In 1942 or 43, our local MP (for Chippenham) Victor Gazalet, disappeared with his Chief of the Polish Army, General Sikorski, during a flight from Gibraltar. This necessitated a bye-election, the two candidates being David Eccles, the Conservative and for Labour, a rather ineffectual type from one of the progressive co-educational schools. As the second largest employer in the constituency, both candidates held election meetings in our canteen, Eccles maintaining that a vote for him was a vote for Churchill, who at that low period in our fortunes was coming in for a good deal of criticism. I was chairman at both meetings and departed from the traditional neutrality of the chair, by suggesting that an adverse vote might well do Churchill a power of good, quoting the saying that every dog needs a good flea to make him realise he is a dog, otherwise he might get too grandiose an idea of himself!
Eccles (now of course Lord Eccles) got in easily and we saw quite a lot of him from then on. Both he and his wife (who was a daughter of Lord Horder) were the children of famous surgeons and at the time he impressed me as the pioneer of a new type of Conservative – more open minded, with the beginnings of a social conscience, and aware that the war was going to change the social and political scene, Eccles held that his ideas on the social development of post war Britain could equally be channelled through either political party, but, on balance he felt that the Tory Party was the better vehicle for his ideas!
Alas, although after the war he made a tolerably good Minister, for Education, his ennoblement by the Queen for his efforts as minister of Works in organising her Coronation (his Tory colleagues called him "Smarty Boots"), seemed to go to his head, and I found him later a singularly poor President of the Board of Trade, and now he seems to be destined to go down in history as the champion of payment for entry to the British Museum – a sad decline from the enlightened views he used to ventilate on the many occasions when we met between 1942 and 1946.
As the number of our employees grew rapidly in 1941/42 we took over some disused warehouse facilities in the town and converted them to a Social Centre, with games room, Billiards and a bar, so that facilities existed in the town as well as at the factory, for socials, concerts, lectures etc. We were supported in this venture by the M.A.P. and the official opening was performed by Professor John Hilton, a well-known wartime broadcaster, who was particularly concerned with civil morale.
The Minister of Education wanted to participate in the Centre, to support youth activities, but decided that under no circumstances could they support premises where beer was sold! Under the pressure of wartime living conditions, and especially at times when war was going badly for us, many management's of displaced factories had neglected the Social side of their responsibilities and paid dearly for their omission.
Younger people today take such things for granted, will find it hard to believe that it was only under pressure of war, that factory canteen facilities became compulsory. In many factories, until this became law, meals were taken at the place of work, even in dirty jobs like foundries and chemical plants Washing facilities were often lacking in many older factories although under various Factory Acts, they had been obligatory for many years.
The girls hostel at Rodbourne was a model of its kind, My wife would have much preferred to work at the factory, but this might have led to awkward situations, but running the hostel was by no means a sinecure. She had a domestic staff under her and in addition to the regular residents, it was often used in emergency and for the temporary accommodation of new employees.
As might be expected there were problems galore; one night we were awakened by the housekeeper in an agitated state, calling for my wife. One of the girls had given birth and had killed the baby in a mad frenzy; there was blood all over the place and the poor girl's room mate was paralysed with fear. The factory nurse, doctor and police were called and the girl taken to hospital.
No one had noticed her condition; it was the usual case of the boyfriend having been on leave; she was an orphan having been brought up in a home in Wales and had no family to turn to. That very afternoon she had cycled to Swindon and back, fourteen miles away. When the case came up in court she was bound over in my wife's care, and stayed on to the end of the war.
A similar, but less tragic occurrence was on a Sunday lunch time as we were just sitting down to eat our first Veal scallops for those years - (how strange that after 30 years one remembers such irrelevant details!) when one of the girls called my wife out to attend to her room mate who was in labour. The works nurse and my wife coped admirably and the child was born fit and well, but again, nobody had noticed her condition. She told us afterwards that when, shortly before, she had been home to Cornwall on leave, her mother had said she must be eating well to put on so much weight! My wife, I am afraid, does not look back, with much pleasure to her war time duties.
These events, and others similar if not so catastrophic, were a clear indication that with so many young people away from their home environment, there were many problems of a personal nature, which employees would not discuss with our own welfare staff, however sympathetic they might be. Fortunately, we were approached by a charming and intelligent member of a non-conformist branch of the church, who lived in Swindon, and asked if he could be given facilities as a works "padre".
We put an office at his disposal in the personnel section, and he came along for two or three lunch hour "surgery" sessions each week, and it soon got around that he was a willing and sympathetic listener and counsellor, which is just what was needed. His views were distinctly progressive, and fitted in well with our own liberal attitude to the sort of problems which arose, and being a socialist myself, we had a lot in common, apart from religion, but even here, although I myself am an atheist, his brand of Christianity was not terribly far from my own views as far as religious dogma was concerned.
One day, he asked me to invite for lunch, the Bishop of Malmesbury, in whose See, we were, of course situated. We had had no approach of a constructive nature from the Church of England incumbent at the Abbey, in fact, I never met him in six years we were there, but as there seemed to be no protocol involved, and the visit was to be private, I complied. The Bishop, who resided in Bristol, turned out to be a most engaging, intelligent and broad-minded individual; he was, apparently one of the financial brains behind the Church Commissioners, and very advanced in his social views.
We had a most enjoyable lunch, where he met our senior engineers and administrative staff, and our discussion lasted for hours, ranging over Church Orthodoxy (which none of our senior people supported), the post war social scene as anticipated at the time in 1942, and a host of related subjects. I remember him telling me that whereas he was a rather socialist Christian, I was a rather "Christian" Atheist! He was, I suppose, a harbinger of the Church's post war effort to bring itself up to date, and get away from the image of the Church of England as the "Conservative Party at Prayer", and the refuge of the third sons of landed gentry!
