Few people noted the death at the age of 90 of Alderman Elias Hughes on 6^th January 1942. He was the 'Quiet Man' of the council, a Welshman brought up in the Potteries, in business as a furniture remover and coal dealer. He never became Lord Mayor and yet he was a founder member of the 1910 council and was the last of the traditional Liberal members.

It is said that Hughes never missed a meeting, the last one he attended was the new Lord Mayor's induction ceremony held annually those days in November before it was brought forward to the familiar May elections.

If Elias Hughes was the 'Quiet Man' the new Lord Mayor was surely the 'Almost-forgotten Man'. He was Alderman Harry McBrine, a Tunstall councillor in his late seventies. Both men were veterans of the 1910 council and had served their communities with honest graft. Not for them the trappings of high office or the magnitude of leadership. They got on with the job in their Hanley and Tunstall patches and proved the truth in the saying, 'if it isn't broken don't fix it'. They never failed their communities and at election time their communities never failed them.

McBrine, though, was the rarest of all Stoke-on-Trent's councillors for he was the last of the original federation founders to hold the office of Lord Mayor. He must have thought his chance would never come. And it has to be said that it may never have if it had not been for the war when many younger politicians had been called up.

Harry W. McBrine
Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent 1941-42

McBrine himself came from a military family, born in Canada during one of his father's overseas postings. As a boy his most vivid memory was being carried off by the regimental mascot, 'Bruno' a grizzly bear, that held him for a couple of hours in its den. After some persuasion the beast allowed the unruffled boy to walk free none the worse for his adventure. Stoke-on-Trent's council chamber must have seemed like a playschool sandpit after that.

The few weeks that spanned McBrine's civic high point and Hughes's civic finale also marked the absolute end of the 1910 glorious age. These, though, were not promising times. Just as the Great War delayed the important plans to modernise and reconstruct the city, everything was again put on hold to await the uncertain conclusion of World War Two hostilities. Three weeks into McBrine's year of office apocalypse came closer as Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on 7^th December 1941. Would there be anything to celebrate, he must have wondered.

A small party had been arranged at Tunstall Town Hall on New Year's Eve. It wasn't a big event, a few dignitaries gathering to raise funds for the local war effort. It went well and Lord Mayor McBrine retired to his home in King Street, known these days as Madison Street. The following morning, New Year's Day 1942, the limousine arrived to take him out to his civic functions, only this morning a civic official accompanied the chauffeur.

"You'll have to come directly to the Town Hall," was the officer's ominous command. "There's some bad news I'm afraid."

Within the hour McBrine had been briefed on the disaster at Sneyd Colliery and at 1pm he stood in Stoke Town Hall as the shocked managers of the colliery made the bleak announcement to the citizens of Stoke-on-Trent that an explosion had occurred in the Seven Feet Banbury Seam in No 4 Pit where fifty-three men and boys had been working. In all, 57 perished that day.

Memorial erected in Burslem to those who
 died at Sneyd Colliery on New Year's Day 1942

For McBrine it was a baptism of fire. A year that should have been spent in happy celebration had begun with an appalling calamity. He immediately launched a Lord Mayor's fund to help the bereaved families and the Potters dug deep as they always do in times of hardship and adversity, a City community sticking together.

McBrine's year of office never picked up. The war got worse and wartime material restrictions saw pottery production become almost non-existent. There were no civic parties; no balls or grand openings. Government shut down dance halls and cinemas fearing bombing would result in major fatalities. The only entertainment for the Potters was a song around the pub piano in the black-out. There really was nothing to cheer about.

McBrine's year ended as it begun with tragedy. It was on the afternoon Monday 9^th November 1942, his very last day in office, that he announced to the council the death of Hanley's former MP H.K. Hales in a boating accident on the Thames two days before. As everyone knew by then this eccentric character, Hales, was the eponymous The Card; named by the book's author Arnold Bennett as the councillor charged with "with the great cause of cheering us all up." Irony resounds!