I was born
in July 1948 in Hoxton in East London. When I was 15, I started to look
round for a suitable apprenticeship. I wanted to be an electrician, but
my father thought it would be better for me to go "into the print"
because his brother-in-law had some connections which could be useful.
At that time, there were no apprenticeships in the newspaper industry,
but here were many with printing firms. So I ended up applying for an
apprenticeship with Blades, East and Blades, a firm of security printers
with a factory which was in two whole city blocks near Old Street. I had
to take exams in general knowledge, maths, English and so on. There was
an interview and a medical. I passed them all, but I had to wait till
my sixteenth birthday before I could start work.
I had been told that the apprentice who scored top marks would be sent
to the composing room and the next one (which was me) would go to the
litho department. But I still had a month to wait 'till my birthday, so
I spent it as the office boy. I was well treated by the staff, but the
other apprentices were awful. They made a practice of picking up an office
ornament which had upward-facing spikes, and hammering it into the back
of the youngest apprentice until it drew blood. So the month passed, and
it turned out that they couldn't take another apprentice in the litho
department, so I was given the choice between the Master Printers department
(which meant taking more exams) or the warehouse dept (which was full
of women).
I had no wish to work with a lot of women, so I went to the Master Printers,
run by one Ernie Woodward, who was much disfigured, had a hunched back
and was very strict. I spent the first month learning how to set type
in a composing stick, and then to 'justify' the line by filling the paces
between words with small extra spaces until the line of type was exactly
the right length as the line above. You had to buy your own composing
stick, quoin key and tweeters etc. - there was no question then of the
company giving you the tools for you to do your job. Mr. Woodward was
the 'clicker' for all the work on the journal of the Institute of Bankers
- this work was done by 6 teams of 4 people under his direction. These
teams produced galley proofs of sections of the journal. The galley proofs
were sent off to the reading room, where they were marked up by proof-readers,
and returned to the composing room for the corrections to be made.
|
|
The older staff
treated us tolerably well, and I learned to be humble and respectful to
all my elders. The other apprentices continued to be unpleasant, and many
evenings I would return home in tears. My father tried to help me stand
up for myself. Over this period, though the other apprentices continued
to be unpleasant. I changed from being a shy self-effacing boy into a
rather quick-tempered youth rather too ready to use his fists. I'm slightly
ashamed looking back on it.
The company closed around 1969, before I had finished my apprenticeship,
but I found a small firm of general printers which was prepared to take
me one for the final year of my apprenticeship. They only had 3 compositors
compared with the 60 or more at my last place, and the work was much
less demanding. But it did enable me to finish my apprenticeship.
I had become a union member many years earlier. The National Graphical
Association was quite powerful, and ran a closed shop, so you could
not be employed as a compositor unless you were a member. If you were
out of work, they would tell you of any openings which were coming up.
So I took casual jobs through them for 6 months. It worked fairly well
for me: I would be employed for two weeks with a four week gap before
my next casual job, but the two weeks' pay was enough to last me out
till the next job.
Then I got a permanent job at another security firm, Waterlows. I was
made redundant after a bit. At this point, I finally got "into
the print" with a permanent job at Sporting Life, a Daily Mirror
publication. Computerisation was beginning to come in at this time,
so much of the typesetting was done by the computer. The computer output
was printed on bromide paper, and the compositors cut it to sections
and made up the pages., and it was then sent to the print room where
the bromide paper was dewaxed. There was a very good atmosphere in this
department, with a lot of camaraderie. If you were under pressure to
meet a deadline, other people would usually come over to help you out.
But in these larger organisations, you never knew anything of what was
going on in other departments; your working life was confined to your
department and the canteen.
In 1989, I left the world of "the print'. For 2 years I was in
desktop publishing, and then 5 years as an insurance agent with Prudential
until they cut the commission rate, and then I moved to Earls Court
and Olympia. They had a large signwriting department, where all the
work was done by hand. A friend had been asked to set up a vinyl graphics
department, and he asked me to join him. It was hard work with long
hours, often working over weekends. I ended up as general manager.
I was fortunate after I retired to be asked to help out at the St. Bride
Institute, where I do presentations with two colleagues, a Monotype
operator and a Linotype operator, in their workshop which is filled
with type cases, old printing presses, .............
|