Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics by Martin Brandon-Bravo Read Free Book Online

well and in 1970 we sold a majority stake to a major private company Readsons of Manchester. Rick had had a real cancer scare a couple of years before, and sensibly wanted to secure his family’s future, should that scare become a reality. There then followed a reverse takeover by Richard Stump Ltd of a public company Hall and Earl. That gave us extra manufacturing units to take under our wing, a small one in Cwmbran, one in Newcastle a third in Chester le Street, plus a knitting unit in Leicester and a dyeing and finishing company. The largest manufacturing unit was the Durham Company which I visited on a fortnightly basis, but the staff there were surprised that I took the trouble to walk round the factory greeting everyone. What had been the regular routine in our Nottingham units, simply had never happened under the previous Durham management, yet was just the normal and right thing to do if good industrial relations were to be maintained. It turned out that all such matters previously went through the union, and since their representative was based in Loughborough, it was clear why problems took time to iron out. We’d never had such problems in our Nottingham factories, for on the contrary, our staff who were picketed every few years by the clothing and textile union representatives, always asked that I send them away. I made clear they had the legal right to try to sign the staff up, and we would not stand in their way if they wished to do so, but since we had good working relations with all our staff, no one ever signed up. Every six months, we gathered in the factory canteen, and set out where the company stood, what the prospects were, and so forth, and we found we ran a happy ship.
    Rick was a true entrepreneur, and when it was clear that knitted fabrics were coming more and more into fashion, and knowing that yarn and knitting had been part of my textile studies, it was a case of my finding a firm of commission knitters, buying yarn, and producing our own fabrics to offer M & S. To make sure M & S bought into those plans, he bought a small company in London who specialised in knitted dress-wear, and on the basis of their range showed we could supply them with both woven and knitted garments. That purchase took us into the typical West End Fashion World, and by 1964, when I married my wife Sally, she was able to go down to London during the showing time, and model the range for us. It had a double benefit, for the samples having been worn, or rejected for whatever reason, they could not be sold, and she had first choice of whatever she fancied. I’m sure my friends in Nottingham were convinced I’d married an heiress, for she certainly was one of the best dressed around, and bear in mind Nottingham was reputed to have the best looking girls in the country!
    We’d met in the most odd of circumstances at a Jazz Night at the Trent Bridge Inn, in the autumn of 1962. M&S had recently persuaded us and a number of their dress manufacturers to handle a very small and uneconomic contract of upmarket garments for a selected number of top stores. It was the brainchild of a daughter of one of the directors, who could not be denied the chance to show what she could do, and we as manufacturers were in no position to refuse. The fabric allocated to us was great in appearance, but an absolute nightmare to handle. It was an American foulard using an artificial Arnell fibre, so woven that it frayed the moment it was cut. We feared that from cutting room to machine floor, the garments would be one or two sizes smaller than planned. Our engineer solved the problem by setting a hot wire into the edging machines, so sealing the edges that we could avoid fraying until the garment had been put together. Because of the length of our cutting tables, we were always left with cloth lengths quite suitable for single dressmaking, and we had regular sales to our staff at a tiny fraction of cost, for whatever it raised, and it raised quite