Bruce Anderson

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Speaker 1  0:00  
History Project, Bruce Anderson, my predecessor in the job, Bruce, tell us, first of all, how you came into the business, your general background, where you were born, and when and where, your education and so on, and your career so far in the industry. I

Speaker 2  0:19  
was born in 1947 on the Isle of Wight. It happened to be the coldest night of the year in that very bad winter. And I was also one of the largest babies that had ever been born on the Isle of Wight. I was 14 and a half pounds. I believe it was heading towards a British record. I was educated on the Isle of Wight in a pretty average sort of way, until I was 13, and then, in fact, my parents moved to Somerset, or the family moved to Somerset. My father changed his job, and I was at school in Somerset, I think, until I was 16, and then 17 cracked myself. It was 17, and then I went to the Bournemouth and Paul College of Art. I decided I was going to be a David Bailey, I think. I mean, photography was very much an in thing in the mid 60s, and I wanted to be a photographer. I mean, I mean I, I reflect upon my vocational guidance, and it was zilch. And I don't know, you just sort of turned a fancy. Takes your eye. It takes over. So I wanted to be a photographer, and I went to the Bournemouth and Paul College of Art. And after about two, perhaps three years there, I thought I am not likely or not really wanting to be a photographer. It looks very unstable, sort of business being a creature of habit. So I did a fourth year, which was a film, a very basic film introduction course. And I managed, managed to get a job at Granada Television as a trainee camera operator, video camera operator, which was November 68 I'm now coming up to my 21 years so I'm still there. You asked about the career well, I'll mention that later, I arrived in Manchester from the south in 1968 sort of coped reasonably well. I think the change little bit lonely at first, I think, and because I sort of been rather involved at college in the Students Union, it was at the time of the Hornsey College of Art rebellion, I suppose even then, when I turned up to work for my living. I was a bit of gas that the people around me who were more worried about taking their dog for a walk and a lawn mower and what was actually happening outside. Anyway, I knuckled down, joined the Union, and really got quite involved in local labor party. Initially, and I think by 1971 I was one of the youngest councilors elected Labor Party councilor, that is, in Manchester, concurrent with being a Labor Party councilor, I was on the local shop committee. In fact, I think I was the chair of the committee. They elected me the chair of the committee. I came off the council and continued until 1979 to come to general council and ITV division. And then, after the long three month, ITV strike in 79 I think it was then that I got on a standing orders committee. Yes, the standing orders committee was created after many years of the fmgp fixing the annual conference agenda was decided there ought to be an SOC, and as the rules are gradually being, as the rule was introduced, it was decided that not being able to elect one at annual conference, one would be appointed by a general counsel, and that would serve until the annual the first annual conference where there was an SOC, a standing orders committee. I remember that because that, in some respects, was an introduction into the way the union was was being run. I mean, in a sense, if you just came to annual conference or the. ITV division, you were, in a sense, isolated from what was really happening and my memories, I'll have to pause who was the chair of the laboratories division and vice president for a long time. He was a van driver, rather pedestrian sort of guy, exactly. We worked very hard for the Union.

Unknown Speaker  5:29  
Know exactly who?

Unknown Speaker  5:33  
Stan? No, not Stan Warby, no.

Unknown Speaker  5:36  
He was a vice president.

Speaker 2  5:40  
Anyway, parents are arguably better that he should remain anonymous because, as of as chair of the SOC, he had certain enemies, Cummings, coming, Cummings, Cummings, Tony Cummings, that's right, Tony cums. He had certain enemies. Of course, if you remember, we used to have something like, was it six vice presidents and Cummins was obviously popular in the laboratories division, but at that time, the Old vis news was part of the laboratories division, and one of the persons in the Laboratory Division, albeit a photograph cinematographer, I suppose, was Rory McLeod. Now, Rory had spent a number of years in the union, found himself working for vis news, and decided he wanted to get on to the vice presidential bandwagon. And my first introduction, even to the so called New cleaned up arrangements for annual conference, was Cummings fixing it so that through the SOC Rory nomination was discounted. I remember so well urgent telephone calls from the SOC meeting on a Sunday in Alan's office, back to Alan and referring to different people. And it was the unedifying spectacle of Tony Cummins as chair of the SOC fixing it so that another candidate for that office for the laboratories couldn't get there. Another less than edifying spectacle. I expect it was influenced because I was a non smoker. We always used to have lunch in the restaurant around the corner Italian place, Romeo and Juliet. No, not Romeo, the other that grew star, the star crashed, yeah. And there was an arrangement there, I believe, at the time, where any Vice President could sign the tab. So we used to troop over there at lunchtime. And again, I digress, but it's amusing because Ian, Ian, little man, the sound recordist, smelly little man SOC would troop over there, and there would be another, yet another unedifying spectacle of everyone trying to arrange themselves around the table so they didn't have to sit near Ian, who specialized in old, dirty, shiny clothes. And of course, for him, ACTT really at that time, and subsequently, it was a was a wonderful sort of gravy, literally, a real gravy train. He I'm told that he wasn't particularly good at his job, and as a freelance sound recordist, was not very popular. So he belonged to a variety of committees, which emanated through ACTT in the Royal Society of Arts and the British Standards Institution, and a Tuc committee here, and something something committee there. And there was the man who lived, preferably on the free lunch so the SOC used to troop over to the star on a Sunday lunch time, we'd have a rather extended lunch, which obviously Tony used to sign for. But I always remember, and I know it's taken a long, round, long way of getting round to it. I always remember he used to have 40 fags on the bill and put him in his pocket. And as a non smoker, I mean, arguably, if I was a drinker, I could have said, I want a bottle of whiskey to take away. And people would have said, that is disgraceful. But a smoker could say, oh, 40 cigarettes and then sign the tab,

Speaker 1  9:55  
probably modest next to the cigars. The rest of them were small apples. Yeah. Sure

Speaker 2  10:00  
I can imagine that, you know, two or 300 fags a month was nothing compared to the triple harmony the real bills that were run up there. So that was the first year of any sort of national office, when I was on the SOC and in fact, after that, because Tony was an officer of the Union, he had to stand down, and I was elected the chair of the standing orders committee. There were several people who were competent in their way. Always remember Peter West was like a human computer, or he's a computer you could, you could find a fault. And he would, his mind would click over and say, Ah yes. And Ian Duff, who used to get in a dreadful bloody muddle. Anyway, I served on that. And at the same time the resolution 15 Committee, which had been charged with trying to change the shape of the Union, it was considered that the old sort of three huge branches were not really appropriate films, ITV and labs, or television and Labs was not really suitable, and that there should be some sort of change. So we ground away for some time, and eventually it was coincidental. I mean, they they came up with a report which I'd certainly been a very active participant in, and because I was the chair of the SOC, maybe it was a lack of integrity on my part, but the proposals that General Counsel wanted from the resolution 15 committee came up in in the form of a of a gigantic rules revision Conference, which people said could not be done, I suppose, in all fairness, at the time as Chairman of the SOC, I think it would be fair to say that I took the deserved credit for steering that rules of Vision Conference through what could have been in true ACTT style, the most incredible cock up, in Fact, got it through fairly well and fairly cleanly. The history at that particular point in time was that Ron Bowie had resigned in a flurry a few months earlier, and Dennis Claridge, as the Senior Vice President, had taken over the role as president, pending an election. And it was fortuitous, I think that the rules of Vision Conference was something like a month or a fortnight before the annual conference. So if I had any real opportunity to advertise my competence managing the conference, which really, I think I did compared to Dennis. I have a suspicion that that won me votes.

Unknown Speaker  13:29  
Why had Ron Bowie resigned?

Speaker 2  13:31  
Ron Bowie resigned in in an atmosphere, a rancorous atmosphere about his personal expenditure. I say personal expenditure, expenditure that he incurred as the president.

Speaker 2  13:53  
I think that, in a sense, certain aspects of what he argued were fair, that as President, he tried to busy himself at what was then Soho square,

Unknown Speaker  14:07  
quite extensively with the affairs of the Union. He was the president. He saw himself as probably first amongst a variable number of equals. And it used to say to me, I try and get down two or three days a week to see what's going on, to find out and keep my eye on things.

Speaker 2  14:32  
I think, I think that was quite reasonable, really, but it didn't go down awfully well with officials and a variety of people. And I have no doubt, and indeed, I was told subsequently by finance assistant that his scale of expenditure was extraordinarily high. I will explain that as a president any committee, any business. Is that you are legitimately or can easily, accountably, attend any business you care to attend to is charged to that particular budget, in a sense. So if you went to the F and G P, that cost went to the F and G P, if you, if you went on a trip to Russia, it went on that particular cost. So any any expenses you put in, they always try to attribute an apportion different parts of your expenses, and at the end of it, if there were expenses that they could not really see were chargeable to any particular account, it simply went down as the President's account. Now I understand that in the last year of his office, his account was standing at something like 20,000 pounds, so over and above everything they could reasonably charge to all these committees that he wanted to attend, invited or otherwise, he was still getting through 400 quid a week. And I'm told that there were last minute requests at the end of an F and GP, oh, it's been suggested I might go and talk to some people in Hollywood or, ooh, do you think I could go to such and such a conference? I mean, I am the president, aren't I? Well, we'll touch on that sort of thing later. No doubt in respect of Peter, but I guess it was out of hand. There is another side to it. I have no doubt, from what I've heard, that he was merely watching some of the professional, some of the paid staff. I think they knew how to spend money on a fairly extravagant scale. And, you know, he was a lay officer. If they can do it, why can't I? I'm sure that was very much in his thinking. But it reached a pitch, and in the end, the then treasurer, Fred Varley, I must say, and I suppose I don't know, I'll discount myself at this point, act at times, has picked up some pretty incompetence, or a people well meaning, but In my estimation, not very bright. And Fred Varley, formerly an ambience driver and then a rigor, became a sound engineer at London Weekend Television. I'm told, wasn't. Again, wasn't. Maybe it runs in the trade, I hope not, sound recordings. I'm pretty good. He wasn't very good, and gone involved in the union. I mean, it's inevitable in a industry, I suppose, where it's very vocationally orientated that perhaps I'm not a very good cameraman, but Fred barley used to physically have fights at the F and GP, and it ended up with him wrestling on the floor one day at an F and GP, I am told, and saying, I'll get you yet you bugger The net result of which was that, with whom was he wrestling? Ron Bowie, I believe

Unknown Speaker  18:11  
pre crutches does, yeah, I'm

Speaker 2  18:14  
not sure was pre crutches day, but he certainly had a boy that appears, I'm told, and was they were throwing blows, and what happened was general counsel said, in future the expenses of the President of all officers must go to the General Secretary for submission. Now I understood how Ron felt about that. He said, Never across my across my dead body sort of thing. I'm not putting my expenses up to the General Secretary, because who was he got to put his expenses up to and at that point, I'd have thought only God could conceivably intervene, because Ron knew what the score was. He knew who else was spending big. So in a very antagon, in a very rancorous atmosphere, he resigned at the General Council, and Dennis Claridge took over anyway. A few months after that, we had this fairly extensive rules revision conference, and two or three weeks later, we had the we had the annual conference at which I've been elected. The background of that was that during the course of the resolution 15 committee, I mean, there's always moans about the competence of the President and the Vice President and Vice President, because, of course, there are several and one or two people said to me, why don't you run as president? At least it'll try and break the mold of of having the almost a bug ins turn type president. So I said, Yeah, sure, I don't mind. Put me down. You know. I'll never go. I'm not proud, and really without doubt, I was essentially a real outside runner. And of course, those days were the days when there was a lot of horse trading. Well, if you step down for that, but stay in for that, will vote for you for this the old division. Well, it wasn't divisional, the Old Branch fixing we get you in. We can get labs to support you if you run as vice president. But of course, the reconstruction had ended. The idea of the six vice presidents, there was going to be one president, one vice president. So the horse trading became a damn sight more difficult and confused, and the sort of thing that I didn't know that went on anyway. I kept clear of all of the horse trading. I said, Look, I've been nominated the writers. I had one nomination, and that was from the writers. There was the one nomination from writers, and I, I stuck to it. I said, No, I'm not gonna stand out. My name's in and that's where it'll have to be, yeah. And the net result was that I won quite comfortably.

Speaker 1  21:16  
Now, well, let me ask you about that. When you were when you were first elected, and if I can digress for a moment, as you know, we we agreed this interview soon after I took office, yeah, which was many, 18 months ago, but for a very variety of reasons, we haven't been able to have it until this time. But but the kind of questions that I would ask you now are very different from the kind of questions that I would ask you then, because I'm considerably less innocent. Were you innocent at all when you were first elected? Obviously, you you've told us about the lead up to the job. In that sense, you weren't. But, I mean, were you innocent about that particular job? Did it? Did you discover elements that you didn't realize existed? And I mean, can you remember how it felt coming coming into that job? I mean, were you at all awed by it, or was it just a natural progression of everything that comes.

Speaker 2  22:22  
I don't think I was awed in any sense what I was most concerned about, and I think it was my reasons for sticking to my sort of guns, as it were, and refusing to stand down, was that I actually wanted to be president because I thought I could do the job better. And I perceive the job as being, at the very least a competent chair, and seeing that, and seeing today that meetings were conducted with a reasonable degree of common sense and efficiency, but also to try and get through and find out To what extent there was fixing and corruption, and whatever you want to call it, emanating from the F and GP. Now, Dennis Claridge had said during the brief time he was the president, he was not he was not going to the fmgp. He was going to steer clear of it. And all this discussion there was about how they used to fix things would simply have to come out in meetings. I didn't subscribe that idea. I said I'll go to the AF and GP, and I'll find out what's going on and honestly report back where I think there are perhaps questionable issues being discussed. So I came into the job, and indeed was certainly very innocent about a whole variety of things. And I think that it's a shame that perhaps even now, it's still arguably not too late to have some sort of job description and some clear parameters of what is right and what is not right and what is I mean. Arguably, they're just questions of personal integrity about how you conduct yourself. But as I remarked earlier, Ron Bowie obviously saw things going on around him, and many thought it perhaps appropriate to do the same.

Speaker 1  24:29  
Did you find things going on around you? Yeah. Did you feel it appropriate to do the same? Because

Speaker 2  24:36  
it just summoned it wasn't right. Some of the things that people were up to, like they were using the union. They were using it in a big way. And when I say using it, I'm not necessarily referring to lay officials. I always remember Jack O'Connor complaining, what? You doing down here? I walked into head office one day, not a Tuesday or Wednesday, not a day that I would normally be there. As far as he was concerned, presidents came down for the ECU, the fmgp. What are you doing here? He said. I said, What do you mean? What am I doing here? I'm the president. That may sound a bit big headed, but I was absolutely angry at the suggestion that an official should really have the temerity to say, what was I doing there? And that to me, albeit not evidence of perhaps what I've referred to, nevertheless, seemed to be the atmosphere of the place head office was for officials, and that, God help you if you dare disturb the routine. And I don't think it was exactly a routine that stretched anyone at all.

Speaker 1  25:55  
How much power does the President have, or does it vary with the individual we spoke previously about von Bucha, whom you say you supported on the point of principle that he would not, as it were, cede superiority to the General Secretary. How do you feel the relationship of the president should be to the general secretary, who is the principal officer of the Union? Is it the president

Speaker 2  26:18  
raises, of course, niceties that are sometimes even decided by the court, the courts you are the principal lay officer.

Speaker 1  26:32  
Is that superior to the principal well lay officer,

Speaker 2  26:35  
you would think so, wouldn't you? In some respects, I don't choose to use the word superior, but arguably, the weakness in ACTT is that the general secretary has not been elected and has not had to submit himself to that election system.

Unknown Speaker  26:56  
Has no intention of doing

Speaker 2  26:58  
so. Spent considerable efforts and union funds in getting a variety of legal opinions to make sure that he didn't have to run that risk. I have a nasty suspicion what the outcome might have been. I mean, I've made no bones about it. People have said to me, Oh, if there's going to be an election, will you run? I've said, Yes, I would. I would run as a matter of principle, in a sense that, you know, I would not, in any circumstances, allow one candidate in any election, you know, I mean, that would be a classical sort of ACTT trick no other suitable candidates to run as general secretary. So the relationship could be better. I suppose from this point onwards, we will inevitably end up in a long and various diatribes about the general secretary. I'm

Speaker 1  27:54  
thinking about technicalities, rather than the individual holding, in fact

Speaker 2  28:00  
the rules of the Union provide that it's the General Secretary that shall call meetings of the executive committee, or in an emergency, the Deputy General Secretary, there is no provision for the President to call a meeting of the executive in

Speaker 1  28:18  
a sense, they have to do they're not, In the sense that we do not have a secretariat, yeah,

Speaker 2  28:24  
but I mean, put it like this, if there was something cropping up that needed, in my opinion, questions that only the EC could decide that might run counter to the wishes of the General Secretary, I know that he would not have called the executive I seem to recall, I think the President could insist he called. I seem to recall that there was an occasion Tudor when we wanted just the executive committee members to meet about how we implemented the ridge race report, and there was threats of legal injunctions if you dare meet without the officials. So, you know, I don't kid myself about that at all. I think that, I think that the President has as little power as the officials or the paid staff are prepared to let him have,

Speaker 1  29:25  
or as much as he has he has the courage to try and take.

Speaker 2  29:33  
I certainly remember us being in on a couple of occasions, in darkened corners of a pub looking at a letter, letters that I was writing to the journal.

Speaker 2  29:52  
Should have brought it along, really. It was a shame we can't find it and put that on the tape. It would perhaps be quite indicative of the relationship. The extent to which, at times, it deteriorated with the general secretary. Can you indicate the contents of the letter for the record? Yeah, sure. The letter was at a time when, yet again, some very high expenses have been submitted by, I think, the then Chair of the ITV division, Jim Jim Bell and very high expenses related to a Chinese lunch was actually a Chinese lunch in a restaurant that cost a great deal of money, sorry, like 40 pounds,

Unknown Speaker  30:47  
30 pounds ahead, 29 pounds ahead,

Speaker 2  30:50  
yeah, which allegedly did not have any wine on the court. Now, the matter was discussed at the executive committee, and if I remember correctly, the editor of the Journal wrote an article, a witty, amusing in a sense, albeit it was a true it's just a report, a witty report of the proceedings at the EC and the General Secretary stepped in and stopped it being published. That's correct, to use an old journalistic phrase. I spiked it. I was very angry about it. I thought that the people had spent that great deal of money should be, should be publicly within the union that is, have the attention drawn to their high spending. But of course, that was at a time after all the bad press publicity about the red race report and high spending, and Alan said, if that gets into the press, There they go again, whatever, whatever, there be no peace. So the article was duly spiked, and I wrote a letter to the two letters. Subsequently, it was two letters to the Journal of the editor of the journal, in which I likened Alan to some Soviet bureaucrat censoring the journal because there was matter in there that was embarrassing to the Union, but in fact, nevertheless should be publicly exposed. And Alan put a pretty thorny report in the journal, to which I replied yet again in a similar, churlish, frosty manner,

Speaker 1  32:40  
I should explain, for the purposes of the record, that I was your vice president of your presidency. So when we say we this is, that's right, the extent that we were working together and we were discussing various aspects together

Unknown Speaker  32:59  
the record.

Speaker 1  33:01  
Certainly talking about the clash, if it is a clash or relationship indeed, between the President and the general secretary. I mean, that was an example of a clash, and of course, arising from the regroups report about no doubt about which no doubt we'll talk in more detail later. But arising from that, course, there actually was a move not springing from you, in fact, but there did arise a move to an seat Alan Sapo, which surely very narrowly fell, did it not one vote? Can you tell us something about that, from your point of view, where you stood?

Unknown Speaker  33:49  
Well, I was certainly aware that, let's say that red race was a fairly colorful sort of figure.

Speaker 2  34:01  
And in retrospect, I'm sure Alan was quite upset that he had been so initially enthusiastic about his appointment. The Red race report, I guess it's on record elsewhere, was taken again as a as a sort of a union decision, rather akin to the resolution of 15 reconstruction, that something was fundamentally wrong with the union, that there were there were massive changes taking place outside of head office, which, in a sense, was becoming more and more isolated from the members and The industry. And how could it best and most efficiently respond? So red race was shortlisted from number of people. He was a former labor MP trade union official himself in the past, and then he came and in a space of four or five months, bloody turn the Union. Upside down, really. It was most refreshing. I mean, those of us who welcomed his massive report really were quite pleased with the prospects of of the potential change, inevitably, the worst aspects of ACTT that we knew about got into the press. I must add that some of us were quite convinced that it only got into the press because Alan deliberately leaps some of the confidential matters. They could only have come from, in my, best of my knowledge, from about three people, and one of them was Alan, certainly wasn't me of the initial leakings. And the consequence was that people thought that a the report had been an indictment on Alan's inadequate management of the union in the past. And of course, Alan's response to that was to retreat and say, but I'm not the chief executive, I'm not the manager. I have to report to all sorts of committees. I'm not allowed to do the job as I really want to. The same time you had Roy Roy lock at the Deputy General Secretary, in his usual mode of hiding behind all sorts of doors and whispering innuendos about the general sector, and he knew there was impossible work. Then I know I said, I've tried, I've tried, and you can't get him to do anything. So in all that sort of atmosphere, a number of people felt the best thing was that really Alan shouldn't stay. He was certainly not up to the job of revitalizing, re managing the union as the report perceived the union should be, and they were massive changes. And I suppose all of this material that is being put on tape will find itself accompanied by the red race report. I would hope so that it's the ridge race is very much taken as part of the history of act at that time, it certainly seemed to me to be quite a historic document. Well, I very carefully get my copy which I'm doing to give, yeah, well, it was a view was taken by a number of people that really Alan ought to perhaps consider early retirement, whatever. And he was on holiday, I believe, at the time. In fact, it was slightly worse than that. I was at the Blackpool Labor Party Conference and with with Alan. And during the week, I'd come back to London for an F and GP on the Wednesday. While I was here on that Wednesday, I met reg race, who just finished the draft report, and he showed me a copy. And I wouldn't say I was thunderstruck, but obviously the contents were pretty devastating for Alan. So when I went back to Blackpool, I did warn Alan that when the report came out shortly, he would not be very pleased about it. He was almost right when I told him about some of the aspects, I think the guy was really very frightened and anxious. I think that would all be certainly understatement, very anxious about his future. So a number of people felt, and I must say, a lot of that emanated from certain luminaries in ITV, who have now departed for the tfpa that he should go, and to be honest, I mean, I Well, even if he shouldn't go, he shouldn't perhaps stay and try and do the job that was necessary. It was felt to be necessary because, in a sense, his lack of qualities in the past was certainly no recommendation for the future. So there were inevitably phone calls and phone calls. I think the best piece of advice I had was from then you well I'm still a principal union lawyer who was one of my great counselors over my period of office, Eddie who said to me, Bruce, it will be impossible to get Alan out. Your general counsel is so loosely constituted, he will turn up with all sorts of people on the day the CP will have found all sorts of worms in little holes, all sorts of old political loyalties and old scores will be cleared up, and there will be the chances are that he would survive a vote of Noel. Confidence, and indeed, what happens if there's a vote of no confidence? That doesn't necessarily mean that he would have to resign? He said, There's only one thing that can be done, and that is to reduce his salary. That only requires a general counsel decision, he said, and you would think that anyone, particularly Alan, would be so spun by a reduction in his salary that he would not stay so as the report then became published, Alan was in Moscow, and Roy and I worked out a telegram that we sent Alan in Moscow advising him of the very serious consequences of the report which was now published, and that when he came back, would he like to meet myself And Roy in his office on the Saturday morning, we said that Roy and I had agreed we realized that there was going to be a strong move to get Alan out in a very public and uncomfortable way, and that perhaps Alan might like to consider his future. Now we all know what a euphemism that is. Would he like to consider early retirement, a consultancy with the union, and a year's pay in hand and full pension, whatever, whatever I duly turned up on the Saturday morning, and lo and behold, no sign of bloody Roy. Alan turned up very worried. I put all these points to him, said I didn't think it would be a good thing for the Union to have all this dragged through the press, and it would be a very rancorous and difficult time. And to what extent would the union benefit? Alan meekly gave an account of himself. Said he thought the report had been very vindictive about him. Personally, it was quite unfair. He would defend his corner. He felt he had a lot left to offer the Union. He had a great deal of experience, and that if there was any attempt to unseat him, he would vigorously stay in his corner and fighter or credit of a guy, he did. And the plan that eventually emanated was that there would be a vote of no confidence in his ability to implement the report. And if such a vote was carried, it would be then assumed that Roy would undertake very specifically, the responsibility and the ensuing argument would then be put to the General Counsel in the form of a motion that if Allen, as the General Secretary, was not able to implement such a major report because he the union didn't have confidence in him that his salary should be reduced, an emotion was accordingly constructed and held back for due display. I must say that, I excuse me, there was no mention of the of the salary at the note that General. No, that was a matter that was, in a sense, the early matter was whether he should implement report on it. That's right. No, I didn't you ever got wind of that, to be honest. Christ, no. What happened was, and I must say, if ever I look back, whenever I look back on my presidency, that was my, one of my greatest failings at that debate, I had arranged for numbered ballot papers to be made available, and I was firmly of the opinion that a vote such As that

Speaker 2  44:00  
should not be a hand in the air job. I thought that it that it would be very difficult to live for many people with the general secretary, hands going up for this, hands going up for that. And after this long and bitter debate, there was no two ways about it and it possibly, it's certainly the forecast that all sorts of people would turn up to to vote for the general secretary is so true, to support him and vote against the motion of no confidence in his abilities To implement the report

Speaker 1  44:40  
his offices, his offices. Susan Yeah,

Speaker 2  44:43  
did a great job, and he put out. He obviously his old two CP mates, Noel Harrison, Ken Roberts, went out and fingered a lot of people, particularly well both of them. I mean, people turned in from I. Shops and workplaces that hadn't been seen, if ever before, and it was particularly a crowd of meeting with all the press outside whatever, whatever, a difficult time. When it came to the vote, I said that I wanted to have a paper ballot earlier. I said that Roy had not turned up on that Saturday morning, and I suspect I know why. I guess either he fingered out anger. Allen fingered him as soon as he got back from Moscow the night before, or Roy just decided to do what he usually does, which is to duck down or hide behind a door. And Roy was inevitably defensive of Alan that Sunday at the General Council. I guess he saw that he had a lot to lose by Alan being elbowed aside. I suppose Roy's weakness is that he's not ambitious really. He really is a number two, a bit of a plotter in Union. I think he's got a lot of ability. If he had more ambition, he might have taken part in the conspiracy and become the general secretary, assume

Speaker 1  46:13  
as chair on that occasion. You, You say that now you said it was a feeling. I mean, you obviously, as it were falling over backwards to appear to be fair to Alan, were you not?

Speaker 2  46:27  
I did struggle. I think, in all fairness, I stopped people being abused, particularly abusive of him, and I had to stop Alan being abusive of people himself. But when it came to the vote, I said I've prepared ballot papers, and I would like people to put a YAY or an A on a piece of paper. And the first person to object was the Deputy General Secretary of the media. We can't have that. We can't have that. We've always raised our hands in the air. Let people account for themselves. And there was inevitable sort of roaring and wailing from the supportive left. And I must say that that particular issue was not a simple LEFT, RIGHT Pro and

Speaker 1  47:16  
did you not take a vote on the issue? I can't. I can't remember. I though I can't remember

Speaker 2  47:20  
whether I decided to short it was, it was a hands in the air John and I well remember when I was handed by the teller the results. And was 50 for the motion of no confidence, and 51 against the motion, so that, in essence, it fell. Had I been a scrap quicker, I would have crumpled up that piece of paper, put it in my pocket and said, the result is a draw, because as the president, I had my own vote. I'd never used it before. Had I used my casting vote, obviously the motion would have fell. I would have been better destroying that piece of paper. And as I knew that teller personally quite well, she would never have told Anyone what the vote was, and I would have been,

Unknown Speaker  48:46  
as we were talking about the vote and.

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
As we were talking about the vote, you're talking about the 5051 Yeah,

Speaker 1  0:07  
that's right. Well, I would have said that the result was so close that there have to be a paper ballot. And the point about that was that it wasn't just 5051 there's something like 20 abstentions. And they were abstentions I could see looking across the floor what was happening. A number of substantial persons in the London television division. Brookie was one.

Unknown Speaker  0:40  
I think book he was away on

Speaker 1  0:41  
No, he was there gene, Gene McClements. There was a number of people who obviously had been fingered. Somehow they'd been fingered, and they abstained. And they said to me later afterwards, if we'd had a paper ballot, we would have voted before the motion, that's

Speaker 2  1:01  
what I meant when I said you were, you know, you were falling over backwards, to be fair to Alan, and perhaps you were unfair to the meeting, in the sense that, as I recall, I don't think you did put it to the vote. I think you kind of accepted the war that went up and said, All right, and we'll Hands up, hands up. And then, had we been voting on anything else, on a 5051, vote, you would undoubtedly have allowed a week, which you immediately ruled out at the time. Well,

Speaker 1  1:32  
I think my feeling was that in saying it's pointless to have another, I mean, I only wanted a paper ballot at that point, but I was held down on that. Arguably, it was proper in terms of being rigidly fair, not to go through it again. Yes, I'm sure. And arguably, there's a case that says Alan has survived by the skin of his teeth, if, and even after four bloody years, I should have known better. If he'd had a scrap of humility, he would have recognized his position of hanging on by one vote, and he would have been a coward and much different person. He wasn't. He turned it into a bloody triumph. He turned it into a triumph.

Speaker 2  2:24  
He actually raised his hands above his head like a box. Would you record? Sure,

Speaker 1  2:28  
yeah, extraordinary. And that was yet another incident I've been reminded and perhaps this is an occasion just to say that, back at the point of my election, I was this outside runner, and there were two or three potentially more popular figures, one of which was Ron Bowie. He had decided, after his earlier resignation that he would run again, he said in his address to clear my name. Well, the net result was that, I think it was eventually, sort of felt that a I had a certain, yes, I had a strong ITV following, certainly a strong ITV following, and probably picked up votes from the film division and the labs division, simply because, I guess they weren't so sure on the other candidates. And yeah, it was probably my competence in getting the major SOC business through a couple of three weeks earlier, I was

Speaker 2  3:44  
gonna say, Can I suggest some of the reasons why you were elected? And historically, historically, it's important to point out that the level of chairmanship was appalling prior to your election. Was it not I mean,

Speaker 3  4:02  
and never any sense of authority. But technically, we never

Speaker 2  4:05  
ever got through agendas. Everything piled up and up and up. We never, ever got to important matters. And there was a very high degree of frustration about that. And you had been seen through, indeed the your SOC position and your handling that rules of Vision Conference to be a very competent chairman. I think that was one major point. And the other one, of course, was that you had become a figure nationally known, rather than regionally known in the resolution 15. In the resolution 15, yeah, about which I will talk to you, but tell me, you know this, this, I'm not sure what you consider that high point as it were in your career, or low point when, when Alan came up, probably both. No, yeah, until you got the result, what were the other highs and lows of your five years? Ones that spring to mind?

Speaker 1  5:14  
I think one of my constant low points was Jack O'Connor being drunk at executives and General Counsel, the fact that we had an organizer who who clinically had a major alcohol problem, never really taken into hand, never really taken into hand, until far, far too late, that no one had the guts. And in essence, it should have been the general secretary, or perhaps me from the chair, but you know, you lived in fear of the consequences of having drunk and Jack about bawling and roaring and incoherent and disrupting proceedings. That was a constant low point, a constant sense of depression. I think another constant low after about the first year or two was and it was a consequence of the resolution 15 reconstruction was the very cavalier and coarse behavior of the ITV people. I'd grown up in the ITV negotiating committee with several people who I had not disliked, until they realized that I, as President, wasn't their puppet. And then they Jim Bell and Ian McLaren and one or two others seemed to become the most spiteful, hateful people you could wish to come across. There were buffoons who could be a high point at any general counsel or any executive. Jim connoch could always be relied upon to, really to contribute next to nothing, in any progressive sense, to a meeting. But he always got up and spoke quite courageously, yes, of course. And I mean, in a sense, I admired the guy for it

Unknown Speaker  7:23  
was Winifred Ron Richard from Ewing still around when you

Speaker 1  7:26  
know Winifred Crom Ewing had had had her stroke just after I became president. I recollect because I remember flowers being arranged most begrudgingly by Alan through the fmgp to be sent to her. So, no, I, I only ever recall her being an annual conference, I think on reflection, as we've said, Tudor, you know, you ran the risk of becoming the the latter day. Winifred, crime, Ewing, you know, by all your attempts at really doing what Winifred doing, which was to try and see some sort of fair play for a particular minority.

Unknown Speaker  8:13  
Yvonne Richards, you mentioned, yes.

Speaker 1  8:14  
Well, I mean, again, Yvonne Richards was one of those people who, at any executive or general counsel, particularly general counsel was always there with an opinion. Alistair Beaton, these were the sort of people who could raise your spirits for the day at a general counsel in terms of bigger issues. One of the stories that ran on and ran on and ran on was the saga about Ken Roberts and his prosecution for alleged shoplifting. I wonder if the record is the principal archivist is raising his eyebrows in complete innocence.

Unknown Speaker  9:00  
It's gonna be sealed tape.

Speaker 3  9:03  
It relates directly to something I want to discuss both with you, which maybe we'll do on tape. I wish your interest. Well, a major theft in the building, yeah, from this bloody office, apart from other things, that clock was taken

Unknown Speaker  9:20  
on the major theft. Yeah,

Speaker 3  9:23  
sure, the collection of Sydney technicians has disappeared. Oh, really,

Speaker 1  9:27  
they've not gone off for long term storage, have they?

Unknown Speaker  9:32  
I don't think now is the time

Speaker 1  9:39  
when I was not long after I've been elected president, and that was during the time when the transition was taking place between the resolution 15 decisions and the appearance of this the new division. Actions, which meant that there was still the six vice presidents making up the fmgp, together with the treasurer, the vice the president and whatever, whatever, we used to meet in Alan's office. And not long after I'd become president, was probably late in the autumn. I suspect we came to the F and G p1 evening, and at the end of the business, Alan said, now there's a very serious matter to discuss now, he said, which is obviously very confidential, I'm going to ask Ken Roberts to come in, because he's been accused of shoplifting and he would like to put this matter to the F and GP, Ken came in and in his own inevitable incompetent, fuddly, muddly manner, proceeded to relay, I mean, the man was so verbally incompetent, how he could ever have negotiated with employers. Defeats me. But he proceeded to relay to us a story, but quite defeated any far fetched novelists idea of the sort of circumstances that the ken alleged were happening to him, in essence, he had gone to Harrods to do some shopping. Now why a well known Communist Party and former alleged spy went shopping in Harrods regularly. I don't know Well, I do know now

Speaker 2  11:44  
to buy presents for Moscow visit.

Speaker 1  11:49  
You had a trip coming up to Moscow, and had been down there to buy some spirits. They liked the Harrods label, the the higher echelons of the Soviet officials like the Harrods label on their whiskey and brandy. So Ken used to go shopping down at Harrods. Apparently, his wife liked the bread that they used to bake there. He liked the overcoats they sold there. I don't know why. Anyway, I suppose I don't know if any of this has ever been related before. Well, I'll try and give my account. Ken came to the committee and said that on this particular occasion, he'd been down to Harrods to do some shopping. First of all, he went to the food hall and bought some groceries, particularly bread. Then he went to the spirits department and bought some spirits. And then he decided he wanted a new over coat, similar to the one he already had, which was that lovely classic co called the British warm I suppose he liked strutting about in some sort of major Domos outfit. Anyway, he then said to us, I thought I'd go and have a coffee first, he said, so I went to one of the restaurants, sat down at a table, and quite by chance, he said, got into conversation with an Irish woman who was very sympathetic to the IRA cause, and told me a number of interesting things about this, that and the other. Anyway, he said, I paid for my coffee, and then decided that I'd take my overcoat up to the cloak room and leave it there, rather than have to take it on and off together with the shopping. So I did all of that, he said, went to the men's department, tried on a coat, he said. And as I was walking around, looking in mirrors, lo and behold, I thought I'd better go and get my other things, because I remembered I'd left my means of paying in the other coat pocket. As I left the department, the men's clothing department, they stopped me and accused me of stealing the coat. I said this was quite ridiculous, and that I was only going to get my coat and I could prove this at the other so anyway, he said I they wouldn't let me do anything, he said. And the police were called, and I was taken to the manager's office and I was duly charged. So the following day, he said, I went back to the cloak room, I went back to the lost property office to pick up my coat and shopping, and I knew that I would have evidence. Incidents on my coat pocket to indicate that I had no need to steal a coat because I already had one. All these stories, the story just seemed to be full of so many elaborations you could not it didn't make sense. But he went on to say that he'd gone to the lost property office. And I mean, I remember interjecting at that point and saying, Well, why did you go to the lost property office? Oh, well, he said, I've left stuff before in the in the cloak room overnight, and you have to go to the lost property office the following day. Now, it was noticeable that in his office there was always stuff with Harrods label on it. Jackets hung up Harrods label. Drinks and so many things had Harrods labels on it. And at that point I thought, How does he know they bloody well put it in the lost property office? Has he been there before? And then I said, just a minute, you said they arrested you or stopped you as you were leaving the department. Surely you have to be outside of the premises. You can't be arrested for shoplifting on the premises. He said, that's what they're going to say. They'll say they arrested me outside of the premises. Anyway. He then went on to tell us this, that he came back to the office, and lo and behold, in his coat pocket was a suspicious package containing some Irish travelers, checks, some white powder, a white substance, and some hypodermic syringes so he said, I didn't know what to make of all of this. He said, Well, I went down to see Alan and to tell him all of this. And Alan said, Well, you better get those odds and ends together, and we'll send him in a motorbike over to the solicitor. I'll tell the solicitor about this. This may be important information that you know you've been planning, because the open Ken was suggesting that he actually been nobled, not really for shoplifting this. Well, he had been noble for shoplifting, but this was an attempt, yet again, by the secret services, who, of course, investigated his conduct on a previous trial for spinach some years earlier, this was another attempt by the Secret authorities to discredit Him, not just him, but of course, really ACTT. That's why we should consider this matter most seriously. So that Alan had said, Well, I'll get in touch with the lawyer and these things that have been planted on you or planted on your coat in the lost property office by the secret services. Should we should send them off to the lawyer? So Ken said, I went back upstairs, and lo and behold, the Irish travels checks had disappeared. There was just the white substance and the hypodermic syringe. Anyway, we put that into an envelope, sealed it up, put it on them, on the motorbike carrier, the courier who took it to the solicitor, whose Secretary put it into the safe. Lo and behold, he said, when we eventually, two days later, went to see the solicitor, he got the envelope out, and it was empty. You know again, this f and g, P, Kitty committee, I mean, was sitting there in abject amazement listening to this saga. Well, what had happened to it? Ken, well, he said, obviously the Secret Service has intervened with the courier and took the parcel off of him and substituted another one. The whole place is being bugged. He said, obviously, obviously, we know that they knew when Alan rang, they sent their own courier. I mean, these, this was almost beyond belief. This sort of description. The net result of it was that it was put to us that Ken, in fact, was being persecuted yet again by the Secret Service authorities, and that the union really should do everything they could possibly do to support him. Now at that point, the chair of the fmgp said, Well, I think it best that you leave now, Ken, we'll talk about it and let you know in due course what our decision is. So they went round the table asking the individual members of the F and GP, what do they think of it? And I was the last one. I said, I'm in a rather difficult position within the four walls of this office, I find the story that we've heard absolutely incredible. And at that point I must and at this point, I'll add that Stan Warby, who had known Ken Roberts for years, he was the laboratories of. Vice President had said, this is a load of typical Ken Roberts cock and bull. He's being caught nicking. I've heard he's done. I've heard stories about Ken and his fancying arrows label. I reckon he's being caught Nick and and that's it. I know when Ken is telling you a load of lies, they got to me and I said, Well, I'm in a difficult position. I said, because a few months ago, a few weeks ago, whatever, I went on a delegation to the USSR, and had to meet Ken Roberts and others, who was the laboratory guy, then Phil Hooley, I had to meet them at the airport. We had arranged to meet at the airport, I said. And there I was on this particular day, looking around the duty free lounge, as they call it, where these sort of fairly classy

Speaker 1  21:03  
British gifts by Dunhill and all that sort of stuff are sold besides the spirits and the perfumery. And I said, at a distance I saw Ken for art go over and speak to him, I said. But I stopped because I was surprised to see him taking a belt off the rack and trying it on and thinking to myself, silly buggers had to buy a belt. He's forgotten to bring one with him, I said. But what I what actually arrested me and stopped me going any further was that I noticed that he was doing up the belt, carefully looking two or three directions, and then closing up his jacket pot, closing his over coat up, and then walked off with it, I said, he then proceeded to help himself from two or three different counters in a similar manner. I said, Now I have no evidence of this. I chose not to call the airport police because I thought, wow, you know, you sort of turn a blind eye to an occasion like this, and you just think to yourself, that's it, I said. And to be honest, when I got on the plane, I was sitting one seat but one away from him, and saw him tear the price label off and drop it on the floor. And I'd said to Phil Hooley, what had happened, and although it's only here say, I told her, so, I So, I said, I'm in a difficult position. The fact of the matter is, as far as I'm concerned, I guess the guy probably was caught Mickey. I mean, I'm what I've seen would perhaps account for what the truth of the story is, it was the next morning after that. I mean, this, this was, this was something that was almost inconceivable. I mean, for me to have said this, and Roy afterwards said it was extremely brave of me, and that he didn't think anyone in the history of Act would ever have said that it was within about 24 to 36 hours of that that I had a note saying that if I repeated this story ever again, I'd be prosecuted for slander by Ken Roberts because I had no business to refer to something of which I had no proof, ie, that he had been seen, in my opinion, shoplifting at Heathrow. So I realized very promptly that someone had told him what I'd said, and that really there was no confidence within the F and GP. That saga then continued for months and months and months. The original decision of the fmgp was that we would support him in the same way we'd support anyone else in a legal case that is up to a limited 250 pounds. There were so many incidents around that and it cost so much money in terms of time and dragging on. Ken had said, as far as he understood it, we'd be defending him all the way to the House of Lords, regardless of the costs. And Alan really didn't know what to say, because he, I think he sort of conspired with Ken on half this bloody story.

Speaker 3  24:20  
Do you know if the union supported him financially during the Kodak trial, the industrial espionage trial?

Speaker 1  24:29  
No, he'd had moral support from Alan. There's an interesting history that was, I believe that at the time, George Alvin said, we know what that bug is like down at Kodak, we're not going to help him at all. And apparently it was the deputy general secretary, a closet member, I believe, of the party, who had said we must try and help them one way or the other. And Alan had offered a great deal of moral and sort of left wing Union. In support of ACTT in that particular defense, and on that occasion, I mean, Ken had got off like he subsequently got off the charge at Harrods, because Harrods turned up with the wrong over coat, and the case was dismissed because of a muddle of evidence. But it was a saga that dragged on and on and deflected the union off its course. So much, so much. And the ultimate story that I was told by the generals Deputy General Secretary was this, and it is worth recording that two or three days after Ken had allegedly Well, had been to Harrods, his secretary, who had not been with the union, very long, stopped coming into work. She was rung up by the office administrator. Why are you not in at work? Oh, well, it's all there were a number of excuses. Came forward why she didn't come into work, and she she was told, Well, you've not been with the union very long. Your sick pay can only last so long. You must send in a medical certificate and whatever, whatever this eventually got to a point where she was warned that she'd been absent so long, she would no longer get any pay, and then indeed, she would have to be dismissed if she couldn't really provide a good explanation of why she should Come to work, why she shouldn't come to work? In the end, this is what Roy told me. She then rang up and said, Look, if you stop my pay any longer, I'll start to tell the truth. She said, You know what happened to the then office supervisor. I've told you before what happened and you're trying to hide it. So the office supervisor talked about it and told Roy, this is all hearsay, but apparently, the day after Ken was picked up by the police and charged. He came into his office and asked his secretary to come with him to Harrods, and he would take her around various points in the store, which would support then his story about where he'd been, and she would say she had been to Harrods with him, right? That was the background to it. She point blank, refused, and said, I'm not going to get involved in that sort of caper, no way. And he said, Well, I forget difficult for you, for my if you're going to remain my secretary, if you won't out me when I need some help. So that's why she stopped coming in. When the pressure started getting put on her to say, well, you must come into work. She said, I'm sorry I'm not coming in if I've got to be his secretary, in which case she was told she would have to leave. And she said, I'm not leaving without a reasonable amount of compensation. And the general secretary told of this, instructed the treasurer to write out a check for 1500 pounds. I believe, that was to be given to her in as an ex garage of payment to keep her mouth shut and go away and never come back again. And that payment was never referred to any committee. And when I heard about it from the deputy general secretary, who I zoom, was fairly well aware of what was happening. I said, What are you going to do about it? He said, You know, I can do nothing. It's up to you. I mean, once again, come back to Roy hiding behind doors as he throws the grenade around the corner. We I then talked to one or two of my personal counselors or my certain friends in ACTT got their opinion, then I went to the lawyer who said, Bruce, if you open that one up, it will be such a big box of ugly whatevers you'll never know where and when it's going to end. Do you think you'll get support from Roy? Will he come out with this story? What is, what is going to happen? And that was one of my low points, desperately low points there. I had a threat of a slander case against me, which subsequently i. Mean, I must admit my lawyer strengthened my hand by saying you had a certain degree of protection in that confined committee, and that you you did the reasonable duty, and that really it's unlikely a slander case might succeed. But you know, I'd been in office about six months, and I was shitting myself. I just didn't think part of that was that Noel Harris had said he Noel Harris rang me up about two days after I told the F and GP what I told them, and said, Here, I've heard you said, so and so, so and so. Is that true what you said in the F and GP? And I said, Yes, part of this letter that I was sent through Ken Roberts threatening me with slander was that I had said to Noel Harris that what I told so Noel Harris became part of it. You know, suddenly was so they are six months into the presidency, threatened with slander because of this massive cock and bull story. I raised my hands in despair. At this point the microphone can't see that.

Speaker 2  31:12  
I may say it was just to sort of wrap up that they ended up that particular saga, yes, that I had to be absolutely insistent when he came to the end of his contract and got an extension on it, that there was no further one, or he would still have been here today. I have no doubt whatsoever. I just had to insist on it, just as I had absolutely insistent about Jack O'Connor going when it came to one

Speaker 1  31:41  
thing that surprises me, yet still, about Ken Roberts is that no one suggested he's made an honorary member.

Speaker 2  31:51  
Oh, yes, but there's a reason for that. That's because he has ambitions of standing profits. Yeah, but let's pass on from

Speaker 1  31:58  
that long story. Sorry, it's so long you asked me about high points. Yes, there was one other, yeah, that was worth recounting. And again, this is sort of battling that you get on a on that trip to Russia, or perhaps an earlier trip, and there was two in the same year, part of the delegation was Ron Barton, Roni MacLeod myself, Andy Gray, Phil Hooley and his wife. And oh, young woman from Ed Tech branch at the time, very nice. Can't think of her name now, should have done, but I can't anyway, throughout the trip, there had been the most appalling

Unknown Speaker  32:48  
atmosphere, not Elizabeth Mead,

Speaker 1  32:50  
no, no, she went on a subsequent trip, the most appalling atmosphere, most generally stirred up and whatever by Ron Barton, who had arranged that as a sort of a preamble to this bloody trip. And again, these were the stories that never came out. We were told that we had been invited to the USSR by the cultural workers union on a goodwill trip to go and see the achievements, whatever, whatever. It subsequently turned out that this was not a free invitation ACTT through the good offices of its general secretary, who happened to be the president of fist have had arranged with a number of other Western European countries, other Western European trade unions in fist ave to pay into fist staffs travel fund certain amounts of Western European currency, which would then buy fares for third World countries who were too poor to send delegates to the fist of conferences, which were usually held in the USSR. USSR couldn't fund with hard currency getting third world people into the country, so this sort of travel fund was set up. And in fact, every so called good will visit that was hosted free by the Russians. In reality, we paid for by making a donation out of general funds into this fist out fund. And it was never taught, sorry, I may have come out. It was never it was never really identified in any way. And in fact, during the trip, the Treasurer had to negotiate a price for this 14 days we spent in the USSR and Ron Barton was a bit angry. The Russians had said they'd fly us out there, but we'd have to fly our own way back. In fact, then they changed their mind. So sorry we can't. Offer any accommodation. In terms of flights, you'll have to find your fare each way. So there was eight of us. We clubbed class fares at 800 pound a piece return. And then on top of that, this figure to be fixed while we were in to be discussed between Ron and the principle of the cultural workers union. In the end, I believe for eight of us to go, there was something like 12,000 pounds. I mean, it was a fortnight in the USSR for about 1200 1500 quid each. By no means was it a free trip. But never was any of this financial aspect ever discussed and related to the executive or to anyone. It was a free trip, and it was the officers who were going wrong. Ron Barton, anxious to please, his hosts, had suggested to myself and Rory and one or two others that between us, we should buy a Hi Fi outfit to take in to one of the one of the cultural workers union hosts. It was a real fixing little guy that we should we in the end, the idea was that each of us would put up 150 pounds of our own money to pay for these two or three grand presents for the people who are going to show us around, and actually sent a list of what they wanted. I mean, Ron had been in touch with them, and there was a list of the things they wanted, ranging from Hi Fi to sort of a CD player, almost, you know, quite bizarre. And I said there was no way I was going to get involved in that sort of expenditure, if people, you know, if Ron Barton wanted to pay for what he could, but I had no intention of doing that. At that point, Alan took me shopping to liberties where we spent 400 pounds of union funds buying gifts to take to the president of the cultural workers union and to liberally dispense around the countryside bits of glass and Dartington glass and one or two oil paintings, little bits and pieces that we were to take over again, all these sort of things surprised me to say the least. We went over there, and we were there. The atmosphere between Rory and Rory MacLeod and Ron Barton was appalling. And for four or five days, we stayed at one of the two Russian tucs, sort of country hospital clinics, rest homes down on the Black Sea. Now, of all the places that I ever stayed in the USSR, that was certainly the most comfortable. And Ron Barton and I shared a suite. We had a big sitting room and a bedroom at either end of it, a bathroom. We shared that. And Ron I didn't see for about three days. He just disappeared into his room with two or three bottles of whiskey and and then appeared very irritable one evening, and as we were walking round about tea time around the gardens of this great big, vast Tuc place, Russian Tuc, an argument started to develop between Rory and Ron, and it got to a point where they were bawling and shouting and wrestling with one another, and I was in the Middle trying to prize these two big, burly men apart. And they created such a bloody row that all the balconies were lined with these various luminaries of the Russian Tuc watching English delegation fight and scrap. God, you know, if ever I could have died, that was it. We'd arrived there at the Black Sea Yalta, having flown down from Leningrad. In Leningrad, there had been something of a problem in that Andy Andy Gray had apparently again, made arrangements to carry other particular gifts over which his wife had arranged for him was vast quantities of cosmetics and perfumes. Now, again, this is hearsay, because I used to sort of go respectively, to bed at about 11 o'clock at night, it seems, in the large restaurant and bar of this hotel, the Astoria we were staying at in Leningrad, fine note hotel, love your place. And he had started selling these cosmetics and perfumes to the various local Russians. Things had got a bit out of hand, and the police were called, and Andy was carted off to the jug. Ron Barton managed to intervene through the good offices of the host who was accompanying. He was Gennady pettico Petti cough, he's dead now, but he was the chairman of the international division of the cultural workers union. That meant he had the black Volga, you know, the driver. So he intervened and Andy in the early hours of the morning was restored to to life. At that point, Andy decided you'd better go home and rapidly arranged at Leningrad instead of going down to Yalta to get on a plane to go to Norway, I think, and then one of those SAS at the airline, Swedish airlines, and then travel back to the UK from Norway. So we got out of the USSR very quickly. I don't know if he's subsequently been back about, you know, I mean the stories and I was trying to go around USSR, making speeches every day and thanking people for that hospitality, trying to remain sober in moss films, where we went to see the work of some young student film makers in the Soviet studios. We were ushered in after a very generous alcoholic lunch to this viewing theater. And Ron Barton always carried a PolyPhen bag with him wherever he went, full of clanking tins of lager. And during the course of watching Malcolm, Malcolm Bradbury, Ray Bradbury, the sky fi writer, oh, Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury, during the course of watching a small short about 15 minutes long, based on a Ray Bradbury story, gradually, the sounds of snoring became so deafening, the lights had to be put on on Ron Barton, who had stretched out on several seats at the back of the auditorium, had to be stirred and woken from his deep alcoholic slumbers. That if those little stories that I recount are some sort of example of how I lose my rag when people talked about jollies, I was trying to retain some semblance of integrity and propriety in this trip around the USSR, when in reality, it was just a drunken

Speaker 2  42:26  
you wouldn't recognize the puritanical regime we have. No God no. I mean, it was, I mean,

Speaker 1  42:31  
it was that sort of thing that made me want to stop trips. Really, they were not trips. They were they were a joke. It was the following year that I went to Las Vegas again with Ron Barton and Lynn Lloyd. Now I will offer my confessions quite openly here on the tape, as soon as it was decided was the three of us. Lynn Lloyd came across to me on after the General Counsel and said, Here you're not traveling bloody first class or club. You're buying two cut price. You're buying two saver tickets to Las Vegas, and David's coming, because that's what I'm doing with Margaret, speaking of our respective lovers, Margaret, of course, was on the executive committee. Alan knew about that for bloody years, that two of his sworn enemies were lovers. Anyway, the long and short it was that, yes, I did trade in my club ticket, as it were, and bought two to economy tickets for the same price. I mean, I didn't rip off the system in any way other than the overall impropriety of what we were doing. David came with me, and we had a very pleasant time. But the long and the short of that, again, Ron Barton had said, well, then he said, I've always wanted to stay at Caesars Palace. Why don't we book in there? I can get a very good rate. So we he said, Look. He said, Look. He said, what I want to do is to have a bit of a trip around the USSR. I said, USA. I won't ask any questions, as long as you don't put in a bill bigger than the price of something like seven nights at the such and such a hotel at the king Caesar's Palace, and your your airfare, that's all right by me. So we met him at Caesars Palace, and we were booked into our respective sumptuous suites. I mean, they were good value for money. I mean, compared to English hotels at about 70 or 80 pound a night for quite a good room. And dutifully, each morning, I used to get on the conference bus, or indeed walk down to the conference center and listen to the various discussions and go around and again for two or three days, we didn't see Ron, and when he eventually surfaced. He said, Oh, I've not been well. President, he said, I've not been well. So I, I retired to my room with two or three bottles of whiskey. It always cures my problem. And he didn't like it. He did not like the sociable atmosphere of the hotel. On the conference myself, David Lynn Margaret and one or two other English people we met there. We used to go to the conference during the day and look around and spend a couple of hours in the afternoon by the pool. You know, it was the classic, in a sense, that was a jolly except that I made every effort to get to the debates. While I was there, I found out that everything at the conference was on tape. So for about $100 we could have bought the entire conference on tape. And even I came back, I recommended that's what we do. We simply write to the neighbor, whatever it was called, and say, Could we enclose $100 and send us the tapes of all the debates we then listen to what is current thinking in the USA on questions of new technology and space and sky transmissions. Again, Ron got up to all sorts of tricks on that one evening. He said, it's a nice evening. Why don't we have a couple of bottles of champagne? I looked at this bloody price list in Caesar's Palace rents price mowing Shandon was about 60 quid a bottle or something. I said, That's ridiculous. Ron, oh, that's all right. President, you know, small slurred speech of his, that'd be all right. The members won't mind us having a bottle or two. And I said, Look, you can get the local Californian Spark, or for about $15 a bottle. Let's have one bottle. You know? I mean, we had the one bottle of $15 worth, but it was a constant battle. It was extraordinary how we had a treasurer who really played around with the money for his personal needs on a scale which was quite different to how he thought the union should have money spend its money. And again, that was an instance of where 1000s of pounds would spend on a trip, and I cannot truthfully say that when I came back, fine, it was enjoyable, and my recommendation was we shouldn't send anyone in future, because we'd get all the information we needed on tape. And on the last day that we were there in Las Vegas, I said to Ron, when are you going to come down to the conference center today? Because he never went to it. Yes, he said, I'll see you down there, and I can take some pictures of us for the journal. I walked down there, and about 1030 turned up at the pre arranged point, and I saw him getting out of a taxi. I said, we had a taxi for down. Oh. He said, Oh, I walk. I said, Well, there's a conference bus, not Goon on any bus. He said, I'm having a taxi. End of story you'll

Speaker 2  47:58  
be pleased to hear. I just kibosh that particular individual from taking taxes from London Airport, which I consider quite unnecessary. 25 quid a thrill, and there's a perfectly good tube, yes, for one pound 70, let's stop. Do.

Unknown Speaker  0:01  
Let me try and pick up some of the things I want to

Unknown Speaker  0:06  
get. It's side three. Bruce

Speaker 1  0:11  
Anderson, we were talking about sort of highs and lows of your career within ACTT and we touched on the resolution 15, because that was something that you were very much concerned with. It very much built your image within the unit. Can I ask you now, looking back, whether you think that reconstruction of the Union was an entirely good thing, can I ask you where you think it succeeded and where it's failed? Behind my thinking is the fact that I sometimes think the general counsel, which was created as what we thought wonderful democratic body, may have been something of a Frankenstein monster. Well and and right now. I mean, what makes me ask you at this particular time is that that is the principal hurdle to amalgamation with beta, and could it serious enough to for it to for it to stop it going ahead, because our people will not concede the principle of General Counsel, those to say it has to remain, yeah, beta doesn't object to us having a general counsel in the interim period, but we are insisting that they should have one. Union should have a general counsel. Well, in effect, I mean, the new union will be from a rules revision conference. But what they're saying is, you get the general counsel in position now and then being status quo, it will probably go through. And what worries me is that I know that General Counsel has become a power base for a number of individuals who can get in votes into the general council turn over the executive, which they have done on many times. So therefore, it seems to be that it's for entirely sort of personal ambitions and powers that people are pressing us talk about that, and in the same breath, could you talk about what motivates lay members to take office in the union and so on. How much of it is for the good of the Union? How much is it for personal gain? What I'll

Speaker 2  2:28  
take the part that the last part first, all sorts of reasons obviously motivate people for me, and I think I can speak reasonably, asked honestly. I was brought up in a family household. My mother had been a labor councilor. My brother had been vigorously involved in CND. My father always been quite a committed trade unionist. I think there are some people who are born to the idea, not in some sort of aristocratic sense of public service, but of being prepared to put their put themselves forward to undertake jobs. Me, I'm a bit of an autocrat. I often look at some situations and ACTT was patently one of them where I thought, What a fucking mess it's in. And from the point of view of some of the jobs that came up, I thought I could do them better. I thought they could be done better, and I could do them better, and was prepared to have a try. And for me, there's all I mean, when I was at college, I became involved in the Students Union. I suppose you get different sorts of people. Some enjoy the politics with a small p, and I do, unashamedly, I enjoyed politics with a big P, and perhaps it had not been for my personal situation. I would have, I would indeed, at one stage, I was offered the opportunity of standing in a constituency and and declined for for my my personal family, well, my personal relationship with David. I didn't want to be an MP, although on reflection, I bloody knew I nearly was when I was president, but I didn't want to. So I didn't want to go into politics with a big P, any sense. Yes, the political atmosphere of a trade union can can be for many people to substitute equally. I know in some instances, I I think that it might have been, I don't know. I think there are people who do have, in a sense, either unhappy family lives or don't care for their family life. And in fact, going to London to Union business is an escape. And. Uh, it was never irksome for me to come to London, but since I've stopped being present and only come down two or three times a year, I am amazed at the fact that I ever had the constitution to do it so frequently, and I certainly wouldn't. I don't think I'd want to do it again, to be honest. So what motivated me was was something I suspect, in my family blood, that I am the sort of person that does get involved in that sort of thing, as I say. I think there are some who are in it, who are driven by politics, very often minority politics, the Socialist work, the Socialist Workers Party and that particular faction of Marxists can never get in on any public office to a lesser degree, the same with the Communist Party. So they use the industrial base to organize in I mean, that's something that I've recognized and have always accepted, the the amount of the level of their volume way and indeed, in many respects, in the past, in ACTT, their level of volume and their influence has far, far exceeded, I suspect, their real popular support. So there's that category of persons, and there you are. I mean, as I say, I think there's people who perhaps have an unhappy family life, people who are driven by by a personal interest in in politics with a small p and that includes trade unionism and the or to me, I class those people, including myself, as the ones who actually go in it with a real sense of integrity, others who go in it because there's not much else to do. We don't get on very well at home, or it gives them an escape from work or whatever. And then those who are driven by politics with a big P but whose politics won't succeed outside of ACTT or their appropriate trade union. And of course, ACTT has got a structure, in particular its general council structure, which does allow volunteers. And of course, any trade union inevitably will have volunteers, and if they are motivated by their political convictions, they are the ones who will tend to take on roles that others consider irksome and a blind people who do have a satisfying vocation or a satisfying family or satisfying personal circumstances don't want to spend very often the time away that It can involve coming on to this question now, of the resolution 15, reconstruction of the Union, that was a reconstruction of the old three, what were perceived as monolithic branches that didn't really reflect the changes that were happening. It did not, of course, change General Counsel. I mean, General Counsel essentially had been there for many, many years earlier. In fact, I think that the decision to create individual, industrial orientated divisions on a broader base, together with a geographical consideration based on the regional was a sound thing at the time, and I don't know how you would do it differently now, unless you made the whole thing geographical. But even then, to break up three major branches was perceived as a revolution. So to create the five or six divisions that we did, eight, eight, trust is eight was still quite something, and I think it was good. It gave the regions a real chance to come forward, and some of the best people that were ever on the executive and that were and that were and are on the General Council, were members from the regions, the same with educational technology, that had been a small area of ACTT that had not really come to the fore earlier, that achieved a new sense of status and provided some very intelligent and worthwhile contributors. I think, I think breaking up the old TV branch was good because it gave the BBC a sensible voice. Its weakness, there was two fold in respect of television. One, ITV became quite a the worst aspects of ITV that in the past have been moderated by the few BBC and London television workers, the London television shop, principally, mostly. Freelancers and facilities, house workers, there had always been a useful check on the worst excesses of the ITV division. Labs, obviously, was not really broken up, and film wasn't really changed substantially, except that probably people who had been in the regions, and might have been in the film division then became in the regional division. So the worst aspects were the ITV became a real a real running sore. It allowed the worst elements and the worst excesses, particularly because so much of the unions income did come from that one division. It also meant that London equally the worst excesses of the of the few representatives of the London freelance workers and facilities workers in the old London television shop, which for years, has been a power base around the Socialist Workers Party and one or two other odds and ends, their worst successes were no longer checked by ITV or BBC. I think the best result from that breakup of the television division was creating the BBC, giving them sort of respect and accord, and indeed they contributed by putting in good people, but it was bad from the point of view of ITV, and I don't think it was very creditable from the point of view of London. But I don't think it was wrong to create those eight divisions, because it gave the opportunity then to just see where the union was going in relation to the rest of industry. And it did relate a little bit more realistically to what was happening.

Speaker 1  11:52  
But you have got a situation you see where let's take the regional division, for example, which is comparatively small, comparatively contributes very little, but because, whether it's because it's in the regions or not, but there is also a class of member to which you didn't refer early on, who are a large unit for the perks. If they live north of Manchester, they can come in on or they can charge for a first class return ticket, they can charge an overnight stay, which they probably don't employ anyway, and out of a general counsel, a couple of them can probably put 100 quid or so in their pockets when they go back. Yeah. Well,

Speaker 2  12:38  
we won't mention any names of people who we know do that very regularly. It's very simple answer to most of this. Give us a receipt, and you can have the money. You give me a receipt for your first class welfare. I'll give you the price of your fare. And

Speaker 1  12:56  
because of the perk, if you like, of coming up to London for a weekend, staying first class, if you like, you want to go to a hotel or compartment first class, you can then encourage people, you can get together. And people so now they've got a voice, which is out of all proportion, to say, for example, London fund division, because the members live in London probably don't even burn out

Speaker 2  13:21  
well, you can't blame the regional people for coming, yes, and I suspect that they come very largely, not because they want to have a weekend in London, but because their sense of frustration in the region about how The union is working is possibly much greater. If you're working in London, your chances of work are perhaps. You perceive your chances of work as much easier, and you can go from one to another if you're stuck up in time T's, the chances of work are different, and you perceive the union as being something more important than it is. I mean, we know that a lot of people work in London, in the industry, and don't bother to be an ACTT. They've no need to. They don't need that union organization if you're working two or 300 miles away from London. Perhaps it does achieve a greater significance. London film division are entitled to send their number of delegates pro rata. And I can't help it if they don't,

Speaker 1  14:25  
okay, since you seem to be supportive, General Counsel, supporter,

Speaker 2  14:29  
all right, I said it was there, and you created it? No, I never created. I

Speaker 1  14:36  
mean, the form of it, the eight divisions, well, yes,

Speaker 2  14:39  
but before that, there had been three branches, and they they'd sent, well, no, there probably wasn't as many people. There wasn't as many people coming to General Counsel. There used to be 50 or 60, I think now it can easily be 80 or 100 and Oh, 10, 121 50, 150 even. Yeah, wow. Gets out of hand. He's

Speaker 1  14:58  
more. We elected. Now, I mean, yeah, I think theoretically it could be some astronomical

Speaker 2  15:09  
shenanigans we went through over satisfying the question of electing the executive to get through the legal hoops. We had the most dreadful caper of effectively supporting the pro General Counsel lobby in persuading the certification officer that our system of election and the difference, the subtle difference between the role of the EC and the GC, was one that was a, I thought mistake. I mean, I the GC is a bloody nonsense. It has some marginal use, perhaps, but it if you didn't win in the F and GP, certain people were there.

Speaker 1  15:56  
Why was it the center point of your reconstruction? Where was it the centerpiece of your reconstruction?

Speaker 2  16:03  
Well, recently the centerpiece, it was there, and it never been part of our admit to suggest the end of the GC. And I wouldn't have thought for a moment we would have got rid of it anyway. It was there, and we wanted to draw a relationship between the divisions, the new eight divisions, and the General Counsel. But you

Speaker 1  16:24  
see why I refer to it as a Frankenstein monster? Yeah, it has made the principal executive committee of the world. Yeah,

Speaker 2  16:33  
against my BECTU judgment at the time. I've always debated and

Speaker 1  16:39  
What chance have we got of ever going to General Counsel say? Will you despand yourself? Well, it's like

Speaker 2  16:44  
asking to about asking the Lords to abolish their own house. I haven't an answer, except to say that I know that general counsels are bloody nonsense most of the time.

Speaker 1  16:58  
Can we talk about amalgamation? Since you know, I've been talking amalgamation,

Speaker 2  17:01  
I believe in some people's wiser pronunciation. Don't you remember the pronunciation of the president Bowie always used to call it maglimation? Or, more than likely,

Speaker 1  17:15  
how important is it? Do you think that we should retain a positive sort of ACTT identity?

Speaker 2  17:26  
I mean, I mean arguably, in view of all I've said Now, let alone my own personal experience, the less ACTT identity there is. The better. Yesterday, I went to a very simple little meeting organized by beta. It was the ACTT beta NUJ hardship Fund, which had been established with a capital of about 36,000 pounds to offer some small relief to those people who've been involved in the recent BBC strikes. Going to even such a small meeting as that, I had a clear agenda through the post well in advance, and it said the agenda to be published and confirmed by the members when they arrived at the meeting. And the officer who conducted the meeting did so clearly. She identified the subject you want to talk about it was fine, you know, it was a sort of an example of a meeting that I'd always yearned for in ACTT. So to want to retain the identity of ACTT in the perspective that I saw of ACTT, I'm not sure that I do. I'm told that beta is very well managed administratively and correctly, almost to the point that the members don't like it. But I think I've seen the reverse in ACTT, where it is hardly at all well managed administratively, and that far from being a rod of iron, it's one of those long elastic pieces of string that can stretch as far as the members wanted to. And whilst it can be said that I'm being anti democratic by complaining about the sort of way in which General Counsel did get up to its various tricks. The fact of the matter is that, on balance, I'd rather see it end, and I'd like to see an amalgamation where there is a new union, because nothing would be worse in an amalgamation to try and retain those old identities, I think they should strive to seek a new identity.

Speaker 1  19:49  
Would you possibly be in favor of an executive committee being the principal

Speaker 2  19:53  
executive of course, I mean the very name itself and

Speaker 1  19:57  
without a general counsel. Absolutely. Be an annual, Annual General Meeting.

Speaker 2  20:04  
No, I think, I think what I would do would be to consider an arrangement whereby you would continue with the biennial or the newly introduced. Is it B any all? Well, you have to be careful about making sure it's not twice a year. Oh, that's bi annual. Yes, I think it's Biennial, isn't it? Every other year something anyway, I think you'd be better off with a conference every other year, and perhaps two general councils in between.

Unknown Speaker  20:35  
Yes, I suggested that, which seems to go down,

Speaker 2  20:37  
but you can only have when, to me, a general council is what it name is, what the name itself infers. It is a general council. It cannot be an executive body. It mustn't be. It's too big. It cannot debate the business. The business of the executive is is to be put into effect, and that's that they must be responsible. Absolutely in favor of amalgamation, and I'm absolutely in favor of losing a general counsel in the context in which it's presently used. I mean, it's, it's grossly abused. It's used as the final, sort of final platform from which launch your various attacks if you feel you've not done as what you wanted to

Speaker 1  21:26  
say here, that for the benefit of any listeners in the year 2010 or whenever, and who didn't listen carefully to your opening remarks, that although you served five years as president of this great institution, you're still a very young man, 42 I feel bloody ancient, many years my junior, and still very active in your working life and in your union activity. You're one of our trustees. Of course, I suppose you were our youngest president, and you've obviously been youngest other things in the past, Council and so on. Was that any kind of difficulty for you, and theoretically there's nothing to stop you standing again, I suppose, for the presidency of ACTT, or if we amalgamate the new union, is there any chance of you returning to the freight you think? Or is a five year sentence enough for any man,

Unknown Speaker  22:14  
old woman?

Speaker 2  22:21  
I'm not sure that I would want to return to any senior office other than what I hold now. Except I've said before, in some ways, I'd love to have been the treasurer. I'd love to have got my hands on that one and sorted that out in the way that I hoped I'd managed to get some semblance of water into the presidency. I Yes. I mean, I suppose I am still usefully Young. I'm not sure that my present employer would be very keen to see me off again on a two or three year stint of some high office television is changing so much for me to have that sort of time off now would present a real difficulty. So I've got a big question mark about that. And indeed, I think you say is a five year sentence enough. I think that I've done my turn, and I think five years was enough. I think it's important that other people should have a go. Should inject new ideas. I'm not in favor of ending the present system whereby there is a limit as to the amount of time you can serve in that particular office, don't I mean, while I can remain trustee, I'm happy to do so, I don't think I particularly want to get into the the rough and tumble of the new union, except perhaps as a trustee of that let's

Speaker 1  23:59  
talk about some of The rough and tumble and nitty gritty of a president's life. I mean, the office does make considerable demands on one. I mean, I reckon I spent a good half of a working life, certainly a rigorous part time job, and not much short of being a full time job. Do we ask too much of our presidents and we don't pay them, of course, which is particularly hard and a freelancer like myself, I know we are very reluctant to reward service to the Union financially for very good reasons. We don't want to create a sort of professional lay trade unionist, as we now have so many professional lay councilors in local government. But what are the pros and cons of the argument? Did you suffer financial loss? What attitude do you think we should take?

Speaker 2  24:45  
Well, the office does make a very considerable demand on your on your personal life, your personal time, because even when you're not here at head office, I mean you, you do lay awake in the middle of the night and you've seen I'm not. I certainly chew things over all the bloody time, even when I used to go on holiday, you know, you couldn't switch off. I mean, it was just too much,

Unknown Speaker  25:08  
the amount of reading matter,

Speaker 2  25:11  
that's right, that's right. And then, almost jokingly, you know, the editor would say, Oh, I've got one or two books you might like to review, you know, right? So you didn't have enough to get on as it was, I don't think we do ask too much of our presidents. Arguably, we don't ask enough of them to do more than they do at the moment. But then you do run into the sort of potential clash between yourself and the elected the paid officers, paid officials. In some respects, that gap of not being paid and being paid is a useful void to maintain. I must add that within a few months, a very few months of standing, I was aware of the financial consequences of being President, because effectively, I stopped all over time. Now I know we are against overtime in the Union, but with even if you only did 15% overtime in a month, it meant you had two or 300 quid up. You know, you were two or 300 pounds a hand. That stopped immediately. And I was, I was aware straight away that it had a financial effect. But it wasn't just that. There's the dinner jacket functions. There is a for me, anyway, a certain PR front that, on balance, for the first year too, I went to some length to buy two or three suits, and always try and appear quite shiny and pressed and immaculate on the appropriate occasions. I think I eased off a bit towards the end because of a reason the most bloody point in it. But I did say to the first fmgp, the first in the first year my presidency, that some sort of honorarium might be a sensible thing. It would take into account those personal losses, financial, immediate losses. And you could say to yourself, well, if I do have to buy a dinner jacket or get involved in a bit more expenditure like that? It wouldn't matter. You know, Alan, surprisingly, although I now know why, was quite supportive. He thought a jolly good idea, you know. I mean, I motive, I'll get this bugger off my back. Give 3000 What's that? I mean, he probably had that in a bloody week for some of his little functions, you know, and he's happy he run away and but Roy, in his Roy lock, at the Deputy General Secretary, in his predictable, puritanical matter manner, argued very vigorously against it in the committee and and in an atmosphere of Ron Barton saying, Well, if the president can have two or 3000 I want some as well. You could see that this was going to be a gravy train that wouldn't stop people would say, Oh, if I come to a meeting, it costs me money. Well, I didn't come to meetings to make money, which is the difference, I think, between my sense of integrity and a lot of other people who do come to meetings because they could make money. It relates to what you were saying earlier. You know, if perhaps you are in a bit of in a period of unemployment, if you're a freelancer and an officer, well, he does pay you to come to London twice a week, rather than come to London once and stay a couple of nights in a hotel.

Speaker 1  28:59  
Was the big there's a big difference between a cheap second daily and class. It's not

Speaker 2  29:07  
the very cheapest fair, because that does put difficult restrictions on traveling times, but it's certainly two thirds of the fair if you come second class rather than first class. I mean, I argued, and I have argued the case, and at least until British royal introduced their silver standard coach fair. That, you know, there is a case if you're doing a lot of traveling, for traveling first class, sure it is comfortably as quiet as how I came down yesterday morning. It's a quiet, pleasant trip. I read some papers, this, that and the other didn't have kids howling and all the rest of it. You are on business. I think that's an arguable cause to sustain one of the pros and cons of having some sort of reward financially. I think it's a sound idea. You are up against the problem that some people would. Always say, Oh, well, if he can have it, so can I. And short of electing a full time lay president with all the consequential degrees of, how do they go back into the industry after a five year term? I don't really have an answer, except that when we do have an amalgamation, we have to consider that in the sort of industry we've got where many people are freelance, or, as we're aware, it's very vocationally orientated union, I think there's a much better chance in our industry for people to be content with their job, rather than being stuck in repetitive manual labor or in an office whatever, you won't get many people, and perhaps as many good people as you would want coming forward to take part in the union as you might in other instances. And when we get to a union that may have 40 or 50,000 members, 6060, there you are. And when you look at the caliber of the two existing general secretaries in Tony, Hearn is a hopeless drunk. He is a hopeless drunk, nice chap, a good schemer, a good administrator, but a hopeless bloody drunk. And Alan, who's a poor administrator, usually sober and as much a schema, but in a different way, you actually need a bloody good president, don't you? Yeah, that's the trouble. It's the it's the caliber of the people you get to employ

Speaker 1  31:36  
the not a lot of perks attached to the job. Bruce solar, I mean, there is provision for the President to attend all union meetings, but I know that you and I both interpret this as many lawyers.

Speaker 2  31:48  
That for me, the lawyer interpreter. Anyway, yeah, he said all union meetings means meetings of the Union, not meetings at which the union is entitled to send somebody. That was what Ron Barton at one stage, put an interpretation on it and said, I as treasurer, can go to any meeting of the unit that the union is going to go the

Speaker 1  32:12  
president of data, on the other hand, the main interpreter does, with the full support of his executives. They don't have a general counsel. There's meaning every single meeting with his choice, you know, with a preference for those in Acapulco, Sri Lanka, Las Vegas, Tokyo and Perth, Western Australia, as well as the routine itinerary of Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Strasbourg, Moscow, Minsk and Kyiv, you know, the Group

Unknown Speaker  32:36  
Calcutta, we missed out recently invited to one,

Speaker 1  32:43  
recently. How do you feel about that? I mean, don't you think the president of the Union should be entitled to attend? Well,

Speaker 2  32:56  
I recall from my personal experience, the first within a few weeks of being elected president, I was told I was going to go to America, to Hollywood. This rather shook me. I'd never been to America to that point, some ways, had sort of resisted going to America. I used to think, oh, I don't want to go there. I don't like the idea of that sort of society. Well, I went because we went to sign an agreement with the Directors Guild of America and Directors Guild of Canada, a reciprocal deal between the directors of our union and the other two countries. Whilst I was there, my the colleagues who traveled with me and Alan were Nick Goss and Connor. No, it wasn't Morris. He was from ITV, red headed guy with glasses. Sean

Unknown Speaker  34:00  
used to be head of drama at ATV

Speaker 2  34:02  
Central. That's right. Really nice chat got known very well when we went to the States and went to Hollywood and were introduced to the various DGA and DGC luminaries. Oh, and I mean, there's a story that our I'll recount these two stories correctly. There we were in the Hollywood and various papers were put before us to discuss. Essentially, they all revolved around the question of how we could have a reciprocal agreement, and indeed, what the intentions of that reciprocal agreement were? Well, from the DGA point of view, part of that was that if there were runaway productions, either from the UK or Canada to this country, the UK, we would stop them. And Alan said, Oh yes, of course, I'd pull. My members off of any any production like that. And I said, just a minute Alan, just a minute. Now you can't say that. You know that you couldn't pull your members off of any production, on what they might perceive as a very specious issue. If there was work with proper money and the proper agreement, we couldn't stop it. And indeed, as you know, the legal framework in the UK now is very difficult, and it would be wrong of me as the president to allow you to give the wrong impression to our colleagues here from America and Canada that we can stop any job we, like Alan, was incensed about mine as my intrusion into it. He said it was quite wrong that I should have contradicted what he had said. He had far more experience as general secretary. I might add that my lay colleague congratulated me on my intervention and said we would never have felt that we could have done that if you hadn't have been here. So you asked this question about the role of the President, and I think there was an instance of where I thought what I did was quite right. What did happen on that trip? It started in an interesting way, in that the first thing I told yes, you're going so, so. So then a telephone message say, would I mind traveling economy? I said, No, longs I'm not on my own, you know? Oh, no, no, yes. The other, the others, have agreed to travel economy for the sake of one fine. Next thing is, oh, I won't be traveling with you. I'll be coming in another way, said the general secretary. Why is that? Oh, well, I've got difficulties about getting away at that time. Well, of course, it just so happened he traveled out first class, didn't he? Perhaps he didn't want us all to travel first class, and he would travel on a different flight, first class, and we wouldn't ever know. What I didn't know was that, of course, the way that agreement came about, I suspect, was in the following way, a few months earlier, perhaps a year earlier, there had been a conference in Germany, in West in Eastern Germany, I think of fist Ave now the Canadians were always active participants in fist staff and their general secretary, a pleasant woman, had met, I use this euphemistic term, met Alan in Germany, and had told Alan about this reciprocal deal she was trying to set up with the Americans, and would England like to take part? After all, we spoke the same language and we had the same problems, so this was seized upon very enthusiastically by Alan, which in a sense, gave him unbridled opportunity to fuck himself silly with this lady, and really that few days that we spent in Hollywood was scandalous. I mean, Nick Goltz formally complained to Alan about his conduct and asked me to because the president of the Canadian union, unfortunately, was half blind and lame. I mean, you can think what kinds you wish from that this is

Unknown Speaker  38:29  
not the lady who Christians. No, she

Unknown Speaker  38:32  
was the general secretary.

Unknown Speaker  38:39  
Explained it for me. No,

Speaker 2  38:45  
no. We were at a restaurant one evening, having done some business during the day, and at the end of the meeting, Alan and the young lady opted in the car and said goodbye everybody and disappeared, leaving two or three of us to try and help this half blind, lame man into trying to find a taxi, you know? I mean, Alan's bird just drove him away, and at the end of our six or seven days in Hollywood, Alan said, Well, I'm off on a couple of weeks holiday now with whatever, and they drove off up through California. I mean, to be honest, I mean, I, I was no particular moralist myself about the issue, you know? I mean, I don't like to deny people as if they happen to be away that sort of distraction. I'm not going to say it's necessarily wrong. I I have been guilty of it myself. I was myself on that particular trip, but I didn't go on that trip with that intention or set it up. And I really wonder if that particular DG agreement came about because of that liaison. I know perfectly well that a few weeks into the fmgp of my first few months, there's a request I've been asked by the TU. See if I'll attend as their fraternal delegate, the Canadian Tuc thing. Now there's very little expense involved. It means that I'll be away from the office for a couple of weeks. Well, about 10 days might run to a couple of weeks. I mean, the conference is really only a week, but you know what it's like either side. I'll probably get some accommodation with friends over there and to see naturally provide the ticket, you know. So is that all right? Why did he go? You tell me, you know. And then a few weeks,

Unknown Speaker  40:33  
why did you let him go?

Speaker 2  40:36  
Because to stop we because there was a case that he was a member of the TUC General Counsel. He was, oddly enough, the one person was prepared to volunteer to go to the Canadian thing, you know. And then a few weeks later, and I did try and Remon straight about it, he'd been invited to the Canadian Tony Awards that was explained to us. We had many English technicians working there, it might be a good idea if he turned up at this award. He had friends who could look after him. There was only the price of his air. You know. Why do you think he went

Speaker 1  41:15  
the next time we went on to check his expenses at all of any of his jewels? Did you ever check his expense? Never?

Speaker 2  41:21  
No. He had a personal relationship with George. Have you Goon? I know what they're like. I know what they're like. He used to say to me on these trips over there, is it right if we go to such and such a restaurant, do you think we're spending too much give him his due? And you couldn't say no in the context that, in all fairness, the Americans picked up a lot of the tab for restaurants and equally when we went to Canada. Now, I thought that was interesting, because we went to Toronto about a year or two later, and in the course of conversation with Adam before we went, Oh, by the way, he said, I'd like you to know that my affair with what's her name, what's her name, is completely finished. I mean, our relationship will be wholly, wholly professional. And I just said to him the wink of my wasn't it professional on all the previous occasions in Alan? Ah, now he said, Now come on. I mean, don't, don't, don't, push your luck. Speaking so these perks, they're questionable, aren't they? I don't think the several trips that I did, there was one that really, in a sense, was a bit of a perk. And that was the thing for Las Vegas, as I said when I came back, my recommendation was it wasn't necessary. But certainly I think the participation of lay senior officers, who I think are the only ones who have a real overview of the Union. The problem very often with particular individuals other than the general officers, is that they have much greater divisional loyalties, and they don't see the issues that perhaps were raised abroad in such a national and international context. Yeah, Goon sounds like a defense for going on every trip abroad. I know, but think you know my experience. I went to Russia, it was the same,

Speaker 1  43:18  
but we ought to have the maximum contact, because so many of our members abuse it when that's right, when given the opportunity, Bruce, by the summer of next year, the white paper on the future of broadcasting will have become law, and the head of that time have already been massive changes in our industry, complete breakdown or reconstruction, depending on how you Look at it, just as reg race forecast indeed, in the light of August and hostile government legislation generally, how have we comported ourselves to think well or badly, and how do you think we're going to be able to cope in the future? You optimistic or pessimistic?

Speaker 2  44:00  
We're struggling. We're struggling. And the real problem, I think, at the moment, will be in ITV, because already at Granada, where I work, people are saying, What's the point of being in a national union if we're having a local agreement? I mean, the National organizer or the regional organizer might come in to help out, but you know, really, they say, what you know, is it all worth it. What they forget is that, and if they're going to withdraw from Union, they will be to come to any union meeting. And I point out to them the questions of the value of coordination, the value of legal services and on all reasons why, in fact, you should still keep a union structure, even if you don't immediately perceive that your head office has done your negotiating. And it's a time of trans. Position for members, they've always seen their agreements as being national agreements in television, and they now see local agreements. Why do we need to be in a national union in our aspect? I'm slightly pessimistic, and I think the union needs to work harder to retain its existing membership. I think the union has gone on the right course, whether it succeeded or not, in trying to get as many people in as it possibly can who have legitimate claim to work in the industry. I think that is good, and in the light of hostile government legislation, we've sort of survived actually. We've actually managed to survive. We've survived the TV am crisis. It, it was, and I said it at the time, it was a signal lesson to ACTT.

Unknown Speaker  45:56  
You know, may have been a blessing. Hard

Speaker 2  45:58  
lesson was a signal lesson. It arguably is some sort of lesson to the employers, but not much of one. I don't know. TV am was a curiosity, very fact that it really didn't place enormous demands on its technical operators, in some senses, but the way the industry is going in terms of broadcasting, to me, can be paralleled to the time when George Eastman developed his Kodak camera. Up to then, you had to have a plate camera. It was cumbersome. It was difficult, very hard, to cope with the moment he invented his camera with the spool of film, anyone could take snapshots. That is what is happening in our broadcasting industry in terms of technology, the equipment, in many respects, is becoming far more accessible. And the one area that is difficult to well, one area that we can only retain some sort of strength in is the fact that our members are essentially our crafts persons. They know how to use that equipment, whatever the technology is, and it's that which would obviously always set them aside, I think, from amateurs, but that is what we're up against. And indeed, unions have been incredibly marginalized in the in the time that I was president, they got to a point where actually they're bloody near irrelevant as far as employers and the government are concerned. I.

Speaker 1  0:00  
We were talking about aspects of the white paper and the future the industry and so on. Maybe worth looking for the historical record. By the way, we are still, of course, in dispute with TV. AM, after two years, that is still not over, which cost us about 300,000 pounds, I think, to date, really. But anyway, finish what you were saying. Bruce

Speaker 2  0:24  
Well, the legislation of various aspects of government which have marginalized ACTT are not, in fact, reflected in many of the areas of ACTT, where we are organized at a very much a small local shop level, because very often you have working managers, lots of small facilities companies, the managers themselves broadly recognize the value of the Union. And I think that the potential long term development of regional organizers will be a good thing, because it will be where there are difficulties and where there is need for the role of of an official. It'll be on the site, and not here in London. I mean those the change that red race said we needed, and I think that is the hope. Am I optimistic, or am I pessimistic in dealing with that? Can you pessimistic about my optimism?

Speaker 1  1:30  
I mean, we have, to a certain extent, tried to implement the worst report. I think most aspects of it, so far as I know, have been implemented. Do

Speaker 2  1:41  
the officers report at the executive the work they've done the officials, that is the paid officials. Do they submit a report? Is there any analysis on their performance? No,

Unknown Speaker  1:52  
we've still got the PPI,

Unknown Speaker  1:58  
fairly major strand, really, isn't

Speaker 1  2:00  
it? Because I know you can, you probably consider that the major important feature of your

Speaker 2  2:06  
budgeting, really effective budgeting, yes.

Speaker 1  2:11  
Well, as you can imagine, the situation the moment is that the F and GP is horrified that any of its power should be taken away, and it doesn't really want to be subject to it wants to budget little power battle going on there at the moment.

Speaker 2  2:29  
Always, little power battles in some little corner, always.

Speaker 1  2:35  
So, I mean, did we fail on the race report overall? I mean, it had to, I mean, well, obviously

Speaker 2  2:43  
some things did get put into place. I'd have thought still that if you could persuade him, I'd still be prepared to give reg race 2000 pounds to come back for a consultation, a four week consultation,

Speaker 1  3:06  
I can only say that the world that you have been describing in our interview is no longer the world which exists in act today.

Unknown Speaker  3:12  
I'm sure does. None of those

Speaker 1  3:16  
the trips anymore ripping off, and I think that's largely due to race, of course,

Speaker 2  3:20  
yeah, oh. I think arguably that the consequences of race meant that certain people in ITV became more isolated, and for better or for worse, and I'm not sure that it's all for worse, the creation of the so called tfpa, which has not yet entered into the annals of this particular discussion,

Speaker 1  3:43  
because it could be factor after, yeah, sure, that's one for my record.

Speaker 2  3:52  
But the existence, the birth of the tfpa was, in fact, by some of the worst ITV malcontents you could possibly have had. And if the red race report exposed some of those people, and it did, really indirectly, and they got out of the Union, I'm not sure all of that was necessarily wrong. I mean, his exposure of what we will use the case, you know? I mean, I think there was perhaps a mistake on the question of the booze to a degree, but it was because it was so grossly abused. I think travel is still abused. I mean, this morning, I stapled my first class receipt to my claim, and I think you know, you should do that or or their receipt, pay up, you know I mean, but the result of ridge race, I think that some areas, I mean, obviously implementing the third option of. Sound and just shaking up the union was very sound. As I say, I'd like to think that he could come back for another four weeks and just give us a reminder on still what needs doing. Because unless you've got officials, what are we now going back? Three or four years ago, we were saying officials should be giving a detailed report in writing to every executive of what's happening, because you don't know what happens in the various divisions. I

Speaker 1  5:30  
think we could certainly have a review of the race report see how far it has been, been implemented. Because with regard to bringing red race back. I'm sure that would be only over Adam's dead body, which you might like the idea Bruce, beginning to the end. Now, let me ask you, how did the presidency affect your career structure within ITV, did it actually? Well, set you back. I remember once, actually, I asked you about people seeking office, and in some you said to me, I remember being very surprised by your answer. You said, Oh, they do it for promotion, yeah. And I could never tie the two together.

Speaker 2  6:17  
Oh, certainly. I mean, at a local level, it's there's a long history of shop stewards getting better jobs within the company.

Speaker 1  6:24  
Very much the thing in the past, of course, wouldn't happen now, at the moment,

Speaker 2  6:29  
actually, there's someone at the moment who's organizing the most foul deal imaginable at Granada, and she's all in line for being a producer. But I I certainly being president, didn't do me any good at all, and not not, but I expected it to. I mean, I didn't. I mean, I made, if you might say, a mistake right from the beginning of never really getting wildly involved at a local level, but always pursuing my interest at a national level, so that, in a sense, my senior management have always accorded me a certain amount of respect for having done it. But no one's ever rung me up and say, Christ, we need a man of your talents to come and sort this company out. And I've never well, there's been one situation since being president where I thought I might have applied for a job within Grenada, and I obviously would have said, look, I think my experiences as president of the Union could be considered useful, but it certainly affected my career, because, in a sense, for five years, and in fact, for about three or four years before that, as chairman of the ITV national negotiating committee, I was out of circulation at work a lot of the time, and you are perceived as being perhaps not quite really interested in your job, or not so committed as others. Well, there's been truth in that, really, you know, I mean, any, any job can get a bit boring. And in a sense, there is a more interest in coming to London for me to take part in the politics of ACTT, you know, the business of Act was infinite in far greater challenge than than being a cameraman doing Coronation Street as much as I've enjoyed it. It's only in this last 40 or 50 weeks I've been working on one particular program in Liverpool that I've thoroughly enjoyed my job, and really my job there is a camera operator has placed no demands on me whatsoever. It's been the content of the program and the people I've worked with, that really was the sort of the thing that I enjoyed. So I don't think that I'm going to get this phone call one day that says, will you please come up and help us sort things out? I'm sure of that, and don't care about that to be honest. I mean, I've not ever felt that much need for that sort of social status. I've always felt it's much better to be held in the sufficient esteem by your own peers, to be elected to a post than to be summoned by management to some other job, which they have decided they think you should do. Sounds a bit precious. I don't mean that you know. What

Speaker 1  9:28  
would you like to be remembered for? Bruce was the president of Oct your support of the way support groups? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2  9:36  
And the fact that I was not prepared to be one of those wooly minded people who, I mean, there's Alan Sapa, had a kitchen cabinet of lay officials who said yes and did this and ran around, and as long as they had their trips and had their lunches, they didn't really care the sort of thing that happened to. I immediately after I was elected, was, Oh, come on, we'll all come back to the office now, and the fmgp went back to his office. I had the most raucous boos up imaginable, with a whole succession of questionable jokes about individuals. It was the most fascist sort of thing imaginable. Really, it was scandalous. And I just said to him, If you ever have these again, don't you ever ask me to come to them? So that was an instance of how I didn't get on with Alan in that sense. You know, I thought this is ridiculous. And then there was the question the following year of of Kevin, who's the film producer? The Tory,

Speaker 1  10:41  
yeah, Pinewood, the glory. Kevin

Speaker 2  10:45  
Francis, no. Kevin Francis. Kevin Francis, at every annual conference used to give the close of speech, the thank you speech. And a lot of people said to me they found it quite offensive. They didn't like it was smutty, jokes, innuendos, all sorts of stuff that was quite irrelevant, and I could never understand why he had to do it. So I said to Alan, by the way, we're not going to have Kevin Francis giving this year's closing speech. I said, Let's find some different formula. He said, Why? What's wrong? I said, Well, why does he do it? Oh, well, he's very good to the Union for the conference. He organizes the van that gets the boxes and does this, you know. And obviously, Kevin Francis, as a producer, an entrepreneurial producer there, could get certain jobs done for ACTT, which were quite useful. But he then apparently had the right to the platform from nothing, you know, for no, no legitimate reason. I said, Well, if we're gonna have anyone do it, it can be the oldest person there, or the youngest person anything but Kevin doing it, because he organizes things. And the most dreadful round with Alan about it. And Alan did the round of other people who who tried to sort of novel me about it, and others came up with the same result that I had heard. And in the end, Allen said to me the day before the conference, well, you'll have to give that bloody end of Season speech. He said, if you're not prepared to let Francis do it. And lo and behold, Kevin Francis didn't appear for that conference, and he's never appeared since. Now, that was the sort of thing that if I'd want to be remembered for. It was standing up to Alan and saying, What is all this nonsense about? Let's sort it out, and let's try and introduce some sort of method or reason and not you're an old pal. Let's fix it. Have a lunch down at so and so, and hope to God we surface.

Speaker 1  12:49  
You're on a plane to Moscow, Bruce on an ACTT bash, and it has to crash land on a desert island. Eight people are marooned with you. Four you like, and four you don't like, all past and present personalities of ACTT Do you want to name a few?

Speaker 2  13:03  
I can have four who I don't like, four who you like past and present. The four who I don't like will be Ron, Bowie will be Peter, the Socialist Workers Party representative, Peter Cox. Peter Cox, probably well, he's left the Union now, Ian McLaren would rate very highly. What's that, Peter Cox,

Speaker 1  13:38  
you still have, you still include Roberts or Connor or let's have

Speaker 2  13:46  
Goon, all right. Well, I'll have Roberts and Roberts and O'Connor because they really hate one another. So you'd have, I'd have five excluded Alan suffer, he's okay. Oh, wow. I mean, there's a limit to everything, six of each shall we? We'll have sapper Roberts O'Connor as the paid officials, right? And then we'll have McLaren Cox and Bowie. So those are the six bones. Okay, those are the six who are the horrors the night, men on the other side, paid officials. I'd have and Egan as someone who, to me, throughout my period, was indispensable. Another paid official, but in a slightly different way, would be Eddie Eddie Solomons. Eddie Solomons another great counselor, and he likes a decent glass of claret. Oh, that was a perk for the record. Yeah, that, by the way, was a wonderful perk. Eddie Solomons used to invite me to sorry to say which ones that that's. Yeah, well,

Speaker 1  15:00  
the invitation that you're about to talk society, oh

Speaker 2  15:05  
no, oh sorry, oh no, You never got to the real ones because of my celebrated cellar at home, Eddie used to invite me to the law societies and the Law Society's wine club annual dinner, which was a very celebrated occasion at Smithfield, at butchers Hall, where every year there was the most wonderful dinner. One year it was at the Dorchester. But the nice thing about it was you could always bring your own wine. So I used to turn up with quite some good wines, and that was every year. And then there was one occasion when Eddie invited into a wonderful bunch to some place in Rutland by Rutland water, Hambleton Hall, a rather exclusive restaurant, again, with solicitors. And there is to meet some of the other lawyers who used to retain some of the QCS anyway. So it's Andy Egan, Eddie, Eddie Solomons and third official, who I'd like to take a third paid person.

Speaker 1  16:10  
Don't think that that hard. George money, attackers,

Speaker 2  16:13  
Oh God no, I know what I'd do. I'd irritate everybody and take John Lloyd because he's gay. Coach. John, yes. I mean, don't see why I should be the only heterosexual isolated

Unknown Speaker  16:24  
a lot longer list of people you don't like those. You do them.

Speaker 2  16:27  
No, I've now got to pay take three lay people, right? You can come true. I just say no, you can come I think I'd take. I mean, Brookie is a bit of a pain at times, but I think I'd take him and above all, to do the cooking. A good sexist remark, this ought to help me do the cooking. Claire brickstock, oh, yes,

Speaker 1  16:53  
I'm cooking in Italy at the moment. Yes, indeed, having put on a stone

Speaker 2  16:59  
the six friends I'd love to take long will be Anne Egan at Eddie Solomons, John Lloyd, Tudor gates, Brookie, Brookie Brookstone and Claire Briggs. Stock. She's one of the editors of BBC cookery programs. Has done some very good stuff. The ones who I'm not so keen on paid officials. Would be Alan salt, Alan sapper, the retired Roberts and the retired O'Connor, together with Cox Bowie and McLaren in McLaren, yes.

Speaker 1  17:39  
Final question, Bruce, yep. Bruce, five years on the job. Is it worthwhile? Yep,

Speaker 2  17:48  
yes, no. Question is that, of course, it was worthwhile. I think it was. I mean, that's history alone, or judge history alone, or judge,

Speaker 1  17:56  
well, that seems a good note on which to end this history project recording, indeed, with the

Speaker 2  18:04  
projects, gracious thanks to the two of you. Thank you very much. Indeed. I will Lipsy all forever. Well, we're going to put,

Speaker 3  18:12  
we should put that on the head of the tape. But why don't we make a note now that this tape is absolutely embargoed according to what conditions Bruce

Unknown Speaker  18:24  
the death of Alan sapper and Ken Roberts, right.

Unknown Speaker  18:27  
Okay, be it noted. I.