Backwords: Tradition Is The Watchword
Mike Shaw reveals that those West Riding mill masters of former days were as miserly with their words as they were with their cash.
There was no gold watch for my dad when he’d worked 50 years at the woollen mill just up the road.
So far as I know he didn’t get a few extra quid in his wage packet, either.
But he was given a reward of sorts. When the boss’s son was getting married, dad was chosen to be chairman at the handing over of a wedding present from the workers.
It was an honour he took so seriously that he spent hours writing and re-writing his speech on a few pages torn out of my school exercise book.
Dad wasn’t upset that he never got a gold watch, simply because he didn’t expect one. It wasn’t part of the firm’s traditions.
Traditions have always been important in the Colne Valley. Even more so in my father’s day than they are today.
It was a tradition that he took his dinner to the mill wrapped in a red and white spotted handkerchief.
It was a tradition that along with it went his daily ration of tea and sugar, in separate halves of a little oval tin with a lid at each end.
It was a tradition that the mill bosses were on first name terms with all their workers.
It was a tradition that the masters -- usually a family dynasty -- were all known to the workers as Mr Frank, Mr David or Mr John.
It was a tradition, in the bigger mills at least, that all big occasions -- like weddings and comings-of-age -- were celebrated with a day out at Blackpool by special train.
Weavers and warpers, spinners and scourers were all at the beck and call of the mill buzzers.
Long before our buzzer sounded, dad was up and about and always made sure I had my early morning milk before he clattered along the flags in his clogs.
At teatime I knew almost to the second when to dash out of the house and run down the lane to meet him on his short homeward walk from the mill.
Walking up the lane, hand in hand with father, is a memory that lingers clearly. Along with an even more memorable exchange of words with an acid-tongued neighbour.
It was coal delivery day and we had to pass the crotchety woman’s shed as she was shovelling up the remains of a newly delivered 10 bags.
“Bah gum, them are nice-looking coyls, what sooart are thi?” asked dad.
Back came her reply, quick at the proverbial lightning: “Black uns, what does ta think!”
A traditional quick-witted answer that for once left dad lost for words.
Much later in life, as a young reporter, I was to find out that most of the mill masters, if not exactly lost for words, had little to say for public consumption.
One wool baron in particular was notorious for his unwillingness to say anything about anything to do with his mill.
So I was completely taken aback one day when I turned up in his mill yard only minutes behind the fire engine, called because of a minor explosion in the generating room.
Within seconds of spotting me walking towards him, the usually taciturn mill master was explaining what had happened.
Perhaps he noticed the puzzled look on my face. Or the engineer at his elbow may have given him a nudge. Because suddenly he paused and said, “I do know you, don’t I? You’re from the electricity board.”
Guess what? As soon as I told him he was mistaken he took a deep breath…and said, “No comment.”
Yes, traditions die very hard up the valley.
