The Times Newspaper

  

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General situation

Working at the Times Newspaper, Printing House Square, London EC4. From approx: 1-Sep-61 to approx: 1-Jul-63

This was all thanks to Peter Olney (my cousin) who was a Reader there in 1960 - who "proposed" me - I went for an interview with the Chief Accountant - very nice man Mr Neville, and joined them some weeks later. 

Had to spend ?probation? first few weeks in the Messenger Department. This was a good way to get to know the layout of the place ? reporters offices, the printing presses etc.. but also a Union requirement - the whole of the "print industry" being heavily "unionised" at that time - more of that later..... Early days and weeks I can remember going to the Canteen on the top floor of PHS, seeing Peter there occasionally together with his Reader colleagues - can you imagine that they had to read articles and reports and correct them for spelling and grammatical errors - I guess they've now got replaced by spelling/grammatical software and/or a more tolerant attitude towards "getting absolutely correct".

Messengering involved sitting with about 6 or 7 other lads in a small "Messengers" Room and waiting for lights (there was one of those old Victorian sort of gizmo's) to signal that someone had a message, or a telephone call requesting our help. The next in line would jump up and scamper off to the requesting office, reporting "smartly" collect the whatever, and bring it back to the Messengers Room. There it was sorted for delivery, and every 30 minutes or so one of us would be dispatched to "deliver" a bunch of messages to an office. It was quite good fun initially, especially the short-cuts through the printing presses and the jumbled collection of landings, stairs, offices that made up PHS, but routine soon settled in and...

After two weeks, they asked if I'd like to join the IBM Department. Now I didn't know what that was..... IBM?? - but when they said "computers and things" - I immediately pictured a laboratory, with scientists walking around in white coats, looking at dials and lights and marking "readings" down on their pads - goodness knows how this "vision" fitted into a national newspaper - but I wanted to join immediately.

I had to join the fledgling IBM Department in another building (Printing House Square was being demolished in parts to make way for a new 6 storey green and aluminium headquarters, so some departments were already "off-site") up on Creed Lane.

At that time the IBM Department comprised Tom ?? - Dept Manager, Arnold Keppel as Chief Techie and Charles Little (Charlie Little) - who were waiting for ordered kit to be delivered. The IBM Account Manager/Salesman was Bob Tester.

Initial jobs involved getting Account details organised - cannot remember too much about this - but can distinctly remember (further down the road) Account Master details were punched into red-striped 80 column punched cards - whilst Sub-Account details were punched into Yellow. Punch-girls joined us soon after I arrived - Joan was in charge, and I can remember Maureen joining later - but two others were.....?June? and ?Rita? we had (I think) a total of 4 * 024/026 Punch/Verifiers.

Around this time I can remember getting a small internal memo, saying my Weekly Pay was going to be increased from ?4-4-6 (Four Pounds, four and six pence - about ?4.25 now) to ?4-18-6 (about ?4.80) - and I can honestly remember thinking "Wow - what am I going to do with all that extra cash?" - silly boy!

After a few months the kit was delivered, over a weekend, all of it being craned-in through a window (we were only on the first-floor. It comprised:

For anybody (everybody??) not knowledgeable about these beasts, the 412 was largest  and must have stood 5 feet high and measured 6 feet by 5 feet, packed with gears and "workings", the 519 and 609 were about half that size each. It may be impossible - now - to imagine how such a mixture of machines was ever supposed to "compute" - this may help....

Around this time I was packed off to IBM Newman Street for a course in plugboard wiring for the 519 and 412. What a good place Newman Street was in those days - with IBM and Ferranti both having massive computers in their display windows - I think IBM had a 7090 (see http://www.frobenius.com/7090.htm) and 1401 (see http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5705/1401.html) , whilst Ferranti had a Mercury (see http://www.computer50.org/kgill/machines/machines.html)  and an Atlas (See http://hoc.co.umist.ac.uk/storylines/compdev/commercialisation/atlas.html).

Jim ?? ( a very nice guy - who knew most of the "wrinkles and tricks" of the Company and Unions) from the Wages Dept had joined by this time and was working on "automating the payroll".

Unions

Looking back on it - how any company could have allowed itself to be so "strangled" by the unions - is beyond belief. But the truth is... in the UK at that time, The Times was not unusual and to varying degrees every company had to deal with Unions.

The specifics of the ridiculous situations that I remember are by no means "all" that the Company had to endure - merely the ones that I came across in my daily working life, and the ridiculous "maneuvers" us workers had to go through to just get our day's work done - only hint at the power/grip the unions had on Government and Employers - close to criminal (but I guess that's what a democracy is all about??) in my view!!

So..... I HAD to join the Natsopa union before moving to the IBM Department. It was of such "non-interest" to me - that I still cannot remember what Natsopa stands for - I could look it up - but why bother..?? There was no induction ceremony, but there was a "Father of the Chapel (FOC)", and Union-Dues deducted from your salary. Actually, in my time he was a nice fat old guy (cannot remember his name) who worked in Accounts or somesuch Department (Mr Raven... have I just had a 'bolt-from the blue'??) who we all had to "revere" a bit - not much, but in reality if you were rude to him - any "grief" you had with the Company would not be handled quite so efficiently as if you were very brown-nosed to the FOC.

So on a daily basis.. how would being Natsopa effect me - 2 examples??

1. - There I am, working/beavering away in the IBM Department, and we appear to have run out of punched-cards... no great problem.. we can phone IBM and they would deliver within a couple of hours.

AND - that's where the problems begun.... IBM were only (union agreement with the Company) allowed to deliver to Reception. They would then phone us (the IBM Dept) and confirm the delivery - we would then, have to phone "the paperworkers Union" and tell them that our cards had arrived at reception and they needed to be delivered to the IBM Department (1 floor up!!) - honestly..... that could take 2 days!! It was like a circus, each "clown" trying to upset the next!! At no point did you have the feeling that "we are pulling for the Company" - rather "we are all trying to f*ck up anybody who will take apparent salary/earnings away from me".

The rules were that any "paper package that exceeded 20 Pounds in weight - could only be carried by a "PaperWorker" Union representative, and our Punched Card boxes each weight well more than that.... so........... we'd wait until 18:00 or thereabouts and go down to Reception and carry the boxes up to our department - have you recognised that no self respecting PaperWorker would be seen dead in the offices after 17:30?? The lies and cover-ups that had to continue the next morning were all on Company time - what a farce!!

2. - Again... I'm beavering away... and one of the machines breaks... lets say its the 412 (that is supposed to print) - has decided not to... (imagine what we had to do, in light of today - when for example - a Photo-Copier fails). Firstly we had to phone IBM and ask for an Engineer to pay us a visit (not unreasonable/unacceptable). Then we had to phone the (Times) Company's Electrician's Department - and tell them we'd phoned IBM and an Engineer was on his way to us..... "fine" they'd say - "please call us when he gets there". After maybe an hour or two - depending on the IBM Engineer's workload - he'd appear in our department. I remember one Engineer particularly - don't know why - Gerry ?Vincent? very well dressed, very competent.. (I think). We'd phone the Electrician's Department and tell them "the IBM Engineer has arrived on site" - "we're on our way" they'd reply - sometimes, other times it'd be "we'll be there sometime". Now.... can you imagine why we've had to call the Electricians?? Can you imagine why the IBM Engineer cannot start working on the problem??? - Probably not..... but be aware... if he'd started working on "the problem" before the Electricians arrived - there would have been an incident... strike/work to rule/whatever.. So.. the IBM Engineer settles himself into a comfortable chair and just sits - waiting for the arrival of the Electricians. Honestly.... this could go on for hours... lots of phone calls, lots of frustration, really  looks and sounds like real Hollywood - "get him the f*ck up here now" - but in reality - it was "boys playing games". Sometimes it would extend over a couple of days. Eventually 2 - two - TWO!! Electricians would arrive in our department - why 2?? - because any call-out inside "the Company" - according to Union Rules - required 2 Electricians to attend!! Bulb's gone?? - two Electricians would arrive - with 1 bulb!!.... Eventually the 2 Electricians from the Company arrive in our Department - and the IBM engineer can start fixing the problem........ they are not allowed to touch IBM property... so they just look on - its like going to school.. they don't even hand him tools that he needs - its all about.... there is a problem in the company related to an electronic device - which we would normally fix with 2 of of our Electricians - but because IBM will not allow us to fix the problem, and only their Engineer can - we'll (2 of us) just stand around whilst the problem is fixed - as if we were fixing it - timewise... can you imagine it?? What a load of rubbish - boys playing games!!

Other memories of those dark distant days are:

Travel: I'd catch a British Railways train at Hayes & Harlington station around 07:30 - 4 stations to Ealing Broadway - then onto the Central Line Tube for something like 23 stations to St Pauls.. in work by 09:00AM ideally. Coming back home in the evenings - I'd sometimes walk through to where Tucker worked, and we'd travel back on the tube as far as North Acton where he'd continue on to Northolt and I'd switch to Ealing Broadway. One memorable trip back was at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, where he asked if I'd got my "call up papers" to join the army - I was really scared that on my arrival home there would be some official looking envelope that was about to change my whole world... but after extracting the maximum amount of fear, he relented and said it was all a joke - bastard!! But now we know how close war was at that time hey?? Around this time I'd sometimes meet up with Margaret Leng and Valerie Colbourne also traveling the same route.

Another memory is of June the senior punch lady arriving in the office all of a hustle and bustle - maybe 10 minutes late - saying "sorry I'm late, we had a 'bridger'" - she lived on the Isle of Dogs where roads crossed canals and entranceways into docks etc.. and if a ship was being maneuvered into a dock the bridge/road was swung out of the way - delaying all the road traffic for quite a while.

Also occasionally traveled with ?Peter? ?? who had joined the Company as a 1401 Programmer, he lived in Hayes and I owe it to him for pushing me into "computing" by suggesting I join ICT. He took me "program testing" at Tate & Lyles' 1401 - the first computer I'd actually touched, but after he'd been with us about 10 months I think the order for our 1401 was canceled and then even the Data Processing equipment was sent back, don't know where he went.... but I went to ICT!!

The Lecher Ledger: This was a big eye-opener for me... a naive lad of 18 years. Basically every 3 months or so a very large old leather Ledger would appear in the Department. Initially you weren't aware that it had arrived, but over the period of a day or so people would disappear from the office carrying this thing and be gone for 30 minutes or so. Eventually I was allowed to see the contents - of course - porno snap shots by the hundred!! Wonderful - you took it off to the toilet for 30 minutes then passed it on to the next guy on your return to the office.

Clothing/Attire: This was just about the end of the traditional "City Gent" era, but both Tucker and I would doll ourselves up in:

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