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Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
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 Posted -
28/05/2004
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16:34
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LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AI/03
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON DECEMBER THE 12TH 1978 IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AT BANCROFT SHED. THE INFORMANT IS STANLEY GRAHAM WHO IS THE ENGINEER AT THE MILL.
Just a few thoughts today on what it's like to be working in a mill that's weaving out. The only people who are working normally now are myself and John Plummer the firebeater. When I say normally, we are the only people who are doing exactly the same job that we have done for the last 5 years and of course, which has been done ever since the mill started. We are still making steam, running the engine and producing power to drive all the mill. The difference being that the load is now much reduced, the actual driving load is reduced, there are very few warps left in the shed, most of the weavers have three, four or five looms empty. All taping has stopped, looming's stopped, winding is very nearly finished, there are no yarn deliveries, no back beams coming in. The only wagons that come in now are vehicles taking empties out to take them back to mills so that we can draw the deposits on them. We did send one other delivery out the other day
(550)
which was a very sad one. We had sold some looms. Sutcliffe and Clarkson's at Wiseman Street in Burnley, who still run on a steam engine bought some looms off us to complete an order for us which they will take over and weave themselves afterwards. It’s a very steady order for some very strong cloth. The heading here is ‘Two Brown’, it's a very strong pure cotton cloth. I’m not sure what it’s used for, I think it's used for polishing buffs in the metal finishing industry. The big laugh about this was that the day we delivered the looms there was a big headline in the Evening Star at Burnley that Stayflex, the firm which owns Sutcliffe & Clarkson, had gone bankrupt that day with a deficiency of £6,500,000 which left us in trouble in several ways. One was they had got our looms and we hadn't got the money. The second was that they weren't able to complete the order and we’d have to find somebody else to complete it and the third was of course the fact that the same firm Stayflex, the same firm that owns Sutcliffe & Clarkson's also owns one of our biggest cloth customers and we have a lot of cloth in the warehouse ready to be delivered to them. We had known that they were rocky for a bit and when I say rocky we have known that they had been in low water for a bit and we haven’t delivered any cloth to them unless they have paid for it first. Well now of course we have a load of cloth stood up there, at the top of the warehouse which in never going to go out or at least not to that firm. It is a fairly
(600)
common cloth and we’ll probably be able to find another customer for it but not before December 22nd, so we shan't finish up with a clearance of cloth in the warehouse. An interesting point about Sutcliffe & Clarkson's closure is that the original owner of the firm, Reg. Clarkson who has about two years to do, still works there as a manager and the last information we had was that he had gone to Leeds to try and buy the mill back off them! Because Sutcliffe & Clarkson actually is one of the few mills in this area
(5 Min)
that is full up to the doors. They have 500 looms and they are working flat out and making a profit. And he said he didn’t see the point in throwing 150 people out of work just because Stayflex themselves have gone bust. Whether he actually will buy the mill back is anybody's guess, I don’t know. But they have told us they are continuing trading, that they will weave the order and that we will get paid for the looms. This is Sutcliffe & Clarkson of course and not Stayflex which looks vaguely hopeful. News of another closure yesterday, Greens at Whalley, Abbey Mill, also a steam engine, the firm that offered me a job in October or November, they are to finish in March. It’s only about three weeks since that Newton Pickle was down there weighing everything up and quoting them for electrifying the shafting, in other wards putting an electric motor at the end of each cross shaft in the shed to drive the looms. I think the quotation was for about £2,300 for each shaft. That was for a 30 HP motor, Horace Green’s motor from Cononley, and necessary alterations to the shaft, bearing and wall plate. I asked him at the time whether he thought this would ever be done because to my knowledge, this is the fourth time that Greens have been quoted for electrifying the mill because the engine has been in a dodgy condition for a long while. And he said that it looked as if they were going to do it this time, there you are, it’s not going to happen.
(650)
Another interesting point that has emerged is the fact that we are not the only firm that is being closed down after being bought out by Indian money. It appears that Indian money is coming into Lancashire in order to buy cotton firms out and close down the weaving section of them. It makes you wonder whether they can see their costs rising and they realise that in 5 or 10 years Lancashire textiles are going to be competitive again. Before this happens they are making sure that the units of production are lessened as much as possible. It won’t be costing them any money actually, because they'll be stripping the assets and they'll get back just what they paid for them. All clever stuff, I have no doubt that we have done it from time to time in other places, they appear to have learnt very well off us! I was talking with a traveller the other day, and he tells me that he knows of at least 12 firms who have been closed down this year in this way and we are one of them of course. Be that as it may, we are left in the position of running this mill now until Friday December 22ndp or such time as no weavers turn in, the reason I say this is that I can't see us running until December 22nd. All redundancy money is to be paid out on Wednesday 20th, all holiday pay and wages owing. They are going to estimate the wages and pay everything out on Wednesday December 20th. So in other words Wednesday December 20th is going to be the last time any of us draw any money off the firm of James Nutter and Sons Ltd. I can't see the weavers coming in Thursday and Friday to weave in a shed when they could be out doing their Christmas shopping because Friday is the last shopping day before Christmas. There is of course Saturday, but who wants to go shopping on Saturday? So in all probability this engine, this mill will
(700)
virtually cease to weave on the Wednesday evening, fairly early I should imagine. Thursday we’ll probably have three or four weavers in, we might start the engine, but I don't know, Friday certainly not, I can't see it. It'll be a big shock to me if we ever start this engine on Friday. There is some bright news on the scrapping situation, there seem to be every possibility that the mill has been bought out by a man called Malcolm Dunphy who owns the firm of Dunphy Oil and Gas Burners, Regent Street, Rochdale. The contract hasn't actually been signed yet but he has put a bid in which has been accepted and he seems confident that he has bought the place. He has bought it 1ock stock and barrel, everything, looms and all, and he will scrap everything himself except the engine and the boiler. He intends to use the boiler for
testing burners on, and with the steam that that produces he is going to run the engine, to drive the alternator to make the electricity to run his firm which at the moment is fairly small, but he can always put a bigger alternator
(10 min)
in if he expands. I think this is a feasible scheme, and I think that he’ll find that it’ll be all right. He'll no doubt run into snags with fluctuating steam pressure and fluctuating load, but I should say there is every possibility that they’ll be able to cope. An interesting thing about this is that Malcolm is a man who runs a Rolls Royce and who flies round in a helicopter and we have had the interesting experience of having the new owner of the mill landing in a helicopter in the field at the back of the mill, which is a very good example of being dragged screaming into the 20th or 21st century, a steam engine running in the mill and a helicopter landing in the field behind. Two different ends of the spectrum of technology. Very interesting, nice little comment on the way the world works. Redundancy has always been a sore point with me, because I think that many a time the fact that a person expects a redundancy payment encourages them to stay on in a dying industry longer that they should.
(750)
This opinion has been confirmed by my own experiences, watching this mill shut down. Some very sad :cases have shown up. Redundancy money is paid on the basis of a weeks pay for every year of service before the age of 41 years and a week and a • half's pay for each year's service after the age of 41. I shall draw the equivalent of five and a half weeks' wages. Two things about this, first of all the wage which is used to calculate the redundancy payment should be the average weekly wage for 12 weeks before the date the notice was given. In our case here they tried to do it on basic wage, in other words they were diddling us out of 50% of, or rather 33% of what we should have actually had. One or two of us took this up with ACAS, the Advisory Conciliatory and Arbitration Service of the Government and also with employers and we have got our payments altered. Mine went from £312 to £460. Jim’s went from £2,000 to£3,000. That's the maximum anybody will draw here. He has 42 years service in so he gets 20 years and he is 62 so he gets 20 years at a week and a half so he gets the maximum, 30 weeks and he'll be on about £100 a week, something like that. The sad cases are the people who have worked on after retiring age, they draw nothing. We have one man here who apart from one year away from the firm has worked here for 52 years, he doesn’t draw a ha’penny. Another man, Fred Cope the cloth looker at the top of the warehouse, little Fred retires on the day the mill closes so he draws nothing. I should explain that if you are in your last year of work before retirement, each month of that year that you work reduces your redundancy payment by 1/12th so that if you are made redundant six months before the end of your service, you only draw half your redundancy, three months before, you draw a quarter and on the day you draw nothing.
(15 min)(800)
It seems a very poor reward, I think Fred has 17 years in at Bancroft. Another thing about it is that a person who has done 40 years doesn't draw any more than a person who has 20 which again seems to me to be unfair. On the whole, I think that if there are going to be such things as redundancy payments, 1 think that they ought to be paid when you leave a job for any reason whatsoever apart from misconduct, or something like that. This would ensure that people get their rights and would also mean that they weren't hanging on in industry that didn't really want them any more, didn't need them any more, it'd encourage mobility of labour and I think on the whole it would be a good thing. Obviously, more would be paid out but is that such a bad thing? We are paying it in so let it be paid out. If we are going to have a welfare state, if we are going to have these payments let's have them fair. My own opinion of the situation as it is, is that it is most unfair.
The mill itself is a very depressing place now, everything is running down. Hardly any cloth in the warehouse, nothing coming in, nothing going out. Everybody is ready for a closure, the last wage will be paid on Wednesday 20th December, redundancy money will be paid out, holiday money, all money owing will be paid and as I say I think that'll be the finish. I can't see anybody coming in after that. It's made very little difference to the running of the engine and the boiler, surprisingly little. The reason for this is that we are running the lights continuously which gives us some load, the heating load on the boiler is actually more than it was before, the reason for this is that there aren't so many people in the building, so we are not getting body heat which is a very important factor even when you are heating a big building like this. And, probably more important there is less weight of cotton in the weaving shed. Now, it's the cotton warps, I have always suspected this, but I'm sure that now it's been proved to me,
(850)
it's the cotton warps that soak up the heat during the day and gradually release it during the night like storage heaters and that helps to keep the shed warm and makes it possible to heat it. We had a cold snap about ten days ago when we just couldn't get the shed warm. We were blowing steam in there at 160psi all day and we just couldn’t get it above about 55degrees, 60 degrees. Depending on the weather outside, the temperature we got it depended on how kind the weather was to us, not how much we put in. And I am convinced that the reason for it is that there weren't so many people in and not so many looms running so that there isn't as much friction heat given off and that there are very few warps in. And what warps there are in are thin
and not holding much heat. Another thing that you come up against is the fact that, as you are going round doing your routine jobs, every now and again you'll come across one and you'll think to yourself ‘Hello, last time I'll do this.’ Things like oiling and greasing the shaft, we did it a fortnight since, Saturday morning. I ordered my last load of coal yesterday, I don't think I'll ever indicate the engine again, I keep saying I'll do it just for old times sake but I don't know whether I will or not. I don’t suppose I'll ever grease the ropes again. I certainly shan't do any brassoing,
(20 min)
polishing of brasses, we have given up to that. All we are doing now is just wiping everything down, keeping it clean and making sure that everything runs right, oiling, greasing, just wiping down. No bullshit, no brassoing, just essentials, the heart has completely gone out of the job. Everybody is fed up, everybody is ready for a closure. We are attracting a lot of attention from the preservationists, people who want to see the mill and its industry its technology preserved for the future, it is regarded as part of our textile heritage. Two things about this, it's rather late in the day to suddenly realize that you are losing something as important as Bancroft, and second and even more important, everybody loses sight of the fact that it isn’t the machinery and the technology that matters as much as the people. And, there’s only been one solitary voice apart from my own
(900)
raised in defence of the workers who were going to lose their jobs. This was a man in Earby, a councillor, and my heart warmed to him when I saw the piece that he had written in the paper, the letter he wrote to the paper. The striking thing is that the people who want to preserve the mill would never, under any circumstances come and work in it. The conditions are so lousy, the wages so bad, toilets with cast iron grilles in so that the wind can blow through and discourage people from sitting there too long, floors that are so rough as to be positively dangerous if you are wheeling something across them or walking across them, inefficient heating system, no canteen facilities. The transport away from the mill, which is regarded as essential nowadays is an old van with wooden seats in the back. The wage is ridiculous, there isn’t a weaver in the shed that can earn £1 an hour during the week working hard. If an industry gets to the stage where it can’t pay the workers a reasonable wage commensurate with the effort and skill that they put into their work it's time it closed. And as regards preserving our textile heritage, I think that the sort of thing that we have been doing with these tapes and photographs is the way to do it. And take account of the things that really matter, the people and the technology. The artefacts are important of course, but we have steam engines preserved now, we have Lancashire looms in museums, we have mules, drawing frames, anything you care to mention we have already got it in museums. What we need is the story of the people and how they felt about it. One thing is sure and certain, nobody at Bancroft wants to stay on, nobody wants to keep running, we are all absolutely fed up. Very depressing thing to be working in a factory which is slowly dying underneath you. I never realised it would be as bad as it is. It really does get you down. However we have not long to go now, a week today and we’ll be on the last lap. Because as I say there won’t be much done after Wednesday. I was asked the other day what my overall thoughts were about
(950)
Bancroft. I think I’ve said most of the things I want to say about the actual closure, it's a very depressing thing, but I am glad that I came to work here and I am glad that I was able to see what a weaving mill actually looks like, how it works, how it ticks and what the atmosphere is like. This is a very old fashioned industry, it's also a very happy one. One thing that nobody can ever say about Bancroft is that, during the period that I have known it anyway, it was an unhappy place to work, everybody likes working here there is a good atmosphere. If I was asked to put my finger on the reason for it I'd say that people enjoy working in an industry, when I say enjoy working, that's the last thing they'd admit to, but they actually do, they enjoy working at a job where they can see the results of their efforts. It’s not some anonymous screw that they are making and sending off and they never see the end of it, they can see piles of cloth ready to go out in the warehouse. The management is very close to them and in
(25 min)
point of fact the management have very few decisions to make which concern the weavers, the actual workers. There is a job to do, the weaver, and the winder, and the loomer and the taper know what that job is and they don't need any direction, they get down and do it for themselves in their own time and get it finished. The chain of command is very short, I think this is one of the secrets. I think that the thing that could take the heart out of a worker more than anything is the fact that they are never in contact with the people who are making the decisions. Obviously the big business decisions such an whether to close the mill or not had been nothing to do with us, they have been made from away, but a worker isn't really concerned about them, they aren’t part of the day to day working life. The day to day decisions are when you go for your weft, when you stop for a brew, how hard you work, things like that. The sad thing is that that sort of atmosphere and that sort of way of working doesn't seem to be commercial because we have had to stop. No doubt later when I have done spinning my thoughts will suddenly come more clear on this and we might be able to come up with some positive conclusions. I hope so. I shall make one more tape with the engine running like this when we actually stop the engine, that will be sometime next week. (1000)
SCG/04 September 2003
3,659 words.
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Stanley Graham (Engineer & Researcher) Tape 03
