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THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON OCTOBER 10^TH 1978 IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AT BANCROFT. THE INFORMANT IS JIM POLLARD, WEAVING MANAGER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.

R- Getting anxious they're not going to get a job. You know, mostly the weavers. Well, like I say, you can't talk to them because a good weaver can get work anywhere round here. But they just want to get in so as that they'd have, you know, a place to go to. More so those people that's on happen four weeks redundancy pay, some that have no redundancy pay.

So in other words they're, they're looking out for jobs now, and as fast as they get jobs, leaving now.

R - They are giving a week’s notice you see, and going. And in some cases there will happen be some forfeit a fortnight’s redundancy if they can find work.

Aye. Which when you think about it, it's happen a sensible way of looking at it.

R- Well it is but I mean to say, the demand for weavers, you just can’t tell them that that demand is still wanted. You see, supposing all t’weavers we have here wanted to get in, there are still vacancies for all them weavers.

Aye, anyway, with the irons we’ve got in the fire, you never know, we might .. its too early to start cheering but you never know, we might not be shutting down.

[At the time this tape was made we had a false dawn because a lot of people were showing an interest in the mill. The day this tape was made I had been talking to some executives from ICI who said they were interested in buying us out. We didn’t really believe it but it was giving us hope.]

R- But you see, as we are now, we’ve that many friends, which we never knew we had Stanley. I mean, in some cases they aren’t what I call friends because all they're wanting is your know how or where these cloth orders are.

Who were the bloke that were here this afternoon looking for you? Big young fe1low.

R- He's manager from Queen Street. Actually he is a tackler. And he got this job at Queen Street, managing. Oh he were after something that we haven’t got such as healds, which when I told him we hadn’t bought none for five or six years he didn't believe us, there it is, five years. I don't think you’ll remember any of the old mill coming in.

I think we happen got a couple of sets once didn't we? When we were right fast. Don't you remember?

R- Well the only thing we did, we got two half dozen sets which were to do an order which I didn't carry any healds at all for. Which I couldn't make up out of nowt.

R- And all the other orders that we've had from the heald makers is for heald yarn for piecing. And then they’re after leather which is such a price these days; pickers which is a price. This is the trend of textiles you see, they aren’t like these other units such as engineering and that. They can carry stock, I don’t know how much money they pay for machines and that, do they?

R- But when it’s a picker that’s £1.55, Textilaties want £1.55 for a picker. Now they don’t see what they’re getting for that cost do they.

Course, those blokes from ICI who were here this afternoon looking at the engine, when I told them how much the shed would go for, they wouldn’t believe it, 75 pence a square foot. I said to them, “You’ve been a bit bloody slow haven’t you?” Anyway, rumour has it that at least one of us has had his golden handshake.

R- What it amounted to, one reference. And I’m the only one that’s going to get one too.

R- Yes. That’s it, after 44 years, a reference. Anyone that gives a reference at my age must be bloody queer or sommat.

R- You see Stanley, when you look at the way the workpeople have been treated over the years here, it’s scandalous isn’t it actually.

Well, I’ve always said so. I've been telling you for years that you're a pillock stopping here.

R- Well it's like we were talking about, this redundancy, it's like somebody said to me, it's a dirty word really. When you think like you could have moved, and you think of the years you’ve been here, and you think “Me redundancy” So you hang on and hang on and then you hang on happen another six or seven years. And you think after “What a bloody fool I’ve been.” After, when it happens, don’t you.

Well I mean, you know yourself you could have been in jobs where you would have been on at least £1600 or £2000 a year more than you’ve been drawing here. I mean it’s all right, I mean you know your wage improved in the last year but they improved

R- Well the more I look at it and I think what a bloody fool I’ve been because you see, these managers are coming in from other places and some of them .. they couldn’t tell a bloody, a six inch pirn from a seven inch. All dressed up, car provided…

Yes, I mean I've told you before, if I'd been your business manager 20 years since we’d both had been bloody retired now.

R- And I think that, you know it's .. if you can bloody talk these days, Stanley isn’t it, to a certain extent.

R- It’s like… but textile industry Stanley, I don't know, there should be an alteration to it.

mean go to town really and spend .. or waste, what I call a lot of wasted money which isn’t necessary. My biggest doings is cutting labour which is the most expensive, Stanley.

Yes. But what’s the economical, what would you say were the economical number of looms?

R- The economical number of looms these days, I should say roughly round about a 550. And you see, if you've to rely on such as what I call bread and butter stuff such as gauze, as Johnson’s weave, you couldn't make a living off that, not with 550 looms Stanley. I mean getting 550 loom, having one or two bread and butter sorts with the weavers, which is only to ease the weft load, cut the shuttling time down you see. But you don't make, the firm won't make money out of that stuff Stanley; you want something with a bit or reed and pick in it.

stuff as that, 9’s and 10’s, you don’t need a lot, happen about 20 or 30 looms on that. With a 46 reed and a 50 wheel it’s producing a good cloth for which you're going to get roughly round about .. 30p a yard. Of course they aren't a hard weave, you know what I mean?

R- You aren't, you aren't .. Well if you run them on the right type of loom, this is it, a lot tries to weave stuff where they're hammering t'loom to bits but if you put ‘em in the right loom you’ve no trouble with it. And weavers isn't taking no twist up. So if you've no twist coming down you are making money, your room's running daily, this in why I say give ‘em bread and butter sorts to keep that weft going which will allow for these thick wefters. But not overdo them by giving happen say six heavy wefters where you’ve happen four heavy wefters which are only lasting two and a half minutes. To a weaver it's just hopeless. But we could improve it by giving them a weft carrier.

Yes well, if winding were shifted into the shed, that’d mend that up wouldn’t it?

R - This is way it should be you see. Because what you take upstairs you've got to bring down, to me this is all money Stanley isn’t it? Waste of time, waste of money. So all you need to do is have your winding in the shed .. which is the natural thing, for pirn winding to be where your weaving is. And then that's an easier job for you when you come to you’re weft carrying.

R- That’s right. So if you have say 550 looms your weft carrier's going to be occupied with that, but if you're talking about running 120 looms you’ve a weft carrier and also someone to clean up, somebody there. And improve it by moving the toilets, you don’t want to have outside toilets these days, which is just disgusting I think.

R- Well them were the old days type you see Stanley. You want a part of the old days as far as training is concerned but you've got to move with the times and all. You see, people now they want weavers, they're crying out for weavers, and

when I mention to them “What have you got for transport?” They've no transport! So there’s one place at Colne, they're begging for weavers. Well it means that to get to Colne you’ve got to go to a bus stop at Skipton Road, you catch a Nelson bus at the top of Skipton Road which takes you to the top of Primet Bridge, and then they’ve three quarters of mile walk down the lane. Now it can be absolutely throwing down with rain. That weaver goes in there, what’s she going to do? No change of clothing. so are they going to run her back home so she has a change of clothing? If they are, they might as well have brought her to work. But they pooh, pooh that. Now that van [Bancroft used to use Wild’s Transport who sent a double decker bus to transport the workers. This was expensive and caused trouble because it arrived before stopping time and the weavers used to stop early and go out as soon as the bus arrived. Nutter’s bought a van and it was driven by Ernie the clothlooker who didn’t leave before stopping time.] has saved us money hand over fist. We’ve, been producing cloth which we’d never have produced because folk wouldn’t have walked up here, they’d have gone somewhere else wouldn't they. But firms, they think if you mention transport … Well you can take it now Stanley, take Lontex, they’ve transport, Silentnight, they nearly all have transport these big firms haven't they?

R- So they worked it all out, if they, if they didn't have this Stanley, they had no workers had they?

Well it makes you wonder, but I mean, I suppose the short answer is that there isn't enough profit margin in t’job.

R- Which is what they are doing. But you see you'll find it's mostly these that's been taking it all out and putting nothing back, isn’t it?

Yes. Well, look at Smith & Nephews and places like that, they seen to be going on.

R- They're what you call like vertical firms aren't they. But you take them other firms, which is still private firms Stanley. They can still make a do, and run transport. You take Reeds of Nelson, they can come

into Barlick and pick up weavers so there’s some profit in it somewhere. If they're good, if they'll plough a little bit back Stanley .. they'll get production out of it.

Yes but you know that’s been my thesis for a long while. That’s what's happened here, this place has been treated like a milk cow.

R- Taken it out. You see, if they wanted to clear James Nutter’s assets, they'd clear them, to put it to another concern, which is so unfair you see.

Which in effect is what is happening now, £60,000 for the building and £15,000 for the scrap and that’s it.

R- And that’s what they think of those workpeople who’ve worked here all those years, that’s never seen anything ploughed back into it. And it’s wrong, it’s a bloody fallacy to say “Where there's muck there’s money” because at this firm there’s plenty of bloody muck but still no money is there?

No, but it’s like… You know these blokes I've been on with this week. They can see the potential in it. And you know, their argument is this, apart from anything else, they can see the time .. and not so long off now, when this foreign weaving will start creeping up in price because there’s none being produced here you see. It'll start creeping up, creeping up, and they can see the time when the textile job here is going to be all right again.

R- I've seen times when a they weren't getting cloth from abroad so that put customers here in such a position that they'd come begging for cloth. They'd pay owt for it.

So they must have had a margin or else they wouldn't be paying big prices for cloth.

R- But you see on this .. they keep talking about importing. As long as I’ve been in textiles Stanley, they still imported cloth into this country because if they didn't… At one time they cut it down. Now, people that were complaining, they were such as finishers, bleachers, and dyers all such people as them. They were making people unemployed, because Lancashire couldn't produce what they, this home market required.

R- They couldn’t. You've got to import, the textile industry in this country can’t keep the home market going. So when that happen you see, all these such as finishing places were creating because they were… the staff were going, being made unemployed, they'd no work for them. Lancashire weren't producing it [unintelligible]* * * * * * * * * yards of cloth from such as James Nutter’s.

R- Yes. And what they do from there Stanley, they'd sell it, they’d have customers of their own, so like everything else the middle man had the cream out of it. Now then, this has eased off a lot because you take a firm like Tootal Bondmore’s, they use a lot of interlining for shirtings and such as this. Well they buy direct from us now, where at one time it were done by the middle man, and Tootal Bondmore went to these cloth converters.

went round Manchester, went round the mills. They'd just warehousing Stanley you see? That's all they had.

R- And not so much of that because they knew that they were going to get shut of that cloth, so it weren't stood so long before it were shipped out again from their place to whoever were buying it, trade it out to Tootal Bondmore’s probably. But they’re the ones who make the money. [Tootal’s] Really and truly Stanley, there are good orders about. I don’t mean such as five hundred thousand yards you know, because them will he taken up by such as these that can really plough cloth out such as Courtaulds, on these jet looms and Saurers. But there’s always something, fifty thousand yards orders and thirty thousand which Courtaulds wouldn’t look at; they wouldn't do a setting up for that, but they are ideal for say a five hundred loom place. And there's some of these which goes on year in, year out. And in some cases the weather affects it and all, good summers, bad summers.

How about weaving itself, you said something interesting when we were on about…

R- Now to me, whoever built these cotton mills in the old days knew what cotton producing were all about Stanley and that’s all that they were interested in. Now, if you look at most of the mills round here, they’ll be set up where you’ve got hill sides, where you've a drainage of water down into the bottom. Now then, what they’d do, they'd run drains under the floors and they flag, happen put ash and just lay flags on top. Now such as that is ideal for cotton weaving.

R- Well, your temperature is what you call a damp atmosphere, which is ideal for cotton weaving. It gives it more elasticity and keeps your cotton at a more even temperature. So once you've concreted the floor, you've took all the beauty out of that floor Stanley, because you’re going to have a drier floor so you’re going to have to find some artificial means such as humidifiers, of putting that damp atmosphere back into that cotton that you are weaving, haven't you? Now this is... well, there is nowt like natural things Stanley you see. In some cases you'll get this moisture coming out in a fine spray if they’re not set properly don’t you? So the weavers are making more bad cloth. Well they came with all sorts like that, it gives them more rheumatics and such as that. But you can have such as that and there's no doubt about it, you can go in the shed at, leave it at Friday night and come in on the following Monday, and you’ll have what we call the starting handles rusting a bit which can't be of any advantage to a weaver, can it?

R- That’s with humidifiers. Now you've nothing like that with a natural floor.

No, as long an them looms don’t get wet with a leak through the roof they stay shiny for ever.

R- Without a leak through the roof they'll shine for ever you see. Now this in why I say you take beauty out of cotton weaving when you do a floor with concrete.

R- You see, you take it, take Johnson’s now Stanley. That’s in a bottom isn’t it. But they've like a concrete and then they've put like a tarmac on top of that haven't they.

R- And painted it. Admittedly it’s clean and swept down. It's far better, better atmosphere for people to work in, you want that these days don't you.

Well yes, but I don’t think much of the atmosphere in Johnson’s shed when I go in.

R- You see now, artificial lighting .. well that’s no good, you want as much natural light [as you can get] that's why there were all them…

R- Yes. But you go into places now and they're what we call underdrawn aren’t they, all artificial lighting. So I don't think you can beat natural light. But like a lot of folks will say “You talk nonsense” these days when you talk about humidifiers, they’ll do all that. Only I’ve been in these places and it just isn’t so Stanley. For the type of cloth that we weave and the yarns we’re using, we don’t have so much twist down [weft laid about in the shed. Weft, being in smaller packages, is more susceptible to changes in humidity.] to say the weaver has to do everything for their selves. No it's .. this is ideal. But like you were saying to me, you’ve got this in a natural state. Well, you can say this is the change over from handloom weaving to the first Lancashire looms and belt drive that were going, and nothing's changed here has it?

R- Nothing. So if you wanted to keep this as a going concern and a show piece, why change the floors because you’re taking all the beauty out of them that installed these mills and knew everything about what were going to happen in here Stanley.

R- All I’d do is lift them flags and level ‘em. Or otherwise you're going to have to do the same as the others, install a humidifier system. And you’d have to buy, in some cases you might have to buy, pay a bit more for your yarn.

[This is a very important point. What Jim is saying is that under ideal conditions of humidity, temperature and air circulation you can get away with using a cheaper grade of weft, usually a shorter staple. When people say that Lancashire is good for cotton because of the humidity this is what they are really talking about. It is the reason why so many sheds like Bancroft were built into the side of the hill so that the back walls were actually largely below ground level. This was quite deliberate and a key factor in choosing a site for a shed.]

R- At one time, in the old days, what they had to do when they had them dry summers and that, they used to, when they'd finished at night they might pump from the canal, and pump water on to the floor to keep it, give it that, still that damp atmosphere.

R- In the shed. Not just Pickles, that's what they used to do in some of these places that were dry you know. And it used to smell terrible but .. never owt like that happened here, going back to when we had that dry summer, [1976] nobody ever noticed it, not with the weaving side did they?

[During very hot weather and particularly during the annual two week break, weavers would lay a damp cloth over the beams in their looms to ensure that there was no drying out of the warp.]

R- In some mills you could see them before Stanley, they’d have all wet rags under the warps so, as they thought, they'd draw a bit of damp up into that beam. That's why Lancashire were the main shop for cotton weaving Stanley, weren't it, for the damp atmosphere.

Aye that’s it. Well they always used to say if you followed water you’d find weaving at t’finish.

R- So I don’t see why this couldn't be done you know, economical, and still a show piece. But straight away I'm dead nuts against a concrete floor.

R- Aye. And leave about 50 or 60,000 square feet free for letting, which can’t be a bad thing.

R- Now then, if they come with an idea on looms Stanley, they want it more or less for a show piece and let the other off for storage, which is an attraction .. I wouldn't touch a thing, but just break it down, you know, into one small unit.

R- Concentrate. It's so as that it's running, if anybody wants to visit and have a look round.

Well apart from that, 120 looms if they were kept running, they'd pay wouldn’t they?

R - You see, there’s to nothing worse than coming into that engine house and everything’s stopped, it’s like a bloody cricket field on a wet day to me.

Yes. You’re right, I mean if you're going to .. you know yourself I’m not a preservationist, but there’s only one way to preserve sommat like that and that's to run it and doing sommat.

Aye but apart from that it’s nowt . I mean if it's cold, it’s got to be warm and spitting at you. That’s an engine. If it isn't it’s just a lot of scrap iron.

R- Same as with that, how the oil flows up into the cylinder .. it's amazing isn't it really you know. But same as with that, if the bloody thing’s stopped, nobody sees such things as that Stanley.

Oh aye, it’s funny but those ICI fellows this afternoon were fascinated by the sight glasses, the lubricator glasses.

R- You see a big thing like that and the smoothness of it. Well anybody who saw it stopped would think there’d be such a bloody clash and a clatter when they start that wouldn’t they. And they’re never going to get to know because it’s just stood there doing nowt isn’t it.

Oh, we have a recording of it Jim, we can let them know what it did sound like. Aye. And the management finishes at the end of this week…

R- Well, he finishes actually on Tuesday night. He starts his new job on the 1^st of November.

Oh aye, next week. Well wait a minute, first of November, when's the first of November.

R- Sommat like that, I think it were 20^th on Friday or something like that. So you see, you take Johnson’s Stanley. Well now I'm just giving you an example, there couldn't be a cleaner shop nowhere could there.

R- You’ve seen it yourself. Can they get weavers? No! They've done all that .. and they're running two shifts and what I call a medium shift. Now, they admitted their selves to me that for weeks now they've had looms stopped to the equivalent of 19 to 25%. So when you come to average that out, there’s always …. They’re only running 75% it's a lot of looms stopped. There's some production there, and they're all bread and butter sorts that they're weaving now. They’ll cost you happen about 5.75 pence a yard, so you should be turning some yardage off to make a profit out of that Stanley.

That's if it wasn't a vertical company, if it were, if you were weaving it for their selves.

R- But you see, folk gets a wrong idea, like when the personnel officer rung me up. I says well, you are going the right bloody way, same as us! There’s only one end to it. Well, she laughed at me. But how long a firm can go on standing that loss I don’t know Stanley. Do you?

Well it is rather a special case, Johnson’s isn’t it, because they're reckoned to be ..

R- Yes but you see, it's only a special case for so long. Look at the money, look at the money that’s been laid out in that place Stanley. That money's got to come back somehow or other hasn’t it? But the man that were in charge when all that were done, he’s left now. So whoever took his job over, he’s going to be watched. What he's got to do, it isn't a matter of beautifying with him, he’s got to produce hasn’t he. He’s not left with an easy job. Because anybody can tell somebody to paint can’t they! It's a far different job is that to telling somebody to produce.

R- And that’s what the textile trade is all about Stanley. You’ve got to produce to make money.

Well to me it doesn’t take a lot of weighing up that, once the looms are stopped, I mean a thing that I could never understand here was how the management could be so blind as to let payments for yarn orders get so far behind that the spinners were refusing to let us have yarn. And that meant that we had weavers stood at stopped bloody looms and we had to pay them.

Because, I mean, one stopped loom takes the profit off that set. I mean, if you’ve got to pay a weaver a wage for a week for a loom that’s stopped, it's just mad!

R- You see I can’t, what I call the dead wood Stanley, you get so far and… It's no use having two real tip top weavers and say six that's only middle, medium. Because them six make them two look bloody awful on the profit side, don't they? So the only thing to do with that is you cut so many don’t you. But no. So if you’ve no backing what can you do.

Aye, now when you come to weigh up if you had like .. Christ if you had 120 looms and twelve weavers like Olive Whittingham.

R- Because such as Olive Whittingham and Mary, they are what I call hungry, they want the money.

R- And they can go a full morning and never go to the toilet, never mind go out for a smoke.

Yes, Them’s the ones that are worth the money though, that's the thing I can't understand.

R- These are the things which .. you pay extra to such as that because you’ll get it back.

R- But I don’t know, you can’t get anybody else to see it. So you only need a few like that and you could honestly say you could pay them £50 a week and they’d show you a profit, because it’s in ‘em, they don’t know what it is to have a loom stopped.

I were watching Lottie today, as long an they're weaving Lottie can knock it off, can’t she.

R- Lottie is one, she’s hungry, but you've also got to have some good cloth with it and all Stanley, which such as Olive Whittingham and Mary can do. You’ve got some that can produce and make good cloth. But you see

there were nothing to keep them, there were no incentive for them to stop Stanley. And you’ve got to have an incentive haven't you? Everybody says “Well, where are you going to start?” But somebody has got to start with something, at a figure haven't they? And you work off that. And if you started and [paid bonus] for attendances you’d get more coming to time, putting more time in you see wouldn’t you Stanley?

R- Yes, same as I’ve said with the transport, fortunately we have that van which has paid for itself, but other firms don't look at it like that. But you can’t expect a woman to work a shift, wait a quarter of an hour to catch a bus in the cold and then have a mile to walk when she gets off that bus at say twenty past ten at night could you.

No, certainly not. That’s another thing that strikes me about something here. I mean, you know yourself, I mean we’ve both got bloody well fed up with it, but over the last few weeks all the talk there's been about it being a shame that Bancroft’s closing down and wasn’t it a marvellous place and the engine's beautiful, and all the rest of it. But I’ll tell the thought that keeps going through my mind, how many of them buggers that’s saying what a marvellous place it were would ever come and work here?

R- You see you don't need to he stood over anybody Stanley, to get them to work do you?

No but I say, these are the people, the people who are saying things like this are the people who are working at Rolls getting £55 a week for sweeping the floor.

R- Yes, which you don’t need no skill, yes. All you need, a bloody bucket and a brush and a mop and a tea trolley and within three hours you’re skilled.

R- Yes, this is it. This is where they’ve lost them Stanley. And once somebody goes out of textiles you’ve a job getting them back haven't you?

I don't know, I think there’s such as Elva Martin, if she knew that she could draw say £50 up at Bancroft, I think she’d be back in a crack.

R- Well I should say, even though there’s muck and everything about, I should say the atmosphere in Bancroft Mill is far better than t’Rolls atmosphere.

Oh it’s different, it’s just a different thing altogether. It’s like a bloody holiday club this place, it's holiday camp.

R- Well, same as now, I know everybody’s a bit down in the dumps but I don’t think there were a happier shop anywhere than this.

R- No, but you see, this is the way you can get work out of folks Stanley, without… You don’t need to stand over them.

R- This is it. All they want is something different to a bloody toilet outside don’t they? And just swept down as if they were, if occasionally they’d done that as though they thought about the workers here.

R- Yes, it would satisfy them Stanley. And if they could get the floor swept up.

Well 1 mean, what makes that shed worse than anything else is the fact that we've got five hundred and odd bloody looms in there and only two hundred running, every weaver’s stood there weaving and looking at a lot of looms covered with dawn. There isn't a weaver in that shed that isn't looking at a lot of empty mucky bloody looms, beams to them. Well there's happen a couple, Mary Cawdray is the only, there might be a couple, aye.

R- There’s reason in being over generous and in being skinny isn’t there. And this has got past being bloody skinny.

R- Because I really think they've had the best workforce in the North of England here to put up with the conditions like we have here Stanley.

Well I don’t see how they could have been any better. I mean we've never had a minute's trouble never a minute and hardly a wrong word. If there is, it generally finishes up with a bloody laugh.

Of course, I suppose a lot of people would say that really, you know, the trouble is that we are an anachronism, we’re behind the time. Which is right I suppose, but it’d be grand if we could just stay that way, behind the times for a bit longer, because I have a sneaking suspicion you know Jim that, same as these blokes that I’ve been on with this week, things might just change and it just might come that the textile job could get some bloody profit in it again. And when I say profit, I don’t mean hand to mouth profit, I mean it might be worth doing. Because overseas production isn’t getting any cheaper.

R- And the more that go out, the buggers will get dearer Stanley. There’s only one answer to it, once a market's cornered you’ve had it.

Yes and anybody that has managed to stop in will be on some prices. And even better off because they're home producing and if prices are the same people would rather buy off home producers than imports any day.

R- But you see, I don’t know how to do. You take it Stanley, Leyland say there's more bloody foreign cars on their car park than what there is English. Whether that's true or not I don’t know. But you said well .. take Silentnight with their beds, I mean the bed covering where the springs are, if they advertised it that it was all British cotton, do you think they’d sell the bloody beds any better?

Well let’s put it this way, I don't think it would do the job any harm. But I don’t think it’d be an overnight sale success. So I don’t think it would do it any harm, but …

R- No but you see this is why Stanley, they're going to be left and there's going to be no textile industry in this country. They’re going the right way to shut it, there's more spinners on the way out now. So if you could get a firm like Silentnight boosting the British textile industry, giving it a boost, it encourages others with the name that Silentnight has, what they've grown to now. You've got an outlet if you follow what I mean, haven't you.

Oh I’d have thought so. Of course, I’ve never been able to understand why Silentnight don’t weave their own stuff.

R- You see Stanley, there's nobody that speaks up for textiles, not even their own bloody union do they.

R- Because all they get off the government is .. no matter what the textile men say, they’ll get no more because they’re subsidised now.

Well I mean, somebody said to me today, they pointed out to me when I were playing hell about the Tories, that Raymond Hill wasn’t Tory. I said "I don't know so much. I think Raymond Hill might be the best bloody Tory in Barlick, even though he is Secretary of the Weaver’s Union and a Labour man. Because by God he acts like a Tory.” And I think that these Trade Union fellows do when they get into a high position, they all act like Tories.

R- But you see, there’s, to me there’s that bloody many set ups of unions in textiles Stanley…

Yes well, they've got to rationalise, and they're the same as the car makers, there wants to be one union for one shop, that's it.

R- You’ve got the Overlookers Union, you’ve got the Tapers union, you've a Drawers and Beamers Union. If you’re skilled you should be skilled in textiles shouldn’t you.

R- And I call everyone in this place except such as Colin Macro, skilled. Because they think he’s a nothing because a bloke comes out filthy, there's no skill in what he's doing, such as loom sweeping. And he can save the firm hundreds and hundreds of pounds a year.

Oh aye. Well, that to me is one of the tragedies of the textile industry, that the weaver has never been really recognised as a skilled job. That’s the reason why I spent so long taking pictures of weavers because I’m full of nothing but admiration for them. I think weavers are bloody marvellous, that’s all there is to it. And anybody that says that they aren’t skilled has never watched a weaver working.

Well, Lancashire loom weavers are all I know. But from what I’ve seen of these automatics they're machine minders not weavers.

You could train bloody monkeys to do the job. In fact it won’t be long before they have a computer that will do the job for them. Well, they are bloody near computers now, they change weft themselves don’t they?

No, to see a weaver coaxing cloth off a Lancashire loom… Anyway, not so bad Jim.

LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT

TAPE 78/AA/10