When Bill came to work as Secretary, the Association was known as Hinckley and District Hosiery Manufacturers Association and in the 1970s changed to Hinckley and District Knitting Industry Association – the word hosiery being a generic term. Other related organisations also changed their titles – the Hosiery Trade Journal became Knitting International, the National Hosiery Manufacturer’s Federation became the Knitting Industries Federation. The Unions also dropped the name Hosiery hence – the Hinckley Asssociation, the North of England Association, the Leicester Association and so on. All affiliated to the Knitting Industries Federation. About 20 years ago the Scottish Association disassociated itself from England; Nottingham and Mansfield Associations combined; the North of England and the South of England and Leek Associations vanished from the face of the earth and the Federation eventually took over the Leicester Association. At time of interview (December 1997) only two autonomous bodies left – Hinckley Industries Federation and Hinckley Association which has 29 members.

Hinckley and District Knitting Industry Association is largely an employer body rather than a trade body and deals with industrial relations, collective agreements on wages and conditions, settling of factory floor disputes, advising on dismissal procedure, health and safety, redundancies and so on. In 1960 the law relating to employment was very sparse – we had a Trade Disputes Act of 1960, the Factories Act which was codified and the Trucks Acts which was set up at the end of nineteenth century to make it illegal for an employer to pay in kind rather than the coin of the realm. In the early 1960s there was a ‘real explosion of employment legislation’ – Redundancy Payments Act, Contracts of Employment Act, Industrial Training Act which became the Protection of Employment Act. Then all sorts of legislation which had their origins in Europe and hardly a year went by when there wasn’t a new act of Parliament covering employment matters of some sort – Sex Discrimination, Race Discrimination, Equal Pay, Disability Discrimination, Health and Safety as well as updating and changing. Up to this day negotions are still made through the National Joint Industrial Council.

During the early 1960s all companies involved in the production of ladies fine gauge stockings were badly hit by Italian imports. The Italians had developed multi-feed machines – 2-feed, 4-feed and 6-feed. The Association sent a delegation across to Italy and on their return presented a report on their findings and it’s Bill’s belief that this visit ‘revolutionised’ the local industry – radical changes had to be made and companies started buying multi-feed machines, it was also essential to break-down employee resistance to working flexible work-loads, prior to this, agreements existed whereby, for instance, 10 B5s only could be worked and paid 1¼d per dozen. These work practices were broken down and consequently individual factories did their own deals with their own workers as to what rates and wages were to be paid. Wage values were introduced and an employee was paid a particular wage against a particular machine efficiency e.g £100 a week for 90% efficiency.

Another ‘revolution’ which took place in the 1960s was the countering of women’s stockings – this procedure was an entirely a male preserve – they had their own union Hinckley and District Counterman’s Association, unique to Hinckley. Countermen as they were known paired and folded women’s stockings – this male preserve was broken down by the Industrial Court in London and women were given the job of pairing and folding stockings. At this time employing females was an advantage because they were paid less and it was socially acceptable – for instance pay increase to men could be 4s 3d per week and a woman would receive 2s 9d per week. Although there is now equal pay there is still a measure of inequality in the jobs that women do and men do! During the mid to late 1960s the mini-skirt emerged – hence the tights industry rather than the stocking industry.

Bill left the Association in 1975 and became Group Personnel Director at Richard Roberts Holdings Ltd, this was also when the 1975 Employment Protection Act was implemented – a huge piece of legislation introduced by Michael Foot. In 1979 he became Secretary of the Leicester and District Knitting Industries Association(?) where he stayed until his retirement in 1993 and then persuaded to come back to Hinckley to ‘mind the shop’ on a part time basis.

One of the first things Bill noticed when he took up his position in Hinckley was that work colleagues addressed each other by their first names, this did not happen in the north east – ‘there was a certain equality and informality’ which Bill hadn’t encountered before. The other thing was the predominance of female employment, not only single women but married women and married women with children who worked in the factories. In the north east there was a culture of women leaving employment on their marriage and certainly when they had children, although it was becoming more acceptable to continue work after marriage.