BURY gave a mixed response to calls for a return to the two-minute silence for remembrance on Tuesday.

Council workers, shoppers in Mill Gate and staff at Metrolink all observed the two-minute pause for reflection at 11am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

At Bury Town Hall a maroon flare was fired to mark the beginning and end of the two-minute silence, called for by the Royal British Legion.

Mr Bob Hargreaves, public relations officer for Bury Council, said: "We feel, from the council's point of view, it was a success. The two minutes were observed in all our offices."

He said they would do it again next year if the Legion asked them.

In Bury's Mill Gate centre shops and shoppers all observed the silence after an announcement over the public address system.

Mrs Elaine Shirt, of the Mill Gate management team, said: "Everybody in the centre observed the silence. It was a very moving tribute."

But it was business as usual elsewhere in the borough. Buses did not stop in the Interchange, and many local folk carried on regardless on the streets of the town.

Meanwhile on Sunday hundreds of local people remembered the fallen at the Remembrance Sunday commemorations around the borough.

Our picture shows the standard bearers from the various veterans' associations at the war memorial in Bury town centre.?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.