JF If we can go back to … presumably before the … well when was it that you were promoted to the Offices?
DJ I reckon it was 1998. I think I was getting to the stage I didn’t want to do nights any more.
JF This was when you still had all your Milling machines?
DJ I was on the CNC Milling machine then. I was doing one week of days one week of nights and I said, “I don’t want to do nights any more.” I’d just … it was putting me back a bit and I could feel it and they said, “Well there is a job that’s going to be advertised, if you put in for it you’ll get it.” And it was in the Dispatching and I put it in for it and it was my mate actually interviewed and he said, “I’m not to ask you anything I’ve been told to give you the job.” So I got the job which was very good. I should think I was in there about two years and suddenly there was redundancies on the staff and because we’d fought for the policy of ‘last in first out’
and I was last on the staff wasn’t I so I got made redundant. I went to see the Manager because I’d had to wait a day longer than anyone else for the letter and I didn’t know whether I was redundant or not but I got the feeling. So I went up to his office and said, “Where’s my letter then? I’ve cleared my desk where’s my letter?” He said, “I don’t want you to go but I’ve got to do it. You could have a job on the Shop Floor if you wanted to.” I said, “Oh, I’m not happy about this at all.” He said, “Well have a week off with pay and come back and see me.” So I did. I couldn’t find a job anywhere. So I said, “Oh, alright I’ll come back.” So I come back in and that’s how I stayed there.
JF So is that when you went on the Heavy Machinery?
DJ That’s when I went back on the machines, yes.
JF So what was the job in the Office, what were you doing?
DJ I was Dispatch Clerk in the Office making sure that every got shipped abroad, that’s the diesels, everything.
It was a nice job it was a nice job.
JF So you had to arrange the transport?
DJ Yes.
Made in Bedford – Interview 8 Page | 14 JF That’s interesting. How were things transported?
DJ All by lorry but we used to have to, it was strange, it was like if you had a big load going out on a Sunday the first thing you did was to get hold of the G.P.O. to sit on the top of the lorry and lift the cables up, the telephone cables. To get from Allens to the town you had to go through Bromham, Box End, Kempston because you couldn’t go over the bridge and turn the corner at the bottom with a long load. So we had to work out the routes, turn the Police out and everything and literally have a guy sitting on the top lifting the cables up to go through.
JF Is this through the yard?
DJ All through Box End, Kempston and everywhere else, yes. You had to get special routes for it to get it out of town. But I mean it was really interesting, there were tiny little issues in the paper work, get that sorted out and then say we’d got work in the Falklands and you can only one plane a week down there and you had to make sure that you caught this particular plane. You had to know when the plane was going, how to get it to the airport and stuff and it was good, I really enjoyed that actually it was really good. You never knew what time you were getting home because you didn’t know when the different collection companies were coming and that. I enjoyed it.
JF It was logistics really, wasn’t it?
DJ That’s right. Yes, but it was and we enjoyed that very much.
JF Was there just you doing it?
DJ No, there was about four of us doing it. Because originally Allens had most of their own transport they gradually got shot of it. They used to have Jim Hull’s lorries from Queens Park and Hull’s packed up then but Jim’s still about. It was good.
I always seemed to get in the wrong place at the wrong time but I survived. I think I worked out that I survived 15 lots of redundancies in there and I kept thinking I’m going to be next, I’m next but I wasn’t until the last one and I wanted to go then.
JF And that was after you’d done your year in the Heavy Machine Shop?
DJ Yes. We got down to about 40 in the factory it was gradually going down. I said, “I can’t hack this anymore, this is breaking my heart now.” I said, “Let me go.”
JF It must have been like a ghost town.
DJ It was awful, absolutely awful. And when we did get redundant there was no one to go and shake your hands with because they’d all gone. They called us in one at a time and you went, there was no one there to say cheerio too, they’d all gone. I think of all the money I gave in leaving presents to people over the years and I never got a penny!
Laughter That did bug me a little bit, 30 years of giving to everyone, weddings, retirements, everything else.
Never mind, it didn’t matter.
JF So did everybody go from the factory when you left?
DJ No. No, they still left a few, still left just a few. I just didn’t want to stay there any more. It was heart breaking, absolutely heart breaking.
JF So when was that then, the early 1990s?
DJ When I finally left? No, it was about 2001. When it closed yes. It had to be because I had a year working for myself and I’ve been in this job two and a half years.
JF Gosh.
DJ Yes, time is rolling by isn’t it really?
JF So that’s quite strange because you still are associated with Allens, aren’t you?
DJ What is strange is living in Queens Park and going past that Gate every time I go out. Weekends, every time I pass that Gate. I used to know everyone that was working, I’d say, “You bugger you worked Saturdays and Sundays because I saw you going in there” and I used to know. I don’t want to keep passing but I’ve got no choice.
That’s how Queens Park was, we were all ‘Allens’ people and we’d say, “Eh, so and so’s working … “
Made in Bedford – Interview 8 Page | 15 8.0 THE SOCIAL SIDE OF ALLENS & SOME OF THE CHARACTERS
JF That’s been really interesting. Perhaps now we can go and talk about the social side, all the characters. I should think that you were one of the characters but I you must have known lots of characters!
DJ We had some wonderful characters I mean some of them were as queer as nine bob notes.
But one which sticks to mind now, Elvis Presley, he changed his name by deed poll to Elvis Allen Presley.
And he come dressed as Elvis you might see him riding around Bedford on a bike dressed as Elvis Presley, what a character. We used to get him to sing to us and he could actually sing, he was very good and we used to say, “Come on Elvis give us a song.” We’d all stand around there you know clapping with him and things like that.
And I remember one night, one of the guys on nights he was a magician, he’d actually been on Opportunity Knocks as a magician. And we used to have this coloured chap, a labourer, the old fashioned West Indian guy, trilby you can imagine it can’t you and he says, “I’ve got a trick for you, I want to show you this trick” he used to come out with tricks most nights and he says, “Put your hat on the floor” and he puts his greasy trilby on the floor and he went …. and it went up in flames! Laughter He would never walk round that Bay again, never, he thought it was voodoo. He wouldn’t because he thought it was voodoo.
And then we had another guy who was convinced he could stand in a tin and lift himself off the ground and we used to stand there with feeler gauges saying, “Come on a bit more, a bit more.”
Another guy coming in on nights would put you on the end of a shovel and put you up in the air like that, as strong as an ox. Taffy Hunt and he actually lifted me above his head on shovel, like that.
JF Was it John Newman saying about that?
DD Yes.
DJ Yes, absolutely true. We used to have wonderful laughs on nights. In the finish there weren’t that many on nights so you could have your music on and they used to get really mad, it was all sixties and then I got into Queen and it was Queen, Queen all night long. And they’d say, “For goodness sake turn that ruddy Queen off.” They used to take their radios in, oh, it was brilliant. Oh we’ve had some great craics in there. I’ve come home and I’ve just laughed myself to sleep in the mornings, I tell you, I just couldn’t stop laughing. I know down our old Milling Bay we used to make footballs out of masking tape, bigger and bigger and we used to play football. We were on overtime and we thought this is alright playing football up and down the gangway ever so hard and I kicked this ball and it hit the Manager straight in the head and I said, “We’ve had it. This is the end I’m either sacked or banned from overtime and I’ve got two kids at home.” And it’s typical Allens set up that it went down the line, down the line, down the line and the Charge Hand in the next Bay had to tell us off not to play football. That’s how it went down the line, no one dared tell us off! Laughter But it was brilliant, because I mean we knew we’d done wrong, we expected to be punished, you won’t have no overtime this week we expected that but nothing! We just got up a bit of fun.
They were long weeks though, you were doing seven days a week, they were long weeks.
DD So come the end of an ordinary working week would have been Friday or Saturday whichever, would it have been most chaps down the pub or whatever?
DJ A lot of them used to, I never would do that because it was dangerous in those days, drinking and working machines. They had no safety guards or anything in those days, it wasn’t law and that was a nuisance, safety guards were a nuisance they got in the way.
It was silly going for a drink.
I never forgot, you never used to have New Year’s Day off, that was not a holiday! I was on nights in there and one guy brought in a bottle of sherry and some little glasses and we toasted in the New Year and I just carried on working and that was New Year. People don’t believe it but it was true. We used to fight not to be on nights but I lost the toss, lost it nearly every year I was working. It was awful you could hear them here in the Club having a good time and there you were, “Happy New Year lads” and then off you’d go on the machine again. When it became a holiday it was wonderful and yet people, the new ones took it for granted. I said, “You don’t realise how hard we’ve fought for all these things. I’ve worked New Year’s Eve”
Made in Bedford – Interview 8 Page | 16 and they wouldn’t believe it. And you only had Christmas Day and Boxing Day off and back straight in, that’s all you ever had.
JF How many weeks holiday did you get, was it three weeks or …?
DJ I think those days they used to probably give you about 20 days which would have been four weeks but then they started knocking off the Bank Holidays as part of. But then it became I think 28 and they knocked the Bank Holidays off to give you the 20 days over the years but that was done nationally. But you couldn’t afford to take a holiday anyhow because you were losing all that overtime. So it was all Catch-22. Every day off you lost two hours overtime think about that. And it used to be that at one stage it used to be four nights overtime to get a Sunday three nights overtime to do a Saturday so if you only did two, you might have been ill or something or going out and you were losing hand over fist. Because you’d lost that double bubble on a Sunday, that was mega money, you needed a Sunday.
Then it got to the stage there when you were doing seven days a week and that was your weekly income and I said, “This is wrong” I said to the Missus, “you can’t keep doing this.” I said “You want to drop a Sunday so when you do get a big bill coming you go and do a Sunday.” I said, “At the moment you are living on seven days, we are not going to that.” Because I said, “I’m not going to land up in the grave.” I answered the old question “Do you live to work or work to live.” It’s a wonderful question because there’s not an answer. In the finish I would not do a seven day week out of principle I would not. I’d always got that fall back if I was skint.
And then when I became a Councillor and went to Council meetings and I was on nights, I was coming in late on nights and I was losing out then. Because I then couldn’t do a Sunday morning because I hadn’t done all my share of overtime because the overtime on nights was before the shift.
DD You actually worked out that system was going against you …?
DJ Well the thing was you see the day and night shift all wanted the Sunday. There’s only Sunday morning so that they’d two guys on one machine during the week and then you could only have one on a Sunday so they started working out this system to stop that causing a problem. And I lost heavily when I was doing Council meetings. People said, “You only need a forty … “ “I’m losing thousands Bob, it’s this blooming Council” they didn’t realise how much I was losing, I was losing stacks.
JF So, I mean listening to you, were you working seven days a week all the time or …?
DJ Most of the time I tried to get seven days a week, I tried.
JF That’s dreadful! I mean did the Christmas parties for your children did that make up for all the time that you were working and didn’t see them?
DJ No. We didn’t get every Sunday because as I say I had to share with day shift, night shift and we tried because that’s what we needed. You’d got a brand new house, garden wants doing, nothing in this brand new house, two kids, you know and you’ve got to survive and the only way to get what we wanted. Then you’d got the horrible situation and I’ve bet you’ve been through it as well, you’re building up your house there and what you first bought wearing out and you think hang on do we replace that or do we … and that’s how it got, we were on the magic roundabout. You get in a way of life and you want more and more and I sat down and I said, “Hang on this is going to kill me. What’s the point of having anything if I’m going to be dead?” And then we eased down then and we got by.
JF You paint quite a grim picture of family life, it would have been none existent.
DJ When we did overtime we finished about half past six time, I got in got washed and changed, had my tea and that you are talking quarter past seven and the kids would be in bed. You saw them for the first time basically on Saturday afternoon and that was the norm. I see more of my grandson than I ever saw of my kids.
JF And were you able to sleep during the day when you were doing night shift?
DJ No. Because some stupid devil put a bus stop outside of our house for the whole period I was on nights and the minute I packed up nights they took it down! They used to get off the bus and stand there, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit and you were in bed on a hot day “Oh, go away” and then the next lot would come along waiting for the bus. As soon as I finished nights they moved it. It was awful I’d get up dinner time. I’d go to bed, finished working at 7am get home washed and changed, too tired to have breakfast. I’d go to bed at half past seven, half past ten get up and have a cup of tea, go back ‘til 12. Get up and then sit there until about 3 o’clock, go back for an hour then off you go on your bike at half past seven when everyone’s in the garden having a natter, mowing the lawn and off you’d go for a night’s work, it was awful. I used to say night shifts were for prostitutes and burglars. I mean you think you are working nights and in the summer and its getting light at
Made in Bedford – Interview 8 Page | 17 3 o’clock in the morning, you think Oh morning, but oh, I’ve still got four hours to do. That was the killer, that was the killer.
JF Because you never got a proper sleep, did you?
DJ No and doing a week about you never got used to it either, never got used to it. But we got by, got by.
JF So you wouldn’t really have time to be a member of the football club or the cricket club?
9.0 THE ANGLING CLUB, KIDS PARTIES & THE ALLENS CLUB COMMITTEE
DJ I was a member of the Angling Club, I was Chairman of the Angling Club. I was a member of the Angling Club before I even came to Allens because dad was on the committee and I used to go fishing with them. It
DJ I was a member of the Angling Club, I was Chairman of the Angling Club. I was a member of the Angling Club before I even came to Allens because dad was on the committee and I used to go fishing with them. It