Paul Stevenson wonders if Britain’s textile industry will ever return… You may say he’s a dreamer, but surely he’s not the only one?
Brian Clough taught us how to play football, Paul Smith taught us what to wear, and a ratio of seven women to every man led us to believe there was no better Saturday night out this side of the Yum Yum Club, Amsterdam. I say led us to believe, as Nottingham was no different from anywhere else, and that male/female maths probably just meant you were more likely to wake up in a badly decorated room on the wrong side of town. It was never a problem on arrival, but in the morning, the flock wall paper, the crushed velour curtains, the nylon valance and the one bar fire… straight from the pages of reader’s wives — time for the walk of shame young man.
So this Saturday night/Sunday morning wasn’t all golden nostalgia, but we did get one thing right, amidst the nylon parkas (Do you want green or blue?) — we made some bloomin good clothes, we had a textile industry. And that’s why there were so many women, beautiful because they arrived from across Europe creating a diverse gene pool that gave rise to yet more beautiful women (and anyone looking at my picture and wondering what went wrong with the lost Mitchell brother, get stuffed).
When the factory bells rang and it was time to go home, the streets filled with hundreds of workers, and according to my great Aunty Daisy, in the main, they were happy enough. We know what happened next: the high street multiples drove the smaller manufacturers into the ground, while the larger ones went in search of foreign souls to buy and sell. Mike Baldwin put on his camel overcoat and said ‘Sorry girls, we can’t go on any longer, I’ll buy you all a goodbye Babysham in the Rovers’.
At one point I think the industry was losing 600 jobs a week, but while the bin men, the miners, the steel workers and Red Robbo all threatened civil war, Nora from MB Textiles had a good cry, a sweet cup of tea and a Number 6, and went to get a job at the local Spa. Because it was a largely female industry, no one really gave a damn. You’ve heard it all before, I know, so what? It’s all over right? India might be the new China, and so we’ll travel around the world until some bloke from Trusty International Traders arrives in Greenland. When that happens, it can’t look like the Eskimos are getting stitched up of course — we will produce our policies on equal rights for polar bears, insist that all igloos are well lit and warm, and then leg it back to Notting Hill as fast as, checking our carbon footprints as we go…..is that factory melting?
And that’s the right approach of course, we have to have all those policies in place — ask me about phthalates in inks, azo free dyes and the astrological positioning of Stonehenge, I know the answers, pretty much — if we are going to keep it all off shore we’ve got to have all the correct practices in place, even if global warming does turn out to be a myth cooked up by the nuclear industry.
But if you can buy a pair of jeans for a fiver, and a T-shirt for a quid, retail; if you can sort your kids’ school uniform for a tenner and have change for a Mocha on the way out, don’t tell me someone’s not getting had over somewhere.
So to make sure this isn’t happening you go on the factory visit, to see for your own eyes that no small children or animals are injured in the making of this sweatshirt. A decent motor, C class Merc maybe, will pick you up from the airport, and you’ll be driven to a bright clean factory full of people laughing and dancing. This may well be the place where your stuff’s made; you can see a box over there with your company name on, but then you’re not likely to get taken to some fly blown toilet round the corner are you? Too cynical…maybe. So I’d better tell you what brought all this on. We print sometimes for a well known brand whose clothes work beautifully — their jeans are the only option for a printer’s bent legs and sagging non smiling cheeks. Although they have some manufacturing in China, I’m as sure as sure can be that it’s all impeccably policed. I was shocked to hear then the REAL cost of a t-shirt to them out of Ping Pong Harbour, a white one with a single colour print, is £5.50!
But it can’t be you say, China and Cheap both begin with the same letters, surely it can’t be that expensive? But unless you’re a member of the Wal- Mart family that can be the real cost, with all the duties, the administrative time, the shipping, figuring out quotas, factory visits, and so on. They recently and unexpectedly sold 5,000 of a particular style in a week — what it doesn’t take into account is the 12 weeks it’ll take to get any more, unless you fly them in and drop another bear through the ice.
We can deal with the urgent requirements here though of course, and we did, but for those who understand the real financial and ecological cost of going off shore, dare I say, is Great Britain worth another look? That way you won’t be asking me if my T-s arrive by air or truck, because they’ll be made next door — and, unless I break wind getting out of my chair, no carbon footprint. And there’ll be no exploitation with a decent minimum wage, because Nora says she’s sick of selling sweets and papers and is willing to get back on a machine — even reckons she’ll smoke outside. If we can do itfor a similar real cost while saving the world,
what’s wrong with that?
You never know, we might then go balls out and stick a British Flag on whatever we produce, rather than some inspired in London by blaggers label. You may say I’m a dreamer — I’ll never again see John Robertson bamboozle a defender with his sheer lack of pace; I’ll never ask someone to marry me on top of a big wheel at Goose Fair, and I’ll almost certainly never again jump naked off Trent Bridge, but make and print some totally British T-s for pleasure and profit?
I’ll have a go if you will, for Cloughie, for Smithy, and my great Aunty Daisy….may she rest in peace.
PS. On re-reading my last article I was referring to a celtic tattoo as in one of those attractive circular designs that wrap around the arm — unfortunately it was spelt with a capital ‘C’ and could have been misinterpreted as Celtic the football team. God only knows I don’t want to be annoying those lads, so just to say it was a typing error rather than a suicide attempt… can I come out of hiding yet?
Cheers,
Paul
www.october.co.uk
