My wife says that I write about sheep too much, and so fearing that readers may get bored with ovine chat this month I touch on my early life in manufacturing. One of my tasks was to escort parties of visitors around a large factory employing two thousand people making a vast range of weft knitted products including men’s and ladies hosiery, underwear and outerwear. I had to explain the processes and answer questions.
These included industrial history, technical aspects of manufacturing and ancillary processes through to wage systems and employment details. Visitors came from all over Britain and, of course, came with their own expectations and pre-conceived ideas.
I remember a particular group of university professors, and of being intrigued by their reaction when they entered the room used to piece together ladies twin sets, cardigans and jumpers. I can still picture their horrified faces as I slid back a large door and their eyes and ears were assailed by the sight and sounds of two hundred female machinists, all busily engrossed in sewing together sleeves, collars, bodies, ribs, welts, buttons, tapes, ribbons, hooks, zips and labels.
As usual, I introduced the visitors to various machinists who gave insights into their jobs. At the end of the tour the visitors had sandwiches and coffee but could not wait to tell me that they were appalled by the mundane, boring nature of the job and of how, in their opinion, the work was soul destroying and demeaning to those conducting it.
I knew the machinists did not share their view, but being a young working lad did not feel able to argue with university professors. I wanted to tell them they were wrong, and years later I came to see how attitudes like theirs have damaged Britain’s manufacturing industry and working people in general.
Their idea that working with one’s hands is somehow of a lesser intrinsic value than that of intellectual effort can still be heard, especially when the BBC’s educated elite imply that only through intellectual pursuit at university is it possible for someone to achieve their potential. This view has done much to undermine the value of the very work that the majority of the population is best suited to perform.
As a consequence, millions of young Britons now refuse work involving physical labour because they have been taught to believe that human attainment and satisfaction can be achieved only by academic means. It has also meant that each year thousands go to university to read subjects which used to be better practically taught at technical colleges.
The intellectualisation of education has also led to adverse changes in the school curriculum as can be seen when physical training (PT) was altered to physical education (PE). This act alone being partly responsible for the decline in physical fitness.
Spurious intellectualised thinking did not however stop at schools. It can also be seen in the workplace where job titles have been spun to suggest academic qualities. For example, the dustman (or dust person if you are of a feminist disposition) is now variously described as Waste Returns Operative or even Resource Recovery Technician.
Those professors who arrogantly dismissed the physical labour of the seamstress or embroiderer as soul destroying, may not realise that the hands of the seamstress are similarly skilled as those of the mason who spends his life chiselling away at stone. Their thoughtless devaluation of today’s skilled labour could therefore also apply to the skilled labour of the past, and so their dismissal of today’s labour could give licence to those who equally dismiss the labour of the past by vandalising ancient buildings and monuments.
Old buildings give a sense of history and belonging to our lives and so I have never agreed with those who believe that such buildings, particularly churches, should be left to fend for themselves and that available money should go to alleviating poverty. This may sound a little hard but poverty which is a relative term, has been around since the beginning and we can be absolutely sure that it will be around in a hundred years. We cannot however be sure, unless we make it so, that our Parish Church will still be there to serve the community through the continuum of the labour and liturgy of those who built it.
Talking about sustaining the church however, reminds me of the story of the avid Bristol City fan who regularly put £5 in his offering envelope at St Stephen’s.
One Sunday to his horror he realised that he had given a £50 note and after the service asked the church warden if he could have change. The warden put on a serious face and replied that he was sorry but that no refunds were possible. He then jokingly said, “In any case the offering was, “Part of the admittance fee to heaven.”
The surprised parishioner however resolved to put things right, and the next time the warden opened the envelope he found a card on which was printed;
‘St Stephen’s Season Ticket. Admit One”.
View from the Pew 