Interviewer * italic text

Interviewed by Janet Druker c.1981

Interview – Laurie Poupard

Transcribed by Alison McPherson, alison.mcpherson@premiertyping.com

, www.premiertyping.com

Interviewer – italic text

Interviewee – normal text

Transcription problem (inaudible/unclear) – text within [] is my guess of what was said in the context of the conversation or “?”.

…and your place of birth…

Yeah. Laurence Poupard, born on the 21 st of September 1915, in Hull.

And what were your parents’ full names?

Em, my father’s was Samuel, Samuel Poupard, and my mother’s was Margaret Josephine

Poupard.

And your mother’s maiden name?

Maiden name, my mother’s maiden was [Gettemans].

And what was your father’s occupation, Laurie?

He was a slater and a tiler.

He was. How about your grandparents – is it a trade that ran in the family?

No. No. My grandfather, on my father’s side, eh, was, eh, a sailor, who sailed on the eh…the ordinary sailing ships. Now, he originated from London, my grandfather, and his father was a

Frenchman who came to London, and the [scalemakers], and if you go down Trilby Street, you’ll still see Poupard’s, the [scale-makers]. I have a lot of funeral cards, eh, and my grandfather – that’s my father’s side – my grandfather’s sisters and brothers are buried in Norwood, in Tooting, and also, em, in…I think they call it Dalton – is it another part of East London?

Yes.

But my grandfather was the only one out of the family who ever left London, and he came to Hull.

I can’t tell you how he came to Hull, but em, my father’s mother died when he was four, and then he had a stepmother, who I remember, and she died, my father’s step-mother died about 1936, just…no, not…1926. It was when I was at school, because I left school in 1929. It would be

1926 when she died. And then my grandfather, he lived until he was eh…[well turned 90] and he died in 1942. My father died, em, in 1950, on the Boxing Day night, and then my mother lived for another 18 years, and she died on the 28 she’d have been 90. th of March 1969. If she’d have lived until the 7 th of July,

Okay. Can we go back perhaps to your early childhood? What are the earliest things you can remember in Hull?

Well, the earliest one I can remember, and it’s a vivid memory, and it’s the only thing I can remember about the First World War. We lived in a terrace, and it was the peace dinner, a peace tea, call it what you may. Each terrace has its own table, and the corner house, on the left-hand side, was an old couple called Ebenezer [?] Jones, used to ride three-wheel bikes, and their front garden was all like wild rhubarb. I don’t know what it was, but to me, I always, in my memory, remember it as being wild r hubarb, and the whole front of the terrace was decorated with Jones’ wild rhubarb, and the table.





Now, that’s the earliest recollection I could ever have of a child, and the next one I can remember, but what leads up to it, I can’t remember, but my mother used to tell me, and the lady who delivered me at birth, was a lady who lived opposite the house, in a terrace, Mrs [Wilson], and my mother used to say she always came every night to hear me say my prayers. Now, my father was in France, and he never came out of the Army until 1921. And she used to say she wanted to hear me say prayers. Now, we [are] what you call [?], as Catholics, and it’s “Oh my God, I [am so sorry that I’ve been so]…so sorry for being bad,” but I used to say, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry for being so good, and I shall never be so good again.” Now, I don’t remember that, but my mother used to tell me that. I remember Mrs Wilson quite well.

But the one thing I do remember, vividly, like the peace dinner, was the fact that my prayers, I’m told, used to be…every night, I used to say “May God send Daddy home safe and sound,” but I was nearly six by the time my father came home, and I think I’d only seen him twice, on his leave, in the five years, and so when my father came home, I got turfe d out of my mother’s bed and I had to go in the other bed, and of course he went into bed with my mother, and I used to refer to him as “that man”, and I remember getting bloody well clipped across the earhole for calling him that, and I wouldn’t call him father, and yet, I’d said my prayers every night that he came home nice and safe. So, that’s another vivid memory I have, about this man, because he brought with him a big cuckoo clock, and it had weights on, and we had that in our house for years and years, and then…I don’t know what happened to it but…whether it turfed out or what, or whether… I think we had it until about my father died, and it was a magnificent thing, and all the carvings was all the different games that they poached, they would poach in the wood – hares and ducks and pigeons, and at the top of it all was a great big reindeer, with the horns on, a magnificent clock.

He brought that home, so I associated that with this here fellow that I used to call “that man”.

Those are the earliest recollections that I have as a child.

Then of course, the next vivid one of course would be…the General Strike, and eh, I went to a school called St Vincent’s School, where there was all lady teachers, and my brother before me went, and my father said that it was no school for a lad and we should go where there were men teachers, and he took me brother away first, and he put him to Newland Avenue School, which was quite close to where we lived, which was not a Catholic school. But when it came for me to be moved, it suddenly dawned on him I should go to St Charles School. That was right in the town, and there was eh…men teachers. Of course, we lived in Newland Avenue, and it was, then, it was supposed to be, you know, eh, a bit toffee-nosed because everybody was working and they were decent and you used to have different clothes for Sunday, whereas in the centre of the town, which was called the West End of Hull, was very, very working class, and the biggest shock I got was that half the kids at school i n St Charles was in bare feet. I’d never seen that before. And of course, shortly after, we had this strike, and we had the students who was operating the [chimes], and eh…I remember that very, very well indeed.

But then, eh, I left school.

Can we stay on the subject of the Strike for a minute? Was your father an active trade unionist?

Yes. He used to have two cards, until – well, I don’t know when he gave it up, but the building industry, by the First War, up to the First War, the building industry more or less closed down because of the severity of the weather, and so he used to have a Transport & General card. I don’t know what they call it, but he used to work in the gasworks in the winter, and then come back, round about Easter, to work in the building industry. So he used to have two cards, one for the slaters and then one for the general labourers. He was a firm believer in trade unions, but the funny thing was that he and the secretary of the slaters’ union could never get on, and the reason why, eh… You can only get to know these things after. We used to take his contributions to [?] in George Street, every Friday night, and it cost one and sixpence, contributions. That was when

I was at school. And you must remember, in that period, the building industry wage rates was the, eh, peak and the trough, and it got as high as two and sixpence an hour. But the whole of my





apprenticeship, you got a reduction every year. Now, we used to take his one and sixpence every week, on a Saturday night, and used to go up [?] hall, and it was a big building, and all the trade unions used to meet in that place. Knock at the door, and there used to be a little panel at the top used to open – you couldn’t see anything but a hand, and the hand used to come out, collect the card, and the money, and then it would close again, and then [you/it] would [go]. So there was a great deal of secrecy. You wanted to know what was behind the door and you could never find out.

But the difference between my father and the branch secretary was this: my eldest brother was my step-brother. My mother, eh, had, eh, a son, eh, and my father was her second husband, but eh, so far as he was concerned, it was his first time of being married. And during the strike, which was before the First War, my father – everybody knew he’d got married, and Bernard, who was the first child of that marriage – you see, I’m the third of our family, but fourth when I count my stepbrother in. There’s my step-brother, Jim, then I had my brother Bernard, then my sister

Kath, then myself, and then there was another one after me, Eric. Well, eh, Bernie – I was born in 1915, Kath in 1913, so Bernie would be about 1911. There was a strike I think in 1912. Then, they used to – any work which was going to be done, the union branch used to supply the labour to do the job, and in those days, it was the slaters who were on strike, and your wage negotiation was done in different localities. The slaters in Leeds was I believe…I’m guessing, but my father used to tell me this – I don’t know if it was three h’pence or an halfpenny, one of the two, lower than the Hull rates, and they brought the slaters in from Leeds to break the Hull strike.

Now, he used to go to the union meeting on the Monday, on the night, and they’d say, for instance, the builder had two houses ready, so they would allocate that work for two or perhaps three men, and the men who had the most in the family got the job.

My father went along and they said, “How many children, Sam?” “Two.” And Clary Davy, who was the branch secretary, he said, “Oh, no, one.” “No, it’s two.” He said, “Well, you haven’t been married long eno ugh to have two.” And my father would never disclose the fact that he had a step-son. As far as he was concerned, he was his son. And that animosity developed from there onwards, and they never saw eye to eye, and so, for years and years and years, my father never attended a branch meeting, but he paid his contributions every week.

That, first of all, got me interested in the union, because it was the fascination of what was behind the door. But then, when I became an – my first job – I left eh…work in October 1929, it would be…14, yeah, 19 th of May… My first job was an errand boy at Cousin’s, the provision people, and I got 12 and sixpence a week. Then…that was in October, 1929, and I got an apprenticeship with Dover Townsl ey’s in June 1930, and so I lost five shillings a week because my first week’s pay then was seven and sixpence a week.

And em, now we come to why I was interested in trade unions, apart from the fact that there was this mystery about this door, which I’d done week after week with my brother, but the fellows used to be talking about the…they used to call it “the club”, the club will do this, the club will do that, and the club will do the other, and the union was exceedingly strong in Hull. And it was…the conversation, every day, was “the club”. Now, there was about five roofing contractors in Hull: there was [Windroses, Beckney’s], Williamson’s, [Wyles]. Dover Townsley’s…I think those were the five, at that particular time. But the largest one of all was Dover Townsley’s. My father had never worked there. My father used to work for a firm called [Wyles], but I worked for Dover

Townsley’s. And then, the Hull branch was the head office of the company. It had started about

1785 or something, a very, very old, established firm, and they had branches in Stockton,

Darlington, Scarborough, Bridlington, Grimsby, Kings-Lynn, Yarmouth, Scunthorpe, Barnsley, and they had the offices in Hull. And em, although it was Dover Townsley’s, when I joined, the main person in that firm was a man called Ray, Mr Ray, and he was the managing director. There was no Dover, and there’d been no Dover for a long, long time, but there were two Townsleys, brothers. Now, Townsley, the senior man, that was the brothers’ father, James Townsley, was





the found er member and the original secretary of the Roofing Contractors’ Association, and for a number of years, he was also the…the Employers’ Secretary, and then, it became too much for him and he gave it over to a man in Leeds called A.K. Davidson, who was the Regional Secretary for the NFBTE, and he became the National Secretary for the Slaters.

Now, when I joined, Cyril Townsley, who was the elder of the two brothers, was a prominent member in the business world. In the course of years, he was the President of the Chamber of

Commerce, he was the Chairman of the Magistrates’ Bench, he was a leading alderman of the

Tories on the Council, he was the Chairman of the Trustees Savings Bank. He was a very, very well-respected and very prominent businessman. And because he had all these different people throughout the North of England, he used to say, if he had any disputes at all, he wanted to deal with one person and not with 20, and so it was his policy that if you worked with the company, you had to be a member of your appropriate trade union, and he always recognised and…from after the First World War, it was just a coincidence, but the Branch Secretary always worked with

Dover Townsley’s, because he had the biggest labour force and therefore he was the bloke [?].

So, therefore, it was a fact that Dover Townsley’s – when I joined, he had about 65 slaters, which was a very, very big number, and the majority of my apprenticeship was spent out of town in lodgings because I used to work different places, but you had to be a member of the union.

Now, the union wouldn’t let you join until you were six months out of your time, so you joined the union at the age of 20 years and six months, not any early – you couldn’t. Twenty years and six months, then you could join, and it was expected to join. So, I joined the union, eh, in due course. I joined…I think it would be what…em…March I think it was, about 1936. Instead of going to the door and knocking at the door and passing my father’s contributions in, I used to then go and pay, and I used to pay sixpence a week, for the first six months, and then it went up to one and sixpence. And I suppose, looking back, I spoke that much…I was going to say I spoke that much [bullshit, but it’s on there]. Eh, the only way of keeping me quiet was, by 1938, I was

Chairman of the Hull branch. Now, these minute books from 1938 are deposited with [the Hull]

University. I became the Branch Secretary in 1938, and so then I started attending the NFBTO

Council for the Hull districts.

And, at that particular time, there was tremendous, strong team at the Federation of local organisers. There was Sid Horsefield, who was the Painters’ District Organiser, who eventually became the General Secretary of the painters’ organisation. There was a man called Hewitson, who was the plumbers’ representative, organiser, and he was a Labour councillor. There was

Ernie Spence, the ASW organiser, who was the Secretary of the Federation, and he was classed as one of the most knowledgeable men in the No rth of England on workmen’s compensation.

And a fellow called Orwell, who was Alderman Orwell, the bricklayers’ organiser, who was

Chairman of the Works Committee on the Hull Council, and em, they do say that he could have aspired to national status if he wanted, but he had no inclination of leaving his own district, because, at that time, the AUBTW did not pay any district organisers, but any district that wanted an organiser had to appoint their own and pay it themselves. Occasionally, they used to have a dispute – you see, in Scarborough, and I know this for a fact, that the head office here would write to [Walt] Orwell and ask him to go to see Scarborough, and he would refuse, say, “No, that’s out of my area,” and he wouldn’t go. But, you see, you had [five] full-time organisers, and they really made a tremendous impact in Hull, and there was three of them were on the Council, and eh, it was in that environment in which I, eh, shall we say, grew, eh, and they were all…well, to me anyhow, men of tremendous importance, although they were only local officials, and the respect which they could command from any employer had to be seen to be believed, to such an extent that it’s the only place that I know of that, even today, it operates, and that is they have what they call a whist league.

Now, you have a number of firms, and they’ve got teams who play whist, and you have three leagues, and all the presentations and all the cups and everything else are donated by the employers, and every year, they have a social event. They have a whist drive and dance, and





the employers turn up, and it’s a tremendous success, from a social point of view. But the first year that it was held, the nucleus of that meeting also formed the nucleus of what they called the

ARP, Air Raid Precautions, and all Building Fed workers who were members of the whist league was also enrolled in the ARP.

And the Labour Club, used to be on [Walton] Street, and it moved to new premises about 1938, on the Beverley Road, where it still is today, and they had a function in the Labour Club of the whist league, the presentation of the cups, etc. etc. and the principal speaker was [McDonald], the Stipendiary Magistrate. He wasn’t a popular man at any time. People used to…they’d always complain about him. But to show you how arrogant the man was, I always remember this, he stood up and he said he’d never been to a working man’s function previously, and he saw the working men behaving as gentlemen, and therefore he’d give an extension to the licensing laws till midnight, just like that [clicks fingers]. And, to me, that’s my memory, as being…it was typical of McDonald to do a thing like that, to show that he was a man of power, you know, because he was the most biased man in many, many respects, in other fields, especially when he was trying, you know, fellows with little petty crimes, and he could be really severe, because he was very, very sarcastic. I had a mate once who was up before him, and he [said something] sarcastic, and

[Laurie Cox] replied, you know, spontaneously, and he gave him three months, straightaway, just, you know, for sarcasm. But that’s the reminiscing I can do in relation to…up to the War.

Laurie, can I go back a little bit and ask you about your experience of the trade, because you went into the same trade as your father.

Yeah.

Was that very much because your father encouraged you to develop the interest?

No. Eh, what I tried was…don’t forget this, that when I came out of school, there was about two million unemployed, and I had tried to be an electrici an, and eh…we…went all over, wrote all over, had interviews and god knows what, and there was nothing at all going, and I suppose, eh, really, Dover Townsley’s used to take on three apprentices each year, which I wasn’t aware of – my father would have been aware of it, no doubt – and he told me to go there and ask, and eh, I used to do more hunting on a Thursday afternoon then, because Thursday was half-day closing for the…because I used to work till eight o’clock Saturday night, because shops was open till eight, and so I used to do more of my parading on a Thursday afternoon than any other time.

Anyhow, I went into West Street to see, and the funny thing was I was interviewed by Ray, the managing director, and the first thing he asked me was could I write properly, and then I found out that this man could read your writing upside down – oh, he was a cute bugger! And he used to give you a piece of paper and he used to …and he said, “Write your name and address,” and you could write your name, like that, and he could read it, upside down, as you was writing it. Oh, he was…he was a businessman, was Ray. And he asked you one or two questions, and he decided whether or not that you would be taken on, and he said, eh, yes, I would have to go again – “When can you come again?” and I said, “Next Thursday.” “Are you working?” I said,

“Yes, I’m an errand boy at Cousin’s.” So I come next Thursday, and I went, and I started actually on my mother’s birthday, started on the 7 th of July…it would be 19…what was it…eh…1929, so I started on the 7 th of July 1930.

My wages didn’t go down, but the wages of the men went down every year, the whole of my apprenticeship. I started with seven and sixpence. I was tempted to bring the indentures with me today, but I didn’t, but I’ll show you them if you like. Eh, it went seven and sixpence, then 10 shillings, then 12 and six, then 15 shillings, and the last two years, and this is worth noting, the last two years, it says on the indentures, that we got half a crown a week more, as an apprentice slater, than joiners or bricklayers. Now, why it is, I couldn’t tell you, but that’s written in…that’s printed in the indentures, that slaters and tilers got an extra half-crown a week – whether it’s for standing in the cold, I don’t know [laughing], but by God, it used to be cold! I used to think





sometimes, how the hell I’ll get through this winter, I don’t know! Sometimes, my fingers used to be absolutely blue up to my knuckles, and of course, you’re fiddling around with nails, inch and a quarter, because, in those days, it was more slates than tiles, because you had a tremendous eh…flood of foreign slates as part of the debt that was paid by Belgium and other countries, and we got Belgian, French, Spanish and Portuguese slates, and they used to come in ships. When a ship came, there was I think about three or four million at a time. They used to send the apprentices down, and you had to go down and you had to count these slates into 20s, and then pass them to the dockers, and you used to be bent down, like that, all day, in the hull of a ship, and I’m not telling a word of a lie – you couldn’t straighten up at five o’clock at night. You was bent! Ooh, and it was…bloody backache was, you know, terrific!

And they break very easily, d on’t they, slates?

Yeah. And then…the law came in then that all imports had to be stamped. And Dover

Townsley’s had moved from [dock-side], which is now Queen’s Gardens. It’s all garden, but it was docks then and they filled it in. We moved from Queen’s Dock, and we moved to Railway

Dock. They had all the apprentices in, moving, and then the law came in that all the imported slate had to be stamped because the firm was selling them as Welsh, especially what they call

[romone], [romone] slates. And they used to give you a short ladder and a bloody great big heap of slates and…say there was a heap of slates there, and you had a short ladder so you could get to the top, and every slate had to be moved, one at a time, from there, and transplant them down to here. And you’d be there three month, on one heap of slates, because you had the stamp, you know, the rubber stamp and a pad, stamping, stamp 20 and then walk down with them, and then stamping… Oh, it was a painstaking and soul-destroying job! It was, honestly.

But eh…because, you see, the first 18 months of your apprenticeship, and this went as far as Hull was concerned anyhow, joiners, bricklayers, plumbers or anybody, you never got no tools. You was the lackey of your tradesmen. An apprenticeship was supposed to be for seven years. And eh…so you’d go and bring the man’s tools out, pack his tools and put them away, and he would lend you a hammer to do something, if it suited him, and you used to get some men who were…should never have had an apprentice at all, and you used to get others where they were as good as gold.

But I used to…eventually, I worked with one man, called Alf Pearce. He wasn’t a popular man at all with the other fellows because whenever we done a housing estate, which was going to last for a couple of year or 18 months or something, he was always designated as the man who was in charge. He was a very, very good craftsman, very good, and a very patient man, and I worked with him for a while. He was a very nice man, I thought. The only time he ever swore was when he used to talk about Mesopotamia, and he’d got [laughing], he got malaria, and then he used to f-and-blind something terrible about bloody Mesopotamia! But apart from that, you never heard the man swear. But the other man used to detest him, but I found he was a very, very good fellow, very good indeed, and I always remember [laughing], I was working with him when I was out of my time, working down [Hull] Road, and he had two daughters. One daughter, she got to be the secretary of the boss in Selfridges and she went to live with him, and it very near broke his heart, and the other daughter, she stayed at home and she was very musical.

And at dinner time, 12 o’clock, [you had to] go to the office and [you had to] ask your employer to give you [your] indentures, so you worked – the day you was 21, you worked four hours at apprentice rate and then four hours at the craftsmen’s rate. Sometimes, it also meant you got your cards for that night as well.

And I went and…working with Alf, and he said eh…when I went back, he said, “Now, what are you going to do, La urie?” So I said, “Well, [I’m going to go slating now].” “Well, I’m going to give you some advice.” So I said, “Oh yeah?” “Yes,” he said. “Now, you save up as hard as you can until you get £100, and then you buy four houses.” Because you could then buy houses at £25





down. “You buy four houses with £100, and you take out a mortgage for 30 years, and you fix a rent which enables you to repay the building society, with a little bit of extra to put into the cause.

Then you save up another £100, and then you buy another four houses. So, when you’re as old as me,” he said, “you’ll be so busy collecting your rent you’ll have no time for slating.” That was

Alf Pearce’s advice to me [laughing]!

We had another fellow called Bob [Hodgson], and he had a tremendous stammer, had Bob, and he was always…he used to be going like this with his foot, to get out what he was talking, and the advice he gave me were [laughing] I had to save £300 up for Bob, had to save up £300, knock off work just after Easter, and you’d go round all the racetracks, and you’d go in the silver rings, and you don’t bet but you go to all the big, important meetings and you go in the silver ring because there’s plenty of women of the aristocracy who were looking for husbands, he says, and then you buy yourself into prosperity [laughing]. That was Bob [Hodgson’s] advice! But I liked Alf Pierce’s best, buying the houses at £25 each.

You never took him up on it anyway. When you were actually at the trade, it must have been pretty hard wo rk, slating, I mean, as you say, being out in the winter and there wasn’t any guarantee at retirement at that point or anything…

There was no guarantees at all, no. It was really rough. I would think it’s the roughest one of all, all trades, but eh…looking back, you was also very, very independent, because your employer was based in [?] Street, say, or wherever his office was, and he would send you, used to give you a piece of paper, and it would say on it, for instance, “Morpeth’s, eh, Griffith Avenue, four houses,

16 by 8, 2.5 inches lap, pointed”, you see. That was your instructions. So you would go – now, there was always willing…they were always pleased to see a slater because you’re going to put the roof on. Now, there was no felt like there is today, so they depended entirely on you working to get your cover. Now, it would rain, for instance. Now, all slate had to be what you call dressed

– that was putting two holes in – so you could always fix them somewhere to get out of the wind and out of the rain to do this dressing, if the weather was inclement. The bricklayers would be rained off. If it was a new site, everybody would be rained off, because of the weather, but you’d be working. And nobody…the whole of my industrial life, I never clocked-on once, and never worked to a whistle. We always used to say we had an undisputed right to go to work a quarter of an hour later and leave 10 minutes early, because nobody supervised us, nobody at all.

Occasionally, but very, very rarely, before the War, there was only one car in the firm, and it was shared between the foreman and the traveller – we only had one traveller. And the foreman had it, eh, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, because they paid out on Friday, and the traveller would have it Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays. And occasionally, not often, but occasionally, the foreman would go out in the morning and he would plant himself somewhere – if, for instance, there was a lot of people working up [?] Road, he’d be down [Craven] Street, and he’d watch

[slaters], because everybody rode a bike, going into work, and he would take it down, and then he would tell you, “Hey, we saw you go into work at 10 past eight,” on such-and-such a morning.

Now, the man who used to drive the car, the chauffeur, used to sell cigarettes, Ted [Clangs], and so when on the Friday they used to come, and he never got out the car did the foreman – he used to come up to the site, and he would pip his horn, so you all came downstairs and stood near it and you all lined up and he used to pay you. And then some of [them] used to go round and buy cigarettes off Ted, and he used to say, “Hey, we’re out next Tuesday.” “Where?” [?], so everybody would be at work early on Tuesday. Because he didn’t like it, in any case – it meant him getting up early, you see. So, he would tell you. But they used to do all sorts of little things, trying to catch you.

But em, no, you were very, very independent, very independent. Nobody could challenge you at all. You used to come to work a nd go home, just on…you could judge your own. And if you stayed until, say, five o’clock, then you’d have some overtime. Now, we always used to say, if you went out of town, by the very fact of your… If you went on a building site, there used to be a





cabin. Because you was only there for, say, a fortnight at the very most, your seat was near the door, and so, if you were staying there, you always claimed a little extra when they went out at o’clock or half-past twelve, whenever it was, and then you would stay another 10 minutes or quarter of an hour and go and sit and try to get warm because you was always frozen down there, with the bloody door, you know. And then, so you’d have a…knock off about five minutes early, you’d get to work late – well, I say “late”, get to work at quarter past eight, knock off at five to 12, start at quarter past one, knock off at quarter to five.

So, if you went out of town, then you worked a complete eight hours, and we used to say that was

[about 10] hours. And eh, if you went out of town, well, your wages would be five pounds, which was a lot of money then, because it used to be…I think it was three pounds 16 and [halfpence], was a 44-hour week, so if you got five pound, you was well in, and it used to be three shillings a night, was lodgings. We used to argue it was three shillings a day, and there was a difference because, if yours was, say, at Doncaster, you came home on a Saturday morning, but eh – this sounds really ridiculous now, but if you was at Driffield, yo u’d come home on a Saturday at 12 o’clock. Well, Driffield, it’s only about, what, 25 to 30 miles from Hull, but the fact was it was lodgings, eh, and eh, so you used to get, eh, six days, 18 on lodgings, plus five pounds, so you got five pound 18. And e h, I think eh…I used to pay about… I worked a lot out of town, and I think I paid somewhere in the region of about 35 shillings a year income tax.

Yes, there weren’t many working people paying income tax at that…

No. I think you paid it, [?], you used to pay it six-monthly. I think it was 35 shillings a year tax.

And of course, you were paid on a plain time basis in those days…

Yeah.

There was no… Was the bonus being worked in any of the trades?

No. No, not that I’m aware of. I never knew of any bonus at all. The first that I ever heard of the bonus – well, the bonus really came in during the War, with Isaacs, the Minister of Labour. He was the man who introduced the bonus scheme, really.

And was there anything, I mean, as we talk about the lump, as we know it today, during that period of the late‘30s? Would you have said there was people working on a labour-only basis?

Yes. Eh, not in the north, but certainly down here.

Yeah.

It was rampant down here, even then. I would say, if you could draw a line, eh, south of

Nottingham, then you would start entering into the area where there was the lump working. But

Nottingham was very, very strong for organisation.

But why was that difference between the South and the North, in your opinion?

Well, honestly, I couldn’t tell you because, eh, if you read the history of trade unions, by God, they used to have some terrific battles down here for trade union recognition, especially the joiners and the bricklayers. But why it should be, I just cou ldn’t say, I’m sure. I couldn’t give you any inclination at all as to why, unless… The one thing which, in all probability, may be…I mean, this is just a sort of a guess…apprenticeships, indentured apprenticeships, down here, there was almost none of, wh ereas in the North, you couldn’t get in unless you was an indentured apprentice. It was very, very strong, with both employers and unions, in insisting in indentured apprenticeship, but that didn’t apply down here at all. The only thing I could think of would be





the…percolating of the labour into the [status] of craftsmen, and perhaps that’s how it came about for the lump labour – but that’s a pure guess.

Yeah. You said the unions were very strong about apprenticeships in the North.

Yeah.

What exactly did they do, visà-vis the employers, to ensure that apprenticeships were indentured?

Well, there’s always been strong NFBTO, eh, and also employers, and therefore there was always that joint consultation, and you’d have apprenticeship committees. So, that’s really the basis of it, I would think. But em…I would…I would say that, em, the strength of indentured apprenticeship is as much a feather in the cap of the employers as it is in the unions, in the North.

Both see the advantages of it, by a regulat ed entry. As I said, Dover’s took on, every year, three apprentices.

Can we come back to the question of the NFBTO which you mentioned in Hull, because it’s often seen as a national forum rather than one that’s local…?

Yes. Well, the NFBTO used to have the national, used to have what they called the General

Council, and each union used to send… At first, at one time, each union sent its executive to the

General Council of the NFBTO, and then the NFBTO also had regions, regional councils, where each affiliated union had representatives serving on the region, and then each region set up, in its own districts, the district NFBTO, so you had a three-tier structure. But it was always the head office in Cedar Road that kept in contact with all the local federations, as well as the regional, so when you went in, there was always a tremendous - on the agenda, there’s always an amount of correspondence from head office, and all the wage negotiations and everything else, it was all sent out in leaflet form to the local and to the regional. So, when you went to the regionals, you were more or less repeating what you’d already learnt in the local NFBTO, but it was a structure which - when UCATT was formed, it was disbanded, and there was nothing put in its place which could bring together the unions in a locality to continue what was really essential, and that was the coordination of the various unions, like the Plumbers, the Transport & General, Municipal &

General, the Painters, and what have you, and this is an omission really which has worked to the detriment of UCATT.

Perhaps we can come back to that point a bit later on when we’re talking about the post-War period because, really, what I’m interested in at this stage, we’re talking about the ‘30s, is what the district NFBTO in Hull was actually doing. You negotiated nationally about wages.

Yeah.

So what would they have been doing at the local level?

Well, as a matter of fact, em, if you look in the NFBTO, I would guess from about 1958 or ’59, that was the first resolution I had on the NFBTO agenda for the annual conference, and it refers there to the local federation. It was this: there was a builder in Hull, and staff did not meet the requirements of the health and safety, Building Safety, Health and Welfare Regulations 1948.

So, I went on the site, and I said to the two fellows, look, we’re going to complain first to the builder, and if he doesn’t take any notice, I shall go down and complain to the building inspector and report it to the NFBTO. Now, all things of that kind went to the local branch of the NFBTO, and this is where the five District Organisers used to play a tremendous part, because they could be called upon at any time of the day to be an NFBTO officer, you see; whereas, in some areas, they was all voluntary, like ordinary tradesmen, and they hadn’t that liberty. Anything at all – used to have disputes panels… Anything which was done nationally, apart from wage negotiations,





was done locally as well. So, if you had a complaint against the employer because he wasn’t paying the right rate, it would go before the Joint Committee. [You/he] would write to the NFBTO

Secretary. He would correspond with the employer. If he got no change, then he would refer it then to the local disputes panel. And the employers used to meet locally as well, so they used to meet jointly and discuss, and if they couldn’t resolve it, they then appealed to the region. If the region couldn’t resolve it, they would go to the national.

So the intention-

[End of Recording 1]

[Recording 2]

So perhaps we can move on then – we’ve talked about the inter-War period – to the period of the

War years because it was a period of quite significant changes for the building industry…

Well, the War years, I couldn’t tell you anything at all because the War started on the 1 st of

September, and I joined the Army on the 3 rd of September, and I didn’t come back – I was in the

Army for 6.5 years, so everything was back to…well, I wouldn’t say “normal”, but was back on an even keel when I came back. So, anything which happened during the War, I couldn’t tell you at all.

Right, yes. Okay. So we can rule out the discussion, except to say that you, like a lot of other people probably, were out of the industry for most of that time.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay then. Moving on to the period after the War years, you came back – did you go straight back into the building industry?

Yes. I got demobbed on the 11 th of November, em, 1945.

That was fairly early on then.

Yes, I was one of the early groups because I’d been in the Army from the very off. I went back to see my employer and I said, “I’m back home – I want my job back.” I saw the boss, saw

Townsley. So he said, “Oh yes, start on Monday?” I says, “No, I’m not – I’m not going to start on

Monday.” I think I had a fortnight off, as [sort of a] holiday, although it was November, but I came home from India and eh…I hope you don’t mind me saying this…coming from a hot climate to a cold climate, and it wa s bloody cold, I’ll tell you, every five minutes, I was going to the toilet, being so cold, and I thought, well, I don’t…you know, and I thought, right, I’ll get over it in a fortnight. It didn’t but eh…within the fortnight, it sort of normalised a little bit. I had a fortnight, and then I went to work, and eh, I said I’d come to work and I’d start to work on the Thursday. So he says,

“A Thursday?!” So I says, “Yes.” “Oh,” he says, “what’s wrong with the Monday?” I says, “Look,

I haven’t worked for 6.5 year, and I reckon if I work Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I’ll want a rest!” Because he’d made it abundantly clear there was no new work, it was all repair work.

Well, if you start humping ladders around and going up and down ladders and you haven’t done it for 6.5 year… So, I started on the Thursday, and that was my first barney with him – not with the boss. The boss said, “Oh, okay,” but I had to see the foreman, a fellow called [Johnny Holmes], and he said, “You can’t!” I said, “Well, that’s what I’m doing anyhow.” And he used to refer to the boss as “the powers that be”. “What do the powers that be think?” I said, “Well, I told him and he said okay.”

So, anyhow…so he said that he would sort a man out for me, and he sorted out a lad called Ray

Kell, who’d been in the Navy, and the idea was not to put people like us with people who’d been





working all the time in the industry, because there was too many fellows who knew all the ropes, and they wanted to put two new-starters together so they would pick up, shall we say, the same system as you had previously and that is, you know, working conscientiously rather than [sly] because a lot [was sly, by all accounts]. So, Raymond Kell and myself was together for quite a long time, and the first argum ent I had, eh, was working at Newbald. We’d got a new job. We’d done all sorts of repairs, and then he came to us and said, “We’ve got a nice job for you, you two, at Newbald.” Well, that’s on the Yorkshire [Dales]. “It’s a lodging job.” I said, “It bloody well isn’t!” I said, “I’ve been away from home for 6.5 years and I’m not going to lodge!” “Ah well,” he said, “we’ll have to see.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to lodge.” I says, “I’ve been away for long enough, so [give it to somebody else].” Now, [he gave us] this job at Newbald, and there was

Swedish wooden houses, erected, and eh, it was a [bolted] roof, no scaffold, because the joiners had just built them, you know, up from the inside, and they were very, very awkward. The roof had to be felted [and it was on boards], and the tiles were…everything was, you know, had to be latted, felted and latted, with no tiles.

Explain, Laurie, what you mean by felted and latted…?

Well, felting is you get the felt and you’re going to put it on the roof, first of all, and lathing is putting the lathes on which…on which you’re going to hang your tiles. But because of the em…supply of tiles was short, like bricks was short, you couldn’t rely on the delivery of tiles, so we…we had I think about eight blocks, so it was lathing and felting. And eh, Johnny Holmes had agreed that we should go on the railway to Howden, take our bikes with us, and then bike from

Howden to Newbald, and then, at night-time, bike back to Howden, leave our bikes at Howden and come back on the train. The train left at half-past eight in the morning, and in the rule, it says you had to travel by train, a time of train nearest to eight o’clock. We could have got one at halfpast seven, but I argued half-past eight because half-past ei ght is nearer to eight o’clock than half-past seven is – because the starting time is eight o’clock. So, that was the first bit of an argument we had.

Then, on the Saturday, [it] was working out how much we should have on our timesheets, and I’d come to the conclusion it was 10.5 hours, because my argument was, while I was riding the bike, in actual fact I should have been walking, so, by the time I got to Newbald, I was working when, in actual fact, I should have still have been walking, and I wanted compensation for [that because it was] my bike, and so we got 10.5 hours. Now, unfortunately, at about 11 o’clock, on that

Saturday morning, Raymond Kell, because of the awkward thing, he fell off the roof, and he broke his arm and he broke his leg, and was fortunate in…in Newbald Village, there was a [VAD] nurse.

There was somebody…anyhow, she came out with flying honours in a national competition, and she came to attend him. Then we’d to get, em, the builders’ truck, took him to [Cave], and then we got a n ambulance from [Cave]. So, I went with him and sat in the… Of course, we had to notify the employer. We got to Hull Infirmary, and this is before the National Health – this was when the hospitals was run voluntarily.

And em, Johnny Holmes came, and wanted to know what happened, and I told him, etc. etc.

And I gave him the timesheets, and I’d worked out 10.5 hours, but we was assuming that [we would finish there], and I had got 8 hours for Saturday, and [I reckoned was going to be there] till about two o’clock. Well, this was at 11. I never thought of altering the sheets. I had them [filled up] and I gave them to him. Now, he was to come out on the Friday, [that was all], to pay us, and he came out I think it was the Monday or the Tuesday, and he brought – it would be the Monday

– brought another fellow out, and he had this sheet with him. “How about this?” he said. I said, “I don’t know.” “How about that? Eight hours for Saturday?” Did I want paying for sitting in an infirmary… I says no, [?] so-and-so, and we had an argument, and then we had an argument about the 10.5 hours a day, and eh…oh, one thing led to another and he said, “Well, the powers that be…” I said, “Okay, we’ll see what the powers that be…” He said, “And you’re not going to come out here any more Saturday mornings.” “Well, what do we do?” He says, “You bring a minimum of your tools in, and we’ll give you a repair job for Saturday morning.” I said, “Aye,





alright, that’ll do.” He said, “And you can scrub that!” I said, “Well, if you can’t have that, I’m not going to come out anymore.” And we argued and argued and [?] the powers that be, and sure enough, he gave us a job repairing the dog kennel at the boss’ house, St Leonard’s, because he had two great big golden retrievers and he had like a little bungalow for the dogs, and I had to go and repair this bungalow. He came out, and he said, “Alright?” I said, “Oh yeah, but,” I said, “has

Mr Holmes told you about the dispute we’ve got?” “What dispute?” I said, “About our hours.”

“What about your hours?” “Well,” I says, “he won’t pay us what we’ve got on our timesheets.”

So, anyway, one led to another, so I had to see him the – he said, “What happened?” I said,

“Well, he won’t let us go out on Saturday morning – we’ve to come out here and he’ll give us a job like this.” He says, “Alright, well, next Saturday, I shall see you, in the office.”

So I said okay, so the next Saturday, I went to see him and [knocked I think an hour and a half] I think, paid us nine hours, and I convinced Townsley that I wanted, first and foremost, compensation for the use of my bike. “It’s my bike, not yours, and I want, first of all, I want you to pay me because it’s a privilege I’m using,” and he agreed. Then he agreed that, while I was biking, I got there quicker, and therefore, when I was working, in actual fact I’d be walking, so he agreed with that, and it finished up I think we agreed on 10 and a quarter hours, so that was okay, with no Saturday. So that was okay.

And then…I cut my finger, and eh…I had to go to the…builder took me to [Cave] for a doctor to stitch my finger, and I had to have five stitches. You can just see a slight…

Yeah.

And he charged me 12 and sixpence, half a crown a stitch. So I says, “What?!” He says, “Half a crown a stitch.” So, I thought [?] pay it now. So I put the 12 and sixpence on my timesheet, stitches. So he says, “What’s this?!” So I says, “Stitches,” and I had this bloody great big bandage on my finger [laughing]. So he said, [?]. I said, “Well, I done it at work.” Well, I had to see the powers that be again, so I saw Townsley again. So, he said, “Well, what’s this?” and I told him. So he said, “What did the doctor say to you?” I said, “The doctor said to me had I my national insurance card – I told him no. He said, if I’d have had my card, he’d have took my number and he would have claimed it, but because I didn’t have my card and I didn’t know my number, he wanted paying.” So he said, “Well, you should have had your card with you.” I said [I don’t carry my card round.] So anyhow, he says, “Well, alright, put down 12 and sixpence on a bus fare for Saturd ay morning.” So I put it on, bus fare, Saturday morning, for just going to

[Penbury] Road, and Johnny Holmes come and he says, “What’s that?!” I said, “That’s what the powers that be said – he said I could have my 12 and sixpence, bus fare, Saturday morning.” So

I got that.

And then [laughing], the next…the next argument with him was…my first son was born, and I was working at Beverley, doing a strip and cover, and my wife had said that she would like to go into

Townend Nursing Home. So I said, right, if you can get in, and eh…it was a very posh place. I said, “If you can get in, if you can go in,” [and she got in]. And I never used to disclose to anybody at work anything which was my private concern. [?]. That was not my way of going about it. I never thought – it’s too important to me, so I never disclosed anything about my wife.

So I says to John, “I want my holidays, John.” “Oh yes – when?” I said, “Well, a fortnight’s time.”

“Aye, alright,” he said. My wife went in, I forget [where/when] it was, but [?], 10 days, and I went to see her, [as I say], on the Wednesday, and she [didn’t come home on the weekend], and she was crying. I said, “What’s the matter?” “Can’t come out,” she says. “The doctor says that I’ve to have some injections in the legs and I’ll be another two or three days.” So that meant she would come out on the Tuesday, instead of the Saturday. So I went to [work] and I saw John Holmes when he paid me on the Friday, and I said, “Oh, I don’t want my holidays starting tomorrow,

John.” “Don’t you?” I says, “No, starting on Wednesday next week.” “You what?!” So I says,

“Starting Wednesday next week.” “You can’t do that!” So I said, “Why not?” “You can’t have that!” Of course, I realised what he was on about. If I had it from Monday till Saturday, he didn’t





pay a holiday stamp, but if I had it from Tuesday, from Wednesday, he’d have to pay a holiday stamp for each week. So I said, “I’m not bothered about that, John.” I says, “You can leave a stamp off – I’m not bothered about that. All I want is I want my holidays from Wednesday to the following Tuesday,” I said, “and there’s nothing in the agreement to say that you must have it a complete week. It just says you are having, eh…the seven days holiday, and I’m having it right there.” Well, we argued and argued and argued. I said, “Well, that’s it, anyhow.” So he says,

“Well, I don’t know,” he says. [?] so-and-so and so-and-so. And I had it – knocked off on the

Tuesday night, and the wife came home Tuesday night, [so we had the full week]. I went back to work and he came to me and he said, “Why didn’t you tell me your wife was having a baby?” I said, “It’s got nothing to do with you.” So he said, “Well, it would have made things much easier,” he says, “and we wouldn’t have had that bit of argument,” he says. I says, “I’m not relying on my wife.” I says, “I’m asking for my holidays as an entitlement, as I’m entitled to re that agreement.”

And we argued and argued and argued and he never forgive me for that.

Were you the shop steward in this place?

Eh…no, because – em, sorry, yes. I said my first son. I’m telling you a lie – that was Martin. The first one, Vincent, was born… That’s right, yeah. Vincent was born em… I was married in

September 1946, and Vincent was born in July 1947, just 11 months – as the saying goes, we’d run across the grass very quickly. And em…the day he was born was the day I became Branch

Secretary, Vincent. It was Martin that I wanted the Tuesday to the Wednesday.

Now, to become Branch Secretary, I had been Chairman before the War, and when I came back, he says, “You want to be Branch Chairman?” and I says no. And then, I was toying with the idea of either going to Rhodesia or New Zealand, and eh, when I joined the Army, I thought it was wrong to continue with any friendship, of courting or anything, because I could have come back with no leg, I could have got killed, I could have done all sorts of things. So I went out entirely as a freelance. And then, eh, when I came back, in No vember, and [I didn’t know whether] to go to

Rhodesia or New Zealand, and I went to a meeting, [?], in St Patrick’s School, and I met my wife.

I’d been on holiday with her before I joined the Army, and I remember saying to her [laughing], “Is your husband here?” She said, “No, I’m not married.” So New Zealand and Rhodesia went out the window, and eh, that was, ooh, about a month I think, a month or five weeks of courting, eh, after coming out the Army, and we got married the following September.

And t hen eh…they said, “Do you want to be Chairman?” I says, “No.” I said, “I’ve just come back,” I said, “and eh, I’m courting at the moment, and I don’t want to do anything.” Well, the Hull

Branch Secretary was the brother of the General Secretary of the union, who also lived in Hull, [?

Davy], and he had a disability which then was very, very serious and it was a killer, and today, it’s no more than toothache. He had a prostate gland. And I [was at work] with him, and ooh, [he was a terrible state], and he died. And I thought, well, it’s the only way I can get in now to be

Branch Secretary. I had an ambition to be Branch Secretary. And my wife was expecting a baby… So I thought, well, [I don’t know]. So I got my mother to sit with my wife, and away I went, and eh…there was two of us put up for the job…yes, two of us, Tommy Lambert and myself. And

Tommy Lambert was the General Secretary’s choice, and myself, and anyhow, I got voted in.

So, they decided, the following Wednesday I think it was, the following Wednesday, at the

General Secretary’s office, for the old books to be audited and handed over, and that was the day

Vincent was born. So I thought [well, I don’t know], so I rang the…I rang the…rang the what-doyoucall it, the em…hospital, the maternity ward, and I said to the matron, “Could I come and see my wife early tonight please?” “What for?” I said, “I’ve got a very important meeting [laughing].”

Ooh, didn’t she tell me off! “Important meeting?! What’s more important than your wife and your first born?!” I said, “It’s an important meeting!” She wouldn’t let me in, not before time, and I went with my mother, because her mother lived at [Hornsby], a good way off, and I left my mother, because it’s not far from home, was [?] Nursing Home, and I said, “Okay, I’m going now to go and see…” And I walked into this meeting, and [Clary Davy] was there. “About bloody





time, isn’t it?!” So I said, “Yeah, I’m sorry.” So he said, “Smart bloody way of starting, anyhow!”

So I said, “Well, do you want to know my excuse?” “Well, any excuse is [?] now.” So, alright, so I went through the books. And then, “What’s your excuse?” I said, “My wife had a baby today,” and nobody in the room believed me! They didn’t, honestly, didn’t believe me at all! Of course, it was in the paper the following day, the following night, put it in the paper, so [laughing] that was my initiation of taking over as Branch Secretary.

And eh…then, I think it would be eh…and I started then a system with the boss, and we used to have a meeting the last Saturday of every month. Sometimes it would last two hours.

Sometimes it would last five minutes. But any complaints, whether they came from Barnsley,

Scunthorpe or anywhere, would come to me and I would deal with it, and they used to go in – and

[he] was very, very fair, very just. He wouldn’t give you that much if you weren’t entitled to it, but if you was entitled to it, you’d get it. And I got on like a house on fire with him, and he gave me a good testimonial, and he lea rnt me a lot inasmuch as that I remember going in and he’d say,

“Well, what have you got to say?” and off I’d [rant], [ranted] on this, that and the other, so-and-so and so on, and he just sat there, occasionally writing, and then he said, “Are you finished?”

“Yes.” And he started, and I…he was saying something [laughing], I don’t know [who] it was, and

I said, “Well, just look here a minute,” and he rapped the table, [thumped it]. He said, “I never interfered with you, I never interrupted you when you s poke, and never you interrupt me!”

Bloody hell…you know… But he was fair. He would never, at any time, interrupt you. [He heard the flow], [?] after, [?], but he was a very, very fair man, very fair indeed.

What was his name again?

Townsley, James Townsley. To give you an illustration, I’ll try, very, very briefly, to show you how much trust I had in him and how far he would go to help. My father died, and he was a very thrifty man, and my mother had more idea of what he had than flying to the Moon. He had a good [?] when he came out of the Army – he was a sergeant major, and he’d done three years in the

Army reserve, eh, the [?] occupation. And he died on the Boxing Day, and it was about the June or July, I went home, and she had all these things on the table. She had defence bonds and savings certificates, all in my father’s name, and altogether, and I’m speaking now of 1950, about

£3500 which then was a lot of money, and she said, “I don’t know what to do with all these!” So I looked and I s aid, “Well, you’ll have to have a solicitor, won’t you?” “Well,” she said, “[burn them]

– I don’t want anything to do with any solicitors.” So I said, “Well, I think I can get it squared up if you like.” She says, “Take them – get them squared up!” Because, although I had a brother, [?]. my eldest brother, my step-brother had died, but my eldest brother, my mother always waited for me going home – any papers or anything, I was an adult, but as soon as the papers were signed,

I became a little boy again. But anything like this, I was adult. So, she said, “Well, if you can do it, take it and get it done.”

I took them home and [put it in a big envelope], and I was acting as…I said chargehand, but they said foreman, for a housing estate, on [?], and I used to ring the office every day for something or other, and the boss had a secretary called Miss [Natte]. So, I rang Miss [Natte], and I says, “Can

I see Mr [Cyril] please today?” “Well, I don’t know – he’s not in.” I said, “When will he be in?”

“About two o’clock.” I said, “I’ll ring at two o’clock and I want to speak to him.” “What about?” I said, “It’s something private – just tell him Poupard wants to speak to him in private.” So, two o’clock, I rang, and he came on, “Yes?” I said, “I want to see you [?].” “What about?” So I said,

“Well, actually, I want to see you as a magistrate.” “Oh, you better come,” he says, “here at halfpast four!” That meant I had to leave work about quarter to four.

So, I get there, and the [?], and [we] used to go out at the back for what we called [going for jobs], but [going to see him], you went upstairs. I went to the stairs, and there was Alan Barker at the top, who was the head of the roofing department, and if ever a man would have sacked me, this bloke would have sacked me every day of the week, but Townsley had asked where I was. So,

“What are you doing here?” and he was afraid I was going to do some tattle-tailing, you know. So





I said, “I’m going to see the boss.” “What for?” So I said, “It’s private.” So I says, “You can tell him, if you like, I’m here.” And there used to be a little room they used to send you in, if ever they sent for me, and I called it the sweating room. They’d always take you there a quarter of an hour before they came in. Don’t know what it was for, but I was there. So I had to wait in the sweating room, and he came in and he used to have a pair of glasses that he used to fold up like that, and then fold up again, in a little y ellow pouch. So, he came in, so…stood at the door, and he said, [“Now, what do you want?”], so I said, “I want to see you as a magistrate.” [So, quick as anything [laughing]] he said, “What have you been doing?!” you know, so I says, “Nowt.” “What is y ou want to see me then?” So he sits down, so I get all these things out, so I says, “I wonder if you could settle them up for my mother?” So he looks at them, so he said, “I can’t do this.” I said, “Why can’t you?” “Well, why should I?” he said. “Well,” I says, “you’re the Chairman of the

Trustees Savings Bank, the Tax Commission, you’re a magistrate.” I said, “You can [take those], do all that, can’t you?” “Aye,” he said, “but I can’t do this.” So he said, “When did your father die?” So I said, “Boxing Day.” Died [intestate], so I said, yeah, yeah, and I says, “And hell of a state, in’t it?” “Just wait a minute.”

So he goes out the door, and he comes back and he said eh…”Can you come back tomorrow night?” So I says, “Yeah.” “Oh,” he says, “come back tomorrow at the same time.” Can I leave these with him, so I says yes, so put them all in the envelope and [?]. So I went back the next night , so eh…he hasn’t got this envelope with him. He says, “I haven’t got your envelope.” So I say, “Oh yeah?” so he says, “No.” I says, “Oh, what happens now then?” So he says, “Well, in the morning, when you go to work,” he said, “ring Mr Kershaw. He’s the actuary of the Trustees

Savings Bank.” So I says, “Oh yeah?” “Yeah,” he said, “and he’ll make an appointment to see you,” but he says, “ring him about 10 o’clock – alright?” So I says, “Yeah, okay, thanks very much,” so away I went.

So, at 10 o’clock in the morning, I rang Kershaw, got through to the bank – “I want Mr Kershaw please.” “Who?” I says, “Poupard.” “Oh yeah. Is he expecting you?” So I said, “Yes, it’s an appointment.” Put me through, and a bloody voice came through, “Yes?!” So I said, “Poupard.”

“Yeah, can you be at my office tonight at half-past four?” So I said, “Yeah.” “Alright then, halfpast four,” and he put the phone down. [Inaudible]. [Go and see] my mother that night, and I says to my mother, “I think I’ve got your problem solved.” “Have you?” So I said, “Yeah.” I said,

“I’m going to see a bloke tomorrow,” I said, “Mr Kershaw. “ “Who’s he?” I says, “He’s Mr

Trustees Savings Bank” I says, “You can’t get any higher than him.” “What will he do?” I said

[?]. I said, “I reckon he’ll come and see you.” “Me?!” I said, “Yeah.” “What will I do with him?” I said, “Well, if he comes,” I says, “all you’ve got to say to him – “Want a cup of tea and some biscuits?”” I says, “He’ll be alright.”

So anyhow, I goes to see him, and I go in the office, great big desk, and eh, so he says to me,

“I’m not interested in this,” he said, “but if Cyril Townsley is interested, I’m interested from Cyril’s point of view.” I says, “Oh…” So he said, “Where does your mother live?” So I says, “3

Marshall Street.” “Any brothers and sisters?” So I said, “Yes.” “Who are they?” So I told him.

And he opened his diary and he said, “Can you be at your mother’s at half-past four next

Monday?” So I says, “Yes.” “Alright then – see you at your mother’s next Monday at half-past four, thank you.”

So, I get to my mother’s. Townsley…I phoned Townsley to tell them, out of politeness, I says,

“I’ve got an arrangement to be at my mother’s at half-past four next Monday.” “Oh, that’s alright then. Everything’s okay?” So I says, “Yeah, that’s good.” So I went to my mother’s, half-past four that night, and I was sat talking to her, and she was bloody trembling, and all of a sudden, a bang on this door, went to the door and it’s Kershaw, just brushed past me, didn’t say a word to me, walked down the passage. They used to have the…the door for the front room and then a door for the kitchen, and stairs like that. So he goes through, and I close the door and I walk up the passage [laughing], and I get in and there he’s sat like this, alongside my mother, got my mother’s hand in his, talking to her like a bloody lost son! I look at him. So he said, “Yes, we’ll do





this,” that, and the other, so-and-so and so-and-so, you see, “And then we’ll make a will.”

“Alright,” she says, my mother says, “Oh yes.” “And we don’t want him,” he said. She said, “But he’s my son!” “Yes,” he said, “we don’t want him!” And to cut a long story short, he called to our house three times, in his car, he took her back on each occasion from her house to the bank, and took her home again, and they made a will, and the two executors was Townsley and Kershaw.

My mother outlived Townsley.

And eh…that’s the kind of thing – he would do anything for you. And I used to say, if I wanted to borrow £500, I’m bloody certain he would have leant me £500, but by God, he’d want it back, oh yes, make no mistake about it! But he was a very, very good man, a very honest man. But I’ll show you…tell you how hard he was because, in 1952, I had 14 weeks off work with hepatitis, and I came off work on the Friday, and we used to have to work a week in hand, and I was off before Easter, so I had my stamp card for Easter as well, and the following week – I phoned in on the Monday to say, “I’m very sorry, I can’t come to work, I’m ill.” “That’s alright.” And nobody from the firm came to enquire whether I was dead or alive, and I had to go to the office to collect my wages, which they owed me, and I had to go to the office at Easter to collect the money off my bloody stamp card. When I went back, to report back, after about 14 weeks, th ey said, “Are you sure you’re fit enough to work?” And it’s the only place I’d ever worked – I’d worked there for

20-odd year! So, the point was that, while you was earning, they were good to you, but they never paid you anything more than what [you didn ’t earn], but the grievance that not only I had but other people had was, if you went to work there, as a girl, and you worked in the office – and they wouldn’t employ a woman before the War. It was only after the War that they employed girls. So long as you was there for the first month, you could have had a day off every week and you got your full pay. That was the grievance I had with him, and I told him on more occasions than one, and he said, “Well of course, we can’t be isolated – we must conform to all the others.”

But eh, no, that was the one thing which stuck in my gill, was that…it was, to me, grossly unfair.

And they used to boast, “You can always tell a Dover roof by looking at it.” I’d say, “Yeah, but you can have the finest costing clerks going, they don’t make that as the finished product – we make the finished product.” But eh, oh, it was eh…

Can we come back to the union because it’s…?

Yeah.

Your union, the Amalgamated Slaters, Tilers and Roofing Operatives, was based very much in that Hull and Northeastern area, wasn’t it?

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, most of your membership seems to have been around the North-East, North-East coast.

We made a great impact into London, if you look – well, you can’t look at the records now because they’ve been destroyed, but they made a good penetration in London on membership, due to the fact that the influx of building trade workers, and especially slaters, into London during the War were the…were the…the what-do-you-call them…the eh…the eh…the flying bug, weren’t it, the flying bug. And of course, it done tremendous damage to roofs, and therefore there was a tremendous influx of slaters, and that’s when they started establishing branches in London which had never existed previously. And eh, to a great degree, we retained that, eh, the eh, membership, but the biggest one, and they say it is the cradle of slaters so far as London is concerned, is Croydon. It’s surprising the number of roofing contractors there are in Croydon.

But, no, again, you come back to a line south of Nottingham. The membership of the society was really very, very small, [when you left] Nottingham, excuse me, despite the fact that, in the

Birmingham and Coventry area, you got some of the biggest roofing contractors in the country –

Ellis Partridge, [Wernold’s], em…there’s another one em…there’s three very, very big roofing





contractors… Rudders & Payne’s, Ellis Partridge and [Wernold’s], three very, very big roofing contractors in Coventry and Birmingham, and yet, we couldn’t crack that for organisation. And I remember, as a General Secretary, putting this proposition to our executive, because I was always of the opinion that we should amalgamate, and I said I will prove to you the value of amalgamation if you accept my proposition, and my proposition was we had a man in the

Birmingham area, the Divisional Secretary of the AUBTW, called [Brimen], and I wanted to give the Midland area, who had these three big roofing contractors, over to the AUBTW so they could go out and recruit slaters for 12 months and then to report back to us and say this is the kind of recruitment figures we’ve got, after a 12-month effort, and that would have demonstrated and proved the value of amalgamation. Our executive’s reply was, if you want to retain that position, never make any suggestion of that nature to us evermore. I think, really, if we’d have done it in that sense, we’d have organised the Midlands, but em, it’s never been organised. Now, since

UCATT has been formed, unfortunately, organisers are no more interested in recruiting slaters than flying to the Moon.

Can we go back to the time, at the stage when you were Branch Secretary, because I never understand why…why did it develop in your area and not other areas? I mean, was it partly the sort of technology of building? Did they have different kinds of roofs in the South that were..?

No. Well, one thing was, in the South, when you says to me “explain felting and lathing”, first of all, in the South, even before the War, they did a lot of felting, because you can have, on the roof, especially a tiled roof, all sorts of fancy designs which, in my opinion, are not watertight, and therefore it’s a showpiece on a roof, and the thing that’s keeping it watertight is the felt underneath. Now, so fa r as the lathing is concerned, we say “latting”.

How do you spell that, Laurie?

It is L-A-T-H-I-IN-G, lathing. Joiners in this area, and even some of the slaters in this area, called it batoning, so it’s tile batoning. Well, they, eh, were…always carried out – that type of work was always carried out by joiners. Why, I just don’t know, I’m sure. The joiners used to do it. And how I know about this, and people of my generation, because I don’t think many people up North realised this, but the original buildings for the Hull University were built about 1932, the University

College. A roofing contractor from London got the job, and when they came down, the eh…in the details on the contract, all the batoning, as it was called, had to be done by the joiners. Well, the joiners in Hull didn’t know anything at all about it, because you had to have a gauge, to start with, and they didn’t know anything at all about it, and so there was two slaters from the Hull branch who were employed purely to do the batoning, or as we called the lathing, on the University original buildings. Now, whether that’s got anything to do with it or not, I don’t know, but the…there are…some…eh…buildings in London that are really being carried out by the highest skilled craftsmen you can imagine, and whether they all came from London or not, I wouldn’t know, but there was some marvellous work here, make no mistake about it. But at the same time, I can go and show you some absolute atrocious work as well, really, you know, absolutely diabolical. So there’s extremes, but em, why this division between North and South, I just couldn’t say.

So your slaters’ branch really would have been probably quite a small branch, would it, for the…?

It was a small branch when you take into consideration the numerical strength of places like the bricklayers or the joiners, but so far as we were concerned as a craft, we had a big branch. You see, you could have, say, for instance, we had Swinton in Yorkshire, we had a branch there which was 100% organised and it was 20.

And how many would have turned up at a branch meeting?





Well, before the War, you could guarantee a good 60-70%, and we used to have special notices and we used to call the meetings for the quarterly nights, they were called, at the end of each quarter, and if you didn’t turn up, you was fined. You was fined a shilling, which was, eh, twothirds of your week’s contribution, because your contribution was one and sixpence. You’d be fined a shilling, and you’d to pay it as well! And there was…you could sometimes have put in an excuse, you know, written an apology, and the apologies was read out and the Branch decided whether or not they would accept that apology – because you put one in, didn’t say it was accepted.

Now, the…it’s only…and you used to get good meetings immediately after the War, and it’s only eh…and one of the reasons why we had good meetings after the War was we used to issue industrial tea and sugar rations and eh…units for bread – we used to have what you called BUs, so you had extra bread, and we also used to have coupons for overalls, because clothing was rationed. So you had a lot of things like that, and also, and I don’t think many people realise this now, if a person wanted a baby to be excused vaccination, people who could sign that are a clergyman, a police sergeant, a trade union official. You could sign and put a stamp on. They used to come and say, “Can you sign this paper?” We used to sign all sorts of papers, put your stamp on. And then of cou rse, em, you used to get a lot of eh…used to have eh…the industrial tea rationing, like…I think every six weeks, and [we] used to [put] it in a box, and they used to turn up for that. You used to get I think two-sevenths of an ounce of tea every five days or something.

We used to work it out, and about every six or seven weeks, you used to get [?] of tea and a pound and a half of sugar, which was a lot, you know, when you consider that you was rationed.

And those things created eh…club life, branch life, but em, today, and I like going to branch meetings, but eh, it’s gone.

Yeah. The fact that you refer to it as “the club” suggests that it had much more of a social element than the trade union branch today.

No, I don’t think there was…eh, although they used to run trips, I agree. There was a great deal more comradeship, eh, and eh, there was always willing to support – for instance, one of the thing was, if anybody died, they would ask the widow to send his bag of tools and they would raffle them, and you would buy [?] perhaps, you’d buy it, and then you would put it in again for it to be sold again and it could be bought three or four times over. There was a great deal – and you always provided bearers at funerals, always. We wasn’t concerned so much with sending a wreath, but eh, because anyone can send a wreath, can’t they, same as anyone can write a letter, but if you go personally, it’s far more valued than any letter or any wreath. Always supplied four bearers, always, and to spare the widow having to provide extra transport, you used to sit in the hearse, with the coffin. There was…in that sense, it was more, shall we say, social than it is today. There was always a willingness to raid the…raid the local fund to support anybody who was on hard times. There was a great deal of that. Yes, there was a spirit and code prevailing then which wasn’t…isn’t prevailing now. There wasn’t so much selfishness. And yet, there was a tremendous amount of bickering between members of one firm among members of another firm –

[?] against [Windroses], [WIndroses] against Dover’s, you know. There was a tremendous amount of animosity, and no matter how much you called your firm, you would never allow anybody else outside to call your firm. You could call them all the bloody twisters under the Sun, but [Windroses] couldn’t call Dover’s [the twisters] under the Sun – that was your privilege, nobody else’s.

How about politics – I mean the Labour Party and the trade union movement had been fired up since, you k now, since…?

Well, the slaters have never…the slaters have never been involved in politics, never been affiliated, although I understand the Hull Branch has written in, just last week, asking to be affiliated with the Labour Party. But I tried three times to join the Labour Party and failed each time, and I’ll tell you for why. The first time I tried to join the Labour Party was about 1935, and





the projectionists in the cinemas were on strike, and I used to go dancing a lot and used to go to the pictures a lot.

[End of recording]

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