Almost everyone in the Kersal, Lower Kersal and Charlestown community will have known Harry Davies at some point. Working for Helping Hands, he supported elderly and vulnerable people in his day job, while involved with numerous causes and campaigns in his personal life.
Incredibly well respected, Harry's passion was environmental issues, from joining anti-fracking campaigners at Barton Moss, to helping Friends of Kersal Moor and Kersal Dale, to bee-keeping on the Lower Kersal Allotments and starring in the related film Up On The Roof.
He was elected as the Labour Party Kersal councillor in 2015, and last Christmas was instrumental in warning the community of the impending Boxing Day flood, having been out with his dog gauging the levels of the River Irwell, which he knew like the back of his hand.
Harry was also passionate about local history and, with his usual humour, related many tales about the old Agecroft colliery as part of the Irwell Valley Mining Project oral histories sessions, recalling how the local pigeons had black feet from the slackheaps, and his small part in the miners' strike of 1984...
"I was in The Racecourse pub one night, a minibus pulled up in the car park and these guys from Yorkshire got out" he recalled "They were pickets come to Agecroft and went for a drink…The police had followed them and outside there was a police van and an unmarked police car parked there. The pickets asked us to show them a way that wasn't on the road..."
Harry took them via the banks of the Irwell, over railings, via the railway, to a back entrance of the pit, while the police waited in vain in the car park of The Racecourse to head off the flying pickets.
Harry said he was desperate to get a job at Agecroft after a school visit down the mine with the Irwell Valley High School. He couldn't get near as it was a closed shop. But Agecroft's loss was the community's gain.
Harry Davies will be sorely missed in the community.
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