Recorded Memories

Bill Boggon Interview December 1997

Bill Boggon, Secretary of Hinckley and District Manufacturers Association: ‘It came home to the Union and their workers in this town that radical changes had to take place in working practices – companies started buying multi-feed machines’

‘desire of the people, working within the industry, to have as high a standard of living as possible…put their heads and produce as much as they could’

Another thing which Bill found remarkable was the predominance of a ‘car culture’ that didn’t exist in the north east’. His job as Secretary came with a car and at the age of 30 Bill couldn’t drive much to the amazement of colleagues – ‘you do drive don’t you?’ ‘No!’. Using first names was also common in Hinckley factories, except perhaps for members of the Atkins family, they had celebrated 250 years as the oldest established knitting manufacturers in the UK in 1972 and were known as Mr Arthur, Mr Jock, Mr Tom.

There was a downturn in industry with the introduction of tights as opposed to stockings in the mid to late 1960s. Industry in Hinckley had largely consisted of stocking manufacturers and knitwear and underwear had been a much lesser part of the Association but this subsequently changed and knitwear became more prevalent. At one time there had been talk of the Mansfield Association and Hinckley joining forces to form a National Stockings Association but never materialized. In order to adapt to changes taking place Hinckley manufacturers invested a lot of money in Italian machinery and later Japanese and German machinery and broke down resistance to workloads. Courtaulds took over a number of local companies during this time – P. Beasley’s & Company Ltd, a very healthy and prosperous company in those days – it doesn’t exist now; Percy Taylor Ltd, they made Penguin stockings – very prosperous. Courtaulds also took over three or four other factories. Some of these companies which were taken over by Courtaulds may still have been in existence today! Corah’s of Leicester took over Iway Hosiery which made Glamour Girl stockings and also Elite Hosiery – neither of these companies now exist. There was also an element of changing product - stockings to tights, manufacturers also diversified into leisure wear making tee shirts and other types of knitwear, underwear and fabric. Other companies such as Flude’s and Atkin’s added dyining to their range of options.

Bill believes during the 1960s and some years after wages paid in the knitting industry were more than the national average, acknowledging that good wages can still be earned (at time of interview). Indeed pre-war and post war good wages could be earned. This was due largely to the piece rate system and ‘desire of the people, working within the industry, to have as high a standard of living as possible. They had a different culture to the earning of wages than elsewhere – put their heads down and produced as much as they could’. There could, however, be spells of less than average earnings or no pay at all because of short time or bad trading conditions. Short time working still exists but because of legislation employees can be compensated for loss of earnings and there are guaranteed rates prescribed by law. Bill also believes that the knitting industry also has the most generous holiday pay arrangement – it is geared to give average earnings for all holidays. The percentage holiday pay is 14%.

Bill feels quite optimistic that the industry will survive and does have a future. Low cost importers are a recurring theme – to some extent [foreign] competitors will catch up in terms of wages and conditions of employment. A number of companies produce for a niche market – specialist products in smaller quantities. Always a need for a British base – perhaps the industry needs to become more adventurous, more design conscious. Most companies sell to stores and sell under the brand name of the store e.g St Michaels, BHS. There are a dozen or more big chainstores that dominate the market place. Some companies have been able to stand out against this domination and sell to inter-departmental stores. Companies who can break away from that dominance have a fair chance particularly in the export market. Some companies have gone under because they have lost their account with a particular chainstore. Warehouses are a thing of the past – the manufacturer has become the warehouse – the chainstore will order a certain amount of goods on ‘call off’ – the manufacture either has to keep them in stock or have the productive capacity available at short notice when the chainstore comes along – we want another 4-500 dozen of Y, X &Z.

The warehouse doesn’t exist anymore. Bill, remembers, while visiting Dan Styles at Atkins Brothers, an elderly Scotsman and Dan were negotiating and haggling about how many dozens of a particular style of stockings he was going to take up to Glasgow to put in his warehouse. He also commented that Peter Hall of HJ Hall & Sons had been chairman of the Textile Distributers Association (formerly the Wholesale Textile Association) – ‘he must have been into a bit of warehousing himself’. At one time warehousing was a vibrant industry.