Amber Online

She'd been up all night, watching the dragon.

It was belching flames that started at 8pm and she wanted to know when they'd stop. The rules said that gas from the cokeworks would only be burned off in an emergency. This 'emergency' lasted over 12 hours and, according to Jennie Shearan, it wasn't unusual. From the upstairs of her neat corner house in Melrose Avenue, you can see the dragon she's been battling with since 1963. The cokeworks looms large over her estate as it's loomed large over her and other lives in polluted Hebburn. Without Jennie Shearan - former Tyne Wear councillor, lifelong Labour Party member, mother and grandmother - National Smokeless Fuels would have slept on its bed of dirt and fire. It was Jennie who first formed an action group to get rent rebate for people living near the Monkton cokeworks. And it's Jennie who is now taking the fight to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. "It was while I was raising a petition against plans to expand the works that I realised there is a grave health problem," she said. "I raised 1000 signatures in 36 hours just going door to door." "I went up Hexham Avenue - people with masks and oxygen in so many houses. They were asking if they could sign the petition twice, they felt so strongly." Jennie's appealed to her council, health authority, MEP, MP, the Department of the Environment, Alkali Inspectorate and party spokespersons. But after years of campaigning she's not convinced any of them has the will to tame the dragon outside Melrose Avenue.