THE Beatles were in the charts with Hey Jude, Martin Luther King was shot dead, the Vietnam War was at its height and Harold Wilson said ‘I’m Backing Britain’.

Where were you in 1968? And it’s no excuse saying you weren’t even born. At least you’ll remember the music.

Otis Redding was (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, The Hollies were wooing Jennifer Eccles, Mary Hopkins declaring Those Were The Days, Tom Jones belting out Delilah and the Stones introducing Jumping Jack Flash.

This was the year that Huddersfield celebrated its centenary as a borough. Its Charter had been granted by Queen Victoria in July, 1868. The Examiner produced a special supplement to mark the event and the unique identity of a town that was rightly pleased with itself.

It was as well they did celebrate because six years later Huddersfield was amalgamated with its neighbours to form Kirklees which came into being, without any sense of irony, on April Fool’s Day 1974.

The special Examiner supplement was among an archive of old newspapers and documents passed on to me. It celebrated Huddersfield’s rich history but also asked local notables to predict what the future might hold.

The late Alderman Clifford Stephenson submitted a witty piece in which he envisaged what Huddersfield might be like in the year 2000. It makes fascinating reading, both for what he got right and the wishful thinking where he got it sadly wrong. But overall, he proved quite a visionary.

Supersonic air travel would make cheap day trips to America possible, he said. Give Ryanair half a chance, and they’ll put that into practice.

Traffic would triple and two car families would be so prevalent that new housing plans would not be granted unless a double garage was included. But there would be few road delays. The ring road would be widened and flyovers at Shorehead and Chapel Hill added. Freeways to the motorway would be created along Leeds Road and from Longroyd Bridge to Outlane.

Electric mini cars would be widely used and 10,000 free undercover car parking spaces provided.

“Free parking is good for trade anyway,” he wrote.

Here, here, say all of us.

The real status symbol would no longer be wall-to-wall carpeting (which it was in 1968) but wall-to-wall TV. He was close to the button on that one.

He predicted a new system of refuse disposal. Instead of being collected, it would be chemically reduced in the home and sent as sludge into the sewerage system.

Libraries would be thriving and he amazingly predicted the advent of the e-book – decades before computers actually made it possible. His version was of a library borrowing system where microfilm of books was sent along a telephone line to the home and downloaded to be read on a televiewer. Which is quite breathtaking in its vision.

He said the school leaving age would be 18 and suggested this would mean the need for nursery school places to cater for the children of married students in the top forms.

The heart of the town would be pedestrianised (which it is) and the water supply would contain additives for anti-fluoridation – and to prevent baldness.

By heck, missus. If only.