“We feel it is an insult to blame those who lost their lives in a fire that was no fault of their own. Our campaign’s demands are not hard to accomplish, but they would help to heal the wounds of the past.”
In an interview with Sky News, MP John Madders, who has pushed for a public inquiry in the Commons, said it seemed like “everyone on the Isle of Man wanted to forget about it and the families deserve proper recognition”.
Mr Madders said: “The way the aftermath was handled was bad.”
“The verdict was wrong and it can’t stand – if there’s an acknowledgment that that was inappropriate that would help people cope with this.
“If you look at the multiple failings in the inquiry, it’s staggering that no one was held accountable for this.
“It’s an offensive verdict for those who have lost someone – almost implying that someone who went on holiday were somehow responsible for fire safety.”
The Chief Minister of the Isle of Man has since made a statement to the island’s parliament to mark the anniversary.
Alfred Cannan MHK said: “There were inadequacies, failings and lapses identified by the Commission, and that had matters been addressed differently, some of the loss of life at Summerland may have been prevented.
“The causes and contributing factors are individually serious. Collectively they resulted in a tragedy. I am sorry. Sorry for the pain and suffering felt by everyone affected by the fire and sorry for the failings that could have prevented such a tragedy.
“The 50th anniversary of the Summerland fire is the right moment for this government to offer an apology for the suffering caused by the wrongs of the past.”
It is the first apology ever given by the government, something the campaign considers a win.
But the fight continues to get the verdict overturned.
‘We’ll fight to the end for this’
Image: Heather and Reg Lea on holiday last year. Pic: Reg Lea
Heather and Reg say their daughters, Vicky and Jane, began finding out what really happened to their grandparents in their teenage years, and it was clear the legacy of what happened is far from forgotten.
“They took it in their stride, but it was a shock to them. Then a few days later my daughter started crying and she said she realised her loss,” said Heather.
“Vicky wants to know more about her aunty June and nan and grandad, she backs us all the way, they believe it needs recognition.
“When the campaign became public, the government said, ‘why now’?” she says, fighting back tears.
“Time shouldn’t matter. It happened. We want recognition for the people who died. They weren’t doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Deep down, I know my sister would’ve wanted us to do something.
“We’ll fight to the end for this – and it hasn’t ended for us, why should it for the Isle of Man?”
The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in hit TV series The Bill has been praised by officers after helping them arrest a shoplifter.
Jeff Stewart stepped in when a thief attempted to escape on a bicycle in Southampton on Wednesday.
In a statement, a Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said: “The thief, 29-year-old Mohamed Diallo, fell off the bike during his attempts to flee, before officers pounced to make their arrest.
“To their surprise, local TV legend Jeff Stewart, who played PC Hollis for 24 years in The Bill, came to their aid by sitting on the suspect’s legs while officers put him in cuffs.
Image: (L-R) Jeff Stewart, Roberta Taylor, Mark Wingett, Trudie Goodwin and Cyril Nri celebrating The Bill’s 21st anniversary in 2004. Pic: PA
“In policing you should always expect the unexpected, but this really wasn’t on The Bill for this week.”
The Bill was broadcast on ITV between 1984 and 2010 and featured the fictional lives of police officers from the Sun Hill police station in east London.
Mr Stewart, who was among the original cast, appeared in more than 1,000 episodes as PC Hollis.
More from UK
Image: Police released footage showing their pursuit of a shoplifter in Southampton. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
Image: As the suspect falls to the floor, PC Hollis (aka Jeff Stewart) sits on his legs. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
In praising Mr Stewart’s actions, the force said: “Long since retired from Sun Hill station – but he’s still got it.”
Police from the Bargate Neighbourhoods Policing Team were alerted by staff at a Co-op store in Ocean Way to a suspected shoplifter on Wednesday.
Mohamed Diallo, 29, of Anglesea Road, Southampton, was subsequently charged with five offences of theft relating to coffee, alcohol and food from the Co-op and two other Sainsbury’s stores on three dates in April and July.
He pleaded guilty at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and was bailed to be sentenced on August 29.
It was a cold, typically rainy Manchester evening, October 1993, when Michael Spencer Jones set out to meet a new guitar band he had been commissioned to photograph.
The weather was miserable, he didn’t know their music, wasn’t totally in the mood. “I had to drag myself from home, thinking: is it going to be worth the trouble?”
On the drive to the Out Of The Blue studio in Ancoats, on the outskirts of the city centre, a song he’d never heard before came on the local radio station. “It was like, wow, what is that?” The track was Columbia, by Oasis, the band he was on his way to meet.
Spencer Jones had previously met Noel Gallagher during the musician’s time as a roadie for fellow Manchester band Inspiral Carpets. But not Liam.
“As a photographer, obviously, the aesthetic of a band is massively important,” he says as he recalls that first shoot. “I’m just looking down the camera lens with a certain amount of disbelief.”
In front of him was a 21-year-old, months before the start of the fame rollercoaster that lay ahead. And yet. “I was looking at a face that just seemed to embody the quality of stardom.”
It was the start of a partnership that continued throughout the band’s heyday, with Spencer Jones shooting the covers for their first three albums, their most successful records, and the singles that went with them.
“You work with bands pre-fame and there’s always that question: are they going to make it? With Oasis there was never that question. Their success was inevitable.”
There was a confidence, even in those early days. “Incredible, intoxicating confidence. [They were] not interested in any kind of social norms or social constraints.”
It wasn’t arrogance, he says, of a criticism sometimes levelled at the Gallaghers. “They just had this enormous self-belief.”
Spencer Jones was one of several photographers who followed the band, capturing the moments that became part of rock history.
Jill Furmanovsky, who started working with Oasis towards the end of 1994, a few months after the release of debut album Definitely Maybe, says Noel always seemed aware their time together should be documented.
“An uncanny intuition, really, that it was important,” she says. “I think Noel has been aware right from the start, because for him that’s what he used to look at when he used to buy his Smiths records or Leo Sayer or whatever, he would stare at the covers and be fascinated by the pictures.”
Contrary to popular belief, Furmanovsky says the brothers got on fairly well most of the time, “otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to function”.
She picks one shoot in 1997, around the release of their third album, Be Here Now, as one of the more memorable ones. Noel had shared his thoughts about the band on a chalkboard and “they were having such a laugh.”
But when things did erupt, it became significant. “There were tensions in some shoots but they never started hitting each other in front of me or anything like that. I used to complain about it, actually – ‘don’t leave me out of those pictures where you’re really arguing!’.”
In Paris in 1995, tensions had boiled over. “It’s one of my favourites,” she says of the shoot. “It reflects not just the band but the family situation, these brothers in a strop with each other.”
What is notable, she says, is that they were happy for photographers to take candid shots, not just set up pictures to show them “looking cool”. Pictures that on the surface might sound mundane, showing “what they were really like – tensions, mucking about, sometimes yawning… This was the genius of Noel and [former Oasis press officer] Johnny Hopkins.”
Furmanovsky also notes the women who worked behind the scenes for Oasis – unusual at a time when the industry was even more male-dominated than it is now – and how they kept them in line.
“They got on well working with women,” she says. “Maggie Mouzakitis was their tour manager for ages and was so young, but she ruled. For a band one could say were a bunch of macho Manchester blokes, they had a lot of women working in senior positions.”
This is down to the influence of their mum, Peggy, she adds. “Absolutely crucial.”
Furmanovsky has been working with Noel on an upcoming book documenting her time with the band, and says she initially wanted to start with a picture of the Gallagher matriarch. “Noel said to me, ‘Jill, you do know she wasn’t actually in the band?'”
Touring with Oasis – ‘the journalist had to take a week off’
Kevin Cummins was commissioned to take pictures when Oasis signed to Creation Records, and it “kind of spiralled out of control a little bit”, he laughs.
“I photographed them for NME, gave them their first cover. I photographed them in Man City shirts because we were all Man City fans, and City were at the time sponsored by a Japanese electronics company, Brother. It seemed a perfect fit.”
The early days documenting the band were “fairly riotous”, he says. “They were quite young, they were obviously enjoying being in the limelight.
“I remember we went on tour with them for three days for an NME ‘on the road’ piece, and the journalist who came with me had to take a week off afterwards.
“I dipped in and out of tours occasionally – I’ve always done that with musicians because I cannot imagine spending more than about seven or eight days on tour with somebody, it would drive you nuts. They’re so hedonistic, especially in the early days. It’s very, very difficult to keep up.”
Cummins says the relationship between Noel and Liam was “like anybody’s relationship, if you’ve got a younger brother – he’d get on your nerves.”
During the shoot for the City shirt pictures, he says, “Liam kicked a ball at Noel, Noel pushed him, Liam pushed him back. They have a bit of a pushing match and then they stop and they get on with it.”
Another time, following a show in Portsmouth, “as soon as we got [to the hotel] after the gig, Liam threw all the plastic furniture in the pool. Noel looked at him and said, ‘where are we going to sit?’ And he made him get in the pool and get all the furniture out. So there were like attempts at being rock and roll, and not quite getting it right sometimes.”
Cummins says he has “very affectionate” memories of working with Oasis. “I’ve got a lot of very sensitive looking pictures of Liam and people are really surprised when they see them,” he says. “But he is a very sensitive lad… it’s just he was irritating because he was younger and he wanted to make himself heard.”
All three photographers have yet to see the reunion show, but all have tickets. All say the announcement last summer came as a surprise.
“There was an inkling of it, I suppose, just in the thawing of the comments between the brothers, but I still wouldn’t have guessed it,” says Furmanovsky, who has a book out later this year, and whose pictures feature in the programme. “It’s wonderful they have pulled it off with such conviction and passion.”
Cummins’ work can be seen in a free outdoor exhibition at Wembley Park, which fans will be able to see throughout the summer until the final gigs there in September.
“I think the atmosphere at the gigs seems to have been really friendly… I like the idea that people are taking their kids and they’re passing the baton on a little bit,” he says. “Everyone’s just having a blast and it’s like the event of the summer – definitely something we need at the moment.”
Spencer Jones, who released his second Oasis book, Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, for the album’s 30th anniversary last year – adds: “They really seem to be capturing a new generation of fans and I don’t think a band has ever done that [to this extent] before. Bands from 20, 30 years ago normally just take their traditional fanbase with them.”
But he says his first thought when the reunion was announced was for the Gallaghers’ mum, Peggy. “I think for any parent, to have two children who don’t talk is pretty tough,” he says. “It’s that notion of reconciliation – if they can do it, anyone can do it.
“The fact they’re walking on stage, hands clasped together, there’s a huge amount of symbolism there that transcends Oasis and music. Especially in a fractured society, that unity is inspiring. Everyone’s had a bit of a rough time since COVID, battle weary with life itself. I think people generally are just gagging to have some fun.”
Brothers: Liam And Noel Through The Lens Of Kevin Cummins is on at Wembley Park until 30 September. Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, by Michael Spencer Jones, available through Spellbound Galleries, is out now. Oasis: Trying To Find A Way Out Of Nowhere, by Jill Furmanovsky and edited by Noel Gallagher, published by Thames & Hudson, is out from 23 September.
It was “shadowy” of the government to reveal Angela Rayner warned about the threat to social cohesion in a “readout”, Harriet Harman has said.
On Wednesday, Downing Street released a “cabinet readout” saying the deputy prime minister told ministers the government “had to show it had a plan to address people’s concerns” to defuse community tensions.
She said immigration was having a “profound impact on society” and noted 17 out of 18 places where protests broke out last summer after kicking off in Southport were the most deprived areas in Britain.
This was widely interpreted as a warning that riots could happen this summer.
But Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that announcing it in a “readout” – given to journalists after a cabinet meeting – was not the way to do things.
“These are quite huge issues – the potential for disorder, social integration, the public mood, and ahead of summer,” the Labour peer said.
“I don’t know whether I’m just a bit old-fashioned about this, but I think it’s better when government are making statements like that they give people an opportunity to ask questions rather than this kind of sort of rather shadowy way of doing it.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:58
Essex Police chief denies Farage claims
The former minister added that cabinet meetings are supposed to be secret so that everybody around the table can speak and say “anything they want because there is this protected thing”.
“You don’t say what’s happening at cabinet,” she added.
“And if anybody asks in the House of Commons or anywhere else, what happened in cabinet, the automatic response is ‘we don’t talk about what’s happened in cabinet, it’s private’. And they’ve sort of slightly breached that now.
“So is it now a situation where anybody can be asked, what did somebody say in cabinet?
“Or is it only that the prime minister can say what happened in cabinet?
“It’s a bit puzzling.”
Baroness Harman’s comments came after protests in Epping last week outside a hotel housing asylum seekers turned violent.
More than 1,000 people gathered outside The Bell Hotel in protests over two nights after an asylum seeker was arrested and charged on suspicion of alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in the town.
Counter-protesters joined, and this week Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused Essex Police of bussing them in, which the force said was “categorically wrong”.