BARLICK IN THE LATE 1930s. (1) STORM CLOUDS.

[Stanley]

BARLICK IN THE LATE 1930s. (1) STORM CLOUDS.

28 December 2002

I picked up the morning paper on the day after Boxing Day and reflected on the fact that here we were in a world that looked as though it was going to go to war in a couple of months and the main article on the front page was whether there would be any fox hunting next year. The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible seemed more important than killing thousands of people.
Much the same thing applied in Barlick in the late 1930s. People like Jim Pollard were aware that there was some sort of a problem in Europe and it looked as though it could be serious, but matters at home seemed more important. Remember that in Barlick and the neighbouring towns almost everybody relied on the textile industry for a living either directly through employment in the mills or indirectly, every trade and business in the town relied on the mills so the main topic right through the 1930s was the state of the trade.
We’ve seen already that this affected Jim Pollard in that he was lucky to get a job when he left school, it was his cricketing abilities that got him into Bancroft because Wilfred Nutter was president of Barnoldswick Cricket Club. Some mills were already closing, Bankfield Shed was in deep trouble as early as 1930. 880 looms and all the preparation machinery to go with them were bought for £1,900, about a fifth of what they were worth five years earlier. By 1934 the shed was closed, there was talk of British Celanese coming in to re-open it but in the event, it never wove again.
In the rest of the mills there was a lot of unrest. Driven by falling profits and the need to weave more efficiently the manufacturers were looking for ways to lower their costs. Some things never change and it won’t surprise you to hear that the first saving they looked at was wage levels. Reductions of an eighth part of the wage were forced on many mills in Lancashire and the workers erupted, the papers of the time are full of reports of operatives going out on strike. Barnoldswick was a slightly different case as they worked on a local agreement and so the full effect of these wage cuts never hit us. What caused the trouble in Barlick were the attempts of the manufacturers to introduce the More Looms System. If we’re going to understand the unrest we had better be clear about the cause.
Ever since the inception of power looms in Barlick round about 1820 the normal quota of looms had been two looms for a learner, four for an experienced weaver and very occasionally six for a top weaver with a helper. When Bancroft Shed opened in 1920 Jack Platt, his sister Annie and his mother went in as some of the first weavers, they had 12 looms between them and out of these they could make a family wage. This was how the industry had worked for 100 years. They were paid by the piece and as long as they had warps in and kept at it they could survive, just.
A manufacturer in Burnley called Tertius Spencer had decided that there was a better way to run things. He realised that the main part of a weaver’s work was changing shuttles as they ran out of weft. Basically, his idea was that if the yarn package in the shuttle was made bigger and the looms slowed down a little one weaver could run eight Lancashire looms. On the face of it this cut labour costs in half and the idea soon spread. This was called the More Looms System and it was the biggest bone of contention in the area from 1930 onwards.
It’s important to realise that the Barnoldswick Weavers Association weren’t opposed to the eight loom system itself, they knew that something had to be done. What they were fighting for was adequate wages under the system, provision of modern machinery and compensation for those weavers thrown out of work. Some mills, like Dotcliffe at Kelbrook took up the system immediately and ran with non-union labour. Sough Bridge Mill which had become a cooperative when the weavers formed a new company, Nutters (Kelbrook) Ltd to take over after R Nutter and Sons failed in 1932 started introducing More Looms and despite being heavily picketed carried on. Remember Jim talking about the police being there when he went to visit his mates?
The feeling was so strong in Barlick that More Looms didn’t take over immediately, it wasn’t until after the end of WW2 that it became universal. The story of this struggle deserves more attention but I want to leave it there for the moment. What we are doing is setting the scene for the story I want to tell over the next few weeks. I want us to get a feel about what was occupying people’s minds just before the war started.
When the sheds were in full work, and many of them were, they were hives of industry. Bancroft had 1152 looms running 48 hours a week. 350 weavers downed 500 warps a week and turned out 200,000 yards of cloth, it was hard graft but if you were in work you were happy. True, you knew about More Looms and Hitler and industrial unrest in Lancashire but what concerned you day to day was your job, what you were doing and whether you could pay the rent, buy food and get to the pictures or a dance on Saturday night.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and looking back we can see now that the whole system was balanced on a knife-edge. It only needed one small push and the whole world could come crashing down. That’s exactly what happened and we’ll tell the story next week.

28 December 2002