New Page 0

THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON SEPTEMBER 25^TH 1978 IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AT BANCROFT. THE INFORMANT IS JIM POLLARD, WEAVING MANAGER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.

Now, what I want to do this week with you is run through these pictures of Ernie the tackler. Ernie’s already gone through them and told me what he’s doing and given me his description Now obviously, there’ll be little things here and there that Ernie hasn't mentioned that you'll mention. So what I want to do is to go through them again, with you, and we’ll see if we can pick out anything different with you looking at them. Now obviously, the first one, number 34, Ernie’s in the storeroom and he’s having a bit of a spell and rolling a fag but …

That’s it. Now just describe to us, you know, how the tackler system works. You know, with them in the storeroom and all the rest of it.

R- The overlooker is now known as a loom technician, it doesn’t go under the old name of tackler. It is now a technician. Well as I'm looking at this photo now Mr Roberts is in the storeroom, all he’s doing is rolling a cigarette, having his break period which normally applies to overlookers after they’ve come out of the weaving shed. But within happen ten minutes

there'll be a weaver after him for some loom fault or a band broken, which is attached to your healds which is a shedding part of your process in the weaving mill. And he’ll drop everything, go outside into the weaving shed again, and this is his job daily. So that's as far as I can explain off this picture.

Yes, that’s what you think! Now then, a tackler in the old days… I mean is there any difference between a tackler's job in the old days and, when I say the old days, you know, pre 1939 you know, say pre second world war. Was there any essential difference in the way that a tackler went on with his job then and the way he does it now?

R- Yes, in one sense. Well, I'm talking just before the war, a tackler’s money, what we now call his wage, was based on his weaver’s earnings. But now, irrespective of what the weavers produce off that loom, it doesn’t affect the overlooker’s or tackler’s wage in the least, they've now a fixed rate for running so many looms. And ratings for looms is based on width and what type of cloths those looms will weave. Not just plain looms, if you are on plain looms you’ll have a basic rate of 80 looms per set. In some firms it’s

100 looms bearing in mind the different widths of the looms. Now if we call, what we’re going to talk about now is a motion loom which weaved a different type of cloth altogether to the plain ones. Your healds is lifting and you’ve to change things under the loom such as what we call the rose wheels, tappets. So that’s an extra job for the overlooker, so dependent on how many motion looms you have in a set, average is 74 now, he’s also cut down and he’ll have a 2% decrease on what we call his normal loom average.

R- He’ll have less to follow yes. Or otherwise, the position that we are in, or we had been in, Ernest is still running his set of looms which is 74, but he’s being paid a slightly higher rate having these motion looms and such as that.

R- Well you get paid walking money now, that's if you .. a tackler’s set was based from .. loom no 1 we’ll take our place as it is 1 to 10 that's a set of looms in a tackler's eye so they follow on till you work round, till you get to 74 round the shed. Now that'll become another overlooker’s break

off point, he starts from 75 where the other overlooker finished on 74. He comes in at 75.

R- Yes. They did, but it wasn't a good idea because you could have two overlookers in one weaver’s alley, therefore they've less working room for the weaver to move about in that alley. So what we did, if that overlooker

were going to finish on say 74 and there was say two, three or four looms more to that weaver’s ten looms, we’d pay that overlooker for running them extra ones in that alley so that we didn't have two overlookers looking after one set of looms. And it gives the weaver more room to play about in the alley. So you base it on, take it that you had two overlookers in that alley at one time and she also had the loom sweeper, so how can the weaver weave with three men in her alley doing different jobs.

R- No you are thinking of something different when you talk about walking time. Now that is if you’ve got to split sets up, what I mean is, as I've said his looms that stretch from 1 to 74, but as it works on walking money he might not be able to follow them looms on to 74 so what I've got to do to give his 74 total, is break into another set of looms which might be a third of the way up the shed, or if it’s only a loom difference in the next back alley, I’ve got to pay what they call walking time.

Yes, so if, say you had five tacklers and one of them left and obviously you’ve got looms stopping so you split his set up between the other four tacklers that are left, it means that some of those looms are going to be in different parts of the shed to his original set so then that’d be walking money as well, walking time as well wouldn’t it.

R- Walking time. And that, you either pay ’em for that, or their looms is decreased, so you pay them that bit extra on walking time.

And of course nowadays there isn't the… Tell me whether I’m right or wrong, now they've changed the system of paying the tackler it means there isn't the same pressure on the tackler to get cloth off the looms and so there isn’t, he doesn't put pressure on the weavers like he used to do.

R- Oh no, there isn’t the same pressure on anybody now like that, as what we are talking about now. Because he is not what you could call bullying the weaver to get cloth off, and he's not being bullied by what we call shed manager to get that weaver cracking so as she is producing more. It’s easier for the weaver, it’s easier for the overlooker. At one time, you’d get the overlooker, if the weaver went to the toilet, they wouldn’t be in two minutes before the overlooker were banging on the door and opening the toilet door and shouting in “You've been there long enough, out!” And that were the system.

R- And as we’ve been talking about looking at this picture here where he is in the storeroom and he is rolling a cigarette ready for a smoke. Admittedly, the overlookers in the old days had a smoke, but they'd to go in the toilet for that smoke, which didn't last two seconds. They were treated no different to the weaver actually. And they used to have benches in the shed where they did most jobs such as putting fur in and fresh shuttle pegs and all that. It were done in the shed.

R- Yes. And that saved the weaver having to come out of that shed into the warehouse, into the storeroom and then after, to walk back, they could just go to that tackler's bench and he’d be there.

Now then, where Ernie’s sat in there, he’s got all those racks behind him, all numbered. Now, what's that, what’s in those racks Jim?

R- Well, in them racks there'll be roller temples, there'll he every spare part, what we call .. fork grates, forks, everything that you want to keep a Lancashire loom running.

R - Well this was done out in the old days. These have never been changed since this place were put in. Numbers on there was, they used to have a system by … they might start off at number 1 and they'd keep happen .. I should say, well, we just take for an instance fork grates, number 2 forks, number 3 cloth roller temples.

R- That's right. And then you’d come to others, you’d happen come, with being here, we’ve always had one or two different types of looms. We’ve had White’s, mainly Whites and Butterworth and Dickinson and Coopers which is three. So in some cases you need three types of spares. So everything were relating to what them numbers were on them, what I call cubby holes.

That's it That's something that’s only just struck me. Ideally you'd only have one sort of loom in a shop wouldn't you?

R- Which is the ideal set up, one type of loom. If you can work it that way, one type of loom. You only need one set of spares. Two types of loom and you're carrying two lots of spares and so it goes.

R- That can't be bad, because that saves you everything if you’re talking of continuity that way, one reed count, one set of heald counts. And in some cases this is the way they work it in America these days. They'll weave one type of cloth happen for nine months.

R- Yes. It's one of these here that you dream about, but it never happens in real life you know.

R - Is still the storeroom but it's relating to where you’ve a bench here and vices, which is what they'll use instead of these benches what I were talking about two or three minutes since. Such things as these up the wall side in the weaving shed. Now they've vices on these benches, and what they’re using them for now is such things as putting shuttle pegs into shuttles. I mean you’ve a vice there to hold your shuttle while you knock your peg out and then replace it with another one. But in the old days all that were done inside the weaving shed.

R- Well you can have all sorts of things wrong with a shuttle, you can have the shuttle eye getting a blockage, your shuttle eye won’t have been put in right. You get your shuttle peg, they won’t be lying in to the shuttle straight, now that gives you a lot of weft breakages. You can have your peg which is loose, comes apart as it's going across your race board which is going, passing your interlacing of your healds and your warp and your weft. That shuttle peg can come up if it is slack, so your pirn which is on your shuttle peg, it'll take half your warp out, half your warp ends. Top of that you can have your fur in wrong what controls your weft flow, because if you've no fur in them shuttles you've no drag on your weft so it just fluffs out. Now as that’s going along it’ll leave a little snarl in every piece of cloth, so that’s why you put fur in, to control that, it comes off at a steady flow. There’s taughtness on that weft where if you don't put that fur in it’s just slack and baggy.

This storeroom here, well I mean right fair, nowadays, looking at that, that storeroom is .. It’s a disgrace isn’t it?

R- Well, it's disgusting to look at it for the stuff that's laid about. Looking in one corner looks to be a damned hypodermic bloody syringe in it, so whatever that’s for I do not know. It’s nothing to do with the weaving section.

R – Well, by the look of that there isn’t much equipment round here, well that grease gun isn’t useful is it.

No, I think, is it for the motions, you know, for the dobbies, for the spring tops.

R- No. Then there's bits of leather, old leather thrown here and there. There’s hammers, there’s old shuttle pegs. When you went in there in the old days that was spotless and everybody knew where everything were and you could put your hand on just whatever you wanted. Now, after t’war when you come back all that had changed, why, I just don't know.

R- Well they'd all the windows blacked round and they used to draw blinds down. They’d a black edge. Have you noticed that there might be some windows left in which were black edged?

R- That’s right. Well they used to draw blinds down and all, or otherwise if they'd had them blacked out Stanley, you’d have been lit, lit up all day and in a terrible state here, wouldn’t it.

I've often wondered, well how did they go on with the North lights in the shed roof?

R- Aye .. well they’d them on a good lot, as far as I can gather. But they’d, some of them windows , when we come back, they were all black.

R- Now what, whether they’d [blacked them] in certain parts and they'd, I don't

Aye. That’d be interesting to find out. Now then, Ernie’s up in the warp preparation department on number 36. Now what’s he doing there?

[I made more enquiries later about the blackout in the shed. {It was of course an anti air raid precaution} I found that they had roller blinds and in some cases the hooks and eyes which had been used for the cords that controlled them were still in place 35 years later.]

R - What he’s doing, he’s preparing a warp which has just come out of the drawing-in frame to take into the weaving shed. Now Ernest, when you look at this picture, Ernest is looking at his bands which is attached to his healds. Now what he's looking at, he’s looking to see if that band, if he thinks it’ll do that warp's .. life of that yarn that’s on that warp out. If not he’ll have to replace that with a new length of band. All he does is put two knots

in the bottom and makes it like a fixture with a knot which can slide up and down which tightens it up when he’s got it in the shed on to what we call his lamb wires which is affixed to a treadle. Now then you can't actually see this but at t’bottom of that .. see, them knots is that where Ernest is on them .. tying that up. If you could just see you’d find two hooks in t’bottom of that wood stave which is attached to the healds which is allowing your twist, warp twist to come through into your reed.

Now then why there’s two hooks at t’bottom of them staves there, well in fact there'd be four, because that’s a four stave set of healds. If them isn’t there all they do, they make a hole through t’bottom o£ that wood stave and the bands run through that. Now your heald cording which is, when it’s knit it ran along t’bottom of that heald stave, what I call the heald stave. So if them bands at any time get out of place when they’re in the weaving shed and start either going one way or the other, there’s a tendency to wear all that what I call the heald cord knitting, which your wood stave

runs through .. and that’ll cut them at the bottom. And then them healds could come up because of the broken ends and cause the weaver to have what we call a heald smash..

R- And that'll be bad, because that warp that's going in is a type which’ll have definitely to come back up into the drawing room.

What are those, the actual threads that a heald’s made of, what are they Jim, what are they made of?

R- They’re made out of different counts of yarn, just ordinary cotton yarn. Now then, it’s really one of the best cotton yarns you can get is that, they’re varying counts of well, what they call 16/20’s and such as that. And all they are is they are varnished, what we call a varnished heald.

Now them’ll have one coat of varnish and then they’ll be put in a drying place. As soon as that’s dry, it comes out and has varnish brushed on it again. They have to be careful not to put too much on or you’ll get what we call a rough set of healds, it’ll start leaving it a bit pitted, pin point in it. So if you get any of that in your second coat of varnishing you’ll get another build up when they come to put the third coat on. So they have to be very careful how they brush this coat of varnish on to that.

R- And then they’ve to be dried off at a nice even temperature so as it isn’t quick dried and gets brittle.

Aye, the thing that always amazes me about healds is the way a varnished cotton heald will stand up to the warp going through it when you can see it wearing steel away.

R- Oh yes, well, it hardly touches that heald you know Stanley. If you set, what I call shed, them healds in a proper manner there’s very little wear on them. Now then, if you get a rough tackler and he sets them with two big open sheds, well, you’ve got one which is coming up higher than the other, a good lot higher, and they’re both coming down and causing pressure where they shouldn’t do. Now that pressure is taken up with your heald isn’t it.

R- At the eye which is made in your heald, so it's either what we used to call it in the old days is we call bottoming which is going into the bottom of where your eye starts and it gives the yarn a sawing motion which will cut them through.

Yes. And some of the healds have metal eyes don't they, you call them mail eyes don't you?

R- We call them mail eyes. Now then when you use yarn which is of a very heavy quality and it’s sized heavy, if you don’t use them you wouldn't get wear out of a set of healds, you'd get happen about two warps at the most out of a set of healds. Because you think when…

I’m doing some now, 9’s twist, it’s a lot of pick in so that yarn is in your healds longer than something which is say, a 25 pick or sommat like that. It’s going quicker through you see with 25 pick.

R - Now then, when you’ve got something which is up to a 58 pick, well it's in them healds longer.

Yes, that’s it, yes. And tell we something, I rather seem to think that I'd noticed that those polyzones like that one that Ernie’s on there, it's what you call a polyzone isn't it. Those are fairly rough warps, fairly heavily sized.

But I’ve noticed Jim that when you do them you very often have your two front healds cotton eyes. Is it just chance that I’ve noticed that all the ones I've seen you do, they've had mail eyes at the back.

R- Well, I’m not in a position to have mail eyes on both back staves and two front ones. So to make things easy, and I'm going to get a better life, I generally split a set of four down so that I'm going to get two and two. Because your two back ones take most of the wear.

R- And so that’s why I split them that way. Now you’ve been talking about this warp that he has hooked up which is a polyzone. Why that is heavily sized is because we… at one side of that… Well take the warp as a whole, you've got three different strengths of cloth when it is finished. Where your black is, that’s where you’ve got the most strength. Now then, that’s going to take the biggest wear of anything. What that's woven for, the purpose of that cloth is to go into men’s suiting on his lapels.

R - So why it’s done that way is so that you’ve different strengths in three different places and that’s cut out so that it goes into your lapels. On what the greatest strength is you put this black to make it easier for the tailors. You can see it as you look at it.

R- Yes, now and you'll come to another happen you'll get a different picture where it shows more of the stripe effect which is in the middle, So that’s slightly less hard wearing. So that comes second and then

that which is your spun is at the far end. Well .. that's something or nothing because that's a man made fibre and I'm not a man made fibre man and never have been. I don't like the stuff.

Ah. So that’s actually in effect three different grades of cloth all on one warp.

R - That's three different grades of cloth on one warp. Now then, they size that warp heavy because this black stuff which in your first stripe is a very hairy ... what can we say it is? It’s a wool and cotton mixture.

R- Which is termed a worsted. Now then, that's very hairy yarn so what they do, we don't size them in our tape sizing room, they have to be sent away to be done. So the tape sizers who do them make certain that they're laying them loose fibres on this worsted twist so that there is no shedding of fibres. Now what they do by doing that they oversize them. Now then, they've made

certain that the worsted fibres are laid on that [dark stripe] but they forget that the sizing on where you come into your second part there, which is worsted and spun mixed together, two and two, then spun which is mixed in with that, has a hardening effect. Now when you come to your all spun at the far end of that warp there …

R - The white end, it's absolutely ruined by the amount of size they have put on [to stabilise] this black, is hard and dry, no life in it, nothing.

R - Elasticity that's in that is nil. It's been sized up that much, and then with the amount of size that they'd got on, they run this on what we call a multi-cylinder tape which is happen seven or eight heating cylinders. Now then, to make certain that they dry the heavy size they have on there, instead of knocking one or two cylinders out of steam, cutting it off, they’ve run that through all eight cylinders [with maximum heat]. So, with over sizing and over drying what they've done is dry that spun yarn off that much that it's lifeless, too hard to deal with.

Now when you say it's too hard to deal with, what effect does over sizing and over drying like that have on a warp, what effect does it have when it comes here. What are the disadvantages for us?

Yes, but what does that actually mean, does it mean more breakages in the looms or worse to draw or what?

R- It means you're going to have bad work all round, they are harder to gait for the tackler, they are harder in my position to draw, I've no give in it, I can't just whip it round me looming knife, I've got to bring my hooks, me looming hooks right? straight out with that and turn it round the hook or otherwise it wouldn’t bend round that and go into the reed. There is no elasticity in it at all and for good weaving you must have elasticity and you need your yarn to give. Because when you think of the weight that’s going to have to be put on to that when it goes into t'shed .. it's just ridiculous.

That’s the reason why when Joe’s taping, you'll see him every now and again, he'll just take one thread and he'll pull it right up won’t he, and let it twang back like a piece of ...

R- Yes, twang .. just to see what elasticity is in that yarn and how much give it has in it.

R- Whereas at Courtaulds or somewhere like that, they'd take a piece out and send it to the lab and they'd test it wouldn't they. Joe just does it with two fingers.

R- Yes, that’s what you can do. You can just pick it up, put it on one finger and let it quietly run up it like that.

R- But this is what I call good yarn spoilt. But they play it safe and do all this heavy sizing to make certain they've laid these worsted fibre. Because then, if once they ... start shedding, if they under did them and then they start shedding… well that is weaving what I call shedding. [Jim is talking about the worsted yarn shedding fibres in the heald and reed and choking the yarn passages up.] So long as that yarn’s going from your heald, lifting up and down and your reed is going backwards and forwards, that’s taking more fibres off and gradually it will split and you’d have ends coming out. So they make certain that doesn’t happen but they are also spoiling that yarn. I can ring them up on the phone and ask them the amount of size that they have on them and they can't tell me how much percent they have. I think the sizing of that is 9%, so Joe would have to mix 11% and he can get a pick up of roughly round about 9% and that'd do that.

So in other words, we are not doing the job. In other words you think that Joe could get…

R- Our sizer, at the size end, different altogether and it would make a better job with that.

R - Well, type of warp that we are talking about now, Stanley, you've got to have a set up …

Oh aye, of course. It's a polyzone isn’t it, he can't do it on the back beams.

R – Yes, you’ve got to have a set up. We can't , no we can't do it on the back beams you see.

R- I mean there is no other firm does it on, there's only two, one in Bradford and this one at Todmorden.

R - Now if they run them on to beams they want the whole lot, they went sizing and all.

R- So this is how it's done. But I can send that away and it’ll go to Bradford to be finished. And where on normal polyzone cloth you should be able to remove that size in half a day steeping in water, the amount that them sizers are putting on, they can’t remove it in three days and they have to put special stuff in to get rid of it.

Now then, Ernie’s up there with, he's stood on the repaired piece of floor isn't he?

R- Because there isn't so bloody much repaired floor about our place. I'm on the last layer of wood, next drop and I’ll be through into the warehouse bottom but that's by the way.

R- Yes, so anyway, what he's doing, he's just seeing that his bands is right, so as he can wheel that warp straight into the shed to put into the loom, ready for gaiting that up to be woven into cloth.

Yes. Now leaned up against the wall over there at the back there’s some sets of healds and reeds that have come straight out of the shed. And some people would perhaps wonder why they're brought out as they are. They’re out of the loom still threaded up on the last piece of that warp, with a piece of cloth on one side and all the ends knotted up on the other side so they can't slip off. Now why are they brought up like that Jim.

R- Well they’re brought up [like that] because them can be what I call re-knotted back in our Barber and Coleman knotting machine to make a loomed warp or a drawn warp. Now them that are shown in this picture are stood up against that board so as that man, the operative on the Barber and Coleman knotting machine could just go there when he gets a repeat for that cloth, pick over whichever set he wants out of that lot, put it in his frame and re-knot it back by his machine, his knotting machine, so what it'll do it’ll pick one end off his top needle from his warp in his knotting machine and his bottom needle will pick one off these healds and reeds which is there, and then it puts both ends in a knotter which just turns them round like that and there you are, that's your knot.

So in other words that machine is doing the same process as the old twister did.

R- Yes. When I first came to work. Well that's done on what we call the Barber and Coleman automatic knotting machine. And where it takes me happen 45 minutes to do say 2000 ends, he'll go across it and have it out in ten minutes.

Yes, but there are disadvantages aren't there, because there are certain types of warp that our Barber Coleman can't manage, like these polyzones.

R- It can't manage these polyzones because .. it can't pick them out, can’t pick two and two out of different sorts. As long as it's a plain one and no cord in it…

Aye that’s it, aye. I thought that it was because of the type of yarn, it's not, it's because of them stripes isn't it.

R- No. It’s because of the stripes you see. He can't set that machine up to pick, when it comes to this stripe effect he can't ..

R - .. pick it in the middle to pick two whites, two blacks, two whites, two black.

R- He can't do it like that you see. What he’d have to have is a different machine, and have leased warps.

R- Leased warps, they have a band in which you've used split your colours from your other ends.

R- That’s right, yes. And that's the way they work and when they come to a cord..

I don't like it, the shop’s shutting down and I’m just starting to learn Jim. Now, the Barber Coleman, when it was brought in it’d be, well they'd think it were bloody marvellous wouldn't they?

R- Yes it were a bad day for the hand twister. Hellish bad day for the hand twister. But they’re not foolproof, if they’re not looked after right, and unfortunately ours isn’t in right good nick, it's never been sent back and overhauled and such jobs as that. If you're not careful and you’re not brushing [Your ends] out straight you can get crossed warps with it because it doesn’t, it isn't like a drawer, it’s picking them ends them warp ends individually one, one, one, all straight. It’ll happen go a one and a miss and a two.

Yes. How do they do it in the more modern sheds now, because I mean, obviously, the Barber Coleman is out of date now.

R- Oh, the sophisticated machinery they have now Stanley, you can go up in a drawing frame to 65,000 [ends a minute]. Oh, they gait this up and do this and this and then they press this button and that button and it’ll go across and pick you any colour you want or any pattern you want. Same as it’ll do some more like a card effect. They are like a bloody computer consoles.

R- Barber and Coleman’s in the old days, they brought an old type of drawing machine out and it were oh, it were a bloody crude effort, horrible. And when you set it up it broke, it sprained more bloody reeds, and deadly it were. It did more healds and reeds in than what … So gradually they faded out.

Now I’ll just trigger you off here Jim. That new piece of floor there, it’s noticeable that there are a lot of cut marks and funny looking marks in that floor. It looks as if it's had a terrible beating just where Ernie’s stood. Now whatever could have caused that?

R- I can tell you what’s caused that with just one glance. But bear in mind what you're talking about here has saved this firm thousands of pounds.

R- Well, I chop all my reeds down there. I can't afford to go out and buy a new reed at £15.50 so what I do, I go out and beg from some friends of mine in the same textile business as myself and see if he’ll give me a few reeds. Irrespective of width.. If they're wide enough that's all right, but I don’t want owt which is too narrow for my 40 inch looms because it's no good to me, it's junk.

R- I can't stick any on. You could do with splicing them, but I don't want so much work. So what I do I get all he gives me above 40 inches and then I chop them down on this piece of floor that you've mentioned to various widths for my looms.

Aye .. that's right because that’s the best piece of floor In the shop isn’t it.

R- So that’s the best piece of flooring I have in the place and it's most valuable .. because when it’ll save a firm like this thousands, I can stand them holes being in that floor or the firm can.

R- Same as me drawing frame, it’s saved them thousands. I’ve cut all our sets of healds down in there. But anyway, we are…

Yes, just one thing while we are on about this, and this will surprise a lot of people but, who does that drawing frame belong to Jim?

R - Yes, that’ll go with me, all my rods, me wood rods that are laid into me healds, they’re all me own, they’re all me own hooks and wherever I go them go. ‘Cause I think every man should have his own tools.

I agree with you Jim. When I leave that engine house there won’t be a spanner left in it because they’re all mine.

R- So that’s why that floor looks tattered and torn. But it’s doing a good job, well it has done, it won't be doing one much longer I suppose.

Right, now we've gone through them pictures we can … you see we could chop that tape there. We’ve left a gap, we can chop it there. Now, let’s just enjoy ourselves for the last two minutes. What are you doing now?

Oh, you've been making a terrible rattling noise on that, you can have a look at them don't worry, you’re going to see all them pictures, you're going to see them all.

Oh, that's it. It's all right, no it's all right Jim but we're all going to have a lot of time. But we're going to do this job properly. Now then, what I just wanted just to do five minutes on now is .. I know for a fact that you’ve been … obviously this tape is made the week after we've got the news that we’re going to be redundant and all the rest of it. Now there is a thing, I were looking at last week’s tape and of course the last tape we did we hadn’t got the news.

R - No we hadn’t got the news it were closing, we didn't get it until the day after .

That’s it, aye. Well now, the thing is that the word's got round now and we are getting … tell me about all the people that are ringing up and all the stupid things that are going on.

R- Well .. that phone is ringing more now than when we were selling cloth. People wanting to come and look at the museum piece which is the engine. We had one today.... they're coming to look at it with a view to buying it. We've had the BBC on wanting to know if there's been a preservation order put in for this firm. Well, people coming up, they want to spend

a week up here, they'll make it a holiday week if they can just see the engine. So this week has been just a bit chaotic. I've been taking more phone calls about why we're closing down and what’s going to happen to the place. Whoever took our cloth over the last two or three year [has rung]. No, I should say by closing down James Nutter's, Bancroft Shed has become known throughout the country more than ever it were thought of before.

Oh yes, our managing directory yes. But the one thing he failed to mention when he was interviewed .. I don't know whether you noticed, but he was .. They asked him what the cause of the closure was, and one of the causes he gave was importing cloth. Well if I had a bob for every card I brought up here into the office that says that ‘your ship is now in Liverpool with so many bales of cloth on from Pakistan’, well I mean, ... how hard necked can you get?

[The post used to be delivered to the engine house before the office opened and I used to take all the mail up there.]

R- Well that's correct. Yes. And the group that we've gone under now, this Wrengate, .... as far as I understand it were one of the biggest importers of foreign cloth into this country. I believe they provide Woolworth with a lot of sheeting and pillow casing.

It's all a load of balls. And the other thing, the other thing that he said that struck me, he said that part of it was due to the government. Well he never made any mention of the fact that the government's been paying the employment subsidy .. they were, I mean they stopped it as well we know.

R- Well as he said like, but it has been hard trading this last 18 months. Now, he hasn't had a bloody government subsidy coming in has he? That was stopped you see.

Aye, government subsidy, aye. ‘Cause that must have come to, well, 50 workers at £20 a week, I mean it’s £1000 a week, it's £50,000 a year isn’t it?

R- So that means that there can be a general slackness with getting cloth orders, he has that guaranteed hasn't he?

R- But everybody’s just realising it when you've took the birthdates and when they started and when they're going to finish, that we’re closing down.

Yes. One of the things that was mentioned to me today was the group photograph, I think we’ll have to have one on the office steps before too many weavers leave.

We’ll just .. bugger it, we'll wait while Birtles isn't in and we'll get everybody outside and have a photograph on the steps, aye, it'll be good won't it? I'll print one up and we’ll give… I’ll tell you what we'll do, we’ll do something the firm won’t. We'll give them all a present when they leave.

I'll print them up and we’ll give them all a picture of t’group. As they leave as they get their notice. If you come and tell me who's getting their notice that week, I’ll make sure they get a picture of t’group.

Oh we can't get the engine in and t’group. We can't get the engine in unless we did them all in the engine house. We could do you know, 'cause there isn't so many is there?

Well, we’ll wait while they've just thinned out a little bit because it’ll be all the young uns that’s going first won’t it?

LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT

TAPE 78/AA/09