Backwords: Mills And Hills
Mike Shaw recalls the boom years in his native Colne Valley when mills were humming round the clock, turning out miles and miles of woollen cloth.
An American visitor gazed at the factory chimneys belching out smoke over the Colne Valley and said with envy “There’s gold in them thar mills.’’
He wasn’t far off the truth at the time, either. It just goes to show how things changed with a vengeance in a generation.
No wonder the Valley’s youngsters of today have difficulty in realising exactly what the place was like 30 or 40 years ago.
Nowadays you’ll be lucky to find a lot of the mills that existed then, never mind any gold. The Midas touch has gone and taken most of the wool barons with it.
But it was all so different during the post-war boom of my teenage years. Those were the days of round-the-clock working and bags of overtime as virtually every mill turned out miles and miles of cloth a week.
When they weren’t busy counting the pound notes, the bosses were on the look-out for somewhere they could lay their hands on new workers.
Foreign labour didn’t just mean self-exiled Poles and Ukrainians. Much nearer home the mill-owners found another untapped source. From the South Yorkshire coalfield area they bussed in out-of-work young women by the hundred.
The mill girls from Barnsley were both brash and brassy. And they caused many a commotion in the weaving sheds and mulegates.
They were always ready to let their hair down. But Christmas was when they really painted the town red. They used loads of lipstick of the same colour, and many a lad was left in confusion and kissprints after being smothered by a mass embrace.
When the girls came out of the pubs at Slaithwaite after their Christmas booze-up nobody was safe from their clutches. Even the elderly church organist who lived near one of the mills once found himself pursued by the aproned hordes full of seasonal spirit.
There were even tales of local lads being smuggled aboard the Wallace Arnold buses and taken over to Barnsley for the night, to be brought back next morning dishevelled and wobbly at the knees.
But the good times were not to last for long - for either the mill-girls from Barnsley or their masters in Colne Valley. And when the rot did set in, the textile edifice crumbled faster than the Roman empire.
Not that everybody became rich, even in the halcyon days of massive order books and fat wage packets. My father must have been among the unlucky ones.
Like nearly all the rest of the valley’s textile men and women, he worked for a family firm, one of those whose names became famous all over the world. The Crowthers, Firths and Hirsts were at the hub of one of the great cloth-making centres.
My dad toiled hard and long at the same mill for 56 years. And he still hadn’t retired when he was called to the great weaving shed in the sky.
So far as I know, he didn’t get a gold watch for his long service. Or even an extra thank-you in his wage packet. But he was allowed to be the chairman when the workers presented the mill’s young master with a wedding present. That was his reward for being the longest-serving employee.
Now, as the textile remnants try to pick up the pieces, Colne Valley looks increasingly to cash from tourists to boost its flagging economy.
Our moorland scenery and colourful history seem to be powerful magnets these days to draw visitors from south of Watford and abroad.
It’s a pity that it has taken so long for the penny to drop. Curly Mallalieu, that lovable character who for so many years served Huddersfield as an MP, tried to press home the point nearly 20 years ago.
As a Board of Trade minister with responsibility for tourism he claimed that the Colne Valley had the ingredients to whet the appetite of tourists.
“If we can get rid of the dirt, particularly in the air, then the whole area could blossom into colour and become a super spot,’’ he told me in 1967.
His comments now seem almost prophetic as he said: “There is some glorious moorland walking country, the canal could be a good place for canoeing, and I think much greater use could be made of the reservoirs for things like boating or water-skiing.’’
The valley may well be on the receiving end of another Goldfinger’s touch. But any new-found wealth is more likely to come from them thar hills than the mills mentioned by my friend the Yank a few decades ago.
