Independent TV finally reached the north east of England when Tyne Tees Television went on air at 5.00pm on 15 January 1959, broadcast from a disused warehouse in City Road on Newcastle’s historic quayside, transformed into state-of-the-art studios. A quarter of a million viewers watched on the first night. They broadcast from this base for more than 45 years until the studios shut down in 2005. In time, the station aimed to create a portrait of the north-east, “a land of wide skies, bent...

Independent TV finally reached the north east of England when Tyne Tees Television went on air at 5.00pm on 15 January 1959, broadcast from a disused warehouse in City Road on Newcastle’s historic quayside, transformed into state-of-the-art studios. A quarter of a million viewers watched on the first night. They broadcast from this base for more than 45 years until the studios shut down in 2005.

In time, the station aimed to create a portrait of the north-east, “a land of wide skies, bent vowels, saints, footballers, shipyards and an inventive tradition which has produced the finest engineers in England: its landscape swings from wild moorland to industrial cities and back again to the sea-fretted coast of Northumberland, Durham and North Yorkshire” as author Antony Brown eulogizes in his book Tyne Tees Television: the first 20 years, a portrait (1978) “The north-east is as far as you can go from the centres of power in southern England.” Many of the Tyne Tees documentaries sprang from these regional roots.

This edition of the current affairs programme Close Up, broadcast from the mid-1960s to 1970, looks at the operations of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in a  former British Arab territory in the Middle East. This was an infantry regiment of the British Army dating back to 1674 as one of three English units in the Dutch Anglo-Scots Brigade. The regional title Northumberland was added to the regiment in 1782 and in 1836 it was designated a Fusilier unit. It adopted the final title of Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in 1935 which it retained until 1968 when it was amalgamated with the Royal Fusiliers, the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers and Lancashire Fusiliers to form the present day Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

This film documents the 1st Battalion of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in their peace-keeping efforts in Aden during the Radfan Uprising, also known as the Aden Emergency. The Aden Emergency was an insurgency against the Occupying Forces of the former British Empire in the Protectorate of South Arabia, which now form part of Yemen. Ever since they occupied Aden as a territory in 1839, British troops were subjected to attacks. From 1962, Britain was engaged in an escalating conflict in the protectorate. Using grenades, bombs and rifles supplied by regional and world powers, nationalist groups such as the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Federation for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) targeted British troops and their families. By November 1967, the situation was untenable and Britain’s ‘permanent garrison East of Suez’ was abandoned.

The British occupation of Aden was a strategic rather than commercial endeavour, guarding lines of communication with India and control of the entrance to the Red Sea. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, a convenient transport route to British-ruled Bombay, Britain established protectorates in South Arabia to act as a buffer against the Ottomans who occupied Yemen. In 1937 Aden became a Crown Colony until the 1967 withdrawal by British forces. This programme looks at the final year of British occupation in the region. Divided opinions are expressed following media reports about the regiment's methods of policing in Aden. (1)

Following the 1839 occupation of Aden, Yemenis migrated to Britain after taking up work on the ships that fuelled the British Empire economy. The first Yemeni communities settled in Hull but over time smaller communities settled up the north east coastline, particularly in South Shields in the 1860s. By the 1890s records show a community of several hundred in the coastal town, increasing to 4000 between 1910-1930. Histories of the Yemeni community of South Shields invariably focus on the 1919 and 1930 riots, the former considered Britain’s first race riot. Attacks on the boarding houses and Arab cafes were carried out in South Shields after the demobilisation of white British seamen following World War I and the onset of the economic depression and intense competition for jobs. The 1930 riot was instigated by similar concerns and the right for work. (2)

South Shields Yemeni Leyla Al-Sayadi launched a website in 2015 to counteract this dominant narrative of Yemeni history in South Shields by encouraging community members to share photographs and stories of their ancestors. Leyla’s grandfather is the oldest surviving member of the community at 101 years of age, who came to South Shields from Yemen in 1945 and worked on the ships. Leyla intends for the website to reflect the South Shields settlement of Yemenis as an example of one of the most successful integrations in the country. (3)

The Yemeni Al Azhar mosque in South Shields became famous in 1977 when boxing legend Muhammad Ali and his wife Veronica Porsche had their wedding blessed, with Leyla’s mother acting as flower girl. Ali spent four days in the North East raising money for local boxing clubs and wanted to pay his respects while there to Britain’s oldest mosque and oldest Muslim community. Ali was invited to the region by ex-South Shields boxer Johnny Walker who flew to America unannounced to track down Ali and ask him in person if he would visit the region to help raise money for local aspiring boxers. Among many clubs Ali visited was Grainger Park Boxing Club in the West End of Newcastle where young boxers were offered the rare opportunity to spar with the greatest. (4)

North East Film Archive holds Tyne Tees Television's coverage of Ali’s visit:

Muhammad Ali Visit to The North East 1977

References:

(1) A Short History of the Aden Emergency - https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-short-history-of-the-aden-emergency

(2) History of South Shields Yemeni community to be preserved in new website - https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/history-south-shields-yemeni-community-9678954

(3) The Yemeni Project - http://www.theyemeniproject.org.uk/

(4) 40 years since boxing legend Muhammad Ali visited Tyneside - https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2017-07-17/40-years-since-boxing-legend-muhammad-ali-visited-tyneside/

Brown, Antony: Tyne Tees Television: the first 20 years: a portrait (Newcastle upon Tyne: Tyne Tees Television Ltd., 1978)