y, 21 February 2014
This edited article about Louis Renault first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 561 published on 14 October 1972.
the Paris to Madrid race of 1903, which had cost Louis his brother's life by Graham Coton
Louis Renault hadn’t a hope. Accusing fingers were pointing at this wealthy French motor car manufacturer.
He was a collaborationist, they said. He made tanks and aeroplane engines for the Nazis, they cried. He had grown fat and rich in the Second World War while most of occupied France starved under German rule, they screamed.
Louis Renault must die.
It was a hate campaign against war profiteers, among whom Louis Renault was classed. His punishment had begun when his great sprawling factory had crumbled under the bombs of the R.A.F. because they were working for the German army.
But he had rebuilt it with the rugged tenacity that had brought him through a life of shattering disasters.
He had made the name of Renault famous throughout the world with a succession of fine cars for the family motorist and fast models for the racing track. He had perfected devices like a special gearbox that earned him royalties for many years from all the other motor manufacturers. Renault had given the car to the people.
And now he was going to pay the price. His arrest was inevitable. The sentence of the court beyond doubt.
Renault had worked for the Germans. Renault would pay the penalty.
As he looked back over his life in the anxious days before the police called to arrest him, he must have wondered what had changed him from the shy, stuttering youth whose main joy was in tinkering with machinery, to the single-minded autocratic employer whose sole interest was in keeping his vast factory in production, whether it was making cars for the French people or tanks for the Germans.
Renault was in love with his factory. And he had to keep its heart throbbing, whatever the cost.
Part of that cost had been paid during the frightful bloodbath of the Paris to Madrid race of 1903, which had seared a burning scar in his memory and cost him the brother, who was his co-director.
Renault had entered cars driven by himself, his brother, Marcel, and another driver named Oury.
The race turned out to be a deadly fiasco. It was stopped at Bordeaux after an unbelievable series of accidents in which fast cars crashed on 16th century hump-backed bridges or broke their axles on bumps in the road that were all right for a dog cart but calamitous for a car.
Less than half the cars which started the race reached Bordeaux. The rest were charred and shattered ruins, death traps for their drivers and mechanics.
Spectators were knocked down like ninepins as the out-of-control cars ran amok among the crowds lining the route. A soldier died trying to shield a child. Onlookers crowding round a blazing car were killed when a following one smashed into it.
The terrible tragedy put an end to town-to-town races, apart from those on properly controlled road circuits cleared of stray crowds, and it nearly put an end to Louis Renault.
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Posted in Famous news stories, Historical articles, History, Industry, Institutions, Labour Party, Politics, Trade on Thursday, 20 February 2014
This edited article about the General Strike first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 559 published on 30 September 1972.
Volunteer bus drivers were protected during the General Strike of 1926 by John Keay
Overnight, the country seemed to have died. Docks, factories, mines and power stations were idle. There were no trains, buses or newspapers . . . half of Britain was on strike against poverty, but the other half was determined to keep the country alive.
The soldiers stood with their guns at the ready, their eyes wary and watchful. There had been no trouble yet, but the tenseness, the almost eerie calm of the strikers lining the roads to the London docks might explode into violence at any moment.
Inside the dock gates, some of the older men loading lorries with meat and flour were wilting under the effort, for they were quite unused to this 