organisation. Canal restoration In Warwickshire, work on the Lower Avon was nearing completion after a decade of hard work and it was confirmed that nobody owned the rights to the upper reaches which led to Stratford-upon-Avon. The prospect of a connection from the Severn through to the Midlands was in sight when the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal was threatened with abandonment. In 1958, a wealthy businessman member named John Smith, who had an honorary post in the National Trust suggested that it might take over the canal. Another enthusiastic member, David Hutchings, took over the task of restoration after the National Trust agreed a five-year lease on the canal a year later pointing out that the cost of filling it in would be £120,000 whereas the cost of restoration was only £40,000, and completed it on time despite the extremely cold winter of 1962-3. The reopening coincided with the 400th Anniversary celebration of Shakespeare's birth at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Aickmans accompanied the Queen Mother in a much-publicized narrow boat trip to reopen the canal into the river as part of a large festival that included 200 boats outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The experience of restoration led to the creation of the Waterway Recovery Group at the 1970 Guildford IWA Rally by Graham Palmer as an independent charity to act as a co-ordinating force, providing equipment, expertise, publicity and labour to help local restoration schemes. They organised weekend and longer work camps where students and older folks could get dirty doing practical restoration work and were involved in many projects, including saving the Peak Forest and Ashton canals from closure, work on the Kennet and Avon Canal, the barge lock on the Droitwich Canal and many other flying visits. A new order emerges The government set up an Inland Waterways Redevelopment Advisory Committee in 1961 to consider the future of canals that were not considered viable. Two of the IWA stalwarts, John Smith and Lionel Munk, were included on this, together with Tom Rolt. This went against Aickman's slogan of "fighting for every mile" although shortly after this he admitted privately to Lionel Munk that he was now a "90% man". As the commercial use of the canals was declining rapidly, requests for closures came in thick and fast from British Transport Waterways - soon to be separated from the BTC as the British Waterways Board (BWB). People from Aickman to Hadfield