Larne men flee French strikes

Clifford Kirkpatrick and David Stewart made the journey to Geneva where they managed to get a flight home.

The pair had been working for a Belfast engineering firm at a factory in Lyon.

They feared they would be stranded when a strike brought the country’s transport network and postal system to a standstill.

They decided to pay a taxi to assist their journey home at a cost of 200 francs. It was a distance of 147 kilometres and took approximately one hour-and-half to complete.

Two million workers were reportedly involved in a general strike which spread to factories and industriesresulting in a state of emergency across the country.