Interviewed by Simon Townsend(ST)
Date: 06/06/1991
Transcribed by Jean Riddell Purkis
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no:O 1991.1
Interviewee:Don Clare(DC)
Interviewer:Simon Townsend(ST)
Date of InterviewSometime in 1991
Transcribed by Jean Riddell Purkis
Typed by Jean Riddell Purkis
italics editor’s note
ST OK. Don. Was it at Wickhams that you actually had your first full time job?
DC Yes, when I left school I went straight to Wickhams ....I had one or two other interviews arranged through the Youth Employment Service at Hoddesdon, 'cos I came out from London and moved to Hoddesdon when I left school. I was offered a job up in Angel Road in London at very near double the money I started at Wickhams for but I didn't take that because of the train journey was so protracted on the old steam trains out to London that it really put me off and I went down to Wickhams and they offered me an apprenticeship, a five year apprenticeship.
My father came down with me to the interview and I think they interviewed my father more than myself actually and Mr. Ford was the works director and he actually carried out the interview and I started in the machine shop in 1948 doing quite a simple job of phrasing the machines' gear wheels and things and Dick Chalk(ley?)who was a skilled man there doing that sort of work, and alongside him is another little man. I think he was an Austrian man named Mr. Justin, a very short man and quite a character. He had a pile of wooden boards under him to bring him up to the height to be able to work at the bench ...he was so terribly short and they were always pulling his leg and getting up to little pranks with Mr. Justin. Quite-a character, he lived over the clock shop in Ware High Street ....a very keen chess player...1think he was a master chess player in his spare time and the sorts of things they would do, they would get some rags and get them smouldering and put them under this stack of wood that he stood on and suddenly the smoke would waft up around him, and they'd say "You're on fire!" and caused quite a panic and he was so short hehad to sort of leap off of this staging that he worked on to get up to the bench height, and he was carrying out phrasing (phasing?) and lapping of gear wheels, that type of work. He was, I suppose .....he looked a bit like how I would imagine a clockmaker or a skilled jeweller would look. 'He had a pair of rimmed glasses and was very small and he was doing all this fine filing work and lapping of gears which is a quite skilled operation, a finishing operation after all the gears and that are cut in the machine shop. But I wasn't there with them very long, before they moved me on to the grinding section with Bob Johnson and Bill Willbornewho were the two skilled grinding people.
Another chap who left Hertford Grammar School the same time, John White worked with me on the grinding section and we started at half past seven in the morning,worked through 'til twelve thirty, had an hour's lunch break and then worked through 'til five thirty. The machine shop carried on working 'til six but we weren't allowed towork that long because we were under eighteen. We were on a five day week, we had a ten minute break in the morning and a ten minute break in the afternoon and when the tea break went you got your mugs and queued up for a mug of tea which, I can't remember, it probably cost about a ha'penny or something like that, ha'pence or a penny, that's in the old money, of course and you could buy rolls and that at the place. One of the labourers used to make the tea ..George Wilshire ....he used to clean out the swart and the waste from the machines and take it out to a place in Page's Yard which was where Wickhams' Wharf is now, it was alongside the machine shop and there was a big old building there which was I imagine something to do with Pages, the corn merchants(?) people years and years ago before Wickhams took that area over, because Pages also had land the other side of the railway sidings where they ran their coal business and that and we always used to refer to that area as Pages' Yard.
ST Can we just go back over a few things. So you started work in Wickhams in 1948 and could you just explain how the apprenticeship worked?
DC Yes, you signed on as an indentured apprentice. You didn't have to pay any money by that time, you just were on a rate obviously alot less than the skilled rate and then each year you worked your way up towards the skilled. At the end of the five years you then became …......... er....
Wickhams was quite a good firm to have an apprenticeship with because you had a wide range of job opportunity. You could do machine fitting; they had their own foundry so you could go into the foundry and do foundry work; you could go into the electrical department and do electrical work. So you probably got more experience at Wickhams than you would in many, many other companies. Most of the apprentices were wide range of activities.
During my apprenticeship I went on a number of machines in the machine shop doing virtually everything apart from gear cutting. I did the grinding, I went from there to milling, slotting, broaching; I then went on to the lathes, centre lathes, capstan lathes.
When I first started, the lathes were all belt driven. You used to have to change the speed by flapping the belt over onto a different gear ratio with a, well you were supposed to use a piece of wood, but er any skilled turner never used the piece of wood, they just used to do it with their hands, so I soon got into the habit of using my hand although it was strictly speaking you should have used a piece of wood.
ST Were there a lot of industrial injuries?
DC No, there were very few....em.....and the shop steward ....Oliver Twist was the shop steward at the time in the machine shop. I remember I picked hold of a file without a handle and he was on me like a ton of bricks and called the foreman over and the charge hand and everybody was round and "mustn't use a file without a handle" and it was very safety conscious.
The chaps were a great bunch of chaps to work with, always calling across from machine to machine with jokes and quips. The foreman was a very nice chap, very amenable ....you did your work and providing you did your work, you got on well with him ...you could go to him with any queries or problems but generally you dealt with the charge hand ....Ernie Barrett was the charge hand on the lathes. The directors would come round and look and perhaps talk to you ....not very much' but it was a family concern, Mr. Cooper was the managing director. You always knew when he was about because he had a little whistle....it was....it wasn't an actual whistle, it was a sort of toothy whistle and then a puff, like a little train engine coming up behind you so you knew he was in your area ....you could hear this "whoo, whoo.....whoo, whoo" sort of noise and he would lookand "how's it going, how's it going?" He had a habit of always saying things in duplicate, he always repeated everything he said, somehow, just his little quirk and he was very interested in everybody that worked in the company.
He was a great designer,a great salesman, and that, and there were tales of him having a bit ofa temper as well. I heard the tale of him actually striking an employee and knocking his glasses off and breaking them. He then turned round and gave him financial recompense and paidfor his glasses to be repaired and that sort of thing. No doubt the employee deserved it, because he must have said something to cause him to fly off the handle but I never saw that side of him. He was a character that you don't find nowadays ...and perhaps he'd say I'11 give you a ha'penny rise, I'll give you a ha'penny rise!" and off he would go, and sure enough a couple of weeks later you'd have a ha'penny an hour rise in your pay packet. These weren't frequently but he was always doing to somebody or other among the workforce and it was very much appreciated and I think it created the feeling that somebody was interested in what you were doing at work.
We had a technical directer, Albert Summer, who had a reputation of always wanting more output than you could get and I was on the centre lathe at the time and Ernie Barrett, the charge hand, said to me, "Summer, the technical director, will come up and he'll look at what you're doing and he'll say' you can do it faster. I'll leave it to you to show him that you can't. Don't argue with him, if he wants the machine to work faster, you let it work faster "....sure enough along he comes ...."Who are you?" ...I told him who I was …. "What you doing?......Won't it cut that metal faster?" I said "I don't thinkso. Mr. Barrett said, "Oh yes," but he....." I said "well, shall I put it up a speed?" "Yes, you put it up a speed, I'm sure it will take a faster cut". So I put it up two speeds without him realising and the tool broke and off he went satisfied that it wouldn't do it any faster than I was doing it the first place.
And he never came to me again.
ST At what age did you begin working at Wickhams?
DC I was sixteen, nearly seventeen. I started at sixteen at 8½d an hour which was a bit more than most of them were getting when they first started because they started straight from school at fifteen, or fourteen and I had a rise two months after I'd been there because I then got onto my seventeenth birthday. I was only there two months. My apprenticeship, although it was five years, it lasted for seven years because I went into National Service in the middle of it for two years …... eighteen months when I first enlisted …... but while I was serving it was extended to two years by the '51 Conservative Governmentwhich didn't please me very much ...looking forward to getting back to finish my apprenticeship.
ST Did you have to serve abroad?
DC No! No I served all my ....
ST How does that physically work ..were you just not in Wickhams for two years?
DC No, that's right I was away doing military service which at the time I thought was complete waste of time, because although I was .....suppose to be a tradesman in the services and I was down to be a vehicle fitter, I started learning to drive initially but I never got into vehicle fitting at all. Ithink eighteen months was a short time and we seemed to be moving from one barracks to another after initial training first three months of basic training. I was then supposed to go on to a trade course but after three weeks of the trade course we moved to summer training camp and that went completely by the board. We were on manoeuvres in Wales and I went into the officers' mess to work, actually doing menial tasks in that area. The only good thing about that was you er ....twenty four hours on duty and twenty four hours off .....you weren't on regular square bashing and that and you got a bit of extra money in tips from the officers' mess, so I was privileged among the other squaddies but I did various things in thearmy.
ST Were you pleased to get back to Wickhams?
DC But I was pleased to come out. I think, it... .... .I had a fairly easy time. I quite enjoyed the friendship and comradeship of military service. The discipline was probably good. I enjoyed it. I did time in the regimental police and various things time on vehicles. I took charge of the vehicle section and used to do the maintenance parade in the morning ....take all the drivers and then I ran all the clerical side of the army vehicles, logging the petrol and mileage reports and vehicle maintenance reports and things, allocating the drivers their daily duties. Because I was taking the vehicle paradesI used to get excused the basic parades of the .....prior to that. There were certain little fiddles that went on …....... kept the officers and the sergeants and sergeant majors' private vehicles full of petrol and that and you were in! Little things like that. I learned the dodges pretty quickly!
ST So you got back to Wickhams, and had another two years of your apprenticeship to serve?
DC Came back to Wickharns, yes, and went back into the machine shop under Harold Hall again working on the turret lathe. Then they said would I like some experience in other departments or did I want to stay in the machine shop? I've always been keen to learn and I thought, well I'd like a chance to see what the other departments were like rather than settle in the machine shop, so I went into the fitting shop alongside the machine shop.
Arthur Basil was the foreman. Jim Spencer was the charge hand and we had a little chap there used to do the electrics on the rail cars …..we were building rail cars in there, small numberfours, number eight trolleys, and very small rail cars that Wickhams produced, velocipedes ....two man ones, pump trolleys .....the old pump cars that you still sometimes see on films of which there are many in use in Sudan principally. Even up until a couple of years ago we were producing them in batches of fifty for the Sudan railways. We did quite a lot of experimental development work on little cars. The velocipede I mentioned was a ….. you had just two wheels like a bicycle really, with an outrigger onto the second rail and you went up and down the track on that –two people. Very light, you could lift it off just like a bicycle, off the track.
ST So you were working five days a week. What hours were you working, were you taking hour lunch breaks?
DC We had an hour lunch break, that was compulsory. Seven thirty we started, nine thirty 'til twenty to ten, we had a ten minute break, twelve thirty .... well, twelve twenty five you stopped work, you had five minutes to wash your hands to finish at twelve thirty. We had an old labourer, George Busher(Bush?), who when you went up to the wash room at twenty five past twelve, he would be there with a big spoon and tin of Swarfega or some such cleaning thing and he would dole out one spoonful dollop into your hands to wash your hands. They were long trough sinks a bit like a horse trough that you washed your hands over and you only had this one dollop of soap to use. There was no soap in the room, just metered out one spoonful per employee. I can't really remember how you would get on washing your hands during the day, if you wanted to go to toilet, I think we used to use the soluble oil from the machines on a piece of rag. Then you would start again at half past one. I was living at Hoddesdon at the time so I didn't go home for lunch, I had sandwiches. After that we would stand out the front and call out to the people that were working in the other shops of Wickhams as they went down to the bottom on their bicycles or walking. Very few of them had cars in the 1940s or early '50s. Then we started again at half past one, went through 'til half past three and then we had a ten minute break, when we could go and have a cup of tea, and then worked through 'til half past five.
ST How about holidays, were you paid for holidays?
DC Yes, we had a fortnight's paid holiday when I started and starting in September at the end of the school holidays the following year you had a two week, two weeks' holiday with pay. You of course had your Christmas holidays with pay and bank holidays. Over the years it got longer, we initially started with three longer days for long service employees. You got one extra day at the end of ten years, one extra day at the end of fifteen years, and a third day at the end of twenty years, so that was something then that you could look forward to. At the end of ten years you would get another day's holiday. Later on it went up to three weeks, we still kept the three days. But when it went to four weeks, we lost the three days' holiday somewhere. We got three days' pay in lieu, but no holiday. And then that was, we went up to five weeks' holiday and we lost the three days' pay for long service. The company used to provide an annualdance for allemployees. That used to be held at the Ware Drill Hall but apart from that there wasn't much, you know, outside of work.
ST So, you'd served your apprenticeship by 1955 approximately, seven years after.
DC Yes. After I'd left the number one fitting shop. At that time we built an extension to the machine shop and they were looking for fitters to do that, so I went on, and we put up the steel work, and fitted the roof and actually built this extension. So, for three months I was working on that, building the extension. Interesting, putting the steel work up and climbing up, working at height, fifteen foot up in the air. I suppose walking along these things ....the first few days youwere hanging on like grim death....after about a week you would walk along the girders like a skilled steel erecter, it was quite surprising. We would occasionally drop a spanner or something and we would shout out "below!" I remember somebody dropped a hammer down, we had a chap, a Mr. Lancaster was a labourer and this hammer fell down and struck him and he looked up and sort of sworeand said "you silly devil" ...... he must have had quite a bruise but he didn't turn a hair at being hit by this spanner dropping down and hitting him. It was really dangerous, but we didn't have any helmets in those days, it was before helmets and that were worn. Apart from that we didn't have any accidents in putting the extension to the machine shop up.
When that was completed the maintenance man in charge, Ernie Wells, was pleased with my performance on the erection and said would I go on maintenance,so I went with him for three months doing works maintenance, climbing up on the roofs, putting fans in, repairing overhead cranes and having fun on that sort of thing.
We were up in number two shop, repairing the crane and he said to me "would you go andask the foreman to come up and check with what we're doing is all right"...l said "well, what we are doing is all right, surely we don't need the foreman to check" ........"well, no we don't" he said, "but he's frightened of heights and you'll see the whites of his knuckles as he climbs the ladder, so go and ask him to come up" ...... so I go down and ask the foreman Mr. Hewitson to come up and have a look at what we're doing....l said "Mr. Wells the maintenance man would like you to come up and have a look and see."..... and sure enough he came up hanging onto the ladder and you could see the whites of his knuckles all showing where he was gripping and he just got to the top of the ladder with his head and said "yes, that's all right!" and hastily beat aretreat. That was the sort of amusing Little things that went on, a little bit of devilment, shall we say. That made life fun and a little bit of relaxation from the seriousness of work. Although you were doing your work, you were having a little bit of amusement and a little bit of joking on the side, in a way.
ST So you served your apprenticeship ...how did your conditions of work improve when you'dserved your apprenticeship ....were you paid a higher wage, or did you work less hours, or....
DC No, you worked the same hours. When I finished my apprenticeship, I could have workedlonger hours 'til six but I didn't want to do overtime, particularly and I went into the works office ....I went onto the staff,virtually, as soon as I finished my apprenticeship, doing scheduling,reading drawings and things of that type. By that time I was studying at college for engineeringqualifications. I didn't start when I left school, further education,I think it was probably because of moving out from London to Hoddesdon and starting at the....taking the full seven weeks school holidays as a break between leaving school and starting work. When I started work, the college terms were already started and the next year when I could have started college, I could see National Service looming after another six months so I didn't start then and when I came out of the forces again, in '52, I didn't start college then. I thought about it, but we'd moved to Hertford by this time, my parents .
STWhere did you go to college?
DC I started at Scott's Road, Hertford Further Education College...there was a two year courseleading onto to Ordinary National Certificate, but I didn't do the first year because having leftschool later, having stayed on 'til I was nearly seventeen, and taken the Schools' Certificate, Iwas allowed to go straight into the first year Ordinary National and not do the preliminary year.Had I left school earlier, I would have had to do the preliminary year before doing OrdinaryNational Certificate.
ST Did you have to study ....were courses run in the evening or did you go on day release?
DC No, I was straight on day release course ...the firm were very good, they allowed me to goon day release although I was ....well it was allowed for all the apprentices if you wished to and Igot in before my apprenticeship ended, but only just. As long as I kept passing they allowed me to carry on studying. If you failed then you had to go on to evening class and when I was taking my Higher National I did fail one year and I did a year of evening class which was quite hard. I changed to Enfield Technical College because that was easier to get to if there were transport difficulties. Hatfield was a bit difficult to get to unless you had your own transport, which I did. I was quite a keen motor cyclist in those days, in fact I bought a motor cycle when I first left school and I used to go to work on that little 125 Royal Enfield. I was always ....perhaps because my education was reasonably good at secondary school, I seemed to progress very well at Wickhams. I moved around the machine shop from machine to machine; I went into the inspection ...learned to use the Vernier …..... Jack Bray was the chief inspector in the machine shop. Charlie Sniegon ...a Czechoslovak chap who'd come over during the war was one of the inspectors ...J was soon taught how to use the Vernier and the tools of the inspection trade, the plug gauges and gap gauges and things and how to set them up.
Jack Bray allowed me to set my own gap gauges and things and was quite impressed with my level of performance, so much so that the chief inspector, Major Palm,said he thought I'd got a great future with the company and the inspector in number three shop which was the fabrication shop went sick ....Tom Dutton was the man who was inspector, he went sick for an operation and they moved me down there at eighteen years of age into number three works to take over the inspection department .... they only had one inspector in the shop and I remember as a young eighteen year old going into this and an old chap of about sixty came up to me with his piece of work and said would I check it and say, "Would you check this, sir?"...... and I think it was the first time I'd been called sir by somebody three times my age. I was quite taken aback by the sort of reverence the inspector held in some of these shops. And I did that for only a short time, a month or so until Tom Dutton was back at work.
ST But when you finished your apprenticeship, you moved from the workshops into the office?
DC Into the works office and I shared the office with the foreman from the fabricating shop. The fabrication shop had a reputation. The foreman was a very hard task master.. ..he would allow no dalliance in his shop. People were there to work and they had to work and he had a reputation as being a very strict task master who was very strict onpunctuality. and that the men got on with u1'e1r work There was no overhead cranage in that shop and we were doing quite big welding structures and that and every now and again when you needed to turn the thing to get the weld on the other side of the structure, the charge hand would shout out and everybody would stop and run over and altogether, perhaps have twenty men round this frame ...man riding car frame or chassis and they would all turn it over by hand. There were no fork lift trucks or lifting devices at all. It was a matter that as soon as it was done everybody was back to work.
I was writing out all the job cards from the drawings, working out the material, putting the tickets over for the material to be cut and then it came in and they were welded and I had to work out how the things were to be made and I learned quite a lot in that. I'd come from a technical school background prior to joining Wickhams, had done metalwork and that at school so I had a fair idea of industry and it didn't come toohard a shock to have to work.
ST Do you remember how much you were paid?
DC No, probably I was on about four pounds fifteen a week, by the time I finished my apprenticeship.
ST Do you remember thinking that was a lot of money, or do you think you were badly paid?
DC It wasn't a lot of money ....but when you are sing!e …. in those days we didn't do a lot ….we'd go to the pictures and to a youth dub, but we certainly didn't visit public houses very much ...once a week, I suppose. If you went to the pub with your mates, you'd go once a week and that was either a Friday night or a Saturday night, when you weren't going to the pictures. If you went to the pub on the Friday night, you went to the pictures on a Saturday night. If you went to the pictures Friday night, perhaps you'd go to the pub on the Saturday night with a few of your mates, but .....
ST Did you go to the pubs in Ware or were you going to the pubs in London?
DC No, no you didn't travel to London very much, you didn't ....your money wouldn'tallow you to travel on public transport … you didn't have that sort of money in those days. I used to go over to the Union......I soon joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union and used to come to Ware to the branch meeting to pay your subscriptions once afortnight and I used to cycle over to that and it was held in a church hall in Amwell End in those days, and on the way back I would call into one of the Ware pubs called the Malakoff (closed 1959; named after victory at Malakoff Fort, Sebastapol, Russia,1855), whichwas a beer only pub, no spirits, but they did sell port and sherry and there were wooden tables and benches scrubbed clean: no chairs, just a long bench seat, with a scrubbed wooden table ...it was very Spartan. There were ever only three or four people in there drinking beer. The landlord used to go down to the cellar and come up with a jug of beer and fill your class from the jug.
ST Do you remember how much it was a pint?
DC No. I don't remember. I didn't used to drink beer very much. I used to love his port ...Ithink it must have been vintage port. ...I've ...very few people drank it, I suppose I was lucky togo in and have port out of the barrel that must have been there for years and years I would think It was certainly a beautiful taste and I never ever found port anywhere else to compare with it. That used to fortify me for the ride back to Hoddesdon .....a couple of glasses of port ….not a heavy drinking person, just a drink to make the pleasure of the evening .....prior to the ride back to Hoddesdon. A couple of glasses of port on the way back and have an enjoyable evening.
ST Shall we talk a bit about the men and women you worked with? You said there was a Czechoslovakian, I think earlier ....
DC Yes, Charlie the Austrian was Mr. Justin. I think he was Austrian. He came over in.... from Vienna in the ...I suppose '36 or whenever the problems were inVienna in that time and settled in this country. Sniegonwould have escaped from Czechoslovakia when the Germans invaded it and somehow got to England. Whether he served in the forces prior to that, and came out and joined the .... settled in this country, I don't know. We had one or two people, we had Glosky who was a Pole ..... he escaped from Poland when the Germans occupied it and walked through France and escaped through to England. It took him over three months of marching. He never had his boots off and his feet were permanently scarred as a result of that. In later life I became quite friendly with him. He was running the experimentaldepartment at Wickhams and later on when I joined the drawing office and was doing design work, I got closely involved with the experimental department on the development of products and with Glosky. He showed at one stage how his feet were scarred from this trek from Czechosolvakia. through to England, being pursued and dodging the Germans. Then he served with the forces over here, afterwards and then joined Wickhams when he left and settled in, in England.
ST There were quite a number of POW camps inthe area.
DC Yes, there was one at Comers End which was ..... but of course came into this area in '48, after the war when they were all finished.
ST A lot of people, I think, did stay locally and got jobs in local companies.
DC Yes, there were some ofthose, we had one I think at Wickham's, Mr. Baum, Herbie Baum,who'd been a prisoner of war and married a local Ware girl and was working at Wickhams. Not a terribly happy relationship with some of their ex-prisoners of war. ..there was a certain amount of anti-German feeling; though we didn't have much to do with them. As I said, I think there was only one at Wickhams. Some people made his life a bit awkward.
ST Where there many women working at Wickhams?
DC During the war there were but, by the time I joined in '48, they had almost all left. I think we had one woman still working there in '48, can't remember her surname, but she was calledGertie and she worked in the foundry ...great big woman ...she was a fettler, she knocked out the moulds after they'd been cast and and phrased the core marks off of the castings. My brother worked in the foundry and because he worked 'til six, so when I finished at half past five, I used to go down in the early stages there and he would ...I'd go into the foundry and wait for him to finish work and then go home with him on his motor bike because when I first started, being under eighteen, I only had a pedal cycle. I didn't get a motor cycle 'til my eighteenth birthday and on casting nights they would stay 'til seven and, as I say, I used to go down and sit in the foundry waiting for him to finish and met all the caps. Mason was the foreman of the foundry, Dave Balderstonewas the charge hand ...I met all the moulders.
My brother was five years older than me and so he was a skilled moulder when he joined Wickhams from a London foundry that he'd worked at. They used to pull my leg and make my visits there down to the foundry quite a happy occasion, for the time I was waiting for him ...wasn't bored because they would always chat to me and tell me a joke or .....the passing of an hour or a half hour on a casting night a pleasant time. So I got to know all the chaps in the foundry which otherwise Iwouldn't have had the opportunity of doing while I was still in the early stages of my apprenticeship in the machine shop. We had our own staff training school run by Ted Parker. We used to go down there, this was before day release started, we used to go down there, half-a-day a week, into his training school which at that time was in a room at the end of the stores in number two works and we would learn how many teeth there were in a file; the difference between a cross cut and a ward file and various things of that nature. Thetheoretical side and a little bit of practical side as well. You had filing exercises ....you had to make a V-block and you had to make two pieces that fitted into each other to very close tolerances and you would hold them up to the light and make sure you'd pass the tests and did a report on you for that which went back to your foreman...how you were progressing and you had a little notebook and that's where you made notes of instruction. It was really like being at school onthe technical basis.
ST Didyou have a works' club?
DC No, not when I first started at Wickhams. Later on we did. We formed a Wickhams social club. I'm not sure which came first. We formed a Wickhams football club and I think then a Wickhams social club.
ST When was that?
DC That must have been in the late '50s, early '60s …..
Side B
DC …... house at the end of Amwell End, a big detached house alongside the railway at Amwell End. Quite a character John Stouring, an ex-naval man, I believe. He was an authority on ships flags and was consulted by all the shipping lines on ships flags. A lot of people had interesting hobbies and sidelines at Wickhams..
ST When a worker retired, was there a presentation?
DC Yes, in the....yes, they did make a presentation ....i don't knowwhether they did in the early days of Wickhams, when I first joined it, but they always gave something when people were ...served there for twenty-five years they got a gold watch and that was presented at a little function. It wasn't presented immediately you'd done your twenty-five years, it was presented once a year and you got it in the year when you'd completed your twenty-five years.
At some stage in the 1950s they talked the managing director, Mr. Cooper, into having a little get-together and the first one was at the Cannons Hotel, for people who'd been there twenty-five years. Ithink it was probably only for staff members that had served twenty-five years in the first stage, the first dinner, but it was soon extended to anybody who had served there twenty-five years. When they made a presentation to anybody who retired, it was only the older people who attended that ceremony, people who'd been there over twenty-five years and his close workmates.,the foremen of the other shops The foremen were nearly always long serving people who'd been promoted up from apprenticeship and my own progression through the company was from apprentice into the staff, works staff initially, then into the drawing office into assistant works manager. And then you just looked for other works vacancies that went on in the company or the company approached you to …. when I came out of the drawing office on being asked by the company would I please consider the position of assistant works manager, by that time I'd been through co1lege to to Higher National, although I'd never actually completed my Higher National. The final year, I failed the final year and didn't retake it because by that time I was married with a child and was finding study at home very difficult. Also I had a number of other interests as well and was doing territorial service which took one evening a week, and couldn't really devote the time. It was a full day study plus one evening. for the Higher National at college, one evening at college, one evening for territorial service, and with a wife and child and some other interest as well, I decided it was a bit too much and decided to give it up.
ST Were there many chances for promotion. or were they few and far between?
DC Well. Whenever there was a Vacancy going in the company. it was always filled from withinthe company. The company was a very good training ground. People were encouraged, either in the early stages of the company training school or later on day release, or after that on block release. So we had people coming through the factory who'd served apprenticeships who'd gone on and got Ordinary National, Higher National, City & Guilds, degrees in engineering. So they were well qualified and able to take managerial positions within the company.
It wasn't necessary to go outside. We had the calibre of people inside the company to fulfil the needs and the very top managers didn't change very often. The sales directors were relations of the managing director and they had been there many many years. The technical director served there thirty or forty years, this sort of length of service so although there were opportunities, there were always opportunities of going to the drawing office and you initially perhaps started doing a bit of tracing.You then went on to drawing and you soon moved into design.
Progression was ...if you had a reasonable potential. Iwas fortunate, when I was at school I was very good at English, my best subject I suppose at school was English. I was either top or in the first three. There was great rivalry between myself and a couple other chaps at school for top spot at English, and I got a credit in the Schools' Certificate with that. So I suppose for the managerial jobs the English stood me in good stead ...writing letters and that side of managerial work. My technical knowledge was learned partly in technical training at school but more in my apprenticeship and at college.
ST Looking back over your time at Wickhams, do you think Wickhams were a good employer or wasthere a good relationship between the management and staff or was it very much a case of 'us and-them'?
DC No, it was always a very good relationship between the staffand the ordinary clock, hourly paid works people. Probably because everybody, or as far as I could see, everybody, had come up from serving their apprenticeship on the shop floor work, into management. So you had a great feeling for your fellow workers and nobody was ....there was no real class distinction. You could talk to everybody ...the managing director would come round and talk to peop1e and the employees would-say, you know, "talk to this man" ..... .I remember I was ....after my military service, I signed on with the territorials for three year period and we went to territorial camp which was paid for by the territorials. You got so much money. But I learned that there were a number regular territorial members on the company and the firm used to pay them wages while they were at territorial camp. I didn't get mine the first yearand they said, "Hey, you should get paid for going to territorial camp by the company, see the managing director!"
So I remember, one lunch hour, just before lunch, the managing director walked into the shop. "Oh!" I said, "Mr. Cooper, can I have a word with you please. I want to ask you about the going to territorial camp. I understand other people were paid for the …. attending the fortnight's camp and I don't." Well. I didn't get a direct reply. Mr. Cooper was a great talker ...this was the Mr. Cooper, senior, the original man who started at Wickhams in 1926 when he bought into the company. And he kept me there talking. Everybody else had gone and clocked out for lunch and it got round to one o'clock and 1thought, "Well, he'll wanting to get to his lunch at one o'clock", because the offices had one 'til two. it was the works who had half past twelve 'til half past one. But no,he kept me talking. He was telling me all about his experiences in the Indian Army during the war, First World War, and he talked on and and on. Very interesting talk. But nothing at all to do with my point that I was asking him to, aboutthe territorial army money. I was getting fidgety to goand get my lunch, else I was going to lose the whole of my hour's lunch-break, hearing all his exploits and so despite my efforts to get him back on the subject, I neverreally got a firm replv to my query out of him and in the end I really broke off the conversation in order to get a quick sandwich before it was time to start' back to work.
He was, if he didn't want to give a reply, he would talk his way out of it rather than say no. He would takeyou on, divert the course of the conversation to hisexploits. He was a wonderful character. Recently I was talking to his daughter who said that yes, he was a great salesman. He would have no idea of time and would talk and talk and talk.
Later on when I was on the staff in the drawing office at Christmas times he would have a little staff party in his office or in the offices and we would use his office as ..... where he would lay on drinks. There wasn't the drink driving in those days. It was beforethat came in. We would have sandwichesand cakes and a few glasses of drink that he would lay on. I remember, one day, Stan Andrews, one of our draughtsmen, was at this Christmas Party and was sitting in the managing director's chair, the managing director was out in one of the other offices, and he was sitting there with a glass of drink and his feet up on the managing director's table or desk and he was saying, "Give you a rise, give you a rise," to various staff members, you know, and acting as if he was the managing director. A great character was Stan. And in walks the managing director, and he says, "What are you doing in my chair?" and he says "I'm in control now, I'm in control and he sought of took the old man off to the tee, saying everything again in duplicate to him and said, ''I'll give you a rise, I'll give you a rise, Cooper" and the managing director laughed. Mr. Cooper laughed and took it all as a good joke. He was that sort of character. He wasn't, although, you know, there were reportsof him losing his temper, he was also a very affable man, a very great character.
When I was in the drawing office he would come up and help with the designs. His was the brains behind a lot of these designs. If you were designing something, he would come up with his ideas and then leave you to put it onto paper. Bert Martin was one of our designers there and he came up one day just after lunch and often in the summer, if you'd had a reasonable lunch and the white glare from the paper would make you a bit on the dozy side, and one day Bert Martin, designer and one of the chief you know, senior men in the drawing office, was dozing off at his drawing board. Along he comes and he looks at him. "Martin!" he says, "Martin!" With that, Bert opens his eyesand says, "Yes, Mr. Cooper?" He says, "You were asleep!" "I wasn't asleep, Mr. Cooper, I was thinking!" and that sort of thing. And, when Mr. Cooper was at the drawing board with a draughtsman, he's talking to him and all the other draughtsmen would stand behind, down the drawing office at their boards, behind Mr. Cooper and would wave, raise their hands in the air and waggle them about to try and cause a smile to come to the draughtsman's face while he was talking to the managing director. These sort of antics were got up to as good fun. Everybody in the drawing office were great fun.
We used to discuss people's private lives, people had a lot of personal problems that .... Mick Barker had been up there since 1943,was an old stage hand in the drawing office. Jock Prentice who was reputed to be a cousin of Mr. Cooper Senior, was a tracer and everybody knew he hadn't got the engineering qualifications but he was quite a good tracer but he knew nothing in the design side and he was looked down upon a bit by the the other draughtsmen. He was a Scotchman, come down from Scotland with Mr. Cooper in the early days, and given a job on a very low wage in the drawing office. Maybe because it was partly because he was on a low wage or partly because he was a cousin of the managing director, the attitude towards him was a little bit, wasn't quite up to the draughtsmen's standard. Apart from that the general feeling was of great fun.
Stan Andrews, while he was there, while I was in the drawing office, was again, always having jokes and he went through a certain amount of matrimonial problems which he would come in and recount to us the next day. At one stage, I think his wife was a bit dominant, he would be sitting in the chair watching television and she would go and change the television programme and he used to say, "Why have you done that?" "I wanted to change it!" "I was watching that!" he'd say and she'd pick up the poker and rap him on me knee and say, "Shut up!" to him. This is what he'd come back and tell us, and he'd be limping where she'd hit him on the knee with a poker and it wasn't verylong before that marriage broke up. She went off actually, with somebody else and he was employing a detective to get grounds for divorce. He,was going up and doinga certain amountof surveillance himself and we had all the tales of this in the drawing office, very amusing. Wewere absolutely killing ourselves with laughter and his antics of donning a mac and doingsurveillance work with the detective and things like that. I suppose when you're fairly young these things are very amusing to you. It probably wasn't that amusing to him going through it.being a bit older but to us, as bystanders, it was a constant source of amusement.All sorts of things of that nature carried on.. Chit chat around the drawing office that made it afamily atmosphere. It was confidential sort of talk that you would probably say to your brother. The friendship between people was of that sort of closeness.
Stan Seaman was a draughtsman up there He had a house built in Ware, detached house and was overseeing it himself. We got daily reports on the progress of the builders building this house. He would go up, and perhaps they'd built a wall, and they'd got it in the wrong position ad they'd got it finished by the time he got home from work. So he'd push it down and make them start again me next day in the correct position. He'd come to work the next day and say, "They put the wall in thewrong position. I don't know what to do, so I though I'd better push it down before it hardens." And so he'd push it down and we'd get all these reports. He went out to South America for a month on some railcars seeing them installed out there, that he'd helped design and we got reports backof his trio to Rio de Janairo. The football stadium they took him to while he was out there. His adventures of not speaking Portugueseor Spanish Portugueseand that that they spoke outthere.
ST Well, thanks very much for this morning's information. It was very interesting.