HERE’S a selection of stories from April 1983 as they were reported in the Barnsley Chronicle at the time.

It is easier to buy glue in Wombwell than Barnsley, glue-sniffers told the Chronicle.

“They won’t sell it to us round here, so we go to Wombwell. It’s easy to buy glue there,” one 14-year-old said.

The Chronicle found some glue-sniffers in a derelict outhouse in the centre of Barnsley and spoke to them about the habit and why they do it.

Two of them were prepared to speak to us about it. An 18-year-old from Worsbrough Dale said he sniffs glue because it gives him illusions and makes him “feel nice“. He does not care about the effects it could have on him.

ABOUT 500 workers at Dunlop’s International Sports factory on Doncaster Road have walked off the job following an overtime ban row.

The General and Municipal Workers’ Union imposed an overtime ban before Easter in furtherance of a pay claim.

But the manufacture of tennis balls requires a small proportion of the workforce doing overtime in advance of the major production start-up, said a spokesman at Dunlop’s head office in London.

The ban resulted in two sections of the plant - covering and finishing - being without work.

AN OFFICE block plan which could provide nearly 300 jobs on a plum site opposite Barnsley Police Station has been considered by the Labour Group on Barnsley Council.

English Industrial Estates want to take over a site at Churchfield to provide speculative office accommodation.

A spokesman for EIE confirmed that talks are taking place with the council, but Labour leader Coun Fred Lunn said he could not make any comment at this stage because the application had not yet been considered by council committees.

The plan is expected to cause a row because the block could reduce the amount of car parking space in the town centre.

GOLF fanatic Len Sager has a lucky charm — his old school chum.

For when they meet at Barnsley Municipal Golf Course, Len gets a hole in one at the 204-yard ninth green.

It first happened ten years ago, when he played his old friend, Eddie Tear,

whom he had not met since school days.

On Tuesday — a decade later — they bumped into one another on the ninth green — and Len did it again.

Eddie, of Edgehill Road, Darton, was playing just behind Len. When he caught

him up, he told everyone about the hole-in-one the last time they stood on the green

together.

“There was a large crowd round us and he asked me if I was going to do it again,” said Len, 61, of Meadstead Drive, Royston.

“I said I was just going to hit the ball. I did, and it went straight in. It must have been

a million-to-one chance. Eddie didn’t know what to say.

AN EYESORE was labelled ‘the scrap Mecca of South Yorkshire’ by angry residents.

Scrap yards on Boulder Bridge Lane, on land owned by British Rail, are an environmental menace, said Cudworth Labour Party secretary Sheila Salt.

There are 22 scrap yards full of buses, cars, lorries and vans, waiting to be scrapped, she said, adding that the vehicles were burned in the middle of the night, to the distress of local residents.

“It’s the most appalling mess I’ve ever seen,” she said.

“It must be the bus scrap centre of Britain — right on our doorsteps.”

HOSPITAL waiting lists in the Barnsley area last year are at their highest since 1979.

Answering a written question from Roy Mason, MP for Barnsley, last week, Geoffrey

Finsberg, Parliamentary under secretary at the Department of Health and Social

Services, said that there were 3,918 people waiting for operations on local waiting lists.