Posted 10 years ago
abarcher
(3 items)
TWENTY-five years ago the world turned upside down for hundreds of loyal workers who thought they would serve out their careers at a world-beating Chelmsford company.
International competition and de-industrialisation of the UK in the Eighties meant the end of a proud and eminent road for ball bearings giant RHP, originally launched as the Hoffmann Manufacturing Company.
Other famous Chelmsford companies – Marconi, Crompton, Christy, Clarkson – have also since vanished from the city's business directory.
At the end of the 19th century, when Guglielmo Marconi was employing people in the tiny 12,000 population county town, two local industrialists teamed up with a Swiss American to form the Hoffmann Manufacturing Company in 1898.
They made ball bearings, world class ball bearings, which for decades were the finest in the world, right in the heart of Chelmsford.
These vital precision-made components were first famously used by a Vickers Vimy Great War bomber, the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic in 1919.
There were 1,000 Chelmsford Hoffmann bearings in a Second World War Spitfire fighter's Rolls Royce Merlin engine, and 4,000 in the engines of the legendary Lancaster bomber.
No wonder the Nazis wanted to flatten the Rectory Lane-New Street complex in the Second World War.
They also knew that, as well as the vital bearings that kept every tank turret, naval gun, and aircraft in the battle against them, Hoffmanns were producing ammunition at the one million square feet factory.
Before and after the war, smooth as silk bearings – again made in Chelmsford – helped Malcolm Campbell and John Cobb seize the water and land speed records respectively for the UK.
But, by the early 1960s, the writing was literally on the wall.
Raw figures in the company magazine in 1962 illustrated the huge growth and market share of the Japanese bearings market.
In 1969, amalgamation, encouraged by a worried Labour Government, created Ransome, Hoffmann and Pollard, or RHP.
But it still did not lessen the disbelief at the firm that employed 4,000 Chelmsford people at its peak, when, 25 years ago, a grim-faced boss announced the bearings empire would be closed within two years.
Mick McDonagh had been apprentice and was a divisional manager on the day when the boss stood on the iron factory staircase and gave the terrible news.
"There was a visible ripple through our people on the shop floor. One very big man who had just mortgaged himself to the hilt collapsed and was taken to the medical centre," recalled Mick.
"RHP was a family. It was a harsh industrial environment with people working near furnace temperatures of 1250 degrees.
"They looked out for each other, respected each other's skills. the harsher the environment the more the feeling of all in it together.
"On night shifts they got up to all sorts of scams. One crew rebuilt a model T Ford, while another had a nice little sideline in staircases made from bearing steel.
"There were ample eels in the Chelmer alongside the factory, despite or because of industrial discharges. On the night shift, guys would throw eels in the scorching rotary hearth and by the time they came back they were cooked perfectly.
"Near Christmas, they would prepare succulent chicken and turkey for unofficial night feasts in the same way... the bosses never knew, or never let on if they did
"The place was not 'tops' only because of its machinery, but the knowledge of the people and what Buddhists call Prajna – intuitive wisdom. When the factory closed all that talent was lost to Britain forever.
"Three generations working alongside each other from one family was not uncommon.
"I, my brothers Peter, John and Stephen, all Melbourne boys, started our careers there.
"My brother John was in accounts and is now managing director of RK Harrison Insurance in the city; Stephen, who trained on big bearings and races, is now an administrator at IFDS, formerly M and G, and Peter is in senior management at Countryside Properties."
"I had the job of decommissioning my ball floor department and making redundant people I had worked with and been trained by. We all believed we would be there for life. I had seen men in the company magazine doing their 40 years service. The blow was all the worse for that.
"But the real story of the end came after we had made many redundant and stripped out kit to send to Newark, where they were consolidating.
"The bosses suddenly realised they could not meet order commitments. We had to recommission and get people back.
"I had helped many of our people, talented in many different ways, find jobs in other firms.
" EEV, as it was then, Cundell, Britvic and many other employers had taken our people, because they were smart, reliable and punctual.
"We approached everyone who had been made redundant with an offer of a month's contract and, after that, to re-hire week by week.
"All the other employers, to a man, agreed to keep the places open while this happened.
"They knew how good our people were and were willing to hold on for them.
"You cannot imagine it happening today
"By the end of 1989, everything, except that irreplaceable know-how, had finally and irrevocably been transferred to Newark.
"The Chelmsford site had been sold freehold and eventually came into the ownership of the present occupiers, Anglia Ruskin."
Mr McDonagh applied for a number of jobs and, within weeks, entered a new career as deputy manager of the High Chelmer Shopping Centre, becoming manager three years later.
"I think the discipline and organisational skills learned in the factory have been invaluable for everything I have done since.
"I occasionally see old colleagues and the Hoffman sports and social and bowls clubs are still going strong, although the membership is no longer restricted to RHP associated people.
"It was a hard life at Hoffmanns, but the closeness to colleagues and friends is something almost impossible to find today.
"You could never go back to it. Bearings factories today, like many industries, is automated. People would not believe how hot dirty and dangerous it was.
"But management and the three unions had worked together to create procedures over the years that made the place work as a well-oiled machine 24-seven 365 days of the year."
Read more: http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Bearings-world-round/story-17175476-detail/story.html#ixzz36FIxEd3z
Read more at http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Bearings-world-round/story-17175476-detail/story.html#B4Dj8ZYf7Ft4k3s3.99
Thanks for this history. A poignant story played out in many industries over the last 30 years or so.
Was this canteen awarded to a family member?
|Thank you for your post.
This was in fact awarded to a family member, of sorts. Through marriage. It is a set of 'Sheffield' Flatware and I adore it. Does anyone know an approximate value? (for Insurance information)