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THE WEEK 7 May 2022Obituaries
Yvonne Blenkinsop, who
has died aged 83, was the
last of the “headscarf
revolutionaries” – four
ordinary women from Hull who helped
transform the fishing industry in the late 1960s.
At the time, “trawlers based at St Andrew’s
Dock landed 25% of Britain’s total catch”, said
The Daily Telegraph; but the management of
the fleet was antiquated, and fishermen were
obliged to take enormous risks. At sea for three
weeks at a time, they would sail 1,000 miles
into the Arctic Circle “with no medical back-up
or rescue ship”, and sometimes no radio
operator, though ships could “turn turtle” at
any moment in the rough waters. Yet anyone
who objected to these blatantly unsafe working
conditions was likely to be blacklisted by local
employers, and families “had become resigned”
to the fact that their menfolk earned a living in
the most dangerous industry in the world.Blenkinsop was herself a cabaret singer, but she was grimly
aware of the cost of going to sea. Her father had been a
trawlerman. He had turned down a place on the Lorella, one of
two Hull trawlers that sank in 1955 – only to die of a heart attack
at sea a few months later, when Yvonne was 16. He was 48, and
she was convinced that had a doctor been on the boat, he’d have
lived. She recalled that after that, she’d sometimes lie in bed,
listing the safety improvements that Hull’s trawler owners could
make, if only they were willing to invest in them; almost none
were, she said. The industry was “all about greed... They just
wanted the money coming in.”It was the “Triple Trawler Tragedy” of 1968, when three Hull
boats went down in just over three weeks, that spurred her into
action. After the first two were sunk, with the loss of 40 men, the
women of Hessle Road, where most of Hull’s fishing families lived,gathered for a meeting led by Lillian “Big Lil”
Bilocca, a cod skinner whose father, husband
and son worked at sea. She, Blenkinsop and two
others – Mary Denness, the wife of a trawler
skipper, and Christine Smallbone, the sister of
one – then formed a committee, to demand
reform. “After that, the campaign dominated
my days,” Blenkinsop recalled. She was so
engrossed, she forgot one of her children’s
birthdays. “It became my life and my job.”They marched on the docks, and forced their
way onto boats. One of their supporters was
the trade unionist John Prescott, who recalled
helping them build a giant red cardboard cod,
bearing the words “It’s not the fish you’re
buying, it’s men’s lives”, which they wheeled
around the city. In just ten days, they gathered
10,000 signatures for a petition, the
Fishermen’s Charter, calling for more safety
kit, better weather forecasting, radio operators
for all ships, and a “mother ship” with medical
facilities. The campaign met fierce opposition from trawler owners
and even some seamen, said Brian W. Lavery in the Morning Star.
The women received anonymous threats; Bilocca was fired from
her job; and once, Blenkinsop was punched in the face while
eating dinner with her husband in a local restaurant.Nevertheless, they fought on. Their campaign gained nationwide
attention, and knocked the Vietnam War off the front pages. In
February 1968, they went to London for a meeting with the
Board of Trade. Arriving at King’s Cross, they were greeted by
reporters, cheering crowds, and a billboard reading “Big Lil Hits
Town”. All their demands were met, and rapidly implemented.
Returning to Hull, Denness noted that “we have achieved more
in six weeks than the politicians and trade unions have in years”.
In 2018, Blenkinsop was made a Freeman of the City, to mark her
contribution to the campaign, and the countless lives it has saved.Yvonne
Blenkinsop
1938-2022In 1957, a Belgian-born singer
known as Régine opened
a basement nightclub in a
backstreet of Paris’s Latin
Quarter. She could not afford a live band, said
The New York Times, so she bought a jukebox
for her clientele to dance to. Business was not
good, however, and she eventually decided that
the jukebox was to blame. “When the music
stopped, you could hear snogging in the corners,”
she told the BBC, years later. “It killed the
atmosphere. Instead, I installed two turntables
so there was no gap in the music. It was the first-
ever discotheque, and I was the first-ever club
disc jockey.” Over the next 30 years, she spun
that single outpost into a disco empire stretching
to 23 clubs in Europe, the Middle East and the
Americas. In 1976, Régine’s opened in New York and became one
of the city’s most glittering venues, frequented by everyone from
Yves Saint Laurent and the Kennedys to Audrey Hepburn and
Salvador Dalí. Once Régine – the self-billed “Queen of the Night”- danced all night with Gene Kelly, then disappeared for 15 days.
They had, she later revealed, had “private relations”.
Régine Zylberberg was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Brussels
in 1929. Her mother abandoned the family when she was young,
and later, her father ran a café in Paris, where she waited tables.
She spent much of the War in hiding; after it, dreaming of a moreglamorous life, she became a torch singer; and by
1953, she was managing nightclubs as well as
performing in them. In the 1970s, as her business
expanded, she moved to Manhattan, where she
took the penthouse suite at the Delmonico Hotel,
and opened Régine’s on its ground floor. The city
was practically bankrupt, but its rich and famous
still wanted to party: she sold 2,000 memberships
for $600 apiece, and instituted a strictly enforced
dress code that stipulated evening gowns for
women, and black tie for men (Mick Jagger was
once turned away for arriving in trainers). The
club was so exclusive, the New York authorities
threatened to sue it for “social discrimination”.As well as Régine’s, she owned restaurants, acted
in various films, designed her own line of
clothing, and continued to sing. By the 1980s, however, the club
was on the slide: a younger generation had gravitated to Studio
54, and even her older clientele found the latter’s decadent vibe
hard to resist. As one commentator said, “you didn’t feel you
could do cocaine on the tables at Régine’s”. By the 1990s, most
of her clubs had closed. Latterly she had lived in Paris, where she
was known for supporting various charities. In 2008, she received
the French Légion d’Honneur, and in 2016 she appeared at the
Folies Bergère, in her trademark feather boa, to sing a French
version of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. “Retire? There’s
absolutely no rush,” she told AFP at the time.Régine
1929-2022The last of the “headscarf revolutionaries”
Blenkinsop: saved countless livesRégine: “Queen of the Night”The Belgian singer who “invented the discotheque”