"All right, um. So. Why did you get involved with the council dad?",
,
[00:00:09:06]
It was sort of a.
,
[00:00:12:02]
"going on from being a trade unionist, of being the convener of the company, and when I stopped being the convenor, they somebody or other suggested it might be a good idea if I went in for that. So I had a go at it and I was successful. "
,
[00:00:31:05]
How did you how did you get to be convenor?,
,
[00:00:36:16]
" Well, when I started there, they didn't have a lot of shop stewards and I decided to work nights and they didn't have a shop steward, they asked me if I'd do it and I said yes."
,
[00:00:50:23
" But you have always been in the, it must have been the Amalgamated Engineering Union at that time.",
,
[00:00:56:23]
Yes. Yes. They didn't like it much in the previous job when I became manager. They didn't think I ought to be in the union.
,They wanted to throw you out of the AEU?" Yeah, but I did manage to hang on a bit."
[00:01:11:01]
that was when you were working for Frenlite,Yeah.
,So when you're working for Frenlite you were in the AEU but they wanted to get rid of you.,
[00:01:17:21]
Yes. Yes. Because I got promoted.
,
[00:01:21:14]
" And then when you come to Welwyn Garden city, you are still in the AEU?. ""Yes, I went on the clock "
,and could
[00:01:30:00]
use the word Amalgamated Engineering Union for,Amalgamated Engineering Union.
[00:01:37:05]
"Yeah, that's what you were in there?"" Yes, I was in the AEU."
,
[00:01:41:20]
" Right. OK. And. How when you when you were a shop steward, what was what was that like?",
,
[00:01:54:01]
" Quite interesting, really, because it it used to be a little bit of a nonsense, I used to go. "Take my stewards up to the management and negotiate our lives and, you know, with great difficulty and all the rest of it, and then when I negotiated, they used to say, oh, thank God you did that. We get it as well, you know? So it I think it was all a little bit of a sham, actually."
[00:02:24:19]
" Yeah. Well, in those days it was like there was a natural idea.",
,
[00:02:28:24]
" I mean, we're talking about the 60s, 60s, early 70s.",A bit later probably 70s
,
[00:02:34:24]
" Yeah. But in the in the 60s and 70s, the idea was that there was a kind of natural process that you every year you got a wage increase and, you know, there were unions and the whole thing, it just seemed normal.",
,
[00:02:48:09]
" Yes, it was how you did things. You you had to."
,
[00:02:54:10]
You had to negotiate a rise. I used to I used to go much more than once a year when I got fed up.
,
[00:03:01:16]
" I'd started organize the shop stewards and we'd go on up and think of something else we'd get. We go on holidays with pay. We got things like sick pay, things like that. They were all things that if you were on the clock, you never got. But if you became one of the foremen or something like that, you're no longer on the clock. You got sick pay and holidays with pay and all the rest of it. And that was a perk. So I got it for the I thought everyone should be treated the same."
,
[00:03:40:18]
"And when you are talking about clock. This was an actual thing that you clocked in with the card, wasn't it?",
,
[00:03:46:03]
" Yes, that's right. You and you on the rack one side of the clock with the cards and you are not on duty. You picked up your card, you put it in the clock and got your time stamp on it and put it in a rack on the other side of the clock, which meant you were in."
,
[00:04:06:02
" Yeah. And these electronic days, you'd think that meant that somebody printed a date stamp or something on it. But it's actually what they used to do with something different, didn't they?",
,
[00:04:16:01]
" Yeah, I'm not sure"
"Can't you remember what they what they did was they punched a hole in your card, which showed what time you arrived at. I think ""yeah, I think they did."
[00:04:26:23]
" Yeah, the."
,
[00:04:30:06]
maybe maybe they just printed the time on it.,
,
[00:04:33:06]
" I think I, I seem to remember the time being printed on it, but it got while I was there working at Nabisco's they went got more complex, and more up to date with their equipment. It was."
,
[00:04:54:19]
" I think that, you know, I took a lot of time with the old ones for the staff to work out how many hours you'd been there and whether you had to be deducted a quarter of an hour for being late and all the rest of it and the amount of staff they had to have to work out your wages made it uneconomic."
,
[00:05:20:03
" Yeah, well, that was in the days before computers when accounting departments used to have big staff, people who they used to actually call computers, didn't they?",
,
[00:05:29:05]
Yes. Yeah.
,
[00:05:31:10]
" But of course, when once they got the computers, they got even bigger staff because no one knew what the hell they were doing, so they were they had an awful lot of staff. I think at one time, the staff in the offices got nearly as big as the staff in the factory."
,
[00:05:49:24]
" Well, I mean, imagine these days factories probably have more staff in the offices than they do on the on the factory floor.",
,
[00:05:57:01]
" Yeah, it was during the time I was there, they they gradually got more and more modern machinery and less and less staff needed to run them."
,
[00:06:10:01]
How did you become convenor? Because I was sort of in bloody awkward if you were on night work for you to come in during the day.,
,
[00:06:17:13]
" Well, I used to. I've never wanted too much sleep and I think no one else wanted the job, so I'd got it."
,
[00:06:27:21]
" Yeah, but that's usually the way with being convenor. But, I mean, you think it must have been awkward for you getting up during the day and going to these bloody meetings?",
,
[00:06:36:04]
" Well, not really. I mean, you work 8 hours and you got the rest of the time to yourself. You don't want to sleep for all that time out of 24, do you "
,no,
[00:06:47:04]
And did you did you get anything for being convenor?,
,
[00:06:52:08]
Now. The only thing I got was that they daren't sack me
,
[00:06:58:21]
" That, of course, was it was a very good thing.",
,
[00:07:02:06]
" Yeah, yeah. Because eventually when I stopped being convener and I, I was then their councillor. So that didn't help em much either."
,
[00:07:13:00
,Yeah. So how long were you convenor for., I dont know several years
,and you became president of the local branch of the union as well.,
[00:07:22:12]
" Yes. Again, that was not exactly much of a honour because not many people attended branch"
,
[00:07:32:15]
How many people were in the shop?,
,
[00:07:36:01]
I think we had.
,
[00:07:38:02]
" Over the three shifts, just over 100" I think, which is a hell of a big engineering staff, that must have been one of the biggest shops outside of Dagenhams or steel plants in the country.",
[00:07:50:13]
" I don't know. You see, you needed you when you're working three shifts. You you want the same number of staff on each shift to look after the machinery."
,
[00:08:06:15]
" We also had a machine shop and people who didn't go out, you know, worked in the machine shop. So that was as well. So that they made quite a lot "
,by machine shop.,
[00:08:19:18]
You mean somewhere where they actually made the machinery that you used in the rest of the factory?,
,
[00:08:24:22]
" No, they didn't make the machinery, but they did make our parts for it that things that you needed. "
,
[00:08:31:10]
And what was the what was your sort of biggest achievement as a convenor.,
,
[00:08:44:04]
" Well, I think it was actually getting the people on the clock so that they had the same. Rights and privileges, as the people who were not on the clock "
,and didn't wasn't there something about you introduced the pension scheme?,
,
[00:09:01:20]
" Yes, I started the pension scheme. I'm still I'm getting a nice pension with it, but of course it. The pension scheme was I discovered that the government. If you contributed to a pension scheme, didn't tax that money. Which, of course, was a big incentive to people to join a scheme because they they didn't have to pay tax on the on that part of their income?"
,
[00:09:35:20]
" Yeah. So basically what it used to be, it was a tax fiddle for rich people who found a way to pay themselves money that they didn't have to pay tax on. And you kind of democratized it.",
,
[00:09:46:18]
" Yes. Well, I didn't see why things ought to be just for rich people."
,
[00:09:50:11]
" Yeah. How did you get involved in the in the council? Because, I mean, when I lived at home, I dont remember you ever going to Labour Party meetings or anything like that.",
,
[00:09:59:23
" Yeah, I used to go occasionally. They they didn't like me. That's why I used to go because I was a trade unionist. I got up, I made a speech once and I remember Stan saying getting up immediately after and saying now follow that. What I was trying to tell them was that once a flippin month or whatever it was, they came to a Labour Party meeting and thought how clever they were. Every day of my life, I was doing the same thing as a convener and risking my job and not getting any promotion by doing it.",
,
[00:10:43:12]
You didn't want to be promoted ,
,
[00:10:46:16
" No, not really, I'd had enough of being a manager. I was a manager before I got there.",
,
[00:10:52:21]
So you weren't really risking anything very much.
,
[00:10:56:20]
" No, I don't suppose so. I mean, they could have sacked me, but it would have caused awful lot of fuss"
, I should think.,
[00:11:06:07]
" On the whole, they probably valued the idea that they got a committed workforce that felt they were getting a good deal.",
,
[00:11:13:00 ]
"Yes, but if you look at it sensibly, I suppose some of them did. I know that the the company secretary and I got to be, you know, quite pally. He was he was on my side as it were"
,
,
[00:11:26:04]
How did you get to be elected as a councillor?,
,
[00:11:32:21]
" Well, you know, I think they didn't have anyone to put up and they thought the tories were going to win. And I'd already I must have told them, I think I stood in London in a safe Tory seat and, you know, the Labour Party had quite a lot of fun. And I think I must have told them and they they asked me if I do the same thing here and I did, and of course, I won the seat, which I think must have been a terrible embarrassment for them. But then, of course, I went to the, that was the local council and I became leader of the local council."
,
[00:12:17:21]
And.
,
[00:12:20:16]
" Eventually, they got rid of me and then I became a county councilor for one period and did quite well there. I was chairman of committees and Things. But they didn't want me to stand again."
,
[00:12:37:01]
they found someone Posh.
" Yeah, well, when you say that that I mean, you're actually on Hertfordshire County Council, weren't you? And that's additionally a very, very Tory authority.",
[00:12:47:15]
" Yes, but. This one election, it got split and actually the tories. I guess the Tories and Labour Party came out about equal so we could have shared the offices, but the Tories wouldn't share them with us, so we took the lot. So that's how I became a committee chairman."
,
[00:13:13:05]
" But you're incredibly lucky, I mean, that that can hardly ever happen.",
,
[00:13:16:09]
" it's only ever happened that once, I think."
,
[00:13:21:16
" So, I mean, that was exactly the right time to be on the county",
,
[00:13:25:04]
" Yes, yes. Oh, yes, you're quite right. I mean, I'm I'm quite sure the people who nominated me didn't expect me to become important."
,
[00:13:36:17]
How on earth did you get to be leader of the district council?,
,
[00:13:41:11]
" I think, again, because. Really, I became I got to be a chairman of a committee and a."
,
[00:13:53:01]
" Somebody you see, I always had some friends and somebody nominated me, and I think the other people couldn't find anyone to stand against me."
,
[00:14:06:01]
" I got it, yeah, ""a friend of mine, um, did subsequently become an MP, said that it was all it was very usually, you know, self selection that people actually decide they want to do it and then, you know, they can. And it's the people who decide they want to do that. They go through it.",
[00:14:26:20]
" Yes, yes, I think there's a certain amount of that about it. I mean, I always wanted to be a committee chairman. Sitting on the back row and put your hand up to vote when you're told to."
,
[00:14:38:22]
Didn't appeal to me a bit "before I became a committee chairman. I didn't think there was much to being a committee chairman and I didn't really want to do it. I actually went on the council to do, you know, constituency work to do to do the, you know, kicking the officers when they weren't doing enough enough work that you you didn't like that?",
[00:15:06:05]
" Well, yeah, I did quite a bit of that, but."
,
[00:15:11:05]
" I I never liked going to a group meeting and sitting in the back row when the chairman said vote, you voted it. I never I wanted to be the one who said vote"
, yes.,
[00:15:26:20]
"But it does mean doing an awful lot of work. And when you're on the on the district
[00:15:30:00
council in particular, you had to work sort of all day and all night, didn't you?",
,
[00:15:34:12]
" Yes. Yes. It was a bit tricky. I used to get come home from work at six o'clock in the morning and get up at 12 and start. Start on the council work, and then I would probably be a little bit late into work. Because a council meeting might have run on and then I'd worked through the night and then back to. But
[00:16:00:00
back to having me four hours sleep again."
,
[00:16:05:13
" Right. OK, so if we just stop a bit, if you could explain to me how you come home from work very, very early in the morning and then go to bed for a few hours, and then you go to the council.",
,
[00:16:18:22]
" So, yeah, I got home from, I left work at six o'clock in the morning, I work from 10:00 at night to 6:00 in the morning and then. At 12 o'clock, I would get up and have something to eat and then go down to the council and sort out the problems that they had got because I had an office in the council and. Then I would come home and have some tea go back for the evening meeting, if there was one, and then from the evening meeting him go straight on to work."
,
[00:16:56:14]
So what committees did you did you did you chair" highways, trading standards?"
,
[00:17:07:00 ]
"And of course, the committee committee, the top one, which was I can't remember the name of what it was ."
,resources strategy, something like that. But that wasn't what they called it. But it was it was the
, finance and general purposes." No no I can't remember. But whatever it was, that was the top committee"
[00:17:27:22]
and I had to chair that one because I was leader of the council.
,Did you ever get to be mayor?, No. You didn't want to be mayor. Mayor was a job you gave to somebody who wasn't very good at being a councillor. Because instead of working on the council. they wandered about being nice to people
[00:17:55:10]
and you didn't like being nice to people?" Well, I didn't think I was qualified."
,
[00:18:01:16
" It's not your forte. Did you ever do anything exciting on the council? Was there anything ever anything exciting happen that you, remember?",
,
[00:18:09:16]
" Not that I could remember no. They all seemed exciting at the time. Your know if you got after a long fight, you managed to get something through the council, however trivial it is, it's exciting for you."
,
[00:18:23:09]
" Yeah, but you did do things like build that bloody center over the tunnel of the A1 in Hatfield.",
,
[00:18:30:18]
" Oh, yes. They got that got that built. That was one thing we did. "
,What was it called dad,
[00:18:38:07]
I don't know.
,
[00:18:40:19]
The center in Hatfield on A1?"Don't know cant remember well, I mean, did lots of things in this street where we live. I gave everybody a parking space. Who would have one because it was so difficult. There was a bus route. The buses had to give up because they couldnt get along. The fire service and the ambulances couldn't get down here. So I put parking places in and now people could have an ambulance."
,
[00:19:14:11]
I think that's good.
,Not bad. But people still park in the street. "Oh, yes. But there's there's enough room to get an ambulance down there."
[00:19:23:04]
" So, I mean, some of the things you did, though, were quite big league. I mean, there was a lot of money involved.",
,
[00:19:29:18]
" Yes. Well, I suppose the."
,
[00:19:34:15]
" The place we, the couple of places we had for people who were without. You know, didn't have anywhere to live, we we got temporary, temporary places for people to live, things like that, which I was very pleased about. I thought that was good."
,
[00:19:52:08]
And you knocked down a lot of the concrete houses as well.,
,
[00:19:55:10]
" Yes, yes, they. When the town was built. It was a railway."
,
[00:20:06:14]
"a railway ruled town, if you lived one side of the railway, you lived with the factories and you were a worker and you lived in concrete dwellings which were a little better than slums, and if you lived the other side of the railway, there was the shops and behind the shops, the bosses lived."
,
[00:20:27:18]
So they had nice houses. So I had the concrete houses.
,
[00:20:34:11]
" Knocked down and some nice houses put up for working people" but I thought the whole story about Welwyn Garden City was that it was all built to Parker Morris standards, which at the time were fantastic compared to anything the private sector had.",
[00:20:48:15]
" Yes, it it is true that the people who when they first I've talked to the people who first moved here, and they thought that from the slums they lived in in London, they thought these concrete houses were wonderful. But of course times move on. And by the time I was leader, they were, they were not considered wonderful anymore."
,
[00:21:14:06]
" But these days, the private sector is building a lot of houses that don't even come up to basic Parker Morris standards."
,
[00:21:21:08]
" Yes, I'm waiting for them to have outside loos again."
,
[00:21:27:04]
That could happen dad? It could happen.,
,
[00:21:30:15]
" I mean, in fact, there are there are environmentalists out there who actually think outside Loos are a pretty good idea.",
,
[00:21:36:20]
Yeah. Yeah. It's environmentalists out there who ought to be locked up.
"Yeah, maybe."" And I've lived with an outside loo. And you think about you, you know, you've got diarrhea and it's pissing down with rain. Try that for a joke."
[00:21:54:05]
" Yeah, I know.",
,
[00:21:55:15]
" I know there are problems, but there are some cultures that believe, for example, that the wet side of the house should be entirely separate from the dry side.",
,
[00:22:08:01]
" Yes, well, there's there's weirdos everywhere. It's no doubt about that, but people who look at things from a practical, sensible point of view, are I believe a minority. But you aren't the only thing. The thing that people don't understand is."
,
[00:22:28:01]
" That if a man and a woman get a place and they've got a family. They don't think labour or conservative or liberal, they think."
,
[00:22:42:16]
" About how they can improve their lot, how they can make things their children can have it better than them, they're not interested in politics, they are interested in their own lives and their children's lives."
,
[00:22:56:09]
" Yeah, from the district council, you went on to the local health authority.",
,
[00:23:01:09]
" Yes. Yes, I was on the health authority for quite a long time. Yeah."
,
,
[00:23:05:05]
Why did you do that? Because you already had two jobs to take on another one. That seems extraordinary.,
,
[00:23:10:09]
" I had more jobs and that I was on all sorts of things. But the health authority was interesting because you got to a point. I used to chair the committee that appointed all the consultants, things like that, which was interesting. And of course. The initial reason. There was a lot of talk about shutting the hospital and moving. We got a good hospital at Stevanage, that should be all right, you know, and things like that. So I wanted to defend the hospital."
,
[00:23:48:08]
" Yeah. Now, you ",still there? "You became chairman of the District Health Authority, didn't you. ""Chairman of it, no"
" deputy chairman, ""something like that, yeah, yeah."
[00:24:04:20]
That's quite remarkable. "They used to they used to find me jobs, too."
,
[00:24:11:09]
" I've been appointed to practically everything. I was on the bloody water water board, the electricity. It wasn't the electricity company or the water board. It was a consumer. Committee side of those things, I was on most of those."
,
[00:24:29:24]
And did you ever get anything out of all these things? Because in those days they didn't get much by way of expenses or anything like that., I think I was lucky to get my bus fare.
"But these days, I mean, if you were chairman of the District Council, you'd be on a wage, ""so yes, you would."
[00:24:48:05]
"Now a days, if you were doing all the jobs I was doing, you'd be rich. You would want to go to work."
,
[00:24:55:03
" I don't know about Rich, but you'd certainly get the sort of salary that you were getting for work just from doing those sorts of jobs.",
,
[00:25:01:17]
Yeah. Yeah.
,
[00:25:05:17]
" Well you see, we in my day, you didn't do it in order to get money, you did it because you thought it was a it was a good thing to do. Youve got to give something back."
,
[00:25:20:20]
" And because you didn't you didn't do it when the kids were young. I think Lindsay was probably quite young at the time, but most of us had sort of grown up.",
,
[00:25:29:05]
" Yes. Yes. Well. When you were all young, it was a full time job keeping the family going, and I had to work a lot of overtime and things like that, so I didn't have a lot of time."
,
[00:25:45:02]
" I think I was. I was a shop steward at first, but. But I didn't have a lot of spare time."
,
[00:26:01:00]
,You. ,
,
[00:26:03:05]
" did actually do a lot of overtime towards the end of your career as well in order to get a decent pension, didn't you?",
,
[00:26:09:05]
" Yes, last year your pension was based on your last year's salary."
,
[00:26:13:23]
" So excuse me, I. I did. I worked nights. I worked sunday to."
,
[00:26:26:02]
" Thursday, which was a week, and then worked Friday night as overtime and usually got a 12 hour in, so that was time and a half."
,
[00:26:38:15]
" Now, wait a minute."
,
[00:26:41:16]
" Yeah, time and a half time and a third, and that was good money because we got time left for work, working nights."
,
[00:26:51:11]
But you weren't on the council at that stage. Not that year no.
"So, um, uh, that that that meant that you could be ended up with quite a good pension."" Yes, yes. It was a big help. I didn't want I mean" if I'd been in the company, I'd have stopped you from doing that because I wouldn't have wanted the drain on the pension fund.",
[00:27:13:24]
" I don't think there's any of them capable of working that out. Uh, you didn't get to be. I think you've got to be a boss because you had a nice suit."
,
[00:27:26:21]
" Well, I don't know about that, but a lot of them, of course, get it through, you know, connections, nepotism of some kind.",
,
[00:27:35:01]
" Yeah, I don't know. I think you see it was an American company anyway, and I don't think anybody cared much because it wasn't their money. There was nobody there, I've never met anybody who had shares in the firm or any thing like that, they were it was just an offshoot of an American company at that time. It isnt now Nesles bought it. But I suppose now its an offshoot of a Swiss company."
,
[00:28:03:17]
"Yeah, it's part of the Swiss company, I'm sure, although Nestle is such a big company, it's more like an international conglomerate",
,
[00:28:12:08]
I remember you telling me once about a ghost that you saw.,
,
" Yeah, I remember. If you're talking about when your mom and I were quite young, when we were walking home from work, from where we'd been out in the evening and I was walking her home."
,
[00:28:39:11]
" We passed someone we knew quite well, he was a business man, local businessman, and he spent a lot of time helping to organize the clubs and put money in the boys clubs, things like that put money into it and all the rest of it. And we said goodnight to him and he said goodnight to us and. When we got to her mother's, we said, oh, we saw, I can't remember his name. We saw him on the way home and she said, No, you didn't he died this afternoon."
,
[00:29:10:12]
But we did.
,
[00:29:13:05]
" But I've seen other ghost to where when I was I was working, travelling all over the country I was down in. On the coast somewhere. Working in an old mill and I had to put this automatic wiring's, so I was up in the loft, putting the parts in, through that and. The mill was owned by two old gentlemen who were brothers; nice old chaps, they were, and. And While I was working, one of them came, they walked past me and walked up to the other end of the place and I thought, what the hell's he doing up there and where did he go? I went up there to look and there was no, there was no way out."
,
[00:30:06:21]
" So I was a bit concerned. So I went and asked one of the blokes and they said, that's the third brother, he died. So, yes, I've seen a couple of ghosts in me time."
,