Following victory in that particular match Darwen’s reward was a trip to Highbury to meet Arsenal, who included Alex James, Ted Drake and Cliff Bastin in their team.A crowd of 27,000 witnessed a tie which the Gunners won handsomely. They became the country’s first professional footballers.The Anchor Ground’s best gate was 9,000 against Luton Town in the 1909 FA Cup tie and 6,500 in 1932 in the same competition against Chester City. However, on the credit side the club reached the FA Cup semi-finals in 1881 after making the quarter-finals on two previous occasions.Your correspondent might also be interested to note that in the mid-1870s Jimmy Love and Fergy Suter joined Darwen, having played previously for Partick. As you can imagine, the size of the crowds has been adversely affected by the success of Blackburn Rovers, and the club relies upon fund-raising functions and local goodwill to get by and meet its debts.
The club is steeped in history, being one of the founder-members of the Football League Second Division. During their eight years as a League club Darwen FC managed one season in the First Division and hold a record which still stands, the First Division’s heaviest defeat, 12-0 against West Bromwich. The team is presently mid-table in the First Division of the Carling North West Counties League, and plays at the Anchor Ground, which is only about one mile away from Ewood Park in Blackburn.

Q In 1898-99 Manchester United beat Darwen 9-0 Who were Darwen and what became of them?

A Darwen is an old mill town in East Lancashire. Luxembourg, the country to which Sabena wishes to move its pilots, fully accepts the social chapter.Social security costs are, therefore, quite separate from costs arising from the social chapter, such as works councils, pregnancy leave etc.Dr Felix KafkaOakington, Cambridge. Whether a country opts out of the social chapter or not is, therefore, irrelevant in this context. All of these are determined within individual EU countries, mostly by their own governments.
These items fall outside the scope of EU laws and regulations, including those based on the social chapter. YOUR article “Sabena threatens flight from Belgium” (Business, 12 March) couples the state-owned airline’s proposed action with the burden of extra costs of labour arising from provisions based on the EU social chapter, and implies that opting out of the social chapter reduces the social security costs. Social security costs, which add to expenditure on labour by the employer and reduce employees’ take-home pay, include (in addition to income tax) items such as health insurance, pension contributions and other obligatory social taxes.

Now what we have is a casual labour force with a rapid turnover, which means a shambles.Is there any reason why cleaners should not have the same conditions as other workers? Without them many public buildings would not open.The trouble with people like Bunhill is that they see a clean office or classroom and think the fairies have been.C E CuttingSprowston, Norwich. I am the retired caretaker of a local high school which employed some 24 “ladies” daily on a part-time basis Prior to contracting out we had a school to be proud of. Now there is a workforce of 16, the hourly rate is reduced by £1, there is no holiday pay or bank holidays and no sick pay – in other words, nothing.
The old cleaning ladies were loyal and hard-working. IN “Clean Sweep” (Business, 12 March) Bunhill has insulted this hard-working section of the public sector. If teachers have nabbed 38 per cent they can hardly complain that only 12 per cent is left for books, equipment and maintenance. Would Ms Abrams argue for a substantial increase in the defence budget because military inflation was running at 20 per cent above RPI?
Lesley GearKew, Surrey. The figures show education spending up by an impressive 50 per cent.

Expressing spending in “real terms”, after factoring out RPI, is the fairest common currency. IN HER eagerness to knock the Government Fran Abrams gets into great detail but misses the most basic sum. I can only think that the “virtual war” Pennington describes breaking out during the discussion was set up for the occasion (no pro-conservationists were invited) and was sparked off by her attitude.
Her implied sneer that Mapesbury (“the suburbs”) has no right to conservation is deeply offensive to the communally minded people who live in it.Penelope MortimerLondon NW2. Far from being “self-appointed heritage police” or “cultural Stasi”, the local Conservation Committee is elected by residents. Susan Pennington’s article, “An Englishman’s home is his hassle” (12 March), presumably intended to publicise her much toned-down Public Eye programme on BBC2 last Tuesday, was a prime example of misleading journalism. I HAPPEN to be one of the “middle-aged, middle-class” residents living on the Mapesbury estate in Brent.