General Gordon's family and convalescent home?

I wonder if any of your members can help me with information related to my family history research. It relates to Woolwich rather than Greenwich but I hope this is not too much of an obstacle.

What I am looking for is this:

Does anyone know if a member of General Gordon (of Khartoum)'s family was running a convalescent home for military patients in Woolwich around 1879?

I believe that Mrs Hawthorn, nee Dow, a member of the Enderby family, was campaigning against the neglect and ill-treatment of patients in military hospitals around that time, and I wondered if it might be her.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Yours sincerely

Dugald Macleod

The decline of Matchless/AJS motorcycles, Woolwich

The decline of Matchless/AJS motorcycles and the rise of Honda
by Dave Ramsey

My paternal families the Ramseys and the Terrells have lived and prospered in Woolwich and Plumstead since the early 1800s. In a blue collar sense they derived prosperity from the innovative factories of the area and lived in a variety of pleasant rented Victorian terraced houses.

My father worked in the heavy gun factory at Woolwich Arsenal but my parents kept me on at grammar school, which he could ill afford, because they saw that poor management and underinvestment was leading to industrial decline. I can remember dad’s prophetic advice that the government was going to let the gun factory demise and that I should decline any job offers there. He evidenced this by showing me one of the huge lathe machines with its instruction typed into the metal in Cyrillic Russian. It had been destined for the Tsar’s Russia but the revolution changed its location to Woolwich and the piece of antiquarian interest was still the mainstay of production 45 years later. This was fairly typical of the lack of investment in riparian Woolwich factories from where 70000 jobs were lost between 1965 and 1975.

The Matchless AJS motorcycle factory was of interest to me because I passed it most days to go to school. The father of a friend worked there as a skilled project engineer and his Triumph Tiger was refurbished there during lunch breaks. The lack of management control, the boredom and lack of creative expression amongst the workforce speaks volumes about the underlying management problems that appeared in the early 1960s.

A look at the two photos below shows the differences of both of scale, industrial organisation and investment. It also shows the company director astride a motor bike touring the factory talking and smiling with the workers.

Soichiro Honda had invested time in his personal development as an engineer, taking up technical college to develop better piston rings, and also showing skill in identifying essential management talents he lacked but in appointing talent to fill the gap. His 1949 appointment of Takeo Fujisawa as managing director was one of these. Honda recognised that the collapse of the market in 1953 after the end of the Korean War. He identified that working people needed a cheap way to get to work and produced the Cub clip on engine for cycles to ensure Honda’s survival, by generating cash flow and keeping the skilled workforce together.

In 1956 the Norton Range consisted of a 500cc and 600cc dominator machines. They were designed in 1948 by Bert Hopwood, Norton MD from 1958, who recognised his signature on the production drawing in the 1956 production line. It had been stopped to allow for manufacturing improvements to the cams but they clearly had not been made. The loss of these production years represented profits forgone.

Alec Skinner, the finance director at Norton, devised a sound but simple early warning system at Norton, as a bank overdraft facility was not available to them. Skinner produced finance, production, labour and stock control figures for the Board and production unit alike. Alec’s simple little sheet of paper gave management all the necessary information to make the right decisions.

The AMC board at Woolwich introduced a complex and unsuitable cost control system, possibly similar to one used by ICI, intended to be used across the AMC company, Norton, Matchless/ AJS, James and Francis Barnet. It was data hungry, slow and unresponsive to the immediate needs of managers to control cash flow, stock and labour. Norton maintained its simpler faster system, probably leading to its continued success. Because of its simplicity, staff across the “coal face” understood it without explanation so lead to more responsive reaction to problems as they emerged, improving Norton efficiency.

Matchless hid behind import duties until the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs swept them aside in 1959. By this time Honda had well established products with excellent engineering and sold 500,000 a year of these in 1959, when it launched into the American market. The quantity and quality of Matchless machines didn’t bear comparison. Bill Cakebread and Alan Jones believe the AJS Matchless annual production to have been 20,000 PA and Bert Hopwood believed Norton to be 10,000.

Norton designed 250cc and 125cc light weight bikes with 90% commonality of parts but the AMC rejected the idea. This is sad as the maximum engine capacity for a provisional license was 250cc after 1962. This may have let Honda into the young market and this people would have progressed to Hondas larger machines rather than AMC. A similar fate befell the one piece engine design for the heavyweight 250cc.

AMC was in fact five companies striving to produce their own range of motor bikes in competition with each other. Honda was one company with superb management leadership producing one unified range of motor bikes. Attempts by AMC to introduce commonality of parts were not successful, like the decision to replace the Villiers engines in Frances Barnet and James with new inferior ones manufactured at Woolwich. The decision by AMC to create its own dealership network in the USA was a costly mistake; Norton simply used the Berliner distribution network used by Ducati to sell its machines with great success. The risk of sales but also profits was born by Berliner, so Norton made a small profit but increased production, reduced unit costs and ironed out seasonal fluctuations in the UK market.

Honda was re-investing its substantial profits in the business while Matchless took profits that didn’t really exist, without investing in modernisation. Matchless had investors, creditors and banks to satisfy, Honda didn’t. During the post war recovery period, Japanese manufacturers were typically investing 30% of profits into its industry.

AMC, with its head office at Woolwich, used profits from Norton and Francis Barnet to bolster the flagging fortunes of AJS/ Matchless. In 1961 Norton was doing well with sales, particularly in the USA. It needed to expand production so was just about to buy a nearby factory, when AMC called in the £250,000 profit to cover a financial crisis at Woolwich. The Norton expansion did not take place and the potential profits from expanded production were forgone. This may have saved the AMC organisation had the right decisions been made.

The Japanese culture of looking after the workforce and massive industrial investment supported by a caring banking sector reaped its own success. In the 60s the Wilson Government tried to encourage replication of this model in the UK but was let down by a lack of desire to bring about a co-ordination with industry by the investment sector. And industrial leaders alike. A closer relationship between bankers and the industry would have revealed that the Norton financial control mechanisms and innovative bike and production design were head and shoulders above Matchless. Appropriate remedial action could have been taken much earlier.

With the failure of the manufacturing base at Woolwich and other Thames-side quality lead to the total destruction of the working class aristocracy that had given such stability and prosperity to East and South East London. The skilled young men emigrated to the old Commonwealth and elsewhere allowing prosperity to develop in those countries.

Conclusions

• AMC bought Norton in 1954 because of its wining habit in TT races.
• The take over seemed to have stultified Norton machine, production and marketing innovation.
• The Norton advertising advantage wasn’t pressed home across the whole of AMC
• Profits from James mc, Francis Barnet mc, and Norton mc were used to bolster AJS/Matchless less than sparkling performance.
• The Norton subsidiary couldn’t borrow money from banks because of the AMC group’s poor credit rating.
• Norton’s innovative one piece engine designs for its 125cc and 250cc with 90% commonality of parts, reduced oil leaks and production costs.
• The Honda advertising slogan “you are never alone on a Honda” lead their marketing campaign to sell machines to non motor cyclists who simply wanted to get to work. Freedom from oil leaks allowed this as people could keep clean without specialist clothes.
• Norton survived beyond the AMC collapse, and went on to develop a 160 MPH machine loved by police forces for their speed and safety. But the investment money wasn’t there to develop it.


DR, Sunday, 04 July 2010

Kidbrooke School and the Dome of Discovery

Notes in 'Festival Times' that the original beams of the Dome of Discovery were hidden away in a Greenwich School sent me scurrying off to find out – was it true? A look through the local papers for Greenwich in 1951-3 made me pretty sure it wasn't true because there was no coverage of the story at all but there was something else. – there were stories of the enormous new school started in Kidbrooke in April 1951. Although its vast hall was actually planned before the Festival of Britain and before the Festival Hall, it has been compared with them in both style and scale – and it is easy to understand how the story of the beams began.

I am not really sure if the school is really anything to do with the Festival but I am writing to tell Festival Times about it because, apart from the story of the beams, it really has something to say to us about the early 1950s. The school was the first purpose built comprehensive school, originally for girls only. It was on a scale not seen before – for 2,000 girls and with huge range of special features (i.e. 5 gymnasia!). They hold huge scrapbooks of their press coverage over the years – and it is fascinating to read the hostile stories in the press when the school opened in 1954 and the constant barrage of critical stories in the tabloid press of the day. Nevertheless it has survived and along with the educational ideas which marked it out, it is rapidly being realised that it is a treasure of early 1950s architecture. The present management is doing the best it can to see that original features are preserved and, in some cases restored.

The school scrapbooks also contain articles from the technical press, which detail the construction methods and materials in a great deal of detail. The copper domed school hall today stands out above the surrounding suburban housing – inside it is, understandably, a bit worn, but the integrity of the underlying design shines through. The dome is, however, not really like the Dome of Discovery. A series of articles was written about the roof by B.K.Chatterjee, who was one of the engineers involved – who was he, and what happened to him? Work by an Asian engineer on such a major building must have been very unusual at the time. The architects of the building were Slater, Uren and Pike and the consulting engineers were Ove Arup.

Mary Mills

This article was originally published by the Festival of Britain Society

Woolwich Antiquarians

Woolwich and District Antiquarians
Notice of the sad death of their Secretary, Audrey Walker, killed by a car at Blackheath Standard on 23rd September. Audrey organised coach trips for the Antiquarians and will be sadly missed.

Future meetings for the Antiquarians:

Statues and Memorials around Woolwich. Jim Marrett 20th October
The National Trust Neptune Coastline campaign. Peter Jones 27th November
The Woolwich Free Ferry. Andy Griffiths, Transport for London. 29th January
The London Underground. David Brown. 19th February
All at 2 pm at Charlton House

Strike at United Glass, Charlton

At the September GIHS meeting we had a talk by Scott Reeve about a strike at the Charlton United Glass works in 1960. Here is an article on which his talk was based.


The Anatomy of a Strike

At 11 am on Friday the 12th, February 1960 the Manager, Mr Morris, of the United Glass Bottles factory in Charlton, S.E London thought he could improve industrial relations in the factory by talking directly to the workers in one of the factory’s shops. The shop he chose was the shop whose steward, Mr Morton, was Chairman of the Shop Stewards’ Committee We do not know what he wanted to say to his employees but it must have been connected with the national engineering unions’ claim for a cut in the working week and a substantial increase in wages. The unions meeting in York on the 11th of February accepted the National employer’s offer of a cut in the working week from 44 to 42 hours but no increase in wages. The Shop Stewards Committee at UGB consequently ended the workers working to rule in support of the national claim on the morning of the 12th of February.

Walk out
We do not know what he intended to say because the men did not attend the meeting but carried on working. Again he sent instructions to the workers to come along and listen to his wise words. Again no one turned up. He then sacked with one hours notice Wally Morton the shop steward who he blamed for the workers not attending his meeting. By noon on the same day all work had stopped at the factory as practically all the firm’s 1,400 workers had walked out in support of the Chair of their shop Stewards Committee.

The Shop Stewards established a strike committee with Les Doust an AEU UGB Worker and a senior official of the South London AEU as its chairman. In addition he was a well known Communist. They organised a picket rota, called a mass meeting of strikers for Monday morning, contacted their union Officials, members of at least 6 unions were on the Shop Stewards Committee, and stewards at other UGB factories. They had factories in Glasgow, Liverpool and Yorkshire.

Time now for the strikers and management to take stock of the situation, at 11am management tried to address their employees, they tried again, and then sacked the Stewards’ Chairman and by midday practically all of the factories’ 1,400 workers had walked out on strike. This was clearly a spontaneous strike, there was little or no time for the Shop Stewards to call a strike, news of the sacking must have spread like wild fire through the workforce scattered throughout the large site and their reaction was to immediately walk out on strike. Labourers as well as the engineers, warehouse men as well as electricians all walked out. The strikers’ position was simple. No return to work until the Chair of the Shop Stewards got his job back.

The management’s position was exactly the opposite. “It can not be acceptable for any employee to countermand management’s clear instructions. Management must be able to hold a meeting with their employees, on their premises and in the firm’s time”, they sent out a letter to all 1,400 strikers making these points. The strikers view was that if management had anything to say to the workers they should do it through, the Shop Stewards Committee, the workers elected representatives. The stewards maintained that there was a local agreement covering this very point. This was the accepted practice in all factories where management recognised the unions.

The employers said they would not discuss the situation with the unions at UGB until all the strikers had returned to work.

The Strike
The strikers mass meeting on Monday morning unanimously agreed that Wally Morton’s sacking was a flagrant act of victimisation. They resolved to continue the strike until he got his job back, and organised strikers to go round other factories, depots and the docks to ask them to black UGB bottles. The factory like many other factories in the area was on the south side of the river Thames and barges delivered raw materials for the glass manufacture directly to the factory site and collected glass bottles. In addition UGB had a contract with the Co-op to supply them with the glass bottles for children attending L.C.C schools. At the mass meeting a fulltime organiser of the South London District of the AEU spoke supporting the strike saying he expected it to be made official. He also said that union officials had met management that very morning but had got nowhere with them.

If all this was not serious enough for the Management the factories’ boiler workers struck on the Monday. The significance of this was that if the furnaces are not working no glass can be produced and it would take weeks to restart the furnaces once they had stopped working. The strikers knew this and stopped the oil coming into the site to fuel the furnaces. Management managed to keep them working until the end of the week.

By the middle of the week the bottles had been blacked by Co-op workers and Thames stevedores who crewed the barges. Workers at the firm’s factory in St Helens’ had held a token strike in support of the Charlton strikers. In addition the Glasgow UGB workers had threatened an all out strike on Friday if the dispute had not been settled by then and the workers of Harveys a neighbouring factory had offered to organise collections for the strike fund.

On Thursday a mass meeting of the 1,600 strikers was told that Management had contacted the Trade unions’ full time officials begging for an end to the strike. A meeting was taking place that very day between the District officials of the AEU and UGB management at the Ministry of Labour offices in Central London. Management still refused to talk to the Shop Stewards

News Story
Meanwhile the strike had become a local and political news story. It was the front page lead in the 2 local newspapers, the Kentish Independent and the Kentish Mercury with headlines “Shop Steward sacked so 1.400 strike and “Shop Steward sacked: 1,600 strike” respectively. As Communist Party members played a leading role in the strike it was not surprising that the Daily Worker covered the strike, they gave it limited, but daily coverage, small paragraphs on page 3. They did not report the deal that ended the strike. More surprisingly the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League of Gerry Healy sent Brian Behan down to the picket line. He wrote a detailed account of the first week of the strike which made the front page of the SLL’s weekly paper “The Newsletter.” With the headline London: Bottle workers out”

The Deal
The AEU lead by their full time South London District official, Mr Parker, agreed the following with the UGB’s management:

1. Wally Morton’ sacking would be withdrawn and substituted with 3 days suspension commencing with the return to work by the strikers.
2. Management asked the AEU to examine the fitness of Wally Morton to be a shop steward
3. Representatives of the 6 trade unions at UGB would meet with management to discuss the functions of the shop stewards.

Mr Parker and another union full timer Mr Biggin then met the strike committee to inform them of the deal but they were divided on the compromise agreed with the AEU and decided not to recommend ending the strike to the mass meeting of strikers on Friday morning.

The union officials sold the deal to the strikers as a defeat for management even through the terms of the deal are not completely satisfactory from the workers point of view. A striker moved that we should not go back until our leader Wally Morton is in the front of our march back to work. This was rejected by 2 to 1 and when a resumption of work on the terms agreed by the Trade Unions was put to the meeting the Chair of the Meeting Les Doust declared the vote 50-50. He then put the vote to the strikers again, this time asking everyone to remember the gravity of the situation, the vote to end the strike was narrowly carried.

After the vote Les Doust said “The meeting whilst accepting the recommendations for a resumption of work does not regard the terms of the settlement as entirely satisfactory. Morton’s credentials are satisfactory to us”

The SLL talked to the strikers about the deal and described it as a shoddy little deal. They sold 125 copies of the Newsletter and some workers asked about joining the SLL. The Daily Worker reported that strikers bought 130 copies of the paper.

Return to Work
Next week the newsletter had a story on the return to work where they said everything seemed to indicate a resounding victory for the strikers. But instead a shabby compromise was negotiated between management and union officials.

The return to work and the deal that made it possible were factually reported in the following week’s Independent and Mercury but the Mercury had an editorial attacking the strike headed Power with out responsibility. The Editorial accused the shop stewards of flouting the agreed local agreement between unions and management and acted on impulse.

The workers would say it was management who broke the local agreement by sacking their leader and they immediately walked out without any instructions from their shop stewards. It was management who acted on impulse. By taking immediate action the workers got the job of the chairman of the shop stewards back.

On the deal that ended the strike, management revoked the dismissal of Wally Morton and suspended him for 3 days. This must be a victory for the strikers. Wally Morton was still a Shop Steward, the workers still recognised him as their chairman. Management can ask a T.U to withdraw a steward’s credentials but only ask. Management do no not veto the appointment of shop stewards. It is clear that the unions and management would have to sit down and discuss how industrial relations can be improved and come to an agreement how they would work together in the future.

This is also an example of how the communists played a positive role in industrial relations: They negotiated the deal; they sold the deal to the workers and were responsible for ending it.

Scott Reeve
28 September 2010

Thameside Toil

This is to advertise an initiative by the National Maritime Museum
Thameside Toil - Memories of a Working River. 25th September 11-15.00. An afternoon of archive film and chat remembering old riverside trades and family histories. This is Free but you need to book.



Organiser Steve Martin writes to GIHS about the event:

"We are looking to get either Claire Frankland from the Docklands Museum or Simon Stephens (one of our curators) to co-host the event alongside a former dock worker or waterman who has yet to be decided on.
The afternoon aims to be quite accesible. Audience participation is expected.

The films will be selected from the museum's extraordinary moving picture archive, in order to highlight local histories, working life on and along the Thames and filmed oral family history work that otherwise would lie unseen in the vaults.

If your society would like to access these or any other archive material please feel free to contact me via this email address.
Steve MartinArchive Learning Officer
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, SE10 9NF

(Steve - sorry - when I tried to reply to your email just now it bounced back)

Glass making in Greenwich

Our July talk was a very wonderful discussion on Glass Making in London given by David Watts. Since then some of us have been able to get hold of a copy of his book "A history of Glassmaking in London"
(£25 Watts Publishing)

Part 2 of the book starts with 'Glassmaking in Greenwich' - and perhaps we need to say first of all that this should really be "Early glassmaking" - because of you look for United Glass and/or Kork 'n Seal you will not find them-nor will you find much about the glass making sand quarries in the Charlton area.

David starts his Greenwich chapter by saying that 'information about Greenwich is least satisfactory' - but what he does give us is a series of, as yet unresolved, clues.

He says that the earliest reference he has found is to a grant in 1575 to James Vasselyn to open a house for 'the manufacture of glass in Greenwich'. This is Verzelini who certainly had glasshouses in London and in Kent, but a Greenwich site is not known.

In the 1630s Jeremiah Bagg and Francis Bristow had a partnership for a Greenwich glasshouse - but where this was he doesn't know.

In 1673 John Evelyn records a visit to an 'Italian glasshouse' in Greenwich. Again, David doesn't know where this was and if it was one of those mentionedabove or something new.

David then moves on to Woolwich. This was a glasshouse for broad window glass on the riverfront between the Arsenal and the Dockyard. Sand came from Maidstone and coal from Newcastle.The works was run by members of the Henzey family and come from France, via Stourbridge, to arrive in Woolwoich in the 1620s.