One of the sad but inescapable facts of advancing age is that your friends and colleagues tend to drop off the perch without notice. I was dropped on again this week when just by chance I had a look at the hatched, matched and despatched in the BET, not a regular habit. I’m glad I did because I saw that another of my weavers from Bancroft died in December, Hilda Elsworth.
Hilda was, like many of her co-workers at Bancroft, one of those workers who was such an asset to a hard pressed weaving manager. She was competent, always turned out good work and was totally reliable. Hail rain or shine she was at her looms when the engine started and never caused anyone a minute’s trouble. Jim Pollard, the weaving manager, used to say that if he had a shed full of weavers like Hilda he could make a fortune. Not only that but she had a lovely personality, I never saw her lose her temper or get upset when things weren’t going well, if she had a problem she went to her tackler, had a quiet word with him and got back on track again.
That’s what is happening in my picture, she had a problem so she walked down to the warehouse and had a word with Ernie Whitaker her tackler. The image is worth a good look and a bit of thought. This isn’t a confrontation, it’s two friends discussing something and coming to a decision, in this case Ernie went back into the shed with her, re-adjusted something on her loom and solved her problem. That was the function of the tackler and at Bancroft it worked well.
From what I can see these days it seems to me that there is a growing culture in the workplace of confrontation because workers and management are under greater and greater pressure to keep production high. This wasn’t how Bancroft worked, it was team work and everyone helped each other. This is why, despite the bad working conditions the general opinion was that Bancroft was a holiday camp! I know that this is hard to believe but nobody ever stopped a weaver from popping out of the shed if she had an errand to do and I often thought that stopping time was a moveable feast! All right, every now and then stern injunctions were posted on the shed door about working to time but in reality the management knew that it paid to allow the workers a certain amount of freedom and that trying to enforce rules would do nothing for production.
I was sorry to see that Hilda has gone, part of the wasting asset which is the skill and dedication that we lose daily. But I am glad that I knew her and it says something of my affection for her and her fellow workers that I took the trouble to write this. It was a privilege to work with them.
Hilda and her tackler Ernie in the cabin at Bancroft sorting out a problem.
