August 22, 2010		INDEX More video from August 22
Keen on dancing , ,
[00:23	My name's Alan Brind.		1
[00:
[00:05:14	I'm the father of five children and I'm now alone because their mother passed on a year ago.	,
[00:
[00:17:20	I worked all of my life as a packaging fitter and I've now retired on a reasonable pension. So I'm quite,
[00:
[00:30:
[00	settled and looking forward to continue like this for some time.
[00:
[00:37:	So your name's not Alan Brind is it? It is Alan Frederick Brind. ,
[00:
[00:41:02	Yes. I've never been too keen on the Frederick though. Why were you named Frederick? ,"My mother had one brother who was went when I went to Canada, didn't he? ", ,"Yes, he. In rather mysterious circumstances as well. ","Yes. Yes, I think he did. A runner."
[00:
[00:59:02	"No, I don't think so.",
[00:01:
[00:
[00	" I mean, I think what happened was he was sort of drafted over there after the war. They they forced him to go go to Canada because there wasn't enough work in Norfolk", that there were there was a thing going on about having.
[00:01:19:02	" Young boys sent to Canada to work on the farms, but he wasn't exactly the young boy he'd been called up and. Somehow he hadn't gone. "
[00:01:30:
[00	" I don't know. I don't know, but what I'm saying is he wasn't exactly a schoolboy."
[00:01:36:14,	" No, that's perfectly true. He wasn't, but he wasn't he wasn't all that old. And Nan used to go on about this letter that she that her mother received from somebody married in Canada saying that he was all right, which they were very pleased about."
[00:01:51:01	" Yeah, we did. We did hear from him later. He had some children. And I think we've"
[00:02:
[00:
[00	actually had communication from the children over the years.
[00:02:04:07	" And I can't remember talking to them, but I think he died in an accident." ,
[00:02:09:12	Something swimming I think. , ,was that it was a swimming accident?,"I think so, yeah. I'm not too sure."
[00:02:16:17	" Well, of course, Norfolk is not a big county for swimming is it." ,
[00:02:20:17	" No, no if it's not a bit of flat land. You don't bother with it. Well, it's only one part of Norfolk, it's most"
[00:02:30:
[00	" of Norfolk is just very flat, very agricultural. Ditches is the best you get."
[00:02:38:03	" Yeah, and why were you called Alan?" ,
[00:02:42:14	" I don't know. I think because my mother didn't want me called by one of the family names, so she she thought of one."	,
[00:02:52:02,	So what was the family and family names?," Jack and John, huh? "
[00,	So you should have been called Jack or John. ," Yeah,"
[00:03:05:06	but but your father wasn't called Jack or John was he?," No, I don't. I think that was because he was a second son. It's the first sons who have to be named after my grandfather and so on." Right.
[00:03:18:19	So where did Leonard come from?
[00:03:24:02	I have no idea. I think it was some something to do with some of
[00:03:30:
[00	his time in the army or somebodies time in the army or something that they got the name from somewhere like that. He got the name from the army.," I think so. But I'm not sure there is so many stories in, you know, way back. Yeah, they do. Got a tale to tell, but I'm not sure how many other men. Much."
[00:03:51:15,	Yeah. And and where do you think the Alan came from.
[00:03:56:01	Was that somebody famous in the musical or something like that?,
[00:04:
[00:11	" I don't think so. I mean, my mother wasn't much for things like that. Where she got it from, heaven knows, " you house you lived in when you were born., ,where were you living when when you were born? ,"We Were living in West Norwood, we were living in I can't think of the name of the road, but we were living in West Norwood, "
[00:04:30:
[00	Knollys Road?," no Knollys Road, We didn't go there till I was about nine. Before that, we lived at the top of Fifty nine Lansdown hill. And before that, we lived in another place. When you were born, we lived in 219 I can't think of the name of the road, but when I was born, we lived almost opposite where
[00:05:
[00:
[00	the house we lived in when you were born"
[00:05:03:10	So I don't know where I was born Tulse Hill? or.
[00:05:10:17	" No, it was West Norwood. I was born actually... talking of born. I was born in a nursing home in West Norwood, in Knights hill. "" Oh, really? He was actually a banker.", ,Why were you born in a nursing home? ,"Well, I think it was something to do with the er, my father being a civil "
[00:05:30:
[00	" servant, and there was... they got some kind of a grant, I think.", ," well, so what sort of civil servant was your father?"," He worked for the post office when the excuse me, when the post office was part of the civil service or the general post office was where the telephones were and the telegrams and of course savings accounts. I think he worked on the savings account."
[00:06:02:06	He was actually a banker?," Well, something like that."
[00:06:06:21	" Because, I mean, from what you told me, I thought he was a bookkeeper."
[00:06:10:23	" Well, yeah. Bookkeeper in a bank. Yeah. He was very good at adding up figures."	,
[00:06:19:22	" Yeah. Well, he had a natural sort of mathematical and musical ability." ,
[00:06:23:16	" Yeah, I wish I'd got it."	,
[00:06:27:21	" But, you know, you're kind "
[00:06:30:
[00	" of more of a sort of a practical person, you get you get things engineering things sort of done."
[00:06:36:17	" Yeah, I understand them."
[00:06:39:
[00	" Yeah, but you also you also actually managed to actually get things done by cutting corners or just find you find some way of making things work."
[00:06:48:24	" Yeah. Yeah, because because I understand what they're about, I don't... it's not just. You just don't do it that way because the last bloke, did you work"
[00:07:
[00:
[00	it out for yourself?
[00:07:01:09	" Yeah. And where did that skill come from if it didn't come from your dad's side of the family, where did that come from?"
[00:07:08:02	I don't know. I think I just picked it up as I went along.	,
[00:07:11:12, Yeah.
[00:07:12:16	" I was, when packaging machines started to come in, I was fascinated by them because. I've been in many factories where the girls were doing the job with their hands, "
[00:07:30:
[00	and then in came a machine that did the job in exactly the same way.
[00:07:38:23	" Oh, sorry about that."
[00:07:42:03	"the machine did it in the same way that the girls had been doing it, but. You know, and there was a machine doing that and that fascinated me."	,
[00:07:54:08	Yeah,"well, when I went into when I first started in packaging, "
[00:08:
[00:
[00	" I started installing automatic weighing machines and then they the weight went into an open packet and the girls put... folded the bag in like (you see) thumbs, fingers, fingers. So it was an envelope fold glued down. And then later on, they somebody made a machine that went like that."
[00:08:27:17	And I was fascinated because
[00:08:30:
[00	I was there when they first bought the first packaging machines in
[00:08:35:15	"before that, the girls had been taking the full cartons, folding them in like that so that there was an envelope fold glued down. Then they turned them upside down. Then suddenly we got a machine and the cartoons came round on the machine and the machine."	,
[00:08:56:
[00	" Folded the tops in, just the same, and that was, that was fascinating, "
[00:09:
[00:
[00	" I thought, because it was doing the hand movements of the girls. Exactly. ", ,And what happened to the girls? ,"So the poor bloody girls got the sack. A lot of them some of them stayed and ran the machines. But where you needed 5
[00	before, you only needed a dozen."
[00:09:19:11	could we just?
[00:09:21:10	" Well, most of the girls were no longer required. Some of them were trained which I helped to train them to run "
[00:09:30:
[00	the machines.
[00:09:33:01	" But the majority of girls, of course, the jobs were no longer there for them. They were I mean, they were you know, it took if it was a big machine, it took three or four girls on it, but then they the finish cartons would have to go into a bigger box. So that was another machine with two or three girls and eventually."" girls are five or six pound a week. So by having the automatic machine, you not only filled the contents a lot quicker, but you put less product in because when you using a scale, you've got to put enough in to turn the scale. So you have to pound weight, it's more than a pound to turn it, but once you got an automatic
[00:11:
[00:
[00	"," machine, you don't need the turning bit. So it saves lots of money on product. And of course, it saved a lot of money on the amount of girls they did to pack."
[00:10:
[00:
[00	" The box would be stacked on a pallet and the pallets would be taken away, so there was. There were still jobs, but nowhere near as many as before. It was what made the made it pay to buy the machines you could buy in those days, an automatic weigher would have cost you three or 4
[00	pounds installed. And the girls were five or six pounds a week. So by having the automatic machines you not only filled the cartons a lot quicker but you put less product in because when you were using a scale you've got to put enough in to turn the scale so if it's a pound weight it's more than a pound to turn it. But once you get an automatic machine you don't need the turning bit so it saved lots of money on product and of course it saved a lot of money on the amount of girls needed to pack. "
[00:11:13:12	And didn't that make you feel guilty?
[00:11:16:04	" No, not really it seemed to me that. You know, this was how things were. We used to walk before we had a bicycle and then we threw the bikes "
[00:11:30:
[00	" away and had cars and life, life is about improving things all the time."
[00:11:36:02	And we, ,couldn't somebody have told Arthur Scargill that then when they wanted to close the mines down.
[00:11:45:14	" Yeah, well, I think that perhaps he had a good argument that there was didn't need to close the miness down the coal. I think someone in some other country "
[00:12:
[00:
[00	was cheerfully digging coal out and sending it over on boats.
[00:12:06:05	" Yes, they were doing that right." ,
[00:12:07:19	" Ok, ","down in Norfolk, it was. You could buy a rabbit for six pence. People went out and poached them and. My grandmother used to do her own skining and all the rest of it, and we would have rabbit for rabbit pie or something like that, but that was"
[00:12:30:
[00	that was when I was down there on holiday when I was a boy , ,at Laura Louise
[00:12:36:01	"Because your other grandmother. You didn't know, did you?",	,
[00:12:38:23	" No I never met my father's mother. Or at least I probably did, but I don't remember it. I think I was just a baby when she died. But I'm not not absolutely certain about that, Laura."
[00:12:52:
[00	Laura Louise was quite a character. She used to make a lot of wine and all that sort of stuff.
[00:12:58:05	My father's mother was a dressmaker.
[00:13:
[00:11	" No, no, no. Your mother's mother."
[00:13:02:19	" Oh, my mother's mother. My. Yeah, she she did. I think almost everybody around, there used to do it. Everything that was useful had to be used so that the hedgerows were gone round for black berries and Sloes and things like that. And they were made into wine. You"
[00:13:30:
[00	" didn't want to drink too much of it, otherwise you fell over a lot."
[00:13:33:11	" Well, I actually used to do something quite extraordinary, which was put in fortifiers meat and stuff like that."
[00:13:40:03	" Yeah. Yes, it's. She used to think it it it fed it."
[00:13:47:11	" Well it does. It's a very good thing. It's just that it's quite a complicated reaction and sometimes you can produce some kind of wood alcohol and things like that, "
[00:14:
[00:
[00	" which are really, really dangerous. Kill everyone",.
[00:14:02:19	" Yes. Well, she knew what she was doing because there was a problem. My Uncle Arthur, Victor's father, he liked his booze. And if he went down there, he'd creep downstairs in the middle of the night, and go in the pantry and sample some of the bottles. And sometimes they used to find him lying on the floor in the morning."	,
[00:14:30:21	"They also had occasions when the when the bottles all exploded, didn't they?"
[00:14:35:14	" Yes. Yes. You couldn't cork 'em up too tight, too soon."	,
[00:14:40:11	And was that with that spectacular in any way?
[00:14:44:03	" Well, no, not really. You got used to the idea."	,
[00:14:50:09	" So when you went down there, you saw sort of rabbits in the butchers at sixpence a time."
[00:14:56:09	" No, not the well. Where "
[00:15:
[00:
[00	" my grandmother lived, there weren't; there was only one shop, but they didn't sell rabbits, if you wanted a rabbit, you got one of the local lads to catch one and you paid a tanner for it "
[00:15:15:07	and you didn't catch Catch Rabbit yourself.,"No I'm a bit squeamish, I think, ", ,Was there none of the Huttons who would do that sort of thing.
[00:15:24:13	" Well, there were there weren't many Huttons about really there was"
[00:15:30:
[00	" one of my older aunts lived in the, In Barnham itself, which was some way away some way off, some miles, and she was married and had a family, but apart from her, there wasn't anyone else apart from my grandmother. Well, I remember my grandfather, but he had a chair by the chimney and he just sat he had a rupture and it sort of finished. Stopped him doing much."
[00:15:58:19	Yeah. And have you ever had a rupture?
[00:16:02:07	" No, no. I've survived fairly well. Thanks,"
[00:16:05:06	so this is not something that is genetic.
[00:16:09:02	" No, I don't think so. I think that. He worked in the Brick fields, and I think that it was carting those heavy weights about they they worked on some kind of a bonus."
[00:16:23:08	And so the. The.
[00:16:28:23	" It was a funny system, "
[00:16:30:
[00	" they used to get these ruddy great things full of wet clay and then leave it to dry a bit before they made it. They were, mostly making pipes. But."
[00:16:44:02	" They, it was carting them, moving them to drain, and then there was a. A hole in the ground where they climbed down and did things so, horrific business for people to do by hand. But"
[00:17:
[00:
[00	" I don't remember doing it in my memory he was I just remember him sitting in the corner, you know, like an old man."
[00:17:12:06	" Yeah, Tommy told me that he used to be upstairs all the time. And when he wanted something, he would bang on the on the on the floor."
[00:17:20:05	" I remember him being downstairs and sitting in the chair by the hearth. But, yeah, later on in life, he didn't move"
[00:17:30:
[00	a lot.
[00:17:31:09	" And, uh, was it was it something you enjoyed going down to Banham"
[00:17:38:05	" Yes, oh, yes, I mean, we lived in a flat in London Banham was freedom " ,"Banham meant, you could sort of go off over the fields","Yeah. Oh yeah. You were supposed to stay on the footpaths, because they used to tell you the farmer will shoot you. But we wondered all over the place I mean there was lovely spots of "
[00:18:
[00:
[00	woods and all sorts of things where you could go.
[00:18:04:08	"And I mean, later on you became you joined the Royal Zoological Society and did some work for the zoo. Is that what started you off on that track, do you think?",
[00:18:17:
[00	" Yes, well, what I mean, when I came back to London, I'd met up with my pals, John."	,
[00:18:25:24	We.
[00:18:29:19	We
[00:18:30:
[00	" we got back into what we'd always done as kids, we used to collect butterflies and things like that and catch catch lizards and all the rest of it, even when we were young, we we'd always enjoy doing that,", ,Bloody hard to catch lizards in south London dad ,Oh you'd be surprised what you can get on Streatham Common
[00:18:50:01	And birds eggs as well. ,
[00:18:54:14	" No, we didn't go in for birds, eggs, very I suppose we again, it's"
[00:19:
[00:
[00	we didn't really look to destroy things. We wanted just wanted to know about them. ,What sort of food did you eat when you went down there? ,Usually it was dumplings and pies since she had an open hearth with a.
[00:19:23:13	" Top on it, you can put kettles and things on and things on. A nd If "
[00:19:30:
[00	" if that was going to be too slow, you went into the shed, which was the building next to the, the house, which only one room downstairs, but if you went out the back door and then in the door next to it, there was another little building that had a copper and things like that in it, which were all fed by wood."
[00:19:58:09	And.	,
[00:20:
[00:10,
[00:20:
[00:
[00	" she also had two oil stoves in there that you could cook on so you know you could fry or do most cooking in there. I mean, she used to bake her own bread in the oven there. Fill it up with wood and bake the bread."
[00:20:19:19	" Do you remember the food down, as being particularly nice?" ,
[00:20:23:18	Can't Remember it really it was I suppose it was for us then because.	,
[00:20:30:11	It
[00:20:30:
[00	was a very poor times in London before the war.
[00:20:36:11	" And I know my father had a good job, I suppose that helped."	,
[00:20:41:16	but	,
[00:20:43:09	" And then, of course, once my father died. We weren't too well off anyway, so going down there must have been a treat."
[00:20:52:12	But. What did what did your mother do in London? ,
[00:20:58:14,
[00:21:
[00:
[00	"she did housework, she did the housework for people, she did house work for other people even in those days.", Yes. ,"With your dad being a civil servant,"," no, after he died", ," before before he died, what did she do? ",She didn't. She just looked after me and the house. ,Your dad was quite a keen gardener. He had green fingers.
[00:21:21:09	Yes. Yes. It's why we moved into Knollys Road. It was because it was the first house he had that had a proper garden
[00:21:30:
[00	" that he could, you know, get into."
[00:21:34:15	Did he teach you anything about gardening?
[00:21:37:02	" I don't think so, because he he didn't live very long in Knollys Road he soon died."
[00:21:42:21	And he used to take a lot of photographs.	,
[00:21:45:18	Yes. Sort of Box Brownie type photographs.	,
[00:21:50:04	" Yeah, and black and white was,."	,
[00:21:59:06	" well, colour was quite rare in those days was he was a great photography enthusiast was he"," Er, not"
[00:22:
[00:
[00	" really. I think he was. Every new technology that was coming along, he was interested. He made us a wireless at one stage, things like that. He was quite a clever bloke. I don't know why I didn't inherit it."
[00:22:17:15	" Well, you like making gadgets as well. You're very much into buying new gadgets and anything you can get from a sunday market. That's interesting. Anything slightly technological, you'll always go for it." ,
[00:22:27:23	" Oh, yes, I do like technology. I"
[00:22:30:
[00	must admit. I'm fascinated by new things. Always have been.
[00:22:34:05	" Yeah. And I mean, how did your parents spend their leisure time?" ,
[00:22:51:04	" I think before I came along, they, there was a club that my father would always belong to. I used to go to that "
[00:23:
[00:
[00	" and. They were quite keen on dancing. It was ballroom dancing, of course, and but when I came along, they got bit more domesticated, I think."
[00:23:12:23	"Well, your mum once showed me how to do the Charleston.",	,
[00:23:16:22	" Yes. Yes. Well, all those all those dances they did. And my mother and my Aunt Rosa were doing all those things "
[00:23:30:
[00	" before they met, before they got married, of course."
[00:23:34:
[00	" Yeah, and that was that club was at the junction, wasn't it?" ,
[00:23:37:05	Yeah. , ,What was the club called?
[00:23:40:08	" I think it was the liberal club, but I'm not sure, "	,
[00:23:51:17	Yeah., ,"yeah, because quite a lot of the liberal clubs escaped in that. Yeah, but your dad wasn't a liberal, ","no, he was a socialist"
[00:23:52:09	What did that mean in those days?,	,
[00:23:58:18	"well, it"
[00:24:
[00:
[00	" was more involved with the trade unions and anything else, but at that time they were establishing the Labour Party. My grandfather was he was a."
[00:24:15:08	Trade unionist and.	,
[00:24:18:06	" President of his union and all that jazz , and he helped with the Labour Party and my father became the local secretary of the Labour Party in West Norwood "
[00:24:30:
[00	and it was what they did.
[00:24:33:12	And what what union was your father involved with?,Post office workers , ,Was there post office workers in the those days?," I think so, yeah. I think that's what he was."
[00:24:45:
[00	I seem to remember they had a union called the Post Office Engineering Union.
[00:24:48:24	Yes. That was what I was in.	,
[00:24:51:06	" Oh, I put you in the team the AEU"
[00:24:55:08	" Yes, I was, but then. I think, yeah,"
[00:25:
[00:	it doesn't matter.
[00:25:01:03	" Yeah, I was definitely in the AEU because that was a bit funny. You couldn't get in it unless someone was prepared to vouch for you that you were sufficiently skilled."	,
[00:25:12:23	"Yeah, well, that was more or less when I joined the NUJ. They more or less, don't know if they do now, but in those days, you more or less had to have, I think, two people vouch for you. You were actually a journalist otherwise they wouldn't let you pay the subs.",	,
[00:25:28:06	Yeah. Yes. It's
[00:25:30:
[00	" strange that. the. Engineering union, anybody could join."
[00:25:37:09	"Yeah, and I mean, this Labour Party activity, did that continue when you came along?",
[00:25:45:23	" Yes, yes. I remember him going to meetings and having the time I turned, he had a thing for printing copies."
[00:26:
[00:
[00	Gestetner,Well it wasn't called that then
[00:26:03:07	Roneo," No. I'll tell you in a minute, but it was a."
[00:26:10:05	You just had a print roller and you rolled it along with ., ,Really
[00:26:15:12	" Yeah," ,So you've got to you've got a kind of stencil and you put the stencil on the plate and then you rolled the individual copies. Yeah. Must be incredibly laborious.
[00:26:27:01	Yeah. But you say you'd you typed
[00:26:30:
[00	a copy with a typewriter that cut the stencil.
[00:26:35:12	You had to do that with your stencils in Roneo as well. ,
[00:26:38:08	Yeah. And.	,
[00:26:41:15	" Then you you just made however many copies you wanted,", ,"I bet it it didn't last long. It would have torn quite quickly, I reckon."
[00:26:50:11	" Yeah, well, I mean, it was mainly he was doing the agenda for the local Labour Party or something like that."	,
[00:26:59:
[00	" You know, what what "
[00:27:	What ward were you in? WARD,"Ward I don't know, ", ,what was your local Labour Party called," West Norwood Labor Party," , huh? So that was the constituency. ,Yeah. , ,You must have it wards as well. ,"Yeah, I'm sure we did, but I don't know what they were."
[00:27:20:20	And what did your father do in the in the Labour Party?,	,
[00:27:28:07	" Well, he was just the "
[00:27:30:	secretary.
[00:27:31:01	"Yeah. But they must have done things, must have run campaigns and.",	,
[00:27:34:24	" Oh yes he did everything except. Stand for council himself, he was. For some reason, he couldn't do that. He couldn't speak in public."	,
[00:27:49:02	"Yeah, well, there is a rule now. I don't know what the rules were like then, but there is a rule now which says that if you're a civil servant and you get above a certain grade, you're not allowed to be ",
[00:28:	involved in party politics.
[00:28:02:11	" Yeah, I don't think I don't think it was that, because as I remember it, I don't think he said it to me. But I remember it his one wish was that I could talk in public. Well, because he hadn't been able to. Let's say he found it difficult to speak you know in front of an audience."	,
[00:28:25:12	" Oh, you mean was stage fright or. Yeah, well, that's I mean, he just "
[00:28:30:	" got to do it, that's all. I mean, you everybody thinks it's going to be like that when you do it for the first time. But you did for a while.", I never did.
[00:28:38:	" Well I did when I first did it,"," I never, never saw what was the difference between talking to one person and talking to a lot of people as long as they listened."	,
[00:28:47:20	" Well, there is a difference dad because you have to learn how to how to work with a crowd. And, yeah, you know, there's a whole thing is the difference that if you hear somebody like Michael Foot speaking, the "
[00:29:	difference between hearing Michael Foot speaking and hearing Tony Blair speaking, Tony Blair couldn't do it. But Michael Foot was a wonderful speaker. And I heard him speak for like a couple of hours. And he keeps you on edge because he knows how to do it. He knows how to work the crowd."
[00:29:17:09	I don't think I did too bad. ," Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure you did, but the public speaking is it is a technique you have to learn."
[00:29:26:17	" Well, I must have learned it some time or other because I've done an"
[00:29:30:	awful lot of it. , ,"Yes. Well, that's how you learn it. You learn by doing of ",practice. Makes perfect., ," Yeah, well, not everybody."
[00:29:38:09	"I mean, some people some people don't have the gift for it. They never get to be any good at it. But your dad never did it.",	,
[00:29:45:02	" No, he was. He was was he would work his socks off for the Labour Party but he wouldn't become a councillor and he couldn't because he couldn't stand up and speak in public."
August 22, 2010		INDEX