Interviewed c.1978 by Janet Druker, then a PhD student at the University of Warwick

Interview – John Leonard

Transcribed by Alison McPherson, ,

Interviewer – italic text
Interviewee – normal text

Transcription problem (inaudible/unclear) – text within [] is my guess of what was said in the context of the conversation or “?”.

One very obvious thing which I’m trying to do to start off with, and that is really to ask people a bit about their background, so that I know something about, if you like, people who were active in the building trade unions, and I wondered if you could tell me, first of all, your full name, your date of birth, and something about your parents, your family background…

Well, my full name is John Leonard. Date of birth is the 25th of July 1909. My home of course was in Paisley, in Scotland, the West of Scotland. I served my apprenticeship as a bricklayer, completing my apprenticeship in 1924.

I was fairly active in the branch of the then AUBTW, although the AUBTW had only been formed as a consequence of amalgamations in 1921, and it was formerly known as the OBS, the Operative Bricklayers’ Society. I was active in the branch, eh, for quite a considerable time, and, in 1939, I was elected, because of the electoral procedure of the union, I was elected the Additional District Organiser for the Glasgow District. I subsequently became the District Organiser, having succeeded an officer who’d died while in office. I served in that capacity until 1948, when I was elected the Divisional Officer of the Union, responsible for what was then known as our Number 10 Division, covering Scotland and Northern Ireland.

So you worked full-time for the union?

I was full-time from 1939, full-time. As I say, I occupied the post of Divisional Organiser until 1951, when I was elected the first Assistant General Secretary of the Union, and of course I had to come south in January of ’52.

But in 1945, whilst an officer of the Union, I did get the permission of the then Executive to stand for the local authority, the Paisley Town Council, and I served on that Council until December of ’51, when I had to resign my seat on being appointed an AGS, and came south here, to be domiciled here.

I acted as Assistant General Secretary from 1952 until 1962, when the then President of the Union was elected General Secretary of the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, and I subsequently stood for the post and was elected in 1962. I remained in that position right up until 1971, when the transfer to the ASW became effective.

So, that’s the background as far as I’m concerned.

Yes. Can you tell me a little bit about, going back to the ‘30s and so on, were you active when you were still working at the trade, within the Federation, say at site level, as a Federation steward or something like this?

Well, I was active insofar as I was attending the local Federation branches. As you know, the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives had regions – they called them regions, and I was in the Scottish region, and I was active in the local branch prior to becoming a full-time officer. When I became the Divisional Secretary, however, I was then appointed as the Union representative on the Regional Council of the NFBTO, and participated in all their work: wages negotiations, as well as the other work that they engaged in, and of course attended conferences as a representative of my own Union. Now, that covers that situation.

Yeah, that’s really what I’m fishing for is that I’m not too clear about the breakdown between how much would have been covered in terms of negotiation by the Federation at this local level and how much would have been covered by each Union separately. What sorts of issues would have gone to the Federation as…?

Oh, I follow what you mean. Well, in my own union, so far as Scotland, the Number 10 division was concerned, the wage negotiations for the building industry, generally speaking, were carried on for the union by the Regional Council of the NFBTO. As Divisional Secretary, however, I was responsible for negotiations in certain branches of the industry, and whilst not completely identified with the building industry, they nevertheless had an association when it came to a question of wages, and I was the chief negotiator for the granite industry in Scotland. I was also the chief negotiator for local agreements in the steel industry in which our members were employed, but I also participated at national level, even as the Scottish representative, in general wage negotiations in the steel industry. In the granite industry, I also negotiated on behalf our members employed in Northern Ireland, round Rostrevor and Kilkeel and places like that. So, that was the wage negotiations that I carried out, separate and distinct from the Federation, and purely on behalf of our own members. [Terrazzo] was another section that we negotiated wages in the Scottish field. So, there was these three specialist sections, had, to a certain degree, an affinity with the building industry, but not part of it.

You’re suggested really then that quite a lot of your members were employed outside of the house-building industry as such, I mean either in steel, shipbuilding…

Well, I wouldn’t say there was a lot. Well, take steel, for instance, I would say there would be roughly about 2,000 members in Scotland in the steel industry. In the granite industry, particularly in Aberdeen – that was the centre – there’d be about four to five hundred there, and there would be somewhere in the region of probably 200 in Northern Ireland, but there again, their employers, our opposite numbers in the employers’ side were separate and distinct from the building trade employers, you see.

So, it was where you were involved in the building industry as such, you worked through the NFBTO?

Yes.

Yeah, that’s the distinction. In Scotland, it’s been said the job of a bricklayer and a mason was never so distinct as it was down South – was that true, do you think?

Well, when you say distinct…what do you…?

Well, in the southern part of the country, the stone mason was a separate trade from the bricklayer.

Oh, they were, yeah. That’s true In Scotland, they were, because, in Scotland, whilst I was a Glasgow District Organiser, there was then in existence an organisation primarily dealing with masons, and it was known as the Building & Monumental Workers’ Association. Now, if my memory serves me right, and I wouldn’t be categorical on this, they subsequently merged with us, under what was then known as the Transfer of Engagements Order – it was during the currency or shortly after the War years, so that they merged with us, but prior to that, they were separate and distinct, and I had nothing to do with them. It was only when they merged with us that I took some responsibility.

You don’t remember how it was they came to merge, would you at all, the details of…?

Well, I think that, probably, some of the things that brought it about was the certain amount of antipathy between masons and bricklayers. A mason would not be allowed to lay brick – this was getting down to the site level, and I think this was an aggravation that subsequently brought about the desire to see a merger, and when all was said and done, I think that…the other facet that probably prompted it or assisted it along the road was that it was becoming a dying trade, from the point of view of costs and the limitations that were imposed by local authorities in the usage of stone for house-building, because they were primarily in the building industry, not in the steel, [terrazzo] or in any other section.

Yes. They merged, I think, actually, in 1942, so I wonder if the War had any effect on the situation…

You certainly have awakened a memory – that’s true, about ’42, they certainly did merge with the AUBTW, under the then Transfer of Engagements Order. It had to be carried through in accordance with the legislation of the country.

Yes. I can’t remember how many members they had. Were there many problems with the merger in terms of overlapping work of officials and so on or did they maintain a separate sort of existence within the AUBTW?

Well, they had officials, but the size of the organisation, in those days, eh…I think they’d only a General Secretary and I think two full-time officers, covering the whole of Scotland, because they never went anywhere else – they never gravitated across the border, as it were. So that, they weren’t a big organisation in comparison to the AUBTW, so that was the strength of their full-time personnel.

So they simply carried on working full-time for the AUBTW?

Oh yes, they were taken – under the Transfer of Engagements, they were taken over without prejudice.

In the post-War period, I suppose there were a number of changes in the industry, in particular the introduction or the consolidation of the Wartime practice of piecework, payment by result, and also the sliding scale arrangement. Did there seem to be, if you like, a transition? Did that seem to be a shift from the pre-War practices, or was it something that had been growing anyway in the earlier period?

Oh, we certainly had the sliding scale. We had the…we had the differentials as well in Scotland at one time. We had a different rate. It was minimal, but it was nevertheless a different rate, as against the rest of the country, and we had…and in some cases, the grading of districts, as they had in England and Wales, but I think that we were able to get rid of the grading earlier than they did in England and Wales. We were also subject of course to the Essential Works Order and the Uniformity Agreement that was governing the civil engineering industry, and we had our problems in those days as well in relation to these two orders.

Perhaps you could elaborate on that because I don’t know anything about this area. How were you affected by the Essential Works Order?

Well, the Essential Works Order was purely a compulsive order and men had to do certain things that were somewhat different from the traditional methods or traditional practices that we had operated prior to the War, and there was strictures imposed as a result of the order. There was, so far as the Uniformity Agreement, from memory, the Uniformity Agreement, eh…contributed to a lot of difficulties because of eh…the determination of the type of work. We always claimed that work up to the cartilage of the kerb could be treated as civil engineering, but when it came over the kerb, we claimed that it rested with the building industry. But, the civil engineering had encroached on this, and to a degree, had affected traditional work that was done by bricklayers, and could be done by anyone, as a consequence of the Uniformity Agreement. So that was the two features of these Orders.

And they were introduced during the War…

Oh yes.

At the end of the War, did they cease to have any effect, or were they continued in practice?

Oh, they lasted for quite a time. I couldn’t be…firm on when they disappeared, but they ultimately disappeared, the Uniformity, and indeed the Essential Works Order, which was purely under the emergency, War emergency.

Yeah. No, what I meant was that they established practices which, by the end of the War, were probably accepted as custom and practice…

In some cases, they were accepted. In other cases, they didn’t go down so well. They were tolerated – let me put it no higher than that, tolerated. But immediately the Orders were removed, then there was a return to the traditional practices.

I’m trying really to account for the introduction of piecework in…

Well, of course, I think every union in the building industry – and at that time, there were somewhere in the region of about 18 unions – I don’t think there was a union who would have permitted, voluntarily, the introduction of piecework or payment by results, but with the introduction of the Essential Works Order, it had as a corollary this payment by results scheme, that was…capable of alterations if you had…could convince the Inspectorate of the Ministry on the justification. It certainly created havoc up and down the country, so far as Scotland was concerned, in their abhorrence of this, but it was introduced as a consequence of a ballot vote of the membership of the unions, you know. They voted on the introduction of this, and the eh…for want of a better word, the malcontents in the unions, eh, claimed that there was a carrot offered the unions to accept this type of work, namely payment by results, and to a degree, there appeared to be some truth in that, up to a point. So that there was, eh, difficulties up and down the country in its operation. There was…the volume of work that was expected was laid down in a certain code, by the Ministry: so many bricks for so much. And the men were saying, well, we can’t meet that quota, so that we had…the only course that we could adopt was, as I say, get in touch with the Inspectorate, get an examination. In some cases, we were successful, speaking purely of Scotland – I don’t know what happened in England and Wales. In some cases, we were successful in getting an alteration in the figures, to the advantage of the men of course; in other cases, we failed, but in some cases where we were successful, I found that eh…I was misled by my own members, because, immediately the figures were altered to their satisfaction, they went mad and they made colossal sums in relation to this…the monetary reward for this scheme.

Why do you think the members favoured the introduction of the scheme? It had been opposed for so many years by the building trade unions.

Well, they didn’t favour it. It was a question of a ballot vote, and they were promised a wage increase if this went through.

Ah, they got the wage increase anyway, yes.

They wouldn’t have got the wage increase that they had been offered, but they got a…shall we say, an enhanced wage increase if the vote went in favour of its introduction.

That was during the War years?

During the – the introduction of the Essential Works Orders.

So that, at the end of the War, presumably, they reverted, did they, to…time rate system?

At the end of the War, the Order disappeared, or was removed, but it then became an issue for the collective machine of the industry, the National Joint Council for the Building Industry, and, in the course of discussions, it was agreed that there would be schemes of incentives introduced. They didn’t use the phrase “payment by results”. They renamed it and called it the incentive scheme, and that continued, and it even continues until today.

Yes. And all of that was arranged through the NJC?

Through the National Joint Council for the Building Industry and the Scottish National Joint Council, because we were a separate National Joint Council, for a long time. I can’t be…I can’t just quote the date when the two…Councils merged, and as far as I knew, or was led to believe, the reason why there was opposition to the National Joint Council taking over the Scottish National Joint Council was largely one for the employers, who were a bit hesitant about losing their identification by going into the larger organisation, but they subsequently went in and now we have one for the whole of the country now.

Yeah. So, presumably, it was after the employers had gone into the English National Joint Council that the Scottish plasterers and Scottish slaters and tilers and these other Scottish organisations started looking perhaps to merger with the English organisations. It would make sense, wouldn’t it?

Well, the Scottish plasterers, if my memory serves me right, it was a good period after the War years when they had discussions with the English plasterers that led ultimately to a merger of these two organisations. But, strangely enough, the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, of which they were constituents, was the Scottish and the English plasterers, and indeed, the slaters. They participated in discussions within the NFBTO in trying to get an implementation of the TUC’s policy on rationalisation of trade unions, but it fell by the wayside because the…the plasterers, having merged together, subsequently went into the T&GW, as did the Scottish slaters. But one of the slaters’ unions, centred on…centred in England really, they merged with the AUBTW.

That was ASTRO?

ASTRO, they merged, but the Scottish Slaters went into the T&GW, as did the Scottish plaster…well, the plasterers’ organisation, they went into the T&GW.

The question of amalgamation, of merger, and the need for consolidation of the trade unions was raised originally as a resolution through the NFBTO in 1959. Do you have any sense of where the resolution comes from? Is it from a particular region or…?