A Strange Kind of Union

November's Derby Telegraph article, hot off the press (if they have such things nowadays) tells of my brief flirtation with militancy ;-)

You can find the whole sordid story on the Derby Telegraph Bygones website here, or read on below:

and here's the unedited content:

Last month, I was writing about my minor act of rebellion in leaving the work’s radio on over and above the allotted hour, which was popular with the girls working in Harold Wesley Ltd. in the 1970s, but less so with the management.  Recalling this reminded me that I had actually been a little more rebellious than that, not that it actually got me anywhere.

The 1970s marked the height of trade union membership in the U.K., with over 13.2 million members in 1979 and a corresponding 29.5 million days lost to industrial disputes, whereas in 2009 there were just over 7 million members and just 455,000 days lost.  Industrial strife impacted on all of us at some point.  I’ve written before about the eerie quiet of the factory and the difficulty of trying to work by torchlight during the 3 day week in the winter of 1973-1974.  Not a T.V. news bulletin went by without the sight of masses of men, at some factory or other (usually in the motor industry) dutifully raising their hands to signify their readiness to walk out on strike.  Against this background, Wesley’s was something of an oddity in that it had no trade union presence, now or in its history.

I think the original Harold Wesley might have been something of an enlightened factory owner in his day.  Certainly, the ancient letterheads we still used showed the H.Q. in Harlesden surrounded by green fields and with happy employees playing healthy sports.  Whether it was like this, or had ever been, I couldn’t comment as I was never important enough to go down there, but the Burton paper mill had none of these advantages. 

For example, the catering provision for the shop-floor staff, when I first joined, was pretty dire indeed.  It consisted of a run-down ancient cottage in the grounds of the factory, filled with third-hand furniture and some dodgy, and distinctly unsanitary-looking kitchen equipment, including a stove on which a kettle was permanently boiling, filling the place with steam.  During my time there, we did move to proper vending machines for tea and coffee but that was about as good as it got.

It was hardly surprising, therefore, that a recent recruit to our warehousing staff was appalled at the low wages and poor provision for the workers and started to recruit as many as he could into joining his union, which was the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU).    Inspired by this, I thought it was a shame that the management and clerical staff were going to be left behind and I tried to encourage a number of them to join the relatively new trade union, ASTMS (Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs) recently launched by Clive Jenkins, the charismatic Welsh trade unionist.  This was quite daring of me, really, because I felt sure that my days at Wesley’s would be numbered if it was ever found that I had been stirring up dissent in the ranks.  I think it even went as far as a representative of ASTMS coming down to the factory to talk to our M.D., but as they had no membership at that time, I think he was sent off with ‘a flea in his ear’.  Ultimately, although the various managers listened to me politely and quite agreed that our terms and conditions were pretty poor, no-one was willing to take the leap and join a union.

Things were different on the shop floor, however.  The warehouse bloke had been successful in getting a reasonable number to sign up to the TGWU and, inevitably, a District Official from that union came to talk to our M.D. about union representation.  It was at that point that our management obviously realised that they had to make some concessions, but they decreed that, whilst they were willing to recognise a trade union, it should be one appropriate to the industry, which is how we came to have the wonderfully named Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) with their titles for their branch officials of Father of the Chapel and Mother of the Chapel, which, when you think about it, was rather appropriate for a firm called Wesley’s!

You can find all of the stories leading up to this, plus a whole lot more, in the brand new bumper 'nostalgedy' collection 'The Things You See...' available now at the special introductory price of just £1.49.