The sixty-four years between 1882, the founding of the firm and 1946, when it went public, divide themselves almost equally into the prosperous period up to the first world war, a time of confidence, expansion and prosperity and the bitter years thereafter, when markets disappeared, competition increased and profits diminished or disappeared. It appeared that the industry was in the grip of a serious, some might say, terminal illness. The search for the cure to that illness caused all the latent tensions between employers and employees, which had marked earlier similar periods of economic emaciation, to erupt.
In their relationships with their employees and in the influence they exerted, either by their actions as employers or in their role as officers of the Manufacturers’ Association, Amos and Joe had an important part to play in the events of the period.
Despite the occasional local dispute in one department or another, all quickly settled, industrial relations at James Nelsons’ were always excellent. Indeed, when the overlookers came to the Manufacturers Association in 1925, complaining that the increased number of poplins had lessened their earnings, Captain Smith, the overlookers’ secretary prefaced his remarks by saying that this was a most unusual case as he could not remember any previous meeting to discuss problems with this firm and indeed, apart from the case in point, the men had no complaint to make against the firm in any way. Looked at even objectively the firm were good employers. The wages paid at James Nelsons’ were among the best in the industry, during the first world war allowances were given to the families of all employees serving in the forces and the general conditions of employment were as good as was likely to be found anywhere at that time.
Even this did not prevent the Unions from instructing their members “to have nothing to do” with the profit sharing scheme, which Amos proposed in 1909 for all James Nelson’s employees. Indeed Amos was beginning to sense a hardening in the attitude of the textile unions, which cannot have been present earlier, for, in his introduction to the scheme, he is concerned that:
The way the Trade Unions are conducted to day is causing the trade of the town to suffer to a very great extent, as the principal object of the officials and leaders seems to be to create a bad feeling between the employees and their employers
This sentence foreshadows the problems that occurred in the cotton trade generally, and in Nelson particularly, throughout the twenties and early thirties.
Immediately after the first world war, James Nelson’s built a large and lavish sports club and recreation centre for their employees as a joint memorial to “the lads who died in the war” and James the founder of the company.
Reading Amos’s speech, however, at the opening ceremony, one cannot help but feel that he was hoping that apart from acting as a memorial, it would achieve something more substantial, by acting as the first span of a bridge over the chasm that was beginning to appear between mill owners and their employees. As the contemporary report states –
“He hoped that the memorial would be the means of bringing about a happier lot for the lives of the workpeople they employed and would help to relieve the drab monotony, which sometimes emanates from the nature of their occupations. He held the opinion that they should always introduce the human element into business. He did not care whatever they did, it was always the human element, which made or marred the business. If they spent money on the finest plant, buildings and machinery, they ought to spend money on the human element side. What really was wanted to day was a closer touch between the workpeople and the employer. We want” he continued “to get a closer working arrangement than we have had in the past, and whether we shall then succeed remains to be seen. We want closer contact and try to make business more a pleasure than it has been”.
Despite these good intentions, employment in the Lancashire Textile Industry between the wars was far from a pleasure, although to be in employment at all, was to be one of the lucky ones. In 1924 when the National unemployment figure was 10%, Lancashire’s was 16%. In 1930, the corresponding figures were 17% and 45%. But resulting from amalgamations, rationalisations and some government action, Lancashire had dropped back to the National average of 10% by 1937.
In view of the decline in trade and profitability, the employers tried to insist on lower wages. The bitterness engendered between employers and employees over these years was perhaps the start of the vicious circle that has led to the progressive decay of the Lancashire Textile Industry. As Lancashire lost export markets and had its home markets threatened by what it considered unfair competition, so employers insisted on their employees accepting lower wages in order to make themselves more competitive. In the face of this the unions became more militant in their resistance, not only to these lower wages, but, more dangerously, to other schemes for improving Lancashire’s productivity.
Amos, despite his good relations with the unions, was consistently critical of what he considered their unreasonable interference in the internal management of the mills and, while appreciating their motives, their resistance to the introduction of automatic machinery or labour saving manufacturing methods.
As he said in 1930
“It must be heartbreaking for any Trade Union Leader to suggest to his members a policy which will throw out of work one third of them, but this is much the lesser of two evils. Better the two thirds earning decent wages in a profitable industry than, if we continue as we are, we shall have more than one third out of work and the other two thirds working in a deplorable industrial situation”.
Therefore it is his role in the long drawn out battle for greater productivity, that is the subject of this chapter, a battle, incidentally, that found him more often at odds with his fellow manufacturers than with the unions.
As markets reduced or disappeared and as other markets became more competitive, so the manufacturers cast about for means to lower their costs in order to compete more effectively. Two suggestions that recurred throughout the period were the reduction of wages or as an alternative, the increase in the number of hours worked. The third suggestion was increasing productivity by the introduction of automatic machinery or the modification of existing looms to make them semi automatic and workable with fewer weavers; in the parlance of the day, ‘more looms to a weaver’.
It is not always easy to separate the industrial trouble that emanated from the tangled negotiations accompanying the introduction of the more loom system from that caused by suggested wage reductions, but most of the facts are fairly clear. The original proposals for the introduction of a more loom system came from the Burnley manufacturers, where the leading spirit was Tertius Spencer, (whose daughter Mary, was about to marry Chris Nelson, Joe’s younger son). They approached their local union in December 1928 with a view to getting their approval for trials aimed at increasing productivity within the industry. The local weavers’ union realising, that this was something that could not be dealt with in a local basis, called in the Amalgamated Weavers Association the Central Body of the Weavers’ Union (A.W.A.). A limited experiment was agreed to, whereby ten Burnley firms, commenced running 4% of their total looms manned 8 looms to a weaver (instead of 4) with ancillary help to do some of the jobs previously done by the weaver, and paid 50/ per week.
The experiment began in April 1929 for a one-year trial. But in August of that year, the Rigby Swift award of a 12½% cut in list rates (implying a 6.4% reduction in wages), was applied by the employers to all their weavers including those engaged in the more loom experiment. This caused considerable resentment on the union side, which had thought that the weavers engaged in the trial were exempted from the cut. This led to a determination to reconsider the whole basis of the more loom proposals. They did not like what they saw. As Edwin Hopwood, the Assistant General Secretary of the Weavers Amalgamation put it in his book “The Lancashire Weaver’s story”:
“The new system would mean reductions in existing piece rates on plain grey cloths of 10% on the six loom system, 32% on the eight loom system and 43% on the ten loom system. It was true that the individual weaver’s wage would be increased, but the aggregate wage bill at the mill would be considerably reduced”.
A more telling criticism from the weavers’ point of view was of course the considerable redundancies that were bound to result from any wholesale adoption of the more loom system. The Weavers’ Amalgamation claimed that a complete adoption of the system could result in a reduction of 40% in the numbers employed in the industry and despite the Central Council of the union being in favour of the scheme, given the right conditions, the General Council and the members were both strongly against it. Chaos reigned; for the better part of a year no effective negotiations took place. Within the manufacturers ranks there was also discord and disagreement. Several districts, other than Burnley, were pressing to be allowed to start similar schemes before any central agreement was reached, while the Burnley employers refused point blank to terminate their experiment. In Nelson the Manufacturers’ Association approached the unions to see if joint trials could be instituted on a “town” basis and a sub committee, including Joe, was formed, but like most negotiations at that time nothing came of it.
By April 1930 Amos’s patience with central negotiations that were getting nowhere, had worn thin and despite his subsequent protestations to the contrary, it seems likely he decided to try and reach some sort of agreement on behalf of James Nelson’s with the unions. As we shall see from letters he subsequently wrote, he calculated that, if allowed to convert 1800 looms onto a more loom system on the understanding that they would only weave cloths that were not at that time woven to any extent in Lancashire, he could gain sufficient trade from foreign competitors to guarantee a higher wage than at present was paid on the list and no redundancies need occur as the displaced weavers would be used for ancillary labour.
He suggested that all the looms should be fitted with attachments, which would stop them as soon as a warp thread broke (warp stop motions). Other attachments fitted would stop the looms if the weft broke or the pirn (the package on which the weft was carried back and forth across the loom, through the warp threads) ran out of yarn (weft stop motions). In this way, the looms would become semi-automatic and two of the greatest responsibilities of the weaver (stopping the loom before the fabric was damaged by a warp or weft breakage) would be removed.
To this opening overture Andrew Naesmith, the secretary of the Amalgamated Weavers Association (A.W.A.), the central body of the weavers’ union, wrote a somewhat cautious reply:
Dear Sir Amos,
The delay occasioned in replying to your letter of the 22nd April is due entirely to circumstances over which we have no control. Since the conclusion of the Fining1 case, a sub committee of my Central Committee has carefully examined your document.
The basis of this document is obviously your desire to reduce production costs, in order that you may compete on more favourable terms with producers of similar goods to yourselves, and increase your own business and assure the more regular running of your looms by your operatives.
The reasons advanced by you for your purpose, however, are so nebulous, that my Committee requires more definite data before any conclusion can be reached upon the revolutionary suggestions you make. On page 2 of your Memorandum, third paragraph, you indicate that “we had cloths put before us which we could make by the methods we suggest and be able to compete either at home or abroad with the French.” It does appear to my Committee that you ought to lay before us what kinds of cloths, and the costs of same between the French and your own, upon which we could favourably compete2 on your proposals.
You admit that the cloths have been gone into carefully and you are fairly certain that the costs can be reduced to secure this trade. If that is so, my Committee feels that this matter should be put before us.
Besides certain other paragraphs that require to be more precise, there is also the question of the wage to be discussed, and you also indicate the payment of a Bonus. Upon this question of bonus, we have always been opposed and would rather that the definite figure was stated, in order that we shall know exactly what the earning capacity of our members would be under these proposals of yours.
It is not out of any carping spirit that we ask these questions, but our desire to understand all that is involved in your proposals; to examine them judiciously in the light of your own explanations, and to come to a reasonable and sensible decision upon the matter.
Yours faithfully,
A Naesmith
General Secretary.
A meeting was subsequently arranged for June 2nd and in view of some of the criticisms expressed in Naesmith’s letter, Amos prepared for himself a series of notes to place before the union representatives that afternoon. He claimed that the country was importing textile goods to the value of over £50,000,000 worth per annum of which £20 million was artificial silk and silk, almost £10 million cotton, about £14 million woollens and some £8 million of other fibres. The object of any agreement they reached would be to cut down on these and boost exports.
To be more specific; a certain British shipper was doing a very large trade with Australia which he had offered to James Nelsons but they could not compete in price with the Italians and had lost the business. A cloth with an artificial silk3 warp and cotton weft had been offered the company only the week before. But the price the customer could buy at from Italy was 12¾d per yard whereas the best price James Nelson could reach was 13½ d per yard.
The company did not have a single loom on artificial silk voiles despite there being a huge market both domestically and in Australia and New Zealand, where we could get the business if only we could compete with the French.
He cited several other instances where even James Nelson’s lowest price was at least 1d. more than their continental competitors and went on to outline the priorities and plans the firm hoped to achieve given an agreement with the union.
They would want to attack first the voile trade where the twist in the yarn would give a lot of work for the doubling mill. They would then go for the artificial silk warp and cotton crepe weft cloth where again there was work for both the doubling and the spinning mills. Because of this extra work, Amos felt that any girl weavers displaced from weaving could be found work doubling and crepeing and there would be no redundancies.
Anticipating other union objections to his proposals, he assured the union representatives that he was not trying to steal a march on his competitors firstly because he had no objection whatsoever to any of them trying a similar scheme, and secondly because he was intending to introduce cloths which were hardly being made in Lancashire at all at that time.
One problem he admitted was the capital cost of the scheme. Implementing it in its entirety would cost up to £32,000 between winding, sizing and the necessary modifications to the looms, and, unless the banks radically altered their policy in the near future, this money was certainly not available immediately, but would have to be introduced by degrees.
He went on to comment again on the unfairness of the present system of wage payments, and foresaw the later introduction of time and motion study (which were not introduced into the Lancashire weaving industry for another 30 years), by saying that with the attachments he wanted put on the looms, the only work the weaver would have to do, would be to correct the loom when it stopped. This would not only lead manufacturers to use the best available materials (to everyone’s advantage), but would encourage modernisation and mean that weavers could get paid, fairly, for the amount of work they actually had to do. The meeting must have gone quite well, for on June 16th Andrew Naesmith wrote Amos as follows:
Dear Sir Amos,
Since our interview on the 2nd instant, both my sub committee and Central Committee have given very careful consideration to the subject which we have in hand. They have in mind that certain questions require to be determined before we can proceed. I think you will agree that this is a matter which we cannot rush, and that it is far better to obtain consent with all the parties interested, by perfect understanding and negotiation.
I think a further interview with you and my subcommittee is desirable, when the following points could be discussed in a frank and friendly manner:
Speed of looms; mechanical appliances; provision of ancillary labour; the method of running the increased number of looms; the period to be fixed for the experiment; the desirability of limiting the experiment to your own firm; the experiment to take place on one set of looms for each class of cloth produced; that the fullest information should be available through fortnightly reports to represent either of the District Weavers’ Association or the Amalgamation; the desirability of permission being granted to inspectors of either the Shirley Institute or the Fatigue Research Board to investigate the breakages of warp and weft and the strain imposed upon the operative.
These are problems that surround the whole of this question, and upon which it is desirable that both you and ourselves should give the fullest consideration.
I should be glad to hear from you as early as convenient, as to what date and time is convenient to you.
Yours faithfully,
A. Naesmith.
General Secretary
To this letter Amos replied on June 18th 1930.
Dear Mr. Naesmith,
I received your letter confirming Friday at 3.00 p.m. and I am trying to give you all the information you ask. Perhaps it will save time on Friday.
The speed of the looms will not be any different under our present conditions, but, as you know, the reed space, the counts of weft and the make of cloth, determine the speed, but with our additions4 on, it will make no difference; we should run them just the same as we are doing at present.
We intend to put on a weft stop motion. This will take away all the responsibility of the weaver watching for ends down and waiting for the cop weaving off.
We shall want to carry the weft to the weavers, fetch the empty pirns away, and also bring their pieces away on the cloth roller.
All cleaning and oiling we intend to do for the weavers.
All yarn will be got on as large a cop, or pirn, as is suitable for shuttles.
The quality of warp and weft, will be very carefully selected, to avoid all possible breakages, to enable the weaver to attend to the maximum number of looms.
I might say here in passing, that with this system manufacturers would get absolutely the best yarn possible, because the extra paid for the yarn, up to a certain point, would be recovered by extra production.
We have not thought about any period at all. We just wanted to make the experiment, and if it answers what we think it will, we shall want to get ahead and make arrangements as quickly as possible.
This alteration would take us a good many months, in fact, I do not see how we could make our arrangements under 12 months, if we started right away, and went at it as hard as we could, because we have a lot of winding machines to put down, also warping machines and sizing machines, in addition to all the stop motions to arrange and the looms to alter to bring the cloth roller away.
It is going to be a slow job even when we do the best we can.
We shall not have the slightest objection to any other manufacturer making whatever experiments he thought fit to try, or in conjunction with the Amalgamated Weavers.
We would furnish all the information you require and we should welcome the suggestion you put forward, that an Inspector from the Shirley Institute, or the Fatigue Research Board, should make the report, so that they would be independent and in addition to anything we might say.
Yours faithfully,
The meeting duly took place and a fair measure of agreement was reached as can be seen from a memorandum prepared by Andrew Naesmith for the central committee of the Weavers’ Union and the Nelson weavers committee.
This reads in part as follows:
Sir Amos’s proposal “argues from the point of view that it is possible to capture a great deal of the import trade in yarns and cloth that the French Silk Manufacturers are doing in this country. To successfully compete with them, it is necessary for him to reduce his production costs by 15% to 30%. He can go a long way towards this reduction by internal mill economies the grading of his cloths and looms. He is proposing to extend the number of looms run by a weaver to six and eight looms.
The sub committee of the Central Committee have had two very long interviews with Sir Amos, and as a result, he is prepared to pay a wage of not less than 56/- per week, irrespective of the number of looms run. A bonus system will be at once instituted, which it is anticipated will make the potential earnings of the weaver about 65/- to 70/- per week. The speed of the looms will not be reduced; the firm intend to fix warp stop and weft stop motions. All ancillary labour, such as sweeping, cleaning, oiling cut carrying and weft carrying, will be taken away from the weaver. The firm propose to make as large a cop or pirn as will be suitable for their shuttles. Yarns will be carefully selected and prepared, in order to reduce breakages to a minimum. New preparatory machinery will be required at this firm, and it is expected that in the winding, warping and sizing rooms, another 100 operatives will be essential. The firm propose to give the displaced labour in the weaving sheds the first opportunity, the wages and conditions for these operatives have still to be arranged. The firm is prepared to allow inspectors either from the Shirley Institute, or the Industrial Fatigue Research Board, to investigate and examine conditions at the mill and make independent reports to the Amalgamated Weavers’ Association, either weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. It is anticipated that the changes contemplated will take at least twelve months to establish, and because of that, no definite period of time can be fixed for the experiment. It will be for at least a period of twelve months. At the end of whatever period is required to complete the arrangements, it is proposed that a new piece price list basis should be formulated on the evidence obtained.
A third meeting took place between Amos and Joe, representing the company, Andrew Naesmith, Carey Hargreaves, and six other weavers’ union officials on July 21st. 1930. The weavers came to that meeting with five further suggestions. A fall back wage of 60/ per week irrespective of number of looms run, and a maximum number of eight looms per weaver were both agreed to. A guaranteed fall back wage, at the end of the experiment was agreed to in principal. The company turned down a request by the union, that only union members were eligible for consideration for taking part in the experiment. A second request that all looms in the experiment be slowed down by 15%, was left to the discretion of the firm.
Thus, agreement was reached and Joe was left to obtain the approval of the Manufacturers Association (C.S.M.A.) to the experiment. This he attempted to do at two meetings held at the end of July 1930. At the first of these meetings, on July 25th, it was decided that “it was not desirable for the firm to make an individual agreement with the Weavers’ Amalgamation (the Union) as this might prejudice other districts”. However, a subcommittee was set up to see if it could use the James Nelson experiment as a basis for an industry wide agreement.
Nothing came of this or of a subsequent Joint meeting. The employers were adamant that any agreement had to be a general one while the union insisted that before they would enter such negotiations, the employers must recommend the discontinuation of the working of a more loom system in Burnley. This the employers would not do, particularly as they were far from enthusiastic about the Nelson deal, involving, as it did, the acceptance of a fall back wage and a minimum wage to weavers on the new system, both principles the employers had been unwilling to accede to.
In mid August, at a meeting of the N.C.T.T.F. (a joint committee of employers and unionists) Amos prepared an opening speech, which he addressed only to the manufacturers, before the arrival of the union representatives. It was designed, to answer some of the criticism, which had been levelled at him by other manufacturers, since the announcement of the “agreement” had been made.
“Before the weavers come in, I should like to explain our position again, because I just feel like the Irishwoman’s son, about whom his mother remarked that everybody was out of step but himself.
I took it, from some of the remarks passed last Tuesday that I must have committed some very great crime, and I want to give in two or three minutes an outline of what has transpired.
In the first place, we did not approach the weavers. It came about through a strike, which we had, which the Amalgamated Weavers came up to settle, and when everything was fixed up, Mr. Carey Hargreaves, the Nelson Weavers’ Secretary or Nr. Naesmith said “Now what about the four weavers who have been out on strike so long?” I replied “Yes: what about them?” This is the manner in which negotiations began. I saw some of the Central Committee twice, and told them what was going on, and no objections appeared to have been raised as far as I could understand from them.
He therefore went on to say that he objected most strongly, to it being said, that an agreement had been reached; no agreement had been reached, not even a tentative one. He had always stated that all negotiations had to be subject to approval by the C.S.M.A. and that they were there to discuss this.
Regarding criticisms from other lower wage areas, against the figure of 60/ per week. Which one manufacturer had described as “absolutely ridiculous” and another had said “queered everybody’s pitch”, he pointed out this wage on the more expensive sorts woven in Nelson represented a maximum increase of 27% and on other sorts much less than that, whereas Burnley had already agreed a figure that showed an increase of 40% on their cheaper sorts.
One of the aspects of the scheme, that had obviously most incensed the other districts, was James Nelson’s agreement, indeed insistence that warp and weft stop motions be installed on all the looms involved. Many of the other weaving companies could not afford to do this with trade so depressed, and thought that if this were made a condition of being able to install a more loom system they would never be able to participate and would lose out increasingly to the larger, wealthier firms such as James Nelsons. Amos, replying to this criticism, contended that, on the cloths they were planning to weave, more looms could not physically be run without these attachments which stopped the loom immediately a fault occurred or the weft ran out, thereby preventing damage to the fabric.
After answering the specific criticisms, he returned to the general one of James Nelson’s right and motives for entering into these negotiations at all.
“We got to the point” he said, “and brought it before the manufacturers who said that the Association must negotiate, to which we said
Quite right, but what has been done! Nothing but ridicule and narrow mindedness has been used about this proposition. What I am going to ask you to do is this. In a letter from the Amalgamated Weavers they express the desirability of limiting the experiment to our own firm, and the experiment to take place on one set of looms for each class of cloth produced. We replied to this letter on June 18th as follows:- We shall not have the slightest objection to any other manufacturer making whatever experiment he thinks fit to try or in conjunction with the Amalgamated Weavers.
The manufacturers certainly had a real grievance if they were thinking that we wanted to get something different from any other Manufacturer, but at one of the meetings here, the weavers agreed that any firm could try the experiment on similar conditions.
I think that in our long experience in the manufacturing trade, we have not tried to copy other manufacturers, and we have not tried to make money by taking an unfair advantage over our competitors, and the bulk of trade for which we are out, do not think a single manufacturer in this room makes a single piece. In fact, we have not, up to the present time, a single loom on the goods.”
He was not alone in his exasperation. The weavers, having dropped their claim for the stoppage of the more loom system in Burnley as a prerequisite to further negotiation, and substituted acceptance of the James Nelson deal by the manufacturers, were indignant when this too was turned down. In their statement recorded in the minutes of the meeting on August 19th they
“Regretted the decision the manufacturers had come to. Our proposals were made in good faith with a view to surmounting the difficulties of setting up the point subcommittee as suggested by you.
The agreement arrived at between the Amalgamated Weavers’ Association and the firm of James Nelson Ltd., Nelson, complies with all that is contained in your application to the weavers’ amalgamation. It provides for the running of more looms to a weaver; it agrees that the system should be extended to mills in various districts covered by your Association; it complies with the firm’s desire and the agreement is at a rate of wages other than that contained in the Uniform list of prices for weaving.
Although it complies with all that is contained in your original application, you exercise the right to veto the agreement: on what grounds we have not yet learned. Whilst it is legitimate for you to veto a tentative agreement between a member of your Association and the Amalgamated Weavers’ Association, it is equally the legitimate right of the operatives’ organization to veto, or object to experiments to which we cannot possibly agree.
In these circumstances we cannot agree to the setting up of a joint committee to examine your proposals without one or other of the conditions previously submitted by us.”
Faced with this impasse, exasperation spread on both sides of the industry. As 1930, drew to a close. The Burnley employers posted notices allowing individual firms to run more loom systems at their discretion, the Burnley weavers struck at those mills where such systems were introduced, and in retaliation the town’s employers declared a lock out. This was supported by the county’s employers and a countywide lock out took place in January 1931. Meanwhile the union took the unusual step of balloting all their members on the subject of whether or not they should enter into negotiation with the employers about the introduction of more loom working. This resulted in a majority of 2 to 1 against negotiations taking place.
The lock out lasted for four weeks and towards the end serious cracks began to appear in the employers’ solidarity. Tertius Spencer took his company out of the Burnley employers’ Association to try and negotiate a separate deal with his own weavers and, it was privately hoped, by pushing through a deal at his own mill, establish a precedent that could be used by the manufacturers generally. In fact, though he officially resigned from the association, this resignation was never officially accepted but was allowed to “lie on the table” presumably until such time as he had achieved his objects. In other districts firms ignored the instructions of their associations and started up again and indeed some whole districts ignored the instructions of the central Committee. This latter event almost landed Joe in trouble with the Nelson Manufacturers association. Carr Manufacturing Company, a James Nelson subsidiary, had worked throughout the lock out and Joe was asked very pointedly at a committee meeting of the Nelson manufacturers on February 11th. 1931, why this was the case. His answer, that Carr was a member of the Trawden Association which had decided not to support the lock out, satisfied any potential critics, but illustrated the weakness of the manufacturers, where certain whole areas withheld their support for the lock out. Even within areas notionally in support of it, many individual firms continued to run their looms. The local manufacturers association then had the unenviable task of disciplining them. It was a Catch 22 situation; if they were not disciplined, other firms felt they could defy the association with impunity and if they were fined many refused to pay and the resulting expulsion only served to further weaken the association that expelled them.
The lock out and subsequent events led to unparalleled bitterness throughout the area. Crowds hearing of a secret meeting between the Secretary of the Union Andrew Naesmith and Tertius Spencer, and fearing a sell-out, marched on Spencer’s house and had to be dispersed by a police baton charge. The Spencers at this time had to have a permanent guard on their house and every trip into town was an ordeal. As far as the crowds went, weapons were not unknown, but in their frequent confrontations with the police, their clogs proved their most useful asset. A sharp hack on the shins from these, with their wooden soles and metal caps and irons was an injury one did not encourage, and corrugated paper wrapped as thickly as possible around the lower leg under the trousers became part of East Lancashire Police uniform.
In May 1931 V.E. Haighton & Co’s insistence on running a more loom system with non union labour resulted in a local strike, which lasted six weeks. Again the bitterness erupted. The weavers at the mill operating the more loom system, were the subject of harassment and intimidation by other weavers on their way to and from work. And when the council withdrew the bus service to the mill, at starting and stopping times, the “loyal” weavers had to live in the mill being unable to get to and from their homes in safety. Several of the committee of the Nelson weavers were bound over in court for their part in the disturbances and a motion for a strike was put by the weavers to the A.W.A.
It is perhaps surprising therefore that, at a time when tempers were running so high, negotiations were taking place, with considerable goodwill, between Amos and Joe and the weavers’ union. Desperate about the state of trade (exports had fallen by 1/3 in the previous year) and impatient that nothing was being achieved towards implementing a more competitive method of production, Amos decided to try and get a more loom system agreed with the unions once more. On March 21st. 1931 he wrote to Andrew Naesmith and, receiving no reply, wrote to Carey Hargreaves of the Nelson weavers on April 18th stressing the urgency of the situation. Negotiations were resumed, and by July 20th an agreement had been reached, and approved by the Central Committee of the Union similar to the one of 12 months previously.
The Nelson Leader, announcing acceptance of the scheme by a general meeting of the weavers, called it one of the most vital decisions in the history of the cotton trade, and a Trade Union official described it as the finest ever put forward by an employer in the industry. The committee of the union, including those same members who had been in court only a month or two previously, recommended acceptance of the scheme at a meeting where the hall was unable to accommodate all those who had come and at the conclusion of the meeting a large majority were in favour of acceptance. The Communist party provided the main opposition to the scheme, chalking such injunctions as “Vote against the more loom system, against semi automatic and automatic looms” across all the main roads of the town.
Other clauses in the agreement were the abolition of fining within the firm, a subject dealt with in the next chapter, the discharge of women whose husbands already held good positions, in favour of unemployed married men and the undertaking that displaced weavers would be given the first opportunity to accept the new ancillary jobs created.
Many throughout the industry felt that this agreement between a firm and what was considered the most militant branch of the weaver’s union was a break-through in what seemed to have become a long war of attrition, but others were less enthusiastic. In Burnley, the manufacturers regarded the new rates with alarm and Tertius Spencer summed up their fears when he said that, while Sir Amos could afford to pay these rates when he was getting prices in the shillings for his cloth, no Burnley weaver, competing with the Japanese, and selling cloth for between 3d. and 4d. a yard could do so and stay in business.
The high hopes that attended the James Nelson’s agreement, were however never fulfilled more widely in the Industry. Negotiations were restarted with a view to getting an industry wide agreement, but bogged down yet again and once more individual firms began to implement their own arrangements with their workpeople. January 1932 saw another strike by the Burnley weavers against those manufacturers working a more loom system, which succeeded in stopping most of the looms in the town. At last, in July 1932 it looked as if a general agreement had been reached only for it to be rejected by the general council of the weavers’ union and partly as a reaction to this disappointment, the employers decided to impose another general wage reduction, while allowing individual districts to negotiate separately. Burnley was the first to impose these reductions, which caused a town strike in August 1932. Again feelings ran high, a march of 3,000 weavers from Burnley invaded Nelson in order to persuade the weavers there to strike in sympathy. The whole of Burnley came to a stop, cinemas ran cheap matinees, the local Tories opened a soup kitchen, the trams stopped and the local mine closed as no mills were burning coal. Eventually a county strike was called, but only after the A.W.A, had threatened to resign from its parent body the N.C.T.T.F. and Nelson weavers in turn promising to secede if they did not.
Eventually the Ministry of Labour was called in and at a series of tripartite meetings held at the Midland Hotel in the autumn of 1932, where Joe was one of the employers’ representatives, an agreement was hammered out covering wage levels, more loom systems and conciliation procedures. These all came into effect in January 1933 but by February certain firms were already breaking the “Midland” agreement and it was not until September 1933 when a county list was actually applied by law that relative peace returned to the industry.
Meanwhile, the James Nelson more loom scheme had been introduced and was working successfully from both the point of view of the operatives and the firm. As Amos pointed out in September 1933, it had been started as an experiment and, as was to be expected from such a wide-ranging trial, certain difficulties had been encountered. Certain production problems had been met, when warp stop motions were attached to looms weaving particular qualities for example. The biggest snag, though, proved to be implementing the undertaking that heads of families would be given the first chance of retraining onto eight loom setts. In practice, it was found that it was almost impossible to retrain male weavers over about 50 years of age to run this number of looms on the specialist sorts that were in production, and as the only weavers the union would allow to go on the scheme were, in practice, men over 50 the experiment got bogged down for a period. After several more months of negotiation, a new six-loom system was agreed, with these sort of operatives in mind, and put into effect in November 1933.
Taken as a whole, though, things had gone as well as could have been expected. Co operation within the mill was good and Amos had kept his word to the unions and the other manufacturers that he would only weave, on these setts, fabrics not predominantly being woven in Lancashire. This did not prevent a great deal of criticism coming his way from his fellow manufacturers. By some he was criticised, for paying too high wages and by others for producing fabric too cheaply on his more loom system. He felt that his critics could not have it both ways.
Encouraged by this success, Amos began to think on a grander scale about the problems facing the industry and, influenced no doubt by some of the reports of Time and Motion study, then in its early days, put forward an imaginative suggestion, which, he thought, would provide the basis for a lasting and acceptable new industry wide wage structure. The number of looms run would depend upon the amount of time taken to attend to the sort of cloth being woven; tests would be made to ascertain the number of breaks in the yarn, the number of times the loom stopped for lack of weft and the time necessary to get the loom started again. When these were agreed between management and union, the weaver could be loaded to that number of looms that would occupy him for between 45 and 50 minutes in the hour. Ten to fifteen minutes must be kept in reserve: -standing by time, he called it. He suggested a sliding scale for cloths, depending on the amount of skill they required, and suggested that there should be a guaranteed fall back wage of 66½% of the full wage irrespective of the number of looms running. The wage would be based upon the achievement of 85% efficiency. For every 1% below that figure down to 80% the weaver should lose approximately 0.5% and for every 1% over 85% the weaver should receive a bonus of approximately 3%.
The proposals seem to have been altogether too revolutionary. Nothing concrete was done about them for another twenty years.
The final irony of this depressing story of industrial confrontation, obstinacy and lack of imagination is that by 1937, four years after the last of the agreements had been reached, only 15% of the looms in the industry were working on the more loom system.
While one is tempted to feel, fifty years on, that the industry could have reached these agreements in a less self destructive manner, at least the cause of the strife was important, indeed vital to the industry. There were concurrently other less important causes of unrest of which the most irritating was the practice of fining. When these got beyond the point of being able to be settled at mill level, they were brought before joint meetings of the manufacturers and the unions involved. Amos, Joe and to a lesser extent James before them, all played their part as members of Nelson and District Manufacturers Association. To that we turn now.
