Board of Trade

Working Party Reports

HAND-BLOWN

DOMESTIC

GLASSWARE

London
His Majesty's Stationery Office
1947

Independent Members

Secretary : Mr. J. J. Breslin

Assistant Secretaries : Mr. C. H. Johns, Mr. W. W. Jordan

SUB-COMMITTEES

Sir,

You announced in the House of Common on 11th March, 1945, our appointment as a Working Party. Our terms of reference were :—

“to examine and enquire into the various schemes and suggestions put forward for improvements of organisation, production and distribution methods in the Hand-Blown Domestic Glassware Industry and to report on the steps which should be taken in the national interest to strengthen the industry and to render it more stable and more capable of meeting competition in the home and foreign markets.”

It was, however, made clear that matters concerning the relations between employers and employees, which are dealt with by employers’ federations and trade unions, should be outside the scope of our enquiry.

You left us to decide what area our investigations should cover. We decided unanimously to consider the hand-blown lead crystal glass industry in this country as a whole, and not in the Stourbridge area only.

We now submit our report.

We appointed Sub-Committees dealing with Finance, Design, Production, Marketing and Recruitment of Labour. These Sub-committees have held 23 meetings, whilst the Working Party itself has met on 20 occasions. All but six of these meetings were held at Stourbridge.

We sent missions to study the domestic glassware industries in Sweden and U.S.A., and we have found the reports which they submitted to us on their return of much value when preparing this report.

Though well aware that many of the difficulties with which the glass industry is, has been, or may be confronted are by no means confined to this section of the industry, we have none the less briefly referred to these general difficulties and made such recommendations for overcoming them within our own craft as seemed possible. Obstacles to prosperity having a special significance for the glass industry — sometimes indeed peculiar to it or else internal and domestic in nature — have been studied with particular care as required by our terms of reference.

Past history has only been recalled in so far as it seemed essential to an under­standing of the present, and none of the great mass of evidence taken or infor­mation accumulated is here quoted, or even referred to, except when it appeared to be strictly necessary to justify some conclusion reached or to explain a recommendation.

Generally we have felt that, now wise after the event, it is fairly easy to see the causes of depression in the past. Sometimes it has been the policy of our own or other Governments, sometimes fashion or technological changes, new trade currents, or some other cause or combination of causes. But the industry itself cannot escape some responsibility, for it must be admitted that it has failed to anticipate some of the trends and to organise itself to meet them.

With present conditions and prospects so markedly different from those of the past — from those of the inter-war years in particular — it seemed to us not merely profitless but positively dangerous to regard, say, lessons seemingly taught by the experience of the 1920’s and ’30’s as necessarily still valid for the ’40’s and ’50’s. Briefly we have tried to present a clear outline sketch of the industry sufficient only for a general understanding of its working, to indicate the main difficulties that now seem to obstruct the way to increased prosperity, and to make such specific recommendations for action whether by the Government or by the industry itself as appeared to us most likely to be helpful.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are greatly obliged to the following gentlemen who have given us most valuable assistance by serving as co-opted members of our various Sub-Committees :—

We are also very grateful to those persons and organisations who provided us with oral or written evidence, and particularly to the following :— The Board of Management, Edinburgh College of Art The Council of Industrial Design

Mr. E. M. Dinkel, Principal, Stourbridge School of Art and Crafts Mr. A. Garstang, of King, Taudevin& Gregson, Ltd. (to whom we are indebted for the plan of an ideal glasshouse layout which is described and illustrated in this report)

Mr. D. Goodlet, of British Hartford-Fairmont Syndicate, Ltd. Mr. T. H. Hayward, of T. Hayward & Co. Ltd.

The Industrial Design Committee of the Glass Manufacturers’ Federation Mr. R.Y. Logan, Director of Education for Worcestershire Mr. G. McOnie (who was released at our request by Pilkington Bros., Ltd., to make a survey of the industry and whose report is included as Appendix (A) to our report)

Dr. C. MacRae, Secretary of the Scottish Council Mr. L. Wallbank, of W. H. Rhodes, Ltd. Mr. J. Wing, of Selfridges, Ltd.

We wish also to express our thanks to those firms in the industry who made available their Board Rooms for our meetings.

We are indebted to the Central Office of Information for providing the photo­graphs which illustrate this report.

We wish to acknowledge the very great assistance which we have received from the Midland Regional Office of the Board of Trade in making arrangements for our meetings and providing transport, and in the recording and duplication of our minutes and report.

We wish to thank also all those manufacturers, trade union representatives, trade association officials and others, in the United States and Sweden, who received our delegations to those countries in so kindly and hospitable a way, and helped them so much in their enquiries. We wish to thank also those of our Diplomatic and Consular Officials in Washington, New York and Stockholm on whom fell the burden of arranging the programmes for the delegations and securing the co-operation of the glass industry in the United States and in Sweden.

Finally, we would particularly wish to record our indebtedness to our Secre­tary, Mr. J. J. Breslin, through whose devoted labours our own have been so greatly lightened, and also to those who have in turn been our Assistant Secretary, Mr. C. H. Johns and Mr. W. W. Jordan.