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THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON SEPTEMBER 20^TH 1978 IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AT BANCROFT. THE INFORMANT IS JIM POLLARD, WEAVING MANAGER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.

[It is perhaps worth mentioning that at the time this tape was made both Jim and I were under considerable stress in our personal lives. His wife had terminal cancer and I was losing my marriage. This information might help in any assessment of what we were saying, in future years.]

Now the interesting thing about this tape tonight is that's it's made the day after Jim and I found out that we are both going to be redundant on 22nd December when Bancroft shed weaves out. So tonight we are going to talk about redundancy and the way we look at the job and it'll follow the last tape on nicely because in the last tape if you remember Jim, was when we were talking about weavers, you know, about … So first, how did you find out about us shutting down? Let's have that.

R- Well I got the official news from the managing director, Mr P J Birtles. He’d been hanging about all morning, but I think he plucked up the courage to tell me after lunch. So as soon as he mentioned this he says “Well, I’m sorry to tell you Jim, we are closing down.” “Oh yes?” was my remark. “Aren’t you shocked?” I say, “I'm not shocked.” “You are not shocked?” “No.” “I thought you would have been.” So from that I says “Well, we’d better have Stanley in and tell Stanley about this.” So you were brought into the conversation.

Aye that's it. And as you know I had a job, I had to bite me bloody tongue to stop myself saying sommat to him. Aye .. what was it he said? I think we've done very well to keep going as long an we have!

R- ‘I think we've done well to keep going as long as we have.’ So, other remarks could have been passed but .. which wouldn't have been pleasing to his ear. And we thought ... Least said soonest mended.

That’s it aye. And Merry Christmas and the last one out please turn the lights off.

R- As though, it won't make much difference. If they want owt they get it. Break in and get it.

Aye. Anyway, of course, we’ve, been expecting this for a long while. We’ve seen the writing on the wall.

And the signs in the sky… But now then Jim, now it has come, I mean, there is one great thing about it now, we know exactly what’s happening. But the thing is, what I’d like to know now, if you remember last week we were talking about the way they trained weavers after the war, and I know for a fact that your opinion of the present day weavers as compared with the weavers in the old days isn’t very good. Now what bearing do you think that has on the situation that we at Bancroft find ourselves in now. And have you any other thoughts about redundancy in general and the fact that Bancroft’s shutting down in particular?

R- Well, one thing leads to another Stanley, As to redundancy, when you look at it, I thought redundancy, when I started off and it was brought in, redundancy, I thought it were going to be a good thing. But now I think it’s just a, more or less, a catch penny. Redundancy is, and for anybody that's willing to work and put a lot into it, it's a foul word. In this respect, you can see a place where you're working gradually going to the dogs, not through your fault but through men that's in higher positions not doing their job as it

should be done. In the meantime you can see this coming and it's on your mind all the time. You've other jobs which you could move into, but due to thinking about this redundancy you get a false idea in your head and think well, it's going to be a good thing when I finish. But now it's happened, I shall be one… I shall finish up with top money, but I shall be out of work for 18 months. So whatever that redundancy pay is that I get, that won't keep me for 18 months. And it’s a thing I don’t think I could settle down to, to be re…. unemployed.

I think it’d be as well, bearing in mind that these tapes are hopefully going to be listened to a long while in the future, it’d be just at well to point out that when we talk about redundancy we mean the payment that is made by the firm and the government.

Together, to people who have been in the service of that firm for longer than 12 months. And for anybody that’s been in employment longer, I don’t know the exact figure but if you have been in employment for a long while you get so much.

R- That's the maximum. Now you'll draw a week and a half's payment for every week, which amounts to thirty….

R- Every year, that amounts to thirty weeks pay. [Based on twenty years service.] Now then, after you've drawn your redundancy you can sign on, you can also draw related earnings benefit which is two thirds of your wages on unemployment benefit and you'll get tax returned which will make you better of for six months than your ordinary wage. But it isn't that what is a worrying thing, it’s what's going to happen after that's finished isn’t it. This is why you get a sense of false security with redundancy.

Well, as you know Jim, I quite agree with you. I mean we’ve talked about this before. I think that redundancy payments, the way they are paid, I think that a lot of the fault is the way that they're paid. I think that they're… I think that they’re a terrible thing because they encourage people to stop in jobs where they either aren't happy or aren't doing any good. You know, you are waiting for the axe aren’t you. There must be a different way of doing it, but I think the trouble is that the only way that it could he altered would be to give people their redundancy payment, you know, what we call redundancy

payment now, each time they change their job. And when you think about it, you know there could be a lot said for that, not paying ‘em much but paying you when you changed your job. As long as you didn’t change your job through being sacked, you know or anything like that. There could be a lot in favour of that because you know yourself …

R- Because it's so unfair in some ways. You see a fellow can give his life to one firm..

Let’s have one example here, you tell us about little Fred down in the warehouse.

R- Well, little Fred, little Fred Cope. Now he makes up 65 in January, now then as soon as he became 64 his redundancy payment starts to decrease by one twelfth.

R- Every month, so in fact he’s being penalised by a scheme that they’ve brought out Stanley, which is a very unfair one due to him being 64.

R- Fred would have been in for a nice tidy sum. But it's 12 year, he'd get paid, he'd get paid for roughly 18 and a half weeks wouldn’t he? Which is a tidy sum for him, but eventually he's going to finish up with nothing, that's for 12 years service. Well, I’ll give you another instance, take it now, you take a fellow like Fred Greenwood

R - Now Fred Greenwood would have worked here for Nutters, he'll have worked for Nutters with just one year's break .. In this I’m counting his forces service, which he bloody couldn't help, he were forced to go. He’ll have worked for Nutters from, Nutter family which was all one then, for nearly 49 year; but he had a break of one year. Now he come back to this place in 1949 . Now Fred’s made up 65 in June of this year so Fred Greenwood doesn't get a penny out of this firm and that's for all them years of service.

R- But you see, I have done since 1934, now that’s, to me, that's 44 years service. But I’m only being paid for 20 years. And same as we are now, I could have left this firm two or three times, but redundancy held me back.

Yes, I think it’s worthwhile pointing out here that you could have left this firm for a lot more money than you were getting here.

get down to the nitty gritty now. You tell me in your opinion what it is that's closed us.

R- As I've mentioned at first Stanley, what you need is good men at the top, more so these days. If a cloth buyer wants a price he wants that price within two days, not two or three bloody weeks. Now then, you want better service. What I mean by that is the way bills is paid these days. I know it's altered has all the financial side of the business but you get held up with yarn [supplies] for being late with payment, that's loss of production, that's not a good thing. Now when you get to this position you don’t get the best service out of people you are buying off. Take five or six year back, what you'd got to do then were move with the times, not wait of firms closing down before you got that little bit of progress into your place. Start building on your

own initiative with young people and if you got three out of twenty you've done a good job in my opinion. I think you have, these days.

In other words, if you can get three good weavers out of every twenty you start with ..

R- Yes. If you get three out of every twenty young uns you start with, if I get three good weavers I think I've done well. Now then, if you think of that, take for five or six years back, you are going to get a better work force aren't you? But when you rely .. [on what you can get] But as I’m saying Stanley, all that

led to more expenditure and money going out. Now this firm has been the tightest firm that I could ever remember for not throwing money away. And they couldn’t see paying to bring young uns, paying them a wage, also giving operatives that were learning them that job extra money, they thought they'd happen be better with a few looms less which to me is all false economy. You also get other things, you get better production by [spending] on your healds, which you use for your warp, you can't weave without healds. But the healds we've sent in there for years have been a disgrace, causing you more stoppages, you've less production, which is all against cloth prices.

R- Loom efficiency, which is cloth prices because if you haven’t loom efficiency you’ve got to charge more per yard for that cloth than being an efficient unit.

Tell me something Jim, talking about loom efficiency, because I know that you know about this. First of all one question, what would you say, even under the conditions that we work under here, with weavers carrying their own weft, bad floors, lots of different sorts and all the rest of it, what sort of efficiency, if we had efficient management, would it be possible to get out of these looms. Can you put a figure on it? You know, what would be possible in a well run shed?

R- I really think that what we could produce off them looms is equivalent of any [shed] It just depends on weft and pick.

R- But percentage efficiency I should say you'd get off Lancashire looms, we should get up to 88%.

Well now .. I mean, there we are. I mean, that must be… Let me put it this way, I’m taking a very simplistic view because as you know I'll admit to anyone that what 1 don't know about weaving will fill great volumes. But it seems to me that if I had the job of managing a place like this I don’t real1y think that you need to know a lot about weaving to see where the waste has been going on. And it, the two things that have always struck me here have been that it would seem to me that one of the first things that you'd need to do is to try and raise your loom efficiency; and the other thing that it seems to me from a purely, well from cost and production and everything .. try to avoid stop time, but those are the two bugbears we've had aren't they?

R- This is it, this is what I stated at first Stanley. In some cases as you know, I've had yarn stopped either in weft form or twist form which are run through the size for making weavers warps.

[One of the big problems we faced was that Bancroft hadn’t enough working capital to be able to pay for yarn as it came in. This was always a problem but was made much worse in the late 70’s by the fact that firms such as Courtaulds instituted a policy whereby they expected to be paid for yarn within a fortnight of delivery. If they didn’t get the payment they stopped yarn deliveries. At the same time they instructed all their branches to delay payment for cloth for three months. We were actually shown an internal memorandum which instituted this policy. Because they were the biggest yarn suppliers and cloth buyers they could get away with this. Other firms which bought cloth such as Tootal’s did the same thing.]

Yes. I think we’d better just make that clear Jim that when you say that you’ve had yarn stopped, the thing has been that due to the fact that as fast as this firm has made money it’s been taken out by the parent company, we haven't had enough capital to be able to keep the flow of yarn going into the factory which means that from time to time there are weavers standing with looms, perhaps an odd one loom, two looms, perhaps three looms out of a set of ten with no warp in, and they get paid for that loom don't they.

R- Yes, so what you are paying for is what we call ‘stopped time’ which is weavers, in lieu of having nothing off in cloth off that loom, we pay a certain amount of money for her less production on that. But we had no cloth production so we are losing both ways.

Yes. Well, we once worked it out didn't we that one loom stopped was taking the profit off six running.

R – Yes. Now this is what I say, and everything else to make such an inefficient unit. Now it you got an efficient unit, and what I call a happy unit, I don't like being bombastic with folk, but if you get a happy unit you can produce, that’s if you've got your cash flowing which is bringing

you materials in to put into them looms. Unless you've got that you might as well finish.

Now, Birtles made a statement to me yesterday, I don’t know whether it’s right or not, so I’m going to ask you. He says that in point of fact he would have no difficulty in getting orders to keep these looms going, he blames it on the weavers.

R- He talks a lot of bloody crap. They don't need to tell me. If he could get a load o£ orders why hasn't he got me a load of orders to pay for

all this stopped time that I've been paying, over a period of months not weeks now, to fill them looms up.

Well you know what I think about that. I think that .. I’m not saying that it was a concrete decision, but I think that the decision to run Bancroft down was made about 12 months ago.

R- You see on this, this is what I'm saying Stanley, all the gun fodder had finished. Now they were in that position, with the time it's going to take to make a weaver, another 12 months probably elapsed. Now they were going out of this place faster than what they were coming in, so your looms is decreasing you could say monthly.

Yes, which is the thing that I know you've been hammering away at for the last …

Well you've been on, as long as I've been here you've been on about it. I’ve been here what, five years next July.

R- You see, there's nobody had any foresight, them at the head, they took no notice of me or they didn't want to entertain it because it were going

to be money spent then and they couldn’t see that it were going to come back in at a later date. They wanted, if they were going to pay sommat out, there and then they wanted a return straight away, which, when you’re teaching people a skilled job, you don't get. You wouldn't get no return out of a young un for, say nine to twelve months but they couldn’t, they didn't want that. If they were going to lay a penny out they wanted twopence back which is an impossibility with skilled labour.

Which is this old same thing that we were talking about, about the manufacturer’s attitude after the war, especially the manufacturers here after the second world war isn't it? They just couldn't see.

R- Yes, just the same thing, they just couldn’t see Stanley that they’d got to do something because there were an industrial revolution coming to this area which were engineering and that where it ought to …as soon as they got into engineering they found that it were better money, easier job. They saw straight away, them that's gone in, they're going to get somebody else they know in, weaving’s a dirty word, no security to weaving, family before me were in it. Pooh, stopping, working a week, playing a week, so what security were this weaving! But the old people before Stanley, before the war, thought that this would go on for ever and ever, this gun fodder in this area. They never thought engineering round this area would get as big as what it is. And this is what’s happened with this lot.

Now this is very interesting to me because, there was somebody asked me a question the other day, and it’s a question I’ve never been asked before. We were in Manchester and coming up through Oldham. It was Mary Hunter asked me, anyway we were coming through Rochdale you know, and she said to me, “What are those mills doing here?” Obviously she realises that these mills now, most of them have gone out, but she said “What were the mills doing here?” I said “These were spinning Mary.” And she said “Why isn't there any weaving down here?” I said that's

a very good question. “Really I can't say as I've ever heard anybody give the answer to it. But it seems to me that weaving was built on the fact that there were weavers there before the industry started” The weavers were already here weren't they?

That’s it. And over the years there was that tradition of weaving. And I mean Ernie Roberts came out with it. He said “Do you know, when I was in the army I used to dream about weaving.”

have them in an out place couldn't they. And everybody did a bit of hand weaving more or less, so weaving is in this area in a fashion, but you go farther down into Lancashire, it was all spinning in a bigger way you know. Right, that became the most … don’t forget there is weaving, there's a lot of weaving there Stanley, but not the same as it were round this area.

Oh yes. And then of course, I mean it was obvious really when you come to think about it, all the cotton was coming in through Liverpool and Manchester, I mean it ...

R - So it's .. and, and as they take bigger amounts of raw cotton and they haven’t as far to…

Anyway, we’re getting away from Bancroft a little bit, but not so far away from Bancroft. So now then, what's going to happen now? Now we’re [on the way out] will we have any more sets to tape?

R- Contracts, I’ll have to weave them cloth contracts out. That'll take me about 12 weeks which they've notices up to that date which is 22nd December.

Now you tell me what'll happen now. As I see it one of the first people who will actually get …

R- But bear in mind anybody, there's some who'll be probably, I'm on a 12 week notice which is the limit. Some will be on five weeks, there's some will be on six weeks notice you see? Gradually cutting staff down so as they'll not pay more money out than they need to. Now anybody that doesn’t fulfil that contract of either five or like meself 12 weeks, I can lose my redundancy. So if I'd another job offered to me and I said Could I leave? and they said no, if I went of me own accord they could and would stop my redundancy pay.

Of course in that respect there is only one thing certain “Stanley will be here till the end”

Yes. Oh, by the way, I had Newton up today. I told him, I said I’m not stopping the bloody engine, you can stop it, I don’t want to stop it.

R - Well as we’ve talked Stanley, it didn't come as big a blow to us. We’d softened the blow over happen 18 months.

R- So when he said to me “Aren’t you shocked?” It were no shock to me and it won’t be any shock to you.

R- Because my life’s been Bancroft. 44 years. Like .. I shall be a bit touched when it stops at last, at Friday, the last day. I might shed a tear, I don’t know.

R- What you said to me, what is redundancy, and to me it's a dirty word. As far as I’m concerned it is. Because when I think back .. I’m going to be happen two or three thousand pounds down with the opportunity I had before, easy.

Oh I should say so, definitely. In other words if you had left say five or six years ago when you had a good job offered, the difference between the pay you'd have got in that job, to retirement and what you'll get in this job plus your redundancy would be, probably you’d be on three or four thousand more there at least. Because you know as well as I do you could have been on a thousand a year more a long while since.

R- But that were best when he says to me “Do you want a reference, Jim?” I said “No, not at my age.”

Oh I didn’t know about that, is that what P.B. said to you? Did you want a reference! I should think he ought to be asking you for one.

I feel we should just point out for posterity that he’s also written his own bloody notice out, hasn’t he. I wouldn’t pay him with bloody washers. Anyway, we are understandably .. I mean I’m speaking now to the people who’ll listen to this tape a long while hence, we are understandably just a little bitter about the management, but 1 can assure you, not without cause.

R- Well .. over the years Stanley, I haven't been.. I've had a... this is what did me with Sidney.

R- Sidney were a no-mover. This were going to do him his time, and Sidney knew when he were going to retire. Admittedly it came sooner than what we thought it were going to do, but not much. But he had it all planned out

when he were going to retire. Now as long as this were [running], he were content to let it gradually dwindle which were going to do him his time. That's the attitude of, I should say the Nutter family, [that’s how they] looked at it for years. You take Vernon Nutter as worked here as manager for years. He'd an honorary managing directorship, he were the same, no interest, no initiative, no ‘Let's get on’. No, let's plod quietly on, we are all right. No, anybody that come with any ideas were either .. well they weren’t shouted down but they were just ignored.

R- And this could have been the best and happiest unit there were in the town because it's ideal .. everything about this place is ideal for ‘em. If it's possible to make money with Lancashire looms never mind automatics, [it could have been done here.]

Yes, well, you know I’ve always said Jim, and I’ll say it now and I don’t care what anybody says, if you can't make money in textiles with a big decent mill like this, low rated property, all your plant and machinery written off years since, no capital overheads, half price power [Shortly before the mill closed we were possibly going to be bought out by Malcolm Dunphie from Rochdale and as part of the negotiation I was asked to do a costing of the price of power from the engine as opposed to electricity from the public supply. The result was that we were on approximately half the cost with the engine.] from a plant that's in .. top notch order, it’s in good nick is the plant, there's nothing wrong with the plant, and with a labour force which with all their imperfections have been bloody marvellous because I mean, they’ve put up with conditions in there that, I don’t knew anybody, I don't know anybody else that’d put up with … But the thing is, what I'm just saying is that if you can't make money in textiles under conditions like that there is no bloody hope for the Skelmersdales of this world. [This is a reference to the fact that Courtaulds had tried to drag the weaving industry kicking and screaming into the 20^th century by building a completely new weaving unit in the new town of Skelmersdale in West Lancashire. It eventually failed.]

R- I'm going back happen six or seven years now Stanley. Well, Bancroft shed must have had the best workforce in Lancashire to put up with conditions what they did then. They were worse off than what they were in what they call ‘the bad old days’ when they were running four and five looms. I mean to say, even on four and five looms, they'd no extraordinary thick weft then but now, when they're running ten looms the weft load is tremendous yet they're still carrying on with the same old fashioned way of no weft carrier, no trap-hand. So every weaver has to bring their own weft, take their own traps [A ‘trap’ is a loom fault which results in yarn breakages.] up and even in some cases go upstairs for weft. If we have been held up with weft and we can only just get to winding it they still want weft so they'd have to go up steps for it [To the winding department.] which is all lost production Stanley. So the workforce here, they've had the best in Lancashire because there is no other place, nobody that'll put up with that. And cleanliness of t’place, it's filthy, filthy, they've just absolutely bled Bancroft Mill.

I think that's a fair statement. I think that's fair statement and I'm speaking as somebody that's really from outside the industry. I mean I’ve only been here five years, and that’s just how it seems to me. I've never seen, and you've heard me say this before, when I first came to work here, I come here and I'd had twenty years on the road, on long distance haulage. And somebody asked me one day, they said “What do you think about Bancroft, Stanley?” As a matter of fact it was Sidney Nutter. He said “What do you think about it, how are you liking…” I said “Well, I’ll tell you what it is Sidney. It's a bloody holiday camp!”

And he looked at me, he was surprised. He said “What do you mean?” I said “Well, I think I've been in more mills, factories, refineries, warehouses, docks, you mention it, I've been in it, than anybody else in the shed. Than everybody else in the shed put together.” Because me job you see, I used to be going in and out of factories all day. And I said “I've never seen anything like this place. They come in when they want to, they go out when they want to. If they want to go and pick the wife up from work or go and do a bit of shopping, they pop off out. Or if they're going to the bookies or if they're going to get a bloody hair cut, anything, they can go out.” I said “Mind you, I realise you’ve got to run the place like that because the conditions are so bloody terrible.” It wasn't possible for them to discipline the workforce even if they wanted to.

R- That’s it. If I'd have clamped down and stopped everybody that were doing that, where were me replacements, who were going to work under them conditions Stanley? Nobody.

Yes. In other words if the firm wanted to run by the book, they would have had to have done a hell of a lot of things.

R - They'd got to have a factory that come in with working like to the book and all.

Yes. But there’s one thing I’d like to mention here, because I think you are as baffled as I am. Now, we are living in an age when, and here again I’m talking to people in a hundred years, and I think they'll find, I think one of the things that they'll find the most difficult to understand is that in 1978 we've had recent legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work Act. Obviously we’ve had the factory Inspectors for over a hundred years. How is it possible for a firm to run a factory in the state that this is in with, and if I'm wrong you stop me .. unsafe floors, unguarded machinery ..

R- No I can stop you in your tracks. You mention to me how often that factory inspector has been here. Now then, I know of a meeting that went on which I'm not supposed to do but I do, and there were unions involved in it. Now when they come to look at the age limit of this place they thought well, two year…

R - Of the workforce here. That place'll have finished. And that’s worked out somewhere near right.

R- So .. in other words Stanley I should think this place has been kept going on this meeting because only up to happen six or seven week back, factory inspector came didn't he?

We must just explain that. In 1976 there were these boundary changes which meant that whereas before, Bancroft at Barnoldswick had always come under the Yorkshire area of the factory inspectorate, in other words they came from I think it was Leeds didn't they, or Bradford, I forget which…

Due to the boundary changes, we came under the Lancashire executive, the Lancashire branch of the factory inspectors. Now they only got round to coming to see us about six or seven weeks since didn't they.

And I can remember that young fellow’s face as he walked out of the engine house, he said “I must bring my superior down here. I didn’t know we’d got anything like this!” And that man was absolutely baffled, he couldn't understand ..

R- And yet, when I got that report back there was nothing really, the place was… could do with a brush down, but there was nothing really serious. Now then, I know for a fact, another firm they go in to, that firm's absolutely spotless and they pull that firm to bits does the factory inspector. And they're never away from there, they make that firm’s life a bloody misery.

Yes. Aye, I think meself they realize that they’re dealing with a dinosaur here, they're dealing with something which is outside the scope of the legislation. And this mill, it always has been hasn't it?

R- If anybody come and look round they couldn't credit what went on here could they?

R- You wouldn't think there were any type of end product. Anybody that come in at that shed door, what I call shed door, and just looked, at first glance in that shed they wouldn't think it possible for any end product to come out of it and be made into money. It’s that chaotic. There’s streamers from one lamp to another, that's just for the cost of having the place swept down, and the only time that can he done is at week end.

R - Which is over time. So they don't bother sweeping down because it's money outlay again.

R - And there is nothing brought in with that, only a big heap of dust that comes outside, which they can't sell. So they don't do it. Well, take even, take toilets ..

Well now, you are on to something now. Somebody once saw a photograph that I’d done of the urinal in the gentlemen's lavatories to give them a polite name and they said to me, they said “What the bloody hell did you

take a picture of that for?” I said well, you tell me the last time you saw urinal in that condition! And I mean, they bloody smell.

R- Well this is it. And same as .. just imagine, you're putting old weft box, weft box lids up to an old iron grid to stop draft coming in, and the winds that blow in, and you've to put that up as a deterrent for the weather, keep trying to keep the weather out.

Which we should just point out, them toilets are built on the old fashioned principle, if you keep them cold enough in winter nobody will go and have a smoke.

So there is just a big cast iron grill instead of a window. That's it, yes. And that is something which always, never fails to amaze me, every winter Jim, how come those bloody toilets didn't freeze up more than they did.

R- Because however anybody went in a toilet there .. I mean, they must have frozen to the bloody seat, wicked, they don't have that in bloody prison never mind in a work place do they?

If a prison inspector were to go round and find conditions such as those toilets in a prison, I have no doubt about it there would be hell to pay.

R - Well just look, just look at the tea kettle where they've to brew their tea, it isn't fit for bloody pigs. And yet it's accepted, it’s been going like that for years.

When you think about it Jim, I think it's about bloody time we shut isn't it really. I’m serious.

R - Well yes. In a way it is. It's because… well I can't say, I’m fast for words.

R- It's just bloody ridiculous how anybody could run a business and still have made money out of a bloody place like this. It's right what the group chairman once said to me, which is Mr K. O. Boardman. “Where there's bloody muck there's money!” but he is a bloody liar because there isn’t, there’s more bloody muck than money.

Yes. But, well I don’t know. It's like you say, words fail us. I don't know and yet the strange thing is…

R- We’ve only one bloody showpiece here and that's the bloody engine house. And it's always been the same . Up to 1939 that shed in there was absolutely spotless, the floor, and every weaver swept their own looms and used to sweep their back alleys which were where .. at the back of where the weaving machines are. They used to sweep all them out every night before they'd finished, and that muck was collected. And they were spotless. And then after, when we come with more looms and a shortage of loom sweepers .. this is what happens where you get into a state. They always come with bright ideas which is going to improve the industry. It does in a certain way if everybody is prepared to go the whole way with it. But it's no good starting a quarter of the way and leaving three quarters of it not done you see. This is what happens.

So in other words, it's no use introducing the more loom system if you don’t put trap-hands in, weft carriers and proper sweeping arrangements.

Aye. Well in fact you're going backwards in some ways because you are finishing up with a dirty bloody shed aren't you? Which isn’t any good to anybody. It's no good for health, it's no good for fire risk, it's no good for production because I mean, you know yourself we've had looms that's overheated and, and only for one bloody reason that they've not been swept right and oiled right and bunged up with fluff.

R- Yes but you see, this is what they cry, Stanley, about this trade. If you are a loom sweeper you are a nothing.

R- A loom sweeper's a valuable asset. In that shed he can save you pounds and pounds on spares for them looms. But on wages with the loomsweepers now, a loom sweeper doesn't draw for doing 140 looms, he doesn’t draw £40 here, and that is to sweep every loom and oil them, which you know, if it's done right he can't do that. But who’s going to do that Stanley, for under £40 these days?

Well I mean, let's talk bloody sense, who the hell's going to go to work for under £40 these days?

R- But this is what they put down. Now I bet if you looked at a list where they come, same as what we're on with now, redundancy. Now they’ll go down that list, you’ve engine driver, boiler man, cloth looker, overlooker, weavers, warehouse man, and eventually you'll come to a loom sweeper .. Now then they'll start off, weaver, skilled. There'll only be one on there that isn’t skilled, happen two, which is such as your labourer that goes in and picks pieces up of the floor and next to them will be the loom sweeper, he is not skilled.

Aye. And as I’ve always said, anybody that believes that wants to go and try and sweep a bloody loom and then watch Paraffin Jack sweeping them or old Les Lambert. ‘Cause Les Lambert, he could sweep ten looms while I were doing one.

R- Yes, and they’re swept. He knows what it is about. But you bring somebody in, what they call unskilled labour to sweep them…

Get one look at the bloody job and run screaming down the road. What was it that you, what was he, a student or something, he told you he’d do anything for money?

LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT

TAPE 78/AA/08