Bunt Clogs

Frank Walkley's autobiography is entitled "Clogs were my life". You see that title on the library shelf, and, well, could you resist? At first, I couldn't help feeling "My Life in Clogs" would have been a better title, but then I read the thing, and the almost unbearable truth hits you that clogs were, indeed, his life. Well, clogs and a bunch of slights and knockbacks that only make the plucky lad from Huddersfield still more determined to succeed in his chosen field.

My Life in Clogs, originally uploaded by Imagined Community.

Our Frank is not a man to bear grudges. So you won't hear a word about the doctors who cost him his place in the civil service. As he says, it was a job for life, plus a good pension, no small beer in the 1930s. There were plenty of candidates willing to pay the fifty pence fee to take the entrance examination. That was just about the equivalent of a (50 hour) week's wages at the time. Out of the whole Huddersfield area, only two candidates would be selected. Frank comes fourth. But that year the intake is doubled. Frank, being an honest lad, owns up to a hearing problem stemming from childhood measles (take note, all ye who haven't had the MMR jab for your kids. Oh, that's us, is it?) and that rules him out. His GP says they never would have known. The first in a lifetime of bureaucratic obstacles our Frank has to face. In depression-era Huddersfield, he settles, reluctantly, for a position with a cobbler and clog-maker. He only gets this job because of his primary school teacher who instilled the importance of well-polished shoes.

He joins the Home Guard at the outbreak of war, and is then called up. At the medical, they seem to accept that his hearing is too bad for service. In the changing room, another conscript says "Walkley? They're calling for you." So he goes back in, the medics decide he must have been faking, and for the next seven years he's an equipment fixer in the Royal Armoured Corps. The first hint of Frank's bleak life comes in his laconic observation about the leave awarded after he completed basic training:

which in my case coincided with my twenty-first birthday on 20 February. Unfortunately there was nothing and no one to celebrate with so the day passed off like any other and I cannot remember anything of interest happening at all either then or any other time during the leave.

He's posted to the 1st Lothian and Border Horse Yeomanry, where he and the other English soldiers in the regiment are the victims of discrimination: few English NCOs, an unfair share of guard duty at night, different punishments for the same offence. The worst of it is the deep-fried jam sandwich they get served for meals. After four years, he is returned to Catterick and loses his lance-corporal's stripe, while his Scottish successor is immediately made sergeant. His hearing downgrades him from A1 through B1, A2, C2, but just before his eventual discharge (no pun intended), he is bumped back up to B1 to forestall compensation claims. His time in the Scottish regiment is not wasted, however, as he gains a taste for whiskey.

With his £225 from the army (bumped up by his 'private' work - and you thought he had a stripe - sewing regimental badges and making handbags. Yes, Lady Bracknell, handbags.) he tries to set up as a, well, can you guess? But he can't get a licence to buy leather (post-war shortages) because he hasn't got a license to make clogs, and he can't get a license to make clogs because he won't be able to buy any leather. To make matters worse, around this time two plain-clothes army investigators arrive to quiz him about the theft of a roll of lino. Truly, our Frank is so often wronged.

Many weeks later I heard that the culprits, a NAAFI girl and her solduer boyfriend, had admitted to the theft, but I heard nothing directly from the SIB or indeed received any apology from the army at all[sic].

In 1946, Frank sets up in business officially, cycling some awe-inspiring distances to drum up trade. Huddersfield to Teesside, anyone? In 1950, he treats himself to a 'minimotor', like the cyclemaster engine my own grandad had:

... a newly introduced device for driving the back wheel of a bicycle by means of a metal roller driving hard against the tyre. This invention was a great boon to me when negotiating steep hills or long inclines. Both Lancashire and Yorkshire had their fair share of these.

His target market is heavy industry, pits and steelworks as well as chemicals and manufacturing. Interestingly, he puts the lie to the notion I had that clogs were a northern phenomenon, saying that they were equally common in London, it's just that workers would change into them at work rather than walking through the streets in them.

There is plenty about the ins and outs of clog manufacturing, and Frank reluctantly lets it be known how he innovates and gradually gains new custom. His cycling is the key to the ICI orders. The buyer - Mr Halfpenny, no less - discovers the bicycle, to Frank's embarrassment - "I put on a brave face, or more probably a very red one" - and says:

'Mr Walkley, you should have come over in a car'. Taking the bull by the horns I replied, 'If you'll buy me one, I'll come over in it.'

Thrillingly, we learn that despite a drop of 15.9% in sales for 1952-53, the company makes a profit of £787, and Frank can indeed buy himself that car. A second-hand Ford Consul, as Ford are a big potential client. Frank's grateful he didn't need to take a similar step to get the Rolls-Royce contract. You can tell when he's trying to be funny, he uses an exclamation mark! Being a good, paternal employer, he uses the car to ferry the wedding guests when his first apprentice, Nelson, who's been with him since the age of 14, gets married.

Cars, though, nearly get him into trouble. He goes to a ROSPA excuse for a piss-up safety exhibition in Leeds, giving one of his machinists a lift to her mum at the same time. She rejoins him at the ROSPA bar, and proceeds to get legless on gin. He has to tip the hotel doorman to help him pour her into his car, and then drives back to Huddersfield with the windows open to try and revive her. Now, is it only me that it strikes as funny that Frank - a man, it should be said, who, foreshadowing William Hague, boasted of drinking seventeen measures of whisky and still being upright for the last dance - should be driving home from the ROSPA bar? Also, what does it say about Frank's lonely existence that the woman's husband is not remotely suspicious that his wife should be brought home comatose?

I once bought a pair of clogs with a flap and buckle over the laces from Halifax Piece Hall. I was sure I'd heard the guy tell me they were Blutcher's Clogs, but couldn't make sense of the name, and decided the 'l' must have been superfluous (what the l's that doing there?) and that the flap was to stop blood, offal and other nastiness dripping through the laceholes onto your socks. But no, it turns out that the technical term is Blucher's clog. But who was Blucher, and why did he or she need the flap? Sadly, Frank doesn't enlighten us.

Red tape continues to blight Frank, with import tariffs frustrating his attempts to open an international market. At home, he is hit by the imposition of a 5% sales tax on all clogs bar safety clogs, but, almost single-handedly, heroically manages to overturn the decision. He also has little time for Selective Employment Tax. Throughout the 60s, Frank takes over other clog businesses, who are struggling with the decline of heavy industry, and also the discovery of North Sea Gas which impacts on coal gas production. By 1971, he has the monopoly in both clog sole and clog iron making, but you have to wonder whether it's all worth it: the market is shrinking.

As part of this consolidation in the clog trade, Frank takes over Maudes clog sole manufacturers at Hebden Bridge, and thus obtains the building that becomes known as the clog mill. Somehow, though, he manages to get on the wrong side of Calderdale council, and there begins a litany of complaints against the bureaucratic impediments to his business. Even though I'm highly secptical about such CBI whines about disincentives for business, some episodes, such as the new fire escapes for the top floors, do seem bizarre. But Frank is clearly a man who is not slow to detect slights, and I can imagine him being an abrasive man to have dealings with. The whole saga over the new restaurant for the mill is a case in point. Conveniently, the saga ends just as he declares he will not spen a penny more on meeting council demands.

The need for a restaurant illustrates how Walkley's business had shifted from industrial demand to tourism and leisure wear.

Among the visitors who regularly came to the mill was a group called the New Model Army. They came from the Bradford area and adopted our clogs as part of their outfits,making a very colourful party with their hair, both sexes included, of many bright colours and styles.

It was none other than Frank who would do the evening guided tours, and then go upstairs and act as barman until eleven.

Truly, did this man have no personal life? The only clue is a throwaway line that May 8, 1945, was to be a special day for him personally. A wedding? There is no other hint in the book. For all I know, Frank Walkley may have been a patriarch in his home, surrounded by throngs of adoring offspring and grandchildren,but the picture that emerges from this book is of a man dedicated to a specialised industry, but nursing wrongs and grudges. He started in 1946 with £225, he retired in 1987 with an overdraft of £6,511 and net assets of £147,225. It seems an empty existence to me, and it's scant consolation to note that the title of his autobiography is well chosen. I can't decide if it's for the better or worse that there is no indication that Frank is aware of what he missed.

Incidentally, Imagined Community is a year old today. If you're minded to buy presents, I'd like a pair of these, obviously.

Ignore this, it's just a tag: clogs
Ignore this, it's just a tag: Frank Walkley
Ignore this, it's just a tag: Hebden Bridge

Where's That Confounded Bridge?

DSCF0096, originally uploaded by Imagined Community.

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This is a test post from Flickr, so it could come out looking any old how. Any suggestions for better photo hosting welcome.

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