Wombourne man wins history symposium with his discussion on the General Strike

David Taylor, who lives in Wombourne, thoroughly researched and explored the strike which saw the country's miners along with other industry workers walk out in a move of solidarity - creating the first ever general strike in Britain.

The symposium, the 11th of its kind held by Wolverhampton City Archives, saw a number of entrants have 20 minutes to discuss a range of historic topics ranging from the story of the vicar of Wombourne between 1632 to 1652 to a discussion about Wolverhampton Missionary to a panel of judges.

Mr Taylor said he was 'really pleased' about winning and hopes he can further his research with the help of his £400 prize personally handed over by the editor of the Express & Star, Keith Harrison.

Mr Taylor said: "I'm very interested in history, particularly local history. I've been into Wolverhampton Archives a number of times and saw the poster for the symposium and thought I'd give it a go.

"I did the obviously which was to look back at 1916 and see what was going on - there was the Battle of Somme but a lot of people had covered that so my eye caught the year of 1926.

"I was sitting and concentrating when I was starting to put it together when I remembered my A Level history teachers and started to reminisce.

"My teacher remembered the general strike at the time so he was able to flesh out the material that was in the books and all the memories came flooding back.

"I realised not a large amount had been done on the subject other than the industrial and union side of things so I started revisiting the Express & Star and archives in the Black Country from that period where there was a fair amount of information."

The 59-year-old was named the winner on February 28 and received his cheque on Thursday. He hopes that the money will enable him to visit The National Archives in London to develop his findings further.

Heidi McIntosh, senior archivist at Wolverhampton Council, said: "David will use the money to further his research and come back next year to show us what else he's found.

"We picked his because we knew he had further avenues to explore and his talk was entertaining and interesting."