On Monday 4th. July 1960 I joined Newey Bros. as a ‘Trainee Executive’ with the then princely salary of £400 p.a. I have in my file the offer letter from Mr. W. Wootton, the Personnel Manager. The title alone was probably enough to tempt me and whilst I quickly realized that I had made a good decision it would be in the years to come that I came to understand that I had made a great decision. I would guess that Newey Bros. was as important to my future as a university degree might be nowadays.
It is because of the importance that time with Newey that I feel I have to record that which I can remember. You might guess from the date that I started there that I am now well into my seventies and I feel a pressing need to record this little piece of Birmingham history. With history in mind it may puzzle some to know that their telephone number was Aston Cross 0151
I was a Trainee Executive in the FPF Dept. (Four Piece Fastener). This was a three storey factory on Brearley Street, opposite the main works and offices on Summer Lane. The General Manager was Mr. C.J Everton, but I reported to his deputy Mr. T. W. Balmond, who was soon to become Production Manager. I still have a Parker fountain pen that I bought from Mr. Balmond.
It was a strict Company rule that all executives were addressed formally. So the two above will for me be forever Mr. Everton and Mr. Balmond. I, in turn, was always similarly formally addressed, even at 19 years of age. It is with sadness that my colleagues in the FPF office from that time are now but a vague memory but I remember Margaret (Giles?), Sheila, and Charlene. Charlene was the niece of Mr. Wootton, the Personnel Manager. I also had an opposite number in a Mr. J. R. Smith.
Whilst names are in my mind, there was a General Foreman, Bill Hughes (I find myself hesitating over that name), the Stores Manager was Fred Wells; looking after packing and despatch was Audrey.
On the top floor was a dept. producing Tape fasteners (four piece fasteners put onto narrow tape and was used mainly by the furnishing industry) and Cami- Catch, a little loop of fabric with a fastener that was used on dress shoulder seams to keep bra straps out of sight; probably not too popular these days. The foreman there was Charlie Hinett and the reason that I describe the products of that dept. is because I was assigned production manager duties for that dept. as part of my training.
The FPF factory was not self-contained and some components and processes came from the workshops in the main Summer Lane building. Just two names come to me from there; a Ken Hopkins? who, I think, ran the Plating Shop, and Des Round who ran the Press Shop. There was a smaller Press Shop in the FPF factory, located just beneath the first floor offices and it was weeks after joining before my ears learnt to distinguish spoken words as the presses hammered away. I think to this day I could tell whether the presses were running brass or steel. Eyelets were not produced by Newey, but were bought in from George Tucker Ltd.
Obviously, there were no such things then as keyboards or computers. No texts or e-mails, not even fax. Everything was letter or phone call. In my first week I found with great anxiousness that I was expected to dictate to a shorthand typist. I had never done or encountered this in my life and I asked Mr. Balmond to allow me to sit and listen to him dictate before I in turn made my first attempt.
The name above all others that will never be forgotten was the Director Mr. R. C. Smith under whose auspices the FPF Dept. fell.. He had worked his way up and carried his position with pride. He drove a Ford Consul, and always wore (outside, of course) a bowler hat. He knew the FPF Dept. like that back of his hand and after office hours before going to the garage to collect his car he would often be found doing a solo factory tour. He had a wonderful knack of recognizing an underlying problem from the incoming post.
Each morning either Mr. Everton or Mr. Balmond reported to Mr. Smith to collect the post. Any letter that to his eagle eye looked like inefficiency or error was marked with his initials and that letter with a report had to be back with him that afternoon. It was always with apprehension that when in turn you were allocated a batch of post to action you found a letter with a big RCS circled on it.
There was no competition in the fastener market at that time from China, Japan, or Hong Kong. The only competitors of which I was aware were Prym in Germany, and Carr in Nottingham. We were far and away the biggest supplier in the UK with many hundreds of customers.
As such each day could be very stressful with a constant heavy flow of letters and phone calls and much of one’s time was spent as a progress clerk. These days it would be described as a pressured environment. On one particular day a particularly angry call was taken by Mr. Everton and mid-way through the call he suffered a nervous breakdown. I could see into his office as he shook in his chair and the phone dropped, but as a naïve 19 / 20 year old I had little idea as to what I should do to console a man in such a state. The mature women in the office rushed in and took charge.
Mr. Everton recovered in the weeks to come and returned to work in a less stressful environment elsewhere and Mr. Balmond took over as FPF Production Manager,
The post was an important duty of us trainee / junior executives although then we all saw it as a burden rather than a privilege. There was a rota so that each morning before the offices opened a post team was formed under the supervision of a senior manager. The post for the whole of Newey and Tayler was opened by the team.
Every letter, unless marked private etc. etc. which was passed to the supervising manager for decision, was opened and read and put in the appropriate dept. file. Anything of apparent seriousness was passed to the supervising manager. The post was then taken to the appropriate Directors, and so the morning post process went on, ending with perhaps a letter on my desk with the dreaded RCS on it. It was of course a privilege and an important learning curve as we were seeing and reading much of the correspondence of what was then a major company.
Other than R C. Smith the only other Directors that I recall were the Sales Director, Mr. Iliffe, and of course the MD. Mr. Martin Newey. Neither ever acknowledged nor spoke to me in the entire time I was with the Company. I did not expect it. These men were amongst the gods.
Another ‘burden’, but of course once again a valuable learning process, was the annual stock take, always on a weekend! Missing or avoiding it, including taking holidays was not allowed. In one of the FPF stock takes I was allocated a team of men and a section of the stored component stock and set about weighing. Scores of sacks of quite some weight of brass or steel components, the shop floor men doing the heavy lifting, I having to organize the sequence, recording the weight reading and the arrange the stacking of counted / uncounted sacks.
Whilst the only country that sticks in my mind in Sweden there was a good amount of foreign business and I learnt the significance of such vital initials as CIF FOB and LOC. Once again a demonstration of the breadth of experience I was getting.
After 5 years I left, and a couple of weeks after I’d left, a deputation of managers and colleagues met me in a town centre pub to try and tempt me back to the post of Production Manager. I do not record this as some kind of boast but as an indication that Newey Bros, the FPF dept. and I were a happy blend and perhaps I had put my learning there to good account.
There are other memories, but too fragmented to show any further light on a distant past. No other names have come back to my mind.
I can only say in conclusion, thank you Newey Bros. It was a privilege.
