RAE Holme: I am sitting in Merseyside, in the town of New Ferry near Liverpool, with Tim Rignall. Tim moved from very poor surroundings to be Alderman of Battersea.
Tim Rignall:
We were a family of 6. There was Mum and Dad, three brothers and a sister. My father was a soldier and fought in the Egyptian war. He also made that forced march across the desert to relieve General Gordon. Though my father was an ordinary man, he was greatly shocked that they never reached General Gordon in time. General Gordon was in Khartoum at the time and my father was part of the force that went out to rescue him but they arrived two days late and my father always regretted being two days late.
Our home was in the poor district of Battersea. We had three rooms, two bedrooms and a kitchen. Mum, Dad and my sister slept in one room. The three boys slept in the other room. The kitchen was the only place with heat from the cooker and the kitchen became a bathroom and a dining room. My mother was a fighter. She caught the terrible scourge of sickness, sleeping sickness. I used to go to the hospital every night and she would tell me to go away, after asking for me all day. She came out of that hospital alive because of the prayers of her friends and her family. At that time I knew whatever happened that God was in command, he created a miracle and she came out alive.
She was a great woman. She used to get old clothes and cut them down for us. Our father used to mend our shoes. My uncle, being a craftsman, used to cut the soles off the old shoes at his work and pass the soles onto my father who used to mend our shoes from the old soles. I used to wonder why I was growing up a rebel because that is what I was, wearing old clothes. As a boy I had to go out working at 9 years of age. I spent the whole day on Saturday taking laundry in a barrow around a great part of the borough. After years of doing that I became a paper boy. I worked as a paperboy for half a crown a week.
Then that finished and I was taken on as a milk boy for three shillings a week. After I had done the paper round I used to have to go over to Chelsea which was a matter of two miles and purchase cheap bread. Then I would have to go to school.
The first stand in my life was when I was 14. I made a stand against going to the pub for beer. I hated the hygiene of the pubs, because the public houses at that time were frightfully unhygienic. I will say that my father respected what I stood for and I never went in the pub again. After army service Dad joined the railway and also the National Union of Railwaymen in the days when membership of the union was not popular with the bosses. He used to come home very tired, because he and his mates were lifting rails that were 25 feet long and a hundred pounds a foot. He worked on the line between Clapham Junction and Queens Road, which was at that time one of the most dangerous places to work. He used to asked me on Fridays to go and pay his trade union dues and also get the ‘Railway Review’. I used to read that from cover to cover, in fact I think I read it more than my father. That paper gave me a great understanding of the lower-paid workers and it helped me very much in my future life.
In 1911 there was a big railway strike and during that period there was no other pay, so my father had to go to the moneylender and to the pawn shop. I did not like going to the moneylender nor to the pawn shop but I had to. I realised in those days that men fought for need and not for greed. I was very fortunate to go to a church school, St George’s C of E in New Road, Battersea. It was a privilege to go to this school because they not only taught all subjects, they gave training in character. The teachers were respected because they loved their job and cared for the children. Mr Willis, the headmaster, was a kind and loveable man. He was very considerate to every child. I felt he was a man who did not favour class and gave his utmost to the children.
The other person who influenced me in those days was my mother. She taught me to be honest, she taught me not to drink, she taught me moral things in life which fitted me to go out into the world. My father by his hard work also taught me later on to do a day’s work. I have always tried in my industrial life to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
At 6am on the 8th of January 1917, I presented myself at the gates of Dorman Long and Co’s factory which built girders and bridges in Nine Elms Lane. It was a very cold morning, the foreman was late and I shivered. Seeing the light of the two blacksmiths’ fires I longed for the warmth of them. When the foreman did turn up late, he took me in the office and offered me the job for 53 hours a week at tuppence per hour. I did not like the job. It was too boring and three weeks later the foreman asked me if I would like to go in the office. I started in the office right away. Little did I realise I would meet many people who would influence me later in life.
During that time in the office I got to know the charlady’s daughter and one day I met the foreman’s daughter. I received a note from the foreman’s daughter asking for a date. I took her to the cinema hoping her father wouldn’t find out! The girls invited me to a bible class. I went very reluctantly but the more I met the girls, the more I was drawn to the youth club. One day, standing outside the church, I saw a young lady in black going in. Something said to me, ‘This is the lady of your choice, and one day you will take her for your wife.’ I did.
One incident happened which would bring unity between the foreman and I. He came up to me and asked me if he could have a job and I said ‘Yes it is ready’. He said, ‘You are a liar. You couldn’t have done it’. I said, ‘I am not a liar.’ ‘You are a liar’. ‘I am not a liar.’ ‘You are a liar.’ I replied ‘You can’t make me a liar.’ he said, ‘Put your coat on and go home.’ I got my coat and as I was walking out he went to the place where the job was, done. He called me back into the factory and said, ‘I am very sorry that I called you a liar.’ From that moment it produced unity between the foreman and myself. We never again got into an argument but we worked steadily together.
The next big event was the General Strike in 1926. I had been warned by the management not to damage any machinery. I believe they thought I was a rebel but that strike was a magnificent disciplined response to the sufferings of the miners. The miners today, and others, could learn from the disciplined colleagues of earlier years. The discipline of the workers rocked the government of the day. They knew so little of the heart of the British workers. There was no strike pay, no public assistance and the government of Baldwin and Churchill played a great part in punishing the workers. Many men were added to the ranks of the unemployed. Others in industry found a lot of short time working. The sufferings of the workers was great. I think of those men who I saw standing outside the factory, morning after morning, asking for a job and most of them being turned away. The dragging down of a nation. The class war of the right breaking men morally by semi-starvation and starving the women and children. The depth of suffering of the miners - they carried on for another 6 months after the General Strike. They felt betrayed by the rest of the Labour Movement. This led the Movement to question the integrity of Churchill who played an important part in punishing the workers after the General Strike by unemployment and short-time working. Later as we know Churchill was forgiven with his work in 1939-45.
On September 3rd, 1927 I married Lilian. She made a very pretty bride. The church was filled and Lilian was on time! Together we took our first stand in married life. There was no alcohol at the wedding breakfast and the families accepted it. We took this stand because my father used the money for alcohol that ought to have been used on food. My mother had taught me never to touch drink, and never have anything to do with it.
The years passed and we worked hard for Labour. We were very often getting home at 2 o’clock in the morning at elections and spent much time in the Battersea Free Church where I was Sunday school superintendent.
I think of the times when we went to church when we were united, when we were fighting for the Labour Party. During those years I was made an Alderman. I think I was ambitious. I was arrogant and I think the home suffered. I was out nearly every night at meetings and it seemed to me that Lily grumbled and that the more she grumbled the more jobs I took on. So at one time I was Alderman of the Council, Trades Council Secretary, Ward Secretary of one of the biggest Wards in Battersea, shop steward at Dorman and Longs, and on the London District Committee of the Boilermakers Union. I didn’t have a night for every meeting - sometimes there were two on one night.
One evening I was going to a Council meeting. I went in to say goodbye to Ann - she was then 4 years old - and she said ‘too busy, I’ve got a committee meeting’. I think that was more powerful than a thousand sermons. It shook me and I knew I had to do something to repair the damage to our home.
Lilian: I think that was the start of our not getting on very well together. Although we were church goers and we always put on a good face, people thought we were the ideal happy married couple, but it wasn’t like that at all actually. I was a very proud woman and didn’t want people to know that there was unhappiness in the home. Tim used to come home from the factory, wash and change and sit down to his supper and expected his supper to be ready on the dot. Then off he would go to the meeting and I would say to Ann, ‘Thank goodness for that, now we can relax.’ That’s how we were and it couldn't have been a very happy time for Ann either. As I look back now I see that it must have caused division in her own mind. I didn’t have an answer to it. I was sort of a religious person, you might say, but I didn’t find an answer to my discontent. I was a very jealous woman.
Then one evening we had a visit from two gentlemen - I didn’t know who they were. They said, ‘Could we speak to Alderman Rignall please’? I said, no I was sorry they couldn’t because he was out. I said, ‘If you give me a message ...?’ So they said, ‘Are you his daughter?’ I said, ‘No, I am his wife’. We were rather a young couple in those days and Tim being an Alderman at such a young age was rather unusual. ‘Well we have come from the Mayor of Battersea to invite him to a meeting that is taking place in the Town Hall on Sunday.’ I agreed to give him the message. So when Tim came home I told him that these two gentlemen had been along and had come from the Mayor.
Tim: When I knew that one of the men was the Mayor’s Chaplain, whom I knew, I felt I must at least go to the meeting. So I went, I sat at the back smoking. Suddenly the Mayor called me to the front. He said, ‘I want you to take Alderman Welch, who spoke here, to the Labour Party meeting that you are going on to. Take my car.’ So we got the chauffeur and we went up to the hall for the Labour Party meeting. Freddie Welch talked a lot about Moral Re-Armament as we were going along. He talked about the homes - that was where the battle was going to be. He asked me what my home was like. I said, ‘Like hell for the present moment.’
We got to the meeting, I introduced him to the chairman and went and sat back feeling my job was done. But after he had spoken there was a man got up at the back of the meeting I had never seen before and I have never seen him since. He immediately attacked Freddie Welch and this made my blood boil. I didn’t know anything about Moral Re-Armament and I got up and defended what Welch said. I was very much taken by what Freddie Welch said. He talked about sound homes, he talked about unity with neighbours and he talked about caring and sharing. I wanted these things for myself and for the world to care and to share.
After that I began to put things right at home. I knew that there were things between Lilian and I. I hadn’t told her all the worst things about myself so I told her all the things she didn’t know. That was one thing. There was a political opponent whom I hated and I knew there was one reason why I hated him .. because he was a better debater than I was. I went round to his home and I apologised for it and I won a friend. We became friends and not enemies.
Then the fellow on the next bench in the factory. While I was away he used to push the steel over onto my bench and made my bench smaller and his bigger. Though I told him about it, he used to laugh and sneer. Well one day the slingers had 20 tons of steel in the chains in the air and I told the crane driver to drop them on to his bench. When he came back he couldn’t work and you can imagine the trouble and the fight. I apologised to that fellow and he and I became such friends that we could work as one bench. We produced much more than ever we produced before because of the unity that came between us.
Lilian: I was invited to go to a women’s (MRA) meeting and I wasn’t very convinced I should go. I said to this person ‘Oh right-oh, I’ll come along’, because I didn't want her to pester me too much. It was another week before the meeting was held so just the day before thoughts about this meeting came back into my mind and I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t think I’ll go.’ But then they persisted, so I thought there must be something to it. I decided to trot along and see what it was all about.
I went along to this meeting and people were telling stories about how they had had the thought from God to do certain things. This was a new idea to me because I had been a churchgoer all my life, practically, and I hadn’t thought that God could guide one’s thoughts. I found this quite interesting so after the meeting somebody came up to me and we started talking. I asked her about this guidance from God and I said, ‘I liked the way people were being honest about themselves. Do you know, one thing that has always troubled me is that I don’t feel at home with people. I feel awkward with people very often. I have always thought that was my nature, that I am naturally reserved.’ So she looked at me and said, ‘Do you know, I don’t think you are naturally reserved, I think you are just darn selfish.’ I said, ‘Oh I don’t see what that has got to do with being reserved.’ So she said, ‘Well what do you think about when you are with people?’ I thought and realised ‘I always think about myself. I am not really interested in the people I talk to and not necessarily in what they are telling me.’ I realised this was very true and I smiled. She asked, ‘Why are you smiling?’ So I said, ‘I think there is something in what you say because all I think about is myself when I am with people.’ She said, ‘Well if you think of them, I think you will find an answer.’ I agreed it was worth trying and thanked her for telling me that.
I did. I put it into practice and I found it did work. When I thought more of other people than myself, I was free. It was a real revelation to me and I was very grateful for that. I realised there was something in listening to God and getting his guidance and it gave me a faith that I hadn’t previously had. I thought this was something practical that one could carry out in everyday living. It has helped me through many years now.
RAE Holme: What was your commitment as a couple then in 1939 that launched you out?
Tim: We were fully committed to the task of trying to turn Battersea into a powerhouse for the nation. That was our objective. The other was to be part of a world force too. When the war did come and the bombs began to fall we were in the middle of a campaign for morale in the Borough. With the help of some friends, we visited some 12,000 homes. Everywhere we went we were met with greetings and warmness which I felt was because the nation at that time needed the morale to win the war.
Lilian: On this visiting of 12,000 homes, people came from all over England into the Borough to help us. We had a wonderful team and support.
Tim: We even had a person from Canada come over and help us. It was a marvellous thing and we began to call ourselves ‘Battersailors’. Frank Romer, a friend of mine who was working with me very much in those days, wrote the other day and talked about the Battersailors. It is still very much in his mind, visiting those 12,000 homes.
There was a call for morale, a card given out and posters, which gave several points. ‘Be a rumour-stopper’ was one I remember well.
Lilian: And ‘help yourself by helping others’.
Tim: These were put up in the shops all around Battersea and they proved to be a great morale-raiser. We worked closely with the church and we used to have about 300 people come back on Saturday and Sunday nights to meetings. At these meetings we used to have men from the armed forces, all ranks, to come and speak. One of them was Cecil Pugh, a padre in the Royal Navy. He spoke to one meeting, and people were very impressed. On his return to the ship where he was chaplain, his troop-ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean. He was on deck and could easily have been saved but he thought of the trapped men below and asked to be lowered down into the hold to be with them to comfort and help them. He went down with his ship. Afterwards he was awarded the George Cross.
Another person who spoke at one of these meetings was the Commodore of Convoys, Admiral Cochrane. He came from the other side of London in a bad air-raid. When he told the people how he had just brought home a convoy of meat I thought the roof was going off. It just improved the morale of these people so much.
One day at work at Dorman and Longs, the big steel manufacturers where I worked in London, we, the senior men of the yard and the shop stewards, were called in to the office. We were faced with a request from Churchill himself that here was a job coming into the yard. They couldn’t tell us anything about it except that it had to be finished in three months. Management immediately said they could never promise it unless they said they had the firm backing of labour. They asked that we have a meeting the next morning.
I thought a lot about it during the night and during the next morning. The one thought I had was that God would show me when to speak. This was important because very often I got up before my time. First of all a man got up and said he wanted a cup of tea, morning and afternoon, before he would give cooperation. A second person got up and they talked about more money and then they would give cooperation. A third man got up and he wanted to run the factory. It was just at that moment that there seemed to be something in me which spoke, ‘Get up’.
I got up and said that we had heard a lot of negative talking and red herrings had been drawn across the meeting. I said I was going to move that we accept the challenge and help our fighting forces to do their job without one string attached. This was immediately put to the vote and there was only one man against. That was the man who wanted the cup of tea. The job came in to the factory. We later knew that it was the Mulberry harbour - because it was planned under a Mulberry tree somewhere in England. It was a port that was going to be towed across the Channel. It was a miracle of production. I had never seen men work as they worked for that job and they delivered it in the time, three months, to the rivers of England where it was assembled. Eisenhower said, after it was taken across to France, that it saved thousands of Allied lives and shortened the war.
During the war we lived at the vicarage because we all felt that the church and the civic people should work close together. Then after the war we ourselves went to a new home in Battersea and immediately we had visitors. In fact it would be true to say that the whole world came to our home, among them a Burmese bishop, German miners, Africans, Nigerians. I remember clearly one night 4 Nigerian MPs coming. We put them in the drawing room and suddenly we heard singing and everything. We went to see what was happening and they had taken the vases off the shelf, put coins in and started shaking them to create a percussion rhythm as they did at home. People of all nations came to that home, labour and management came. They found a common objective so that they could work together and, as I say, so many people came.
I remember one German miner especially - Alois S............... He came one night. It was the occasion of my 52nd birthday. We went into the drawing room where there were candles and a Christmas tree and we started singing carols. We got to the one ‘Silent Night’. When we had sung that, Alois got up and said, ‘I came into this room tonight full of bitterness because my son was killed by a British bomb. I hated the British. But it has been my birthday tonight because that hate has gone.’ Later on I was able to go to his home in Germany and meet his wife, and later I met him at different conferences. When he came again to Britain I met him again.
Lilian: To go back to the time when we lived in the vicarage, I really had a miracle worked in my heart there. I was very jealous of the vicar’s wife and I didn’t get on with her at all. It was because she had talents that I hadn’t got and she had had a much better upbringing than I had. I didn’t know what to do about it. I had prayed about it but nothing seemed to happen. We lived there for 4 years. Then came the time when we moved on to our own home. One day the vicar’s wife, Norah, came to visit me after we had moved and I wasn’t a bit pleased to see her. I invited her in and I had just been washing the floor so I sat her down in the chair and went on washing the floor taking no notice of her at all. After a little while she said, ‘I think I’ll go now.’ So I said, ‘Right’, and off she went. I thought to myself afterwards, ‘Well how horrid - how could I do such a thing as that?’ But I thought I couldn't apologise to her.
Soon after Tim and I were invited to go to a conference at Caux in Switzerland, and it was while I was sitting in a meeting there and a lady from France was speaking about her bitterness of the Germans that it came into my mind what a horrible thing bitterness was. A text flashed into my mind - ‘If you offend one of these my little ones it was better that you had never been born, that you had better have been buried in the depths of the sea.’ I thought what an awful thing, what would happen to me because I had offended Norah? I felt I must do something about it and was quite desperate. I went out of the meeting and immediately sat down and wrote a letter to Norah, apologising and sent it off.
I had a very nice letter back from her, received when I got home and then the thought came, ‘Yes, but what is going to happen when I meet her? I have made these sort of promises in my mind before but when I have seen her I have just retracted from them?’ This really would be the test. Then she wrote and said she was coming to London - they had moved away from London at that time. Would I meet her at the station, Victoria? So, you know, I felt a little trepidation about it, but I went along and thought ‘this is it’. When I saw her, I felt as free as the air. It was an absolute miracle. I had no bad feelings against her at all and it was marvellous. She came home with us and they were going to stay the night. During the night her husband wasn’t at all well and when he came down in the morning we found out that he had got mumps. That meant he couldn’t travel so they stayed with us for three weeks. That really was a test and it was marvellous! I felt the Lord has a sense of humour, that he really goes the whole way with us and doesn’t let us down at all. I was tremendously grateful for that experience.
Tim: In January 1963, I had been working for Dorman and Longs steel manufacturers for 46 years. I was called along with the other stewards into the office. They talked about redundancies and some we agreed to. A fortnight later they called us again into the office and told us that we had two months' notice and the firm would close. I myself was stunned. I believe the rest of the yard was stunned too. 400 men and apprentices were involved and I felt a tremendous wave of sympathy for my fellow workers. Hardly anyone spoke during that day. The next morning, in a time of thinking about it, I realised that something positive had to be put up. I suggested to the men that we ask the management to bring the Ministry of Labour people on the job and let every man be seen so that we found a job for everybody. This was passed in spite of strike action by some. Things went on well. During that two months everybody found a job, except myself. I had been too busy finding jobs for others but I was very grateful that this, which seemed tragedy, came to such a brilliant end with everybody except myself getting a job.
Some got better jobs, some got cleaner jobs. I remember on that particular day of closing, it was pouring with rain all day. It was a terrible thing to hear the wheels go round for the last time - a terrible feeling. Then one of the apprentices came to me and he said, ‘Tim, you taught me to do a day’s work. I can get a job anywhere.’ Another plater came to me, a young fellow with plenty of humour and fun. He used to stand at the back of the meetings and barrack me and I used to resent it but I took it all. He came to me and said, ‘Tim I am sorry about the past but I never knew what you were up to and what you set out to do.’ He was the man who got a very much better job. We discussed during that two months redundancy payments because the law hadn’t come in at that time so it was a very voluntary thing. I think that the highest award was £188, for 48 years’ service. Though I contested the points at a London meeting and at a York meeting, we couldn’t get any more but I was satisfied.
That afternoon, Lady Richmond, the daughter of Sir Hugh Bell who was at one time the manager of Dorman and Longs at Middlesborough, she came down - 80 years old - came on two buses on a very wet day. She came and saw the men before they left. Lady Richmond did a great job coming down to those men. They appreciated it. Later on we took her home in a car lent by one of the shop stewards. That was the end of a day. In some ways it was a sad day and in others it was a happy day. I was the only one unemployed.
There was a great sense of caring and brotherhood in the Boilermakers Union in our factory. We had for some time been worried about men who had accidents and who were offered small sums of money meaning they had to come back to work because of lack of money. So we decided to set up a fund where every boilermaker contributed every week the same amount as each other and this fund was kept going for years, week in week out, year in and year out. We came to the case of a man named Brown, who was a riveter who had a piece of steel come into his eye and he lost the eye. The insurance company offered him £60. This fund began to work, and we gave Brown weekly amounts so he could stand out against it and finally he won for himself £650.
The second man was called Mackay, a young man. A girder came off his bogey onto his feet. The hospital operated again and again. He was offered £60 and we told him that we would pay him his wages to stand out against it. We sent him away on holiday and when he came back the judgement was for £750 and he set up in business. This is the caring of trade union, to trade union men.
RAE Holme: Can you tell us a bit about the tactics of disruption inside a plant and how many men were involved and how they went about it?
Tim: I think there were only three communists in the other union, the AEU, but they deliberately stopped boilermakers from working. First of all it was the overhead cranes. Secondly it would be the saw, when no stuff was sawn so it couldn’t get to the benches. The third thing was the stockyard, where they would stop the supply of steel coming into the fabricating shops. Their tactics had to be seen to be believed and it was only a few men. But on the boilermakers side there were many men who were sound trade union men and they fought. The boilermakers were very often left alone on the job, paid very often for doing nothing. But we did resist communist pressure on the boilermakers at all times because we knew it was political and we knew it was ideological. Finally when the firm did close I feel that there were three things - there were weary willers in our own ranks, there were the communists whose tactics had to be seen to be believed and there were management who wouldn’t deal with either of them.
RAE Holme: How did you build trust with management over the years and can you give an example of how it worked in practice?
Tim: One morning the foreman in the works sacked a man for not working overtime. This was contrary to trade union practice. Then we decided to go on strike and we walked out of the factory. This was in the morning about 9 o’clock and the Managing Director came walking down the road. When he got up to us he called me over. He said, ‘Tim, what's the matter?’ I told him and because of the trust that existed between us he said, ‘Get the men back in the factory, Tim, and I will see the matter put right.’ We immediately had the backing of the men and we went back. No man lost anything because we were paid from 8 o’clock and the man was reinstated and peace was restored.
RAE Holme: How, after beginning a life of such poverty, you must have felt a bitterness against the managerial class and the richer people - how did you find something that replaced that with something better in your thinking?
Tim: I think the great thing was a new caring came for people, for the fellow on the next bench, for the people I came in contact with. I became classless, I became colour-blind and I wanted to see the world united where everyone cares for the other. This was what attracted me many years ago - ‘there is enough in the world for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed’. And I think that is a great answer to any class war.
[During the war, while staying at Tirley Garth in Cheshire for a short period attending an MRA conference, Tim had an encounter with a management man from Yorkshire which was to have a profound effect on his view of management. On the first night, Tim put his shoes outside his bedroom door when he went to bed. Perhaps he had seen this done by others, or in a hotel or something. Tirley Garth was a large private home and at that time during the war would have housed many dozens of people, but no servants. A fellow-guest in the house was Farrar Vickers, Chairman of a textile lubricants firm from Leeds: Tim’s polar opposite and of the class for whom Tim did not naturally have any trust. In the morning Tim found that the shoes he had left outside his door had been cleaned and were shining. Then he found that it was Farrar Vickers who had unobtrusively cleaned them. Their friendship thereafter was life-long and greatly valued by both men]
Cammell Laird have got a terrific name for building ships. They have built some of our finest ships. They worked a miracle of production during the war. They also built three atomic submarines and then the government took the work away. When I arrived in Birkenhead from London it was very deep in me to get a job in Cammell Laird. At one time one morning I had the thought, ‘Go to the Labour Exchange’. I went and asked for a part-time job, I didn’t want a full-time job. As I was going out they called me back and said, ‘We have got a fulltime job at Cammell Laird’s as a postal messenger and they want an older man because the boys are giving them a lot of trouble.’
Things were slow at first. There was great unrest both in management and labour, and I spent my time during the dinner hour going over to the workers’ canteen and eating with the shop stewards. In the meantime my union gold medal gave me an introduction right away. A gold medal was given to me for 44 years’ service for the Boilermakers’ Society. It was given to me by the President and he said it gave him the greatest joy to come down to London to give it to his old friend, Tim Rignall. So when I arrived, there was one gold medallist in Cammell Laird’s. The thought I had going round the offices was that I was responsible for the atmosphere in every office. I went to the shipbuilding manger one day and found him absolutely down and out. I just said to him, ‘Are you having trade union trouble?’ For the next quarter of an hour I didn’t say a word. He just poured it out. At the end of the 15 minutes he was a changed man.
In 1968 Graham Day, a Canadian, came over to take charge as Managing Director of Cammell Laird’s. I went along as was my practice every morning at 7.30 to pick up correspondence. I pushed open the door as I did every morning looking at an empty office. This particular morning I saw a man standing in there. He said, ‘I am Graham Day, the new MD.’ I said, ‘I am Tim Rignall, the messenger.’ I talked to him the next day a bit and the next day the charlady gave him a cup of tea. Some weeks later he said, ‘When I came to Cammell Laird I was a very lonely man. I had two friends - the charlady and the messenger. These gave me friendship when I was very lonely.’
The result of the new spirit that came into Cammell Laird’s was that in 1972 one ship was delivered six weeks before time, 4 ships were delivered to time - an industrial miracle that comes from unity of all. Nellie Smith, the charlady, launched the next ship. It was called the ‘democratic launching’ and for the first time it was a buffet lunch and the shop stewards and their wives were there. The lower management and Lily and I were also there. I was very much taken with the care that Graham Day gave to Nellie Smith, the care taking her up to the launch and at the launch his care was terrific. It united - I think when Nellie broke that bottle. There was the greatest cheer I have ever heard at a launching because it was a very popular launching.
RAE Holme: Can you tell us about your visit to India?
Tim: We went out there with our daughter. My wife and I were aged 72. We were invited to go by Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma. We went to Asia Plateau for an MRA conference and training centre. When the Indians asked me what I did in Britain I told them I was a bridgebuilder - I had worked for Dorman and Longs, the well-known bridge-builders who built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I was there to build bridges between the two nations. This was always accepted with much joy. There was no prejudice against Britain. One top trade union leader I met in Bangalore who had been in prison under the British said, ‘The past is past. We work for the future.’ More than one who had been imprisoned by the British said the same thing. They wanted unity and they wanted peace.
With special thanks to Ginny Wigan for her transcription, and Lyria Normington for her editing and correction.
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