LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT

TAPE 78/AC/8

THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON AUGUST 2 1978 IN THE ENGINE HOUSE AT BANCROFT.  THE INFORMANT IS ERNIE ROBERTS, TACKLER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.

Now, Orde Wingate has just picked his Chindits and you were……

R-We were still in Burma then.  These wireless sets we worked on were manned 24 hours a day you know.  All night, you get four [hours] on and four off.  Well, me and my mate, we had to work in pairs.  Me and my mate were in this slit trench with these FS6 wireless sets, they were good uns, Australian.  And there were a bust up going on, some patrols having a bit of a dust up you know and there were bullets flying around and a lot of noise.  I were cowered down in this trench with Straw and suddenly it struck me as funny, I remembered me mother telling a little tale to me, years ago, ‘cause she had a sense of humour.  This little tale came into me head and I said to Straw, ‘Ho, Straw, what does blood smell like?’  He says ‘I don’t know’.  I says ‘well, if it smells like shit, I’m wounded!’  and then I started laughing.  But just imagine, laughing under them conditions.  Things quietened down, time passed on, big shifts and little shifts and we moved on eventually.  Well, there were one harrowing instance, we had about three hundred mules and we were cut off completely, no hope of survival, it were like every man for himself and the vet. [veterinary surgeon] put all these mules down, rather than let them fall into Japanese hands and do you know, I cried like a bloody kid.  Because there were one mule that I used to like a lot, Susie we called it.  If we did any moving about we used mules to carry batteries and what we used to call the Chore Horse, for charging them, and we always seemed to get Susie and poor old Susie were put down.  What a bloody waste isn’t it, war.  What a waste when you come to think of it, all for bugger all.  Where’ve we got to now?  Oh, I’m on me way to Ceylon aren’t I.  To invade Sumatra.  But I’d only been in Ceylon, Colombo, for a month or so and I were posted again, back up to Madras, Air Formation Signals, so I’m in’t army, I’ve been in the navy and now I’m in’t air force.

It were a big air station that and for the first time in me Indian career I had a sweetheart.  I were working on a telephone switchboard at the time [and] down in Madras there were some army offices you know and I noticed this girl were on duty [at the army offices] when I were on duty.  We used to have little chats and they called her Irene Lucas.  There were lots of Lucas’s in India, born and bred in India, he were a busy man were Lucas.  Anyway, there were a film on in Madras, Gone With The Wind, and I asked this Irene Lucas if she’d like to go and see it wi’ me.  ‘Yes, all right’ she says, ‘but I’m dark see?’  Well I thought, dark, it’d make no difference to me.  I said ‘What difference does that make?  I’m fair’.  I had bloody ginger hair then.  ‘All right then’, we’d meet on St Thomas’s Mount Station at this particular hour.  So I went down and gets off the train and walks along the platform and I saw this smart little bird walking towards me.  I thought, I wonder if this is Irene Lucas?  So I said, ‘Are you Irene?’  She says yes and do you know, dark? She were as dark as the bloody ace of spades but a lovely girl.  And I were at St Thomas’s Mount for three or four months going out with this girl regular and it were’t happiest three or four months I’ll tell you, she were a lovely girl.  I were sorry when I had to leave her, urgent posting back to Ceylon.  They couldn’t start this bloody invasion without me you see.  So back to Ceylon I went, it were a long way you know, travelling on me own.

How did you travel, by rail?

R- Train, train and boat.  Oh we used to go on a boat to Ceylon you know.  Like, you know how they do, issue these passes and I went.  I mean, Ceylon were a lovely island but it’s lousy, there’s bugs everywhere.

So you’re in Ceylon now, you’d gone back ostensibly to invade Sumatra.  What year would that be about?

R- !944 going on to 1945.  I had been in India nearly four years then.  I told you about me old mate Jones didn’t I, that I were wi’ a long while and I lost touch with him.  He were a brilliant operator, brilliant, they’d had him up on the North West Frontier, listening to the Russians.  And when I were in Burma, up at Brigade one time, I got relieved and come back to Division.  I’m stood in a queue waiting for some grub, there were open fires you know, like camping out and I looked down the queue and I thought by gum that chap looks familiar from the back.  This Jones had a big head.  And it were Jones.  He’d come from the North West Frontier [where he had been] listening to t’Russians right down into Burma to listen to t’Japanese.  That bugger

should have had a bloody medal, he were still a Signalman and a brilliant operator.  He were never, oh it were marvellous just to watch him taking these messages.  And we came home on’t same ship me and him.

From Ceylon?

R- From, no, you did a four year term and we went out on the same ship so we were coming home, they called it the Rajah Draft.  I met him at Doolally [Deolalli is a town near Bombay and ‘tap’ is Hindustani for fever]  Doolally Tap?  They reckon everyone who has been at Doolally is doolally.  I met him there in that camp, it were a trans, what do they call it?  Trans sommat camp [transit].  We went from there on to t’ship, they called it Alcantara and we set sail for England.  [ALCANTARA  22,181 gross tons, length 630.5ft x beam 78.5ft, two funnels, two masts, twin screw and a speed of 16 knots. Accommodation for 432-1st, 200-2nd and 674-3rd class passengers. Built by Harland & Wolff, Belfast, she was launched for Royal Mail Lines on 23rd Sep.1926. Her maiden voyage started on 4th Mar.1927 when she left Southampton for Cherbourg, Lisbon, Las Palmas, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. She continued this service, with the occasional cruise until 1934 when she was rebuilt to 22,209 gross tons, with accommodation for 330-1st,220-2nd and 768-3rd class passengers. She was also lengthened to 666ft, her two funnels heightened and she was fitted with new diesel engines to give her a speed of 18 knots. She resumed the same service on 4th May 1935 and continued until 1939 when she was rebuilt as an Armed Merchant Cruiser. Her forward (dummy) funnel and mainmast were removed at this time. Sent to Malta for further conversion, she was involved in a serious collision with the Cunard ship FRANCONIA en route, but remained afloat and managed to reach Alexandria for major hull repairs. In December 1939 she commenced South Atlantic patrol work. In July 1940 she was engaged in a battle with the German surface raider THOR and scored a number of hits, but was damaged on the waterline by an unexploded shell and had to reduce speed. The THOR withdrew under cover of a smokescreen and the ALCANTARA put into Rio for temporary repairs. In Nov.1940 she returned to Liverpool where she was fitted with better armament and then returned to South Atlantic patrol work.  Converted to a troopship in 1943, she made trooping voyages to the Mediterranean, Singapore, East Indies, Halifax, India and Ceylon. Refitted after the war to carry 220-1st, 185-cabin and 462-tourist class passengers, she resumed the Southampton - Buenos Aires service on 8th Oct.1948. On 17th Apr.1958 she left Southampton on her last voyage to Buenos Aires having made 172 round voyages to South America. Sold to Japanese ship breakers, she was renamed KAISHO MARU for her passage to Japan for scrapping and arrived at Osaka on 30th Sep.1958.]  But they came back through t’Suez Canal and when we went out we went round the Cape you know.  So I had been all them miles, a country boy that had been to Blackpool exploring.  And I’d been all them thousands of miles in them four years.  When we got back to England it docked at Liverpool and they were playing ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ on t’quay side, a brass band.  Bloody Hell!  I thought me heart would break, what a feeling, coming back.  And we went to Catterick for some ration tickets and all sorts.  Well, we’d had no dealings wi’ this hardly you know, it were all new.  And black-outs, blackout were still on.  So we got to Catterick and got leave passes and money and chocolate and all sorts and old Jones and me said Ta Ta, see you in a month.  We had a month’s leave.  We came home, had a month leave and went back to Catterick.

Now hang on a minute, you came back to Barlick then for the first time for four years.  Skinny ginger little Ernie Roberts that knew nowt went out and skinny little Ernie Roberts that were a different colour and knew a bit more came back.

R- That’s reight!

What were your impressions when you landed back in Barlick?

R- It were just as if I’d gone yesterday, just exactly the same.  There were no changes only me wife had buggered off with another fellow and I like came home to me mother.  That were like, it were like a disease during the war.  Soldiers used to get ‘Dear John’ letters.  Very sorry but these things happen and, well, that were it weren’t it.  I remember a bloke called Nop.  There were about 26 blokes in his section when we were at St Thomas’s Mount, Air Formation, Signals, and he were the only bugger that hadn’t had a ‘Dear John’ letter.  This Nop come from Manchester and he got one.  I think I must have been a good listener or fatherly figure or sommat.  Came to me with bloody tears in his eyes, ‘Read that’  he says.  Oh I said, is this it?  You’re the last!  And it said, I forget his Christian name, you didn’t use Christian names in the army.  It called him, ‘Dear Nop, I had been to Manchester Royal Infirmary with my eyes and they’d put some drops in and when I came out I couldn’t see and some lousy swine put me in the family way’.  I thought that were bloody good that were!  Eh, poor old Nop, he were reight upset but he realised and got over it in a week or two.  But I mean, it were just life, the times, by gum.

They must have been powerful drops!

R- They must have been powerful drops them!  Anyway, I came home to me mother up Castle View and I had a jolly time for a month, dances and drinks and I had some medal ribbons up you know, conquering hero, I’d carried me rifle then for about five years and never fired it, only on the range in the early days, I’ll bet there were cobwebs in it.  Anyway, back to Catterick.  The German war were doing well then and t’Japanese were getting hammered by the Yanks and everything were hunky dory.  Got back to Catterick, no Jones.  So I hung on and hung on, waiting for Jones to turn up and a fortnight passed.  Eventually he turned up.  Now I were with him a fair while in India and he would never go into a brothel, he were a clean living man.  I said ‘Where the hell have you been?’  He says, ‘You won’t believe this’.  He came from Pontypool, spoke Welsh you know, up and down.  ‘You’ll never believe this, my childhood sweetheart gave me the VD!’  Aye, and he’d been in hospital, what a shame that were.  [laughter]

Aye, we shouldn’t laugh.  I think I must have the same sense of humour as you!

R- Eh I said, what a shame, he’s wasted four years.  So that romance had gone to pop.  I can see his face now, he wore big glasses.

Poor bugger.

R- Where did we go from Catterick/  I’m saying Catterick, it were Thirsk where we went.  We went from Thirsk and we got split up then.  Different units, some went to Germany, or wherever they were acting the goat see?  I thought, Well, it’ll be my bloody turn and I got posted to Preston!  I couldn’t believe my own eyes when I saw it on Orders, ‘Signalman Roberts 13023992 report for orders and pass to Preston in Lancashire.  Eh, it’s only twenty miles away.  Oh, it were a real time I had at Preston, I were just there long enough to plant some seed potatoes and dig ‘em up.  How long does that take?  About four months?  Well, that’s what it were.  While I were there the European war finished and our job, we were working in a big warehouse, all the Home Guard equipment were coming in there, all the wireless equipment you know.  Thousands of pairs of headphones, wireless sets, everything you can mention, wireless valves, things for testing lines.  Well, they were well away, I mean we were flogging these buggers down in Preston.  Next door there were a REME place [Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers] and all the guns were coming in there.  Shotguns and rifles and revolvers and all sorts.  I’d have got bloody jail if they’d catched us, we were flogging guns, flogging this, flogging that, we were out every night, it were a real [do].  Oh, I forgot to tell you, while I were waiting for Jones I had a job in the blanket store at Thirsk, there must have been five million blankets in there.  I thought they’ve made a mistake putting me in here!  It were thin Roberts but it were fat Roberts going out every night, one blanket round me waist.  Ten bob, selling like hot cakes down in the pubs at Thirsk.  I think we went to Northallerton or somewhere on the passion wagon, me with the blankets.  I wish I’d had a wagon in them days, made a bloody fortune, there were millions.  I’m not codding [kidding], as far as I could see, piled up to the ceiling, blankets, some of them good uns and all.  Not them hairy uns, them smooth khaki coloured uns.  I fetched one or two back to Barlick and there were one or two young women walking about with these fancy camel hair coats on after the war.  Ernest Robert’s Yankee blankets……  Yes, I had a happy time at Preston.

Where did you go from there?

R- From Preston?  Oh it’s coming up to demob time now, to Catterick we went.  I were at Catterick a few months and then I were demobbed. [demobilised]  Back to Civvy Street.

The thing that strikes me, listening to you, is that you’ve told the story of four and a half years, five years, whatever it were, soldiering, in a very relaxed gentle sort of fashion.

R- Aye it were six years to the day from going in to coming out.

There you are, six years to the day.  Bit it’s perfectly obvious that there were times when you would have rather been anywhere than where you were at the time.

R- Oh aye, many a time.

You see what I mean?  We were saying earlier what marvellous things human beings are, I mean it’s a marvellous thing that you can, it’s not a matter of blocking these things out but you know, look on the bright side.  You don’t remember the bad days so well do you?

R- Well, you don’t remember the bad days unless you think about them.  But you remember all the happy times and I had some happy times.  Fun, good fun, aye.

Well, that’s as far as I want to pursue the war years.  I’ll tell you why, I’m not really into the business of going into that and I think there has been plenty done already.  I once did some with me dad and if you start pushing people into talking about things that are very bad experiences which some people did have, especially in the First World War……

R- Aye, they did that.

….. you can actually make them poorly.

R- Oh there were some bad times in my times, aye there were.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying…..

R- Oh no, I mean, I’m no hero but a survivor.  I mean I could have shoved a bayonet into a Jap and thought nowt about it if it had been either me or him.  We’d lots of scares and on the ready .  I mean, when I say I carried a rifle all them years and never fired it, it were ready, but I weren’t a fighting man, I were a technician you might call me, a tradesman doing my part wi’ the Signals.

Yes.  I realise that there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.  As I say, I don’t want to pursue that too far really.  What’s interesting me now is [that] Signalman Robert’s part in the Great Conflict 1939 to 1945 is now finished.

R- Aye, it’s like a bloody comedian’s part!  It were nearly all fun.  Laughing.  I remember one time we were really in trouble, right in the bloody middle of it and someone wanted an instrument mechanic quick.  We had these tradesmen who went round mending wireless sets you know.  And this officer galloped into this little clearing where we were on a horse.  And this bloke went with him, walking behind his horse and this were just when the sun were coming up very early in the morning.  And then, when the sun were going down, this bloke staggered into the clearing, I can see his face now, he were bloody exhausted.  He says, ‘I’ve walked round after that bloody horse all day’.  He were lost, the officer were lost, he never found the place he were going!  Eh dearie me, I fell on the floor laughing because he were a comical bugger this instrument mechanic.  Aye, he were forced to laugh when he’d had a cup of tea and come round.  But, funny instance that of what you used to have, just imagine walking round all day behind a horse in that heat!  Eh, dearie me, t’officer were lost.  I said to him, ‘I’ll bet the horse was buggered as well!’  Oh he said ‘What a bloody experience!’ 

Anyway, there you are, landed back in Barlick, t’war’s over, now what’s the first idea you had then?  Get a job or what?

R- Well, I’d only a hundred pounds.

Demob pay.

R- Well, a hundred and odd quid, and that didn’t go so far.  I mean, it were like starting from scratch but big shifts and little shifts.  I’d been in touch with the wife you know, and she had a little boy.  ‘Could she come back to Barlick?’  Like, to me, I mean we were like childhood sweethearts, they grow on you don’t they, women.  So I said ‘OK, we’ll have another try’.  I mean, t’war years, I’d been no angel and I’m like broadminded and you don’t miss a slice off a cut loaf as they say.  I went to live in a little house down t’Butts, me and t’wife and this little boy.  Well, I only knew one job, weaving, so I’m weaving within a week or two.

Who were weaving then in Barlick?  ‘Cause a lot of the mills had been shut down hadn’t they?

R- Oh they must have been.  Calf Hall were like munitions, Bankfield were on munitions and Wellhouse were a tobacco store.

Butts were closed weren’t it?

R- Aye, Butts were closed as well.  But Pickles’ at Barnsey were going, Long Ing were going, Moss Shed were going, Bancroft were going and Slater’s at Salterforth.

How about Westfield?

R- Oh they were running

Fernbank?

R- They were going as well.

So there were still a lot of looms running in Barlick then.

R- Yes, and ‘Britain’s Bread hung by Lancashire’s Thread’.  I mean, you were like a little god, a weaver, they were clamouring after your services.

Is that right?

R- Aye it were.  I walked down to Pickles’ for some weaving and he shook me by th’hand, the manager.  ‘Hello Ernest’, he says, ‘How are you?’.

Who were that?

R- Tooby.  ‘Do you want some work?’  I says Aye, that’s what I’ve come down for.  You can start right now if you want to, six loom and working reight hard then in 1945/46, a pound a day you’d make, five pound a week.  Well, that didn’t go so far did it?  Even then.  But you could make a do, but you were still on the borderline between starvation and living.  There were no luxuries, I had ten fags a day, I mean I had a wife and child to keep, not much rent to pay.  I were weaving there a fair while and I asked Tooby would he find me tackling.  They were short of tacklers see.  Tackling, that were it, every weaver’s bloody goal.  No, no signs at all of ever being a tackler.  I were very friendly wi’ t’weft chap at Moss Shed, Widdups, and I were having a pint of beer in t’Stars one night and he says ‘They’re looking for a tackler, an apprentice tackler, at Widdups.’  ‘Why don’t you try like?’  I says ‘I will do’.  So it’d be the following morning at breakfast time I went across from Barnsey Shed to Moss Shed and knocked on the office door there and John Widdup came to the door.  I didn’t know it were John Widdup then but I knew after.  ‘Now then lad’ he says, he thought I wanted weaving see.  You were welcome everywhere.  I says, ‘Well, are you Mr Widdup?’  He says ‘Yes’.  I said ‘I’m weaving at Barnsey and someone told me you were looking for an apprentice tackler.’  He said ‘Well, we are.’  I said ‘Well, I’d like to apply.’  He says ‘Have you been in the army?’  I said ‘Yes.’  ‘Come back at dinnertime’ he says.  So I went back at dinnertime.  ‘Put your notice in and start here as an apprentice tackler.’  That were the best bit of bloody luck I’d had in my life.  I started there as an apprentice tackler and I’ve never done anything else since.

Why did he want to know if you’d been in the army?

R- I don’t know.

And then, come back at dinnertime, I mean, would he be checking up like at t’Labour Exchange?

R- I don’t know about checking up but there were three brothers and t’father then and it’d have to be a joint affair I suppose.  And the reason I got the job, and this is how it had been working for generations about tackling, there were a bloke working there, two tacklers, one had a son he wanted to come into t’mill as an apprentice tackler and t’other fellow had a nephew to come to Widdups as an apprentice tackler.  To settle that difference, they’d be falling out I suppose, they fetched a stranger in.  And that’s how I got to be a tackler.  Immediately my wage went from five pound to ten pound.  Now, can you imagine that happening?

Straight away?

R- Straight away I were on a ten pound wage.  I were weaving and learning to tackle in between you know.  Dinnertime and evenings and Saturday morning and that.  After six months I was on me own.

So you joined the Tackler’s Union straight away?

R- Oh yes.  Aye, I’d to go in, that’s like essential, you’d to be in t’Tackler’s Union.

Did you have to go in front of t’Committee?

R- Oh aye.  Aye, little god sat there!

Where were that at?

R- Colne.

How did war service go down with them?  Were that having a …..

R- Oh they weren’t interested in war service.

No?  What were they interested in?

R- They were just interested in bloody tacklers.  I don’t suppose any of them had been in the army, ever.  It wouldn’t have mattered to them if I’d had the bloody VC!  Anyway, they accepted me.

When you went in front of the Committee, were the old story true, that if you knew the right blokes you were all right.

R- Well, it’s always been like that hasn’t it?  But, at the same time, they were very short of tacklers.

That’s it.

R- It’s been a closed shop all these years, they had been dying, nobody to take their place.  But I mean, it’s a bit different now, there isn’t a lot of work, it’s gradually dying is textiles, Lancashire Textiles anyway.

Yes, that’s right, aye.  So anyway, you went in front of the Committee and got into the union and you were tackling down at Widdups and your wage had shot up from a fiver to a tenner.

R- That’s right, just like a flash of lightning, never earned as much money in me life!  Well off, it were from poverty to bloody luxury in comparison and within six months I were on a set of looms and earning about fourteen pounds a week.

That were a good wage then.

R- Yes, it were, it’s always been a decent wage.

That set of looms, how many were there to it?

R- How many looms running?

No, your set, how many were there in your set.  Your looms, was it a standard set?

R- Well, they were standard.  There were a hundred looms then.  It’d gone down from one hundred and forty four to one hundred then.

So, you had a hundred loom on your set.  Were you still on poundage?

R- No, no poundage.  I have never been on poundage.

That had gone then?

R- It had gone aye.  Yes, you were on a standing wage.

Going back into the weaving shed after the war, did anything strike you when you went back in?  You know, about the condition of the weavers, had it altered any, were things any better for t’weaver?

R- Oh, a lot better.

In what way?

R- Oh well, they weren’t as strict, what they wanted was production, they didn’t want quality.  Any kind of cloth ‘ud do in them days.  They weren’t strict on timekeeping either and there were a canteen and you know, things were different altogether.  Bosses were like pandering to the workers then.

Well it’s the same thing we’ve talked about before isn’t it, all of a sudden labour becomes…..

R- Important.

It wasn’t a cheap commodity any more and of course, if weavers are [short] like that, there’s no such thing as tramp weavers then, they had all gone.

R- Oh aye, t’tramp weaver’s days were finished.  I fancy they’d all be dead, they all seemed to be old men when I were a boy.

No lines in’t warehouse in the morning?

R- No, nothing like that.  Aye, anyone who wanted weaving in them days were welcome with open arms.

Just walked in and got it.

R- Walked in aye.  And it’s t’same today.

Yes it is, you’re quite right.

R- I mean if there were a dozen weavers come tomorrow they’d get started, well, some of them would.

How about weft carrying then, was there anyone weft carrying?

R- Well, it were leading up to that.  There were experiments going on, weft carriers and that.

Were they still plaiting their own cloth or had that gone by the board?

R- That had gone.  There were roller carriers and sweepers.

When did roller carriers come in?  During t’war?

R-Aye, they must have done.

Aye, that’s a gap that you won’t be able to fill in this story, what happened during the war in the weaving shed.  I shall have to find someone that were weaving right through the war.

R- Aye, there were some places closed down but a lot of places went on.

Yes, it seems to have been the family firms that they left alone and the room and power shops that they closed generally wasn’t it?

R- I think it were when you come to think of it.  Calf Hall went on munitions and Wellhouse were a tobacco store and Bankfield, aye.

Yes.  It’s been pointed out to me before and it has been said to me that there were two reasons for that.  One was that the government in their wisdom thought that if they were going to leave anybody alone it’d be more politic to leave the family firms alone.  The other thing was that the shed companies weren’t averse to being thrown out of weaving because they knew they could draw a bloody good price for premises for other purposes during the war.

R- Oh aye.  T’war’s made millionaires, plenty.  And bloody widows!

Yes, aye, and to go back to the consequences of the war just a little bit….of course there’d be a lot of your mates, there’d be a lot of blokes….  Well, I’m assuming that there would be people that you knew that they didn’t come back from the war.  That weren’t as lucky as you.

R- Oh aye, there were.

So there’d be faces missing among the people that you’d grown up with.

R- Aye, that’s true, yes, there were.

It’s a difficult question to ask…….  Do you know that it affected you in any way?  Did it make you start thinking?

R- Well, I suppose it did.  I used to get a bit emotional at Christmas and times like that you know when you’d been celebrating may be and getting a few drinks and you start thinking about people you knew that had been killed.  Well, even today I think about some of them sometimes, I lost some good mates in Burma.

Aye, that’s understandable.  So I mean, would you say that when you came back into the weaving shed you were a different man than when you went out?

R- Aye.

If you’d come back from the war into exactly the same conditions that had prevailed before the war when you went in, you know, the weavers being really hard pressed, that’s the only word for it.  Do you think that your attitude would have been any different?  Because you’d been to the war?

R- Oh definitely it would.  You’d never be servile to anybody.  You’d be respectful but not servile.

Yes.  That’s the thing I’m getting at here.

R- Oh it changed your whole pattern of life.  You had to be independent and militant towards these bloody plutocrats.  No, I would never wear anything like that when I come [home].  Well, I’ve always been a bit of a bloody rebel and even before the war it were gradually organising.  My generation, they are better educated and were realising that things weren’t quite as they should be.  Unions were organising and things did shape themselves into a pattern on the worker’s side.  I mean, I don’t care how many millionaires there are so long as I get a living wage.

That’s it, yes.  But would you say that in general, because obviously you weren’t the only one coming back from the war, that there’d be quite a few coming back into industry the same as you.  You know, if you like, the effects of the normal system of brainwashing you into thinking that your job was to start work as early as you could, work well ‘til you were 65 and then quietly cock your clogs somewhere and not get under people’s feet, a lot of that had gone by the board.

R- Oh aye.  Oh yes, you wouldn’t stand slaver off bloody tacklers even,  There’s a bloke in Barlick now, what the hell do they call him?  His name’s just slipped but there were a tackler trying to treat him like tacklers treated weavers pre-war and he thumped him right on the bloody nose and he didn’t even get sacked.

Aye, and before the war that’d be out of your…..  Well, he’d have never got a weaving job in Barlick would he?

R- Oh no, he wouldn’t have, never.  He’d have been blacklisted.  Aye, smacked him right on the bloody nose, that quietened him.  No, they wouldn’t have it.

So times have changed.

R- Aye  But all…., I mean there were a lot of ex-soldiers weaving with me, we weren’t militants or domineering or owt like that so long as we were treated somewhere near like human beings.  That’s all we wanted, we wouldn’t be treated like bloody dirt.

Yes, that’s the thing I’m trying to get at really because it seems obvious to me that if you train a bloke and condition a bloke to fight for six years it’s no use expecting him to come back and go back into conditions such as were prevailing before the war in the weaving shed where in actual fact he’d been downtrodden.  I mean the two things just don’t square up do they?

R- Oh no, they never would have squared up.

It makes me wonder how much of the transition was due to the fact that weavers were in demand and the industry was booming at the time.  You know, Britain’s Bread ….. and all the rest of it, and how much was due to the fact that a different generation, a different type of man was coming back and going in [the weaving shed].  A completely different education.  I mean, you were a young man that’d travelled the world, you’d seen elephants, you’d seen some light.

R- That’s right.

You weren’t the little lad that, in clogs, had never been outside Barlick apart from t’train to Blackpool, Central Station and back.  And yet in some ways, and this is the fascinating thing to me, do you think it’s right to say that the manufacturers themselves, as far as they were concerned, I wonder how much of that dawned on some of the manufacturers.  Because as far as they were concerned, what had happened was  that there had been an interruption of normal trading and they were back into one of the good old boom periods like they had before the war.  Their only bloody problem as far as I can make out was that they couldn’t get enough weavers.

R- That’s it, that was a problem.

Now bearing that in mind, do you think they could see the….[writing on the wall]  Do you think any of them had any idea what was coming or do you think they were still living in the pre-war days?

R- Oh aye.  They were living in the pre-war days, it were a bitter pill they had to swallow and they didn’t like it.  They had it to do, to try and attract weavers into the industry.  They even took ‘em on day trips to London and Blackpool and places, a trip every year free, meal laid on.

Who did that?

R- Pickles.  And you could get a meal in t’canteen if you wanted one, but you wanted a good stomach!  That’s one thing I came out of the army with, a bloody bad stomach.  It took me five years to get me stomach back.  Aye, I were living on bloody cream crackers for about twelve months.  Aye there were sommat right wrong wi’ me stomach all right.  I tried every bloody patent medicine there is on the chemist’s shelves.  Always feeling sick and indigestion and vomiting and sick you know.

What do you think it were?  Some bug you’d picked up?

R- Well it were all t’bloody dysentery I had.

Aye, that’s it, you’d be full of dysentery.

R- Aye, I’d be full and I were full of bloody drugs and all what they pumped into me.  And diarrhoea, I’ve had diarrhoea for thirty years.

Is that right?

R- Yes, it’s quite true.

You still have it now?

R- Aye.  Did I ever tell you about when I had amoebic dysentery?

No.

R- I had diarrhoea that long me bum all shrunk and I had to have it stretched.  All them things like were in the army experience.

So you’re still suffering the effects of amoebic dysentery?

R- Oh yes I am.  But I’m somewhere near what you might call fit.  I’m never off me work.  I’ve always worked like.  It isn’t what you’d call a disablement.

I understand that.  Now then, you and your bootlace diarrhoea, you’ve done it again.  If it isn’t dogshit it’s diarrhoea!  We were on about manufacturers.  Would you say that the fact that cloth was in such demand, what effect would you say that had on the standard of weaving?

R- Oh they encouraged bad weaving.  They must have been able to sell anything that looked like cloth.

When you say ‘encouraged bad weaving’ what do you mean Ernie?

R- Well, you know they use combs for pulling back and scratching up?  Well the big boss at Pickles come into the shed and told the weavers to throw the combs away, there were no time for scratching up and pulling back.  That’s true, all they wanted was quantity.

Aye, I don’t want to get into the subject of taping this week because we’ve nearly finished this tape.  We’re getting very near the end of the tape now and I think we’ve had a good do tonight.  I think we’ve reached the natural break now so we’ll stop this tape and then next week we’ll have a fresh start with Ernie Roberts, Tackler.

R- Aye.

SCG/10 April 2002

6388 words

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