The first week of November 2010 became an outstanding week. Today I woke at 4am, my usual time of 5 until the hour was changed and slept until just before 6am. It was an amazing drive along the coast to the Marriot Hotel for the morning swim. There was a jet black blanket of cloud, or so it seemed over the mainland except for above the coast road and between half as mile and a mile out to sea, when there appeared to be a new black mountain range. Overhead it was bright as if the dawn chosen to rise in a narrow band width to guide my journey. A little later the sun rose brightly leaving a frothy bank of cloud out to sea rising steeply from the water.
The week had also commenced with an early rising this time around 4.30 am although having put the clock back it had become 5.30 I had everything packed or prepared for packing overnight so was ready for a swim arriving around 6.30. I restricted the swim to 40 lengths as the pool became busy with the usual early risers mixing with those who arrived an hour later as the body clock had not adjusted to Winter time. By the end of the week I have completed 5 swims, the average over the first 15 weeks, just under 49 lengths and 729 metres a visit.
I longed for a cup of coffee and some food and called in at a McDonalds just before the Boro, enjoying breakfast role and coffee before a horde of young people arrived dressed for a Halloween party and then I realised they were Newcastle supporters. They formed an excited queue much to the horror of the next arrivals who appreciated they would have to wait many minutes before being served.
The early cold weather had brought a rich autumnal browning to the trees but the extent of the colouring made the journey a rare treat, an enjoyable three hour drive. The disappointment of the week was the quality of the lunch. I visit three village restaurants in the countryside between Nottingham Newark and Mansfield. One serves the help yourself fixed price roast. The other, my favourite, serves a two course meal for two for £8. I usually choose a gammon with egg followed by an apple crumble with custard. The car park was extraordinarily full on arrival just before midday on Monday when usually there are no more than two or three vehicles waiting for the opening. The County Council appeared to have booked the conference room as a hot buffet meal was already waiting for about thirty young women who were crowding in on the bar. Their well prepared for presence did not affect the quality of service for my meal.
This brings me to the third converted village Inn which over the past three years had been transformed into a quality restaurant also offering a fixed price three course menu which ranges from £14 to £18 a head depending on your age and choice of main course. Mine host, the Mrs, and her husband the Chef were missing perhaps working on their new venture, driven out by a doubling of the rent. The team which had taken over from them are a disaster. The bar staff more interested in their young lives than the guests and the main course awful with the meat tough and vegetables under cooked. I did enjoy the chosen starter of a liver pate but had to settle for pancakes with sharp stewed apples and a difficult to find taste of the promised toffee, with a lump of standard ice cream rather than the delicious home made bread and butter pudding that I had hoped for.
One reason for combining use of my home exercise machine with swims on five days is that I have been enjoying tubs of Ben and Jerry chocolate fudge ice cream at a third of its usual price under special offer at Morrison’s. On my way to Newcastle by Metro on Friday I was able to read the notice at the new Morrison’s being developed from the Wall Mart Azda building part way down my hill, vacant for the past year, since moving to its purpose designed premises on the other side of the Town Centre. It will open on Nov 22nd and will also have a cafe as well as fish and meat butchers. There will be three Morrison Supermarkets within a radius of six miles plus the Azda and a Tesco, two Lidl’s and a Sainsbury local. There may be significant unemployment and above average dependents on welfare in the area but the food tills keep ringing.
This morning at the pool in addition to the spectacular sunrise there was the boost of the full weekend content to the Daily Telegraph, Usually there is just the main paper which on Saturday’s incorporates business news plus the sports section. Today there was the full works, including the first of the seven part Century of Warfare DVD’s. In addition there was a £5 voucher for Body Shop, the weekend review, the glossy magazine, two sales catalogues and among other sections, one on property which commenced with an article about a journalist who pretended he had £15 million to buy a new home in central London, and was disappointed at the value which was on offer.
The purpose of the visit to Newcastle on Friday was to see the film Made in Dagenham at the Tyneside Film Theatre which has become one of the most attractive Independent Cinemas although I admit I only know about a dozen of the over 500 members of the European union of such ventures.
The film portrays the all out strike initiated by 151 women directly employed by Ford UK to sewing machine stitch the car seats covers for all the vehicles produced at the huge Dagenham plant in 1968. It is important to remember the culture which existed at the time. Harold Wilson was in power and Barbara Castle as the Minister in charge of government involvement in Industrial relations. Trade Unions controlled the government, industry and the economic position of the UK in the world. There were over 25000 thousand strikes in one year, and relations between management and unions within the Ford UK were the worst. The approach of Henry Ford II was to pick up the phone to the Prime Minister of the Day and remind that his company could shift his plant to another country if things became too bad, putting out of work 40000 direct employees and ten of thousands of others who supplied parts and services.
Unions and management were run by men for men. Less than thirty years after World War 2 when women had done the work, including heavy industrial work of men, most men thought the place of a married woman was in the home looking after children and her husband and if she went to work it was for extras for the family. With the consent of the Union, the women had been persuaded to be placed on a lower new grade with rendered them as unskilled instead of semi skilled although union official and management were unable to undertake the work without training and experience. The women had been expected to be placed higher on the new scale and were in receipt of a percentage of what a man received on the same point on the scale. They were incensed about this and agreed to a ban on overtime and a token 24 hour strike. The management response was to threaten dismissal so the women went on an all out strike and when the supply of car seat covers ended all the men at the plant were laid off as were those at the Ford plant in Liverpool where the women undertaking the same work or the same revised grade also joined in.
The film, created by the same team who brought the Full Monty and Calendar girls concentrates on the lives of three of the striking women, two union officials, the head of the Ford plant and his wife and the representative of Henry Ford who travels to the UK. The elected shop steward for the women is married to a World War II veteran who has ongoing mental health problems with physical consequences. She willingly gives up her position to a colleague who quickly shows she has the conviction and the aptitude to lead her colleagues and it is she that initiates the all out action. She has a loving working class home life whose husband also works at the plant and therefore the family income is reduced to strike pay. The film shows the reality of strike action on a family as the husband struggles to look after the children. While his wife is involved in meetings, rallies and the picket line. The support of the male workers quickly ebbs when they are laid off and when the husband of the original shop steward commits suicide, she blames the strike for what ahs happened to him. The third strikes is young and sexy and who has the figure to become a model. She is photographed on site for a brochure advertising the car on the understanding she returns to work. She is persuaded to remain on strike by her colleagues although her one ambition is to become a model.
The release of the film prompted the BBC and some newspapers to contact those who had participated and one complaint is that the film sexed up the situation, unsurprising for the creator of the Full Monty and Calendar girls. Because they work in a sweat shop some of the girls strip down to underclothing something which in fact did not occur in the actual factory unit. However the sexual banter between the women and any man coming on site is real enough as I remember from being a twenty one year old on a bus fill with young women off their shift on Clydebank in the early 1860’s.
The two main union officials are contrasting characters. The local convenor is a kindly character played by Bob Hoskins who not just supports the cause but encourages the women to press for equal pay. When asked why he takes such a position, he explains that he was brought up by his mother who had to undertake several jobs to provide a him because she was paid half that of men undertaking the same work. The regional union man is a position taker enjoying the good meals, travel, hotel and foreign travel which comes with being a union official. He is used to doing deals with management and then putting the best light on concessions. He wants to agree with putting off the strike when with Bob and the two women representatives they meet management and he also wants to call it a day, along with senior union officials, after the one day strike takes place. He is then blackmailed into supporting efforts to end the strike by the visiting USA chief who had got hold of his personnel file. All major companies create or buy information on potential trouble making employees and on competitors, using various commercial and sometime secret organisations who gather up the information for them, and for governments.
It is the Bob Hoskins character who educates the girls about the tactics of the union as well as the bosses. His masterstroke is to arrange for the girls to attend the national executive of the union when it is discussing making the dispute an official one. He also takes a back seat when the Minister, Barbara Castle, played by Miranda Richardson intervenes and invites a representative group to meet her over a cup of tea. In the film she provides alcoholic refreshment although in fact she did open the drinks cabinet after the press had departed from her office.
Ford, unlike General Motors was noted for its hostility to the unions and a take it or leave approach to negotiation. According to the film what first tips the scales in favour of the strikers is the chance meeting between the appointed strike leader and the wife of the Dagenham Managing Director. The strike leader is at the local grammar school to complain to a master who has canned her son to over not bringing in his protractor into class one day. The wife of the managing Director is there for the same purpose ad she tracks down the parent to sign a letter of protest to the head teacher and which in turn leads to the master being dismissed. The man is presented as a social snob and a bully, much like the French Master at my school who beat me, although it was other parents which saw him disappear a couple of days later.
When later she realises that the mother is also the strike leader she calls to give her support saying that she obtained a first class degree from one of the best universities but is treated by her husband as a moron. The is a great scene in which the visiting US Director, invited to dinner, asks for her opinion, and she draws a parallel between the approaches of Ford’s and Universal Motors and is quickly sent by the husband for the cheese and biscuits.
The film ends with an apparent victory although in fact they remained on the same inferior scale for a decade and although they were given an equal opportunity uprating this was to 92%. It did enable Mrs Castle to get an Equal Pay Act on the Statute book two years later and the film suggests that progress was only made because Henry Ford successfully bullied the Prime Minister as his representative tried to bully Mrs Castle, she held firm, in part because she could not contact Harold Wilson at one vital moment and took the decision without him. Employers with government help have found ways to bypass the legislation ever since.
Then there was trade union anarchy with disgraceful agreements in which men were sometimes paid overtime when their work had been completed earlier in the week. Now a days financial consortia buy and sell firms for instant profit, transferring manufacturing where labour is the cheapest and the most reliable, China and India being the best examples. Barbara Castle’s attempt to regulate and modernise, In Place of Strife failed. Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan brought their Winter’s of discontent and only Margaret Thatcher succeeded in creating a more balance relationship which Tony Blair managed to keep, despite the pressure from the Unions and within his Party to bring back their power.
I enjoyed the film which was shown on the same floor as the new bar where I enjoyed a small glass of Merlot and a packet of crisps for lunch, having had an early start cooked breakfast and coffee at the supermarket after the swim and enjoying a copy of the Tyneside daily, the Journal which I have not bought for several months , if not this past year, relying on the free Metro Newspaper, which I also obtained beforehand. On the journey I noted that a new covered stand has been built at the Gateshead stadium, used for Athletics, Rugby and American Football. I must go into Newcastle more often, and the walking will do me good.
The sporting even event the week was the victory of Tottenham Hotspur over the European Champions Inter Milan with a worldwide football performance from their left wing back Gareth Bale, who has speed, the ability to change pace and to cross the ball onto the heads and feet of his forwards with match winning regularity. His value has been catapulted into the stratosphere. He, if not his value, and his team were then brought down to earth at lunchtime, with a defeat at Bolton, a bread and butter team. The Spurs never got into first gear. Passes went astray and the forwards failed to make use of several excellent opportunities present by both their wingers.
The Tyne Wear Derby also took place on Sunday as midday but I was able to see the whole of the second half live and the first recorded. In the past I have been loyal to the club for which I held the season ticket or was watching some home games. This was the first year where I had not strong feelings about the outcome and thought a draw was the most likely outcome. I did not anticipate what happened as Newcastle thrashed Sunderland 5.1, the biggest margin of Victory for over 50 years. I gather the Leisure club was empty on Monday morning as the predominately Sunderland supporters were either still in mourning or unable to face the taunts of those supporting Newcastle.
The week had also commenced with an early rising this time around 4.30 am although having put the clock back it had become 5.30 I had everything packed or prepared for packing overnight so was ready for a swim arriving around 6.30. I restricted the swim to 40 lengths as the pool became busy with the usual early risers mixing with those who arrived an hour later as the body clock had not adjusted to Winter time. By the end of the week I have completed 5 swims, the average over the first 15 weeks, just under 49 lengths and 729 metres a visit.
I longed for a cup of coffee and some food and called in at a McDonalds just before the Boro, enjoying breakfast role and coffee before a horde of young people arrived dressed for a Halloween party and then I realised they were Newcastle supporters. They formed an excited queue much to the horror of the next arrivals who appreciated they would have to wait many minutes before being served.
The early cold weather had brought a rich autumnal browning to the trees but the extent of the colouring made the journey a rare treat, an enjoyable three hour drive. The disappointment of the week was the quality of the lunch. I visit three village restaurants in the countryside between Nottingham Newark and Mansfield. One serves the help yourself fixed price roast. The other, my favourite, serves a two course meal for two for £8. I usually choose a gammon with egg followed by an apple crumble with custard. The car park was extraordinarily full on arrival just before midday on Monday when usually there are no more than two or three vehicles waiting for the opening. The County Council appeared to have booked the conference room as a hot buffet meal was already waiting for about thirty young women who were crowding in on the bar. Their well prepared for presence did not affect the quality of service for my meal.
This brings me to the third converted village Inn which over the past three years had been transformed into a quality restaurant also offering a fixed price three course menu which ranges from £14 to £18 a head depending on your age and choice of main course. Mine host, the Mrs, and her husband the Chef were missing perhaps working on their new venture, driven out by a doubling of the rent. The team which had taken over from them are a disaster. The bar staff more interested in their young lives than the guests and the main course awful with the meat tough and vegetables under cooked. I did enjoy the chosen starter of a liver pate but had to settle for pancakes with sharp stewed apples and a difficult to find taste of the promised toffee, with a lump of standard ice cream rather than the delicious home made bread and butter pudding that I had hoped for.
One reason for combining use of my home exercise machine with swims on five days is that I have been enjoying tubs of Ben and Jerry chocolate fudge ice cream at a third of its usual price under special offer at Morrison’s. On my way to Newcastle by Metro on Friday I was able to read the notice at the new Morrison’s being developed from the Wall Mart Azda building part way down my hill, vacant for the past year, since moving to its purpose designed premises on the other side of the Town Centre. It will open on Nov 22nd and will also have a cafe as well as fish and meat butchers. There will be three Morrison Supermarkets within a radius of six miles plus the Azda and a Tesco, two Lidl’s and a Sainsbury local. There may be significant unemployment and above average dependents on welfare in the area but the food tills keep ringing.
This morning at the pool in addition to the spectacular sunrise there was the boost of the full weekend content to the Daily Telegraph, Usually there is just the main paper which on Saturday’s incorporates business news plus the sports section. Today there was the full works, including the first of the seven part Century of Warfare DVD’s. In addition there was a £5 voucher for Body Shop, the weekend review, the glossy magazine, two sales catalogues and among other sections, one on property which commenced with an article about a journalist who pretended he had £15 million to buy a new home in central London, and was disappointed at the value which was on offer.
The purpose of the visit to Newcastle on Friday was to see the film Made in Dagenham at the Tyneside Film Theatre which has become one of the most attractive Independent Cinemas although I admit I only know about a dozen of the over 500 members of the European union of such ventures.
The film portrays the all out strike initiated by 151 women directly employed by Ford UK to sewing machine stitch the car seats covers for all the vehicles produced at the huge Dagenham plant in 1968. It is important to remember the culture which existed at the time. Harold Wilson was in power and Barbara Castle as the Minister in charge of government involvement in Industrial relations. Trade Unions controlled the government, industry and the economic position of the UK in the world. There were over 25000 thousand strikes in one year, and relations between management and unions within the Ford UK were the worst. The approach of Henry Ford II was to pick up the phone to the Prime Minister of the Day and remind that his company could shift his plant to another country if things became too bad, putting out of work 40000 direct employees and ten of thousands of others who supplied parts and services.
Unions and management were run by men for men. Less than thirty years after World War 2 when women had done the work, including heavy industrial work of men, most men thought the place of a married woman was in the home looking after children and her husband and if she went to work it was for extras for the family. With the consent of the Union, the women had been persuaded to be placed on a lower new grade with rendered them as unskilled instead of semi skilled although union official and management were unable to undertake the work without training and experience. The women had been expected to be placed higher on the new scale and were in receipt of a percentage of what a man received on the same point on the scale. They were incensed about this and agreed to a ban on overtime and a token 24 hour strike. The management response was to threaten dismissal so the women went on an all out strike and when the supply of car seat covers ended all the men at the plant were laid off as were those at the Ford plant in Liverpool where the women undertaking the same work or the same revised grade also joined in.
The film, created by the same team who brought the Full Monty and Calendar girls concentrates on the lives of three of the striking women, two union officials, the head of the Ford plant and his wife and the representative of Henry Ford who travels to the UK. The elected shop steward for the women is married to a World War II veteran who has ongoing mental health problems with physical consequences. She willingly gives up her position to a colleague who quickly shows she has the conviction and the aptitude to lead her colleagues and it is she that initiates the all out action. She has a loving working class home life whose husband also works at the plant and therefore the family income is reduced to strike pay. The film shows the reality of strike action on a family as the husband struggles to look after the children. While his wife is involved in meetings, rallies and the picket line. The support of the male workers quickly ebbs when they are laid off and when the husband of the original shop steward commits suicide, she blames the strike for what ahs happened to him. The third strikes is young and sexy and who has the figure to become a model. She is photographed on site for a brochure advertising the car on the understanding she returns to work. She is persuaded to remain on strike by her colleagues although her one ambition is to become a model.
The release of the film prompted the BBC and some newspapers to contact those who had participated and one complaint is that the film sexed up the situation, unsurprising for the creator of the Full Monty and Calendar girls. Because they work in a sweat shop some of the girls strip down to underclothing something which in fact did not occur in the actual factory unit. However the sexual banter between the women and any man coming on site is real enough as I remember from being a twenty one year old on a bus fill with young women off their shift on Clydebank in the early 1860’s.
The two main union officials are contrasting characters. The local convenor is a kindly character played by Bob Hoskins who not just supports the cause but encourages the women to press for equal pay. When asked why he takes such a position, he explains that he was brought up by his mother who had to undertake several jobs to provide a him because she was paid half that of men undertaking the same work. The regional union man is a position taker enjoying the good meals, travel, hotel and foreign travel which comes with being a union official. He is used to doing deals with management and then putting the best light on concessions. He wants to agree with putting off the strike when with Bob and the two women representatives they meet management and he also wants to call it a day, along with senior union officials, after the one day strike takes place. He is then blackmailed into supporting efforts to end the strike by the visiting USA chief who had got hold of his personnel file. All major companies create or buy information on potential trouble making employees and on competitors, using various commercial and sometime secret organisations who gather up the information for them, and for governments.
It is the Bob Hoskins character who educates the girls about the tactics of the union as well as the bosses. His masterstroke is to arrange for the girls to attend the national executive of the union when it is discussing making the dispute an official one. He also takes a back seat when the Minister, Barbara Castle, played by Miranda Richardson intervenes and invites a representative group to meet her over a cup of tea. In the film she provides alcoholic refreshment although in fact she did open the drinks cabinet after the press had departed from her office.
Ford, unlike General Motors was noted for its hostility to the unions and a take it or leave approach to negotiation. According to the film what first tips the scales in favour of the strikers is the chance meeting between the appointed strike leader and the wife of the Dagenham Managing Director. The strike leader is at the local grammar school to complain to a master who has canned her son to over not bringing in his protractor into class one day. The wife of the managing Director is there for the same purpose ad she tracks down the parent to sign a letter of protest to the head teacher and which in turn leads to the master being dismissed. The man is presented as a social snob and a bully, much like the French Master at my school who beat me, although it was other parents which saw him disappear a couple of days later.
When later she realises that the mother is also the strike leader she calls to give her support saying that she obtained a first class degree from one of the best universities but is treated by her husband as a moron. The is a great scene in which the visiting US Director, invited to dinner, asks for her opinion, and she draws a parallel between the approaches of Ford’s and Universal Motors and is quickly sent by the husband for the cheese and biscuits.
The film ends with an apparent victory although in fact they remained on the same inferior scale for a decade and although they were given an equal opportunity uprating this was to 92%. It did enable Mrs Castle to get an Equal Pay Act on the Statute book two years later and the film suggests that progress was only made because Henry Ford successfully bullied the Prime Minister as his representative tried to bully Mrs Castle, she held firm, in part because she could not contact Harold Wilson at one vital moment and took the decision without him. Employers with government help have found ways to bypass the legislation ever since.
Then there was trade union anarchy with disgraceful agreements in which men were sometimes paid overtime when their work had been completed earlier in the week. Now a days financial consortia buy and sell firms for instant profit, transferring manufacturing where labour is the cheapest and the most reliable, China and India being the best examples. Barbara Castle’s attempt to regulate and modernise, In Place of Strife failed. Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan brought their Winter’s of discontent and only Margaret Thatcher succeeded in creating a more balance relationship which Tony Blair managed to keep, despite the pressure from the Unions and within his Party to bring back their power.
I enjoyed the film which was shown on the same floor as the new bar where I enjoyed a small glass of Merlot and a packet of crisps for lunch, having had an early start cooked breakfast and coffee at the supermarket after the swim and enjoying a copy of the Tyneside daily, the Journal which I have not bought for several months , if not this past year, relying on the free Metro Newspaper, which I also obtained beforehand. On the journey I noted that a new covered stand has been built at the Gateshead stadium, used for Athletics, Rugby and American Football. I must go into Newcastle more often, and the walking will do me good.
The sporting even event the week was the victory of Tottenham Hotspur over the European Champions Inter Milan with a worldwide football performance from their left wing back Gareth Bale, who has speed, the ability to change pace and to cross the ball onto the heads and feet of his forwards with match winning regularity. His value has been catapulted into the stratosphere. He, if not his value, and his team were then brought down to earth at lunchtime, with a defeat at Bolton, a bread and butter team. The Spurs never got into first gear. Passes went astray and the forwards failed to make use of several excellent opportunities present by both their wingers.
The Tyne Wear Derby also took place on Sunday as midday but I was able to see the whole of the second half live and the first recorded. In the past I have been loyal to the club for which I held the season ticket or was watching some home games. This was the first year where I had not strong feelings about the outcome and thought a draw was the most likely outcome. I did not anticipate what happened as Newcastle thrashed Sunderland 5.1, the biggest margin of Victory for over 50 years. I gather the Leisure club was empty on Monday morning as the predominately Sunderland supporters were either still in mourning or unable to face the taunts of those supporting Newcastle.
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