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Profile: Alf Avison
Alf Avison brings trade unionism to Deeping
It’s hard to imagine Joe Gormley (leader of the mineworkers’ union) holed up in the Waterton Arms enjoying a pint with a Deeping local! But being Deeping St James you can perhaps imagine him being taken to task as a troublemaker by an elderly lady, a Church Street resident – he explained that he was only doing his job but it quickly became apparent that the lady was actually speaking to his companion, Alf Avison! In fact the Waterton became a regular watering hole for the great and the good of British trade unionism of the early 70s including Arthur Scargill and journalist Richard Littlejohn, now of the Daily Mail.
Alf had moved to Rycroft Avenue when he had taken up the job as a Union Official with the Transport & General Workers Union (now Unite) in 1968. His remit? To increase the Union membership from 4,000 to 6.500 otherwise Jack Jones, leader of the TGWU would close the Peterborough branch. Alf ran the area from Kings Lynn to Oakham from Spalding to Huntingdon from a small dilapidated office where Queensgate now stands. It was next to the Registry Office and quite often Alf was asked to stand in as a witness to a wedding! Without the aid of any technology, Alf worked with a secretary. When he managed to raise the membership to 7,000 he was given an assistant, Arthur Hyland, an Italian speaker who was invaluable working with a predominantly Italian workforce at the brickyards.
Alf was from Grimsby the middle child in a family of six girls, whose father had left home when he was just eight. In spite of his working class roots, Alf attended the local grammar school becoming a cinema projectionist on leaving. After National Service in Egypt and Cyprus he returned home to Grimsby where he became senior fish buyer for the whole of the fish store that was at that time on every high street, Macfisheries. Responsible for the purchase of thousands of tonnes of fish that passed through this thriving fishing port, Alf became interested in the plight of the fishermen who were often away for weeks at a time. He began to study employment and contract law and became a shop steward at Fisons Chemical Plant in Immingham. Alf was one of a new breed of trade unionists in the TGWU who, under Jack Jones, were encouraged to study union law backed by union research and legal expertise. hauliers in Lincolnshire the board of directors agreed to a negotiation structure which would see a procedure allowing for a staged escalation of a grievance before industrial action could be taken, but where a basic wage would be guaranteed to striking workers. Said Alf in a quote in the Sunday Times at the time, “The original 8 day strike cost the firm real financial loss – about £4,000. But if it had gone through the full procedure, even if it ended in a strike, the basic wage would not have cost them more than £400. It’s a matter of simple arithmetic – buying both a cooling off time and better relations with the men.”
The industrial landscape for workers was very different in the 1970s with few rights, no pay or employment tribunals, no minimum wage and no redundancy schemes. In retrospect it is apparent that these schemes were hard won by the officials and workers who fought for a better deal in a decade which became known for its lightening and wild cat strikes. Alf Avison was one such man. His pragmatic approach averted many a strike and saw systems enshrined in law which would improve the livelihoods for workers and ultimately make for a more peaceful future.
After a particularly costly strike to a firm of road But it was not an easy time for Alf, whose influence with the Unions could bring Peterborough to a halt. Aware of the magnitude of the responsibility Alf would tip the local Chief Inspector off in the event of an impending strike on the understanding that the information would remain under wraps. On one memorable occasion, Alf was driving into the city from his home which was now on the riverside in Eastgate in the Union’s Ford Cortina. He saw a family waiting at a bus stop and gave them a lift, knowing that the Eastern Counties bus would be delayed because of a strike. The man sat in the front with wife and two children in the back. Alf ’s name card was easily visible to the passenger in the seat next to him, while in the back the wife in blissful ignorance berated Alf all the way into Peterborough. As the family regrouped and made their way to the station, Alf would still love to have been there when his identity was revealed!
In the end the need for police protection and with incidents such as a noose being put through the door made Alf have second thoughts about the job, which he had first seen as a vocation. With the membership now at 12,500, Alf left the Union in 1974 and became an employee of Geest, with the responsibility
for wage negotiation. Eschewing the title of Industrial Relations Director, Alf refused to become poacher turned gamekeeper! Worldwide consultancy work followed. Alf ’s unique understanding of the labour market was much in demand and he worked for the Government on the drafting of the National Dock Labour Bill. While the strikes of the 70s caused wide scale disruption with unrest affecting power stations, coal yards, crematoria and refuse collection, Edward Heath introduced the three-day week. In this the scenario was similar to that which we have faced today with the Covid 19 lockdown, but as Alf comments, ‘In the seventies we knew what we were fighting; now we are facing a secret enemy.’
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