Fascinating story behind Sheffield plaque honouring man on spot where he used to collect money for striking coal miners

Of course, the fountain was removed from its spot near the entrance to Orchard Square in 1998 – but where did the plaque honouring Percy Riley go, asked local history enthusiast Robin Hughes.

The answer is not far! The plaque has been placed under a tree near where the fountain once stood. My eagle-eyed colleague Jane Salt found it after a hunt around.

Percy, who died in 1986, became a well-known figure for standing by the fountain, collecting money for Sheffield Trades Council’s Miners’ Support Fund to support the 1984-5 strike.

A biography of Percy by former senior TGWU union official and Communist Party member Graham Stevenson at https://grahamstevenson.me.uk/ says he was born in Leeds in 1920 and moved to London to work for London Transport, joining the Communist Party in 1940.

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He returned to Yorkshire when a lung condition stopped him enlisting for the war and he was sent to a sanatorium. He worked at a Maltby ordnance factory and became an organiser for the Young Communist League.

In 1946 he was elected as South Yorkshire’s first-ever Communist councillor, in Hickleton.

Three years later, he was banned from standing for five years as, along with a group of rebel Labour councillors, he was surcharged for over-spending on building homes. He lost everything.

Graham said Percy was a key organiser behind attempts to bring an international peace conference to Sheffield in 1950. Picasso famously spoke before the event, caught up in Cold War politics, was pulled when foreign delegates were refused entry visas.

Percy went to the reconvened congress in Warsaw in 1952 – after raising a petition to force his bosses to give him unpaid time off.

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He became a key NUM activist when he got a job as an NCB diesel fitter and was heavily involved in the 1970 and 1972 strikes.

Also active in the tenants’ movement, Percy moved to Sheffield in 1975.

Ill health forced his retirement just before the 1984 strike but Percy threw himself into solidarity work. That took its toll and Percy died in January 1986.

Graham Stevenson says 800 went to his funeral.

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