‘The press were terrible with us — saying we were all Communists’

Sheffield’s twin-city history with Donetsk remembered

Good afternoon members — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune.

We thought it had been consigned to the history books, but this is the year the Cold War came back with a vengeance. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it shocked the world. But for many in Sheffield it also rekindled memories of the city’s long association with Donetsk, a city in the east of the war-torn country. Sheffield has been twinned with Donetsk since the 1950s, but it hasn’t always been an easy relationship. Today, we speak to two Sheffielders who visited the city about their memories and the prospects for this relationship in the future.

Editor’s note: This edition is written for paying Tribune subscribers but regular readers are also being sent the first part of the email, in the hope that they might be moved by the quality of our prose (if we say so ourselves) to support us financially. This is support we rely on — we’re entirely funded by paid subscriptions. Join us as a member today to get the full story and all our members-only journalism.

---

News round-up

🗳️ Penistone and Stocksbridge MP Miriam Cates has become the first regional MP to call for Prime Minister to resign. Speaking to Times Radio this morning, Cates said Liz Truss’s position now “seems untenable”, adding: “I do think it’s time for the Prime Minister to go.” In all, 13 MPs are now calling for the Prime Minister to step down in the wake of the home secretary Suella Braverman’s resignation and a chaotic parliamentary vote last night.

🛢️ Two regional MPs who won their seats partly due to their opposition to fracking voted to allow the controversial technology to be restarted. Rother Valley MP Alexander Stafford and North East Derbyshire MP Lee Rowley say that they still oppose the practice in their constituencies but voted against a Labour motion to ban it. Earlier, the government had given them assurances that drilling would only take place where communities wanted it to.

📽️ Warp Films, the television and film production company behind This is England, Four Lions and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, has announced it is to recruit more staff and produce more shows and movies in Sheffield thanks to funding from Channel 4. Warp Films’ chief operating officer Niall Shamma told The Star that while the UK film and television industry was booming, too much production was still centred around London and the M25.

Things to do

🎷 On until Saturday night at the Lyceum theatre is The Commitments, a musical adaptation of the Bafta award-winning film. The musical is returning to tour the UK and Ireland five years after a phenomenally successful, record-breaking run in London’s West End. It tells the story of Jimmy Rabbitte, a young working-class music fan, who tries to craft an unlikely bunch of amateur musicians and friends into the finest soul band Dublin has ever produced.

🍿 From tonight until Sunday (20-23 October) at the Showroom Cinema is the Celluloid Screams horror film festival. The programme features a range of classic films and new features as well shorts made by local or up-and-coming horror directors. As part of the festival, a 30th anniversary “immersive screening” of the BBC’s Ghostwatch mockumentary will be shown on Friday and Saturday evening at the Peddler Warehouse in Neepsend.

💃 On Sunday, join in a free family-friendly day of dance, art and creative writing activities at Croft House, a historic community centre in the heart of Sheffield. During the day, workshops will take place on African movement, street dance, Bollywood, Latin flamenco fusion, circus skills, art and creative writing, while in the evening entertainment will come from Blue Street Brass and Dance:Social who combine ceilidh dancing with a variety of Indian dance styles.

---

‘The press were terrible with us — saying we were all Communists’

When you think of significant global events in 1986, you might think of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploding, scattering radioactive material across the breadth of Europe. Or perhaps you’d think, instead, of Reagan’s America secretly selling missiles and other arms to Iran in an attempt to recover hostages. What you’re unlikely to consider is one event assigned rather less column inches by the international press: a meeting 1,000 feet below the city of Donetsk. There, in the inky darkness of a Ukrainian coal mine, the mayors of three major European cities — Sheffield, Donetsk and Bochum — sat and swilled cold tea with a group of bemused miners.

A convivial teatime atmosphere wasn’t a given. Amongst those present was veteran Sheffield City Councillor and then deputy leader Peter Price, along with Sheffield Lord Mayor Frank Prince. They were joined by the Mayor of Donetsk Vladimir Spitsyn and Heinz Eikelbeck, Oberbürgermeister of Bochum. “During the war they had been deadly enemies,” Price remembers. Memories of the past threatened to wreck the whole thing.

But perhaps the unusual setting of a coal mine and being forced to crawl through tunnels no higher than three foot tall brought those assembled closer — emotionally, as well as physically — in a way that a less claustrophobic environment would have failed to? “It was actually very moving,” Price tells me. When the party returned to the surface, they even showered together as they scrubbed the soot off their blackened faces.

Peter Price (second left) with Frank Prince, Vladimir Spitsyn and Heinz Eikelbeck at a war memorial in Donetsk. Photo: Peter Price.

The 1986 delegation was Peter Price’s second visit to Donetsk, and tea wasn’t the only drink on the menu. As well as the underground meeting, he also remembers the vodka-soaked toasts. “They went on forever,” he tells me. “Everyone was expected to propose one.” As well as this making it difficult to think of enough topics to devote a toast to, it also made standing up afterwards equally hard. Price tells me [former deputy leader and current South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner] Alan Billings used to try to surreptitiously dispose of his drinks in plant pots.