SHUDE HILL
I looked for suitable premises and eventually found a basement in High Street, in the centre of Manchester. It consisted of a large room entered down a short stairway from the street, at the back there was a toilet and a small back-room. When I contacted the agent who managed the property for the owner I was told that the owner was an eccentric old lady who occupied a room at the front, and that she was very difficult to get on with. I got the impression that the agent was trying to warn me off but I was so determined to get started that I ignored his warning.
A lease was drawn up and I approached Barclays Bank for a loan to buy equipment and get the business off the ground. A good friend of ours, Solly Simon, introduced me to the bank manager and agreed to act as guarantor for the loan. Sol and his wife Nita were friends that could always be relied on for a helping hand. He had been a member of the Communist Party and went to Spain as a volunteer in the International Brigade.
I had been told by my friends in Lewis's barbers' shop that it had been decided to re-fit the salon and therefore the old fittings were up for sale. I approached the management and they agreed to sell me some barber's chairs, wash-bowls and fittings and seating for waiting customers. Cash was in short supply so I could not afford to employ a removal firm to transfer the equipment from Lewis's to the shop in High Street so I borrowed a hand-cart and trundled the chairs etc. through the centre of the city myself.
Once the salon was fitted and ready for opening I employed a young assistant and an apprentice and we opened for business.
Slowly we built the trade up, gaining customers from the various shops and offices in the area. We became quite well known as the High Street Salon and before long we were thinking of expanding.
To give some idea of the geographical situation we occupied: The Arndale Centre now sits on the space we had in High Street - in fact the High Street entrance into the Arndale Centre is probably directly over the spot where we had the salon.
About two hundred yards from High Street was the wholesale fruit and fish market bounded by Shude Hill, Swan Street, Tib Street and Thomas street. Known far and wide as Smithfield Market it attracted large numbers of people into the area and so the small businesses that surrounded the market prospered as a result of the influx of traders from a wide area around Greater Manchester. There were shops on Shude Hill, Swan Street, Thomas Street and so on providing a vast range of goods and services. Jewellers, clothing stores, cafés etc. Lower down Shude Hill was a section of the road that had been traditionally used as a second-hand book market.
So the whole of that part of the city was full of small businesses. One of these was a sweets and tobacco kiosk in Swan Street owned by two brothers. They were both customers of ours in the barber's shop and during a conversation as I was cutting his hair one day, Lionel Cohen, one of the brothers, told me that they were opening another kiosk as the one in Swan Street was doing quite well, they felt they could expand and had found premises in Shude Hill at the corner of Bradshaw Street where the Metrolink tram now crosses Shude Hill.
The property consisted of a large room at the front with a big shop window, at the rear a smaller room and a large cellar. The Cohen brothers intended using the window space as a kiosk selling sweets, tobacco etc. and the rest they suggested could be used as a barber's shop, so each would compliment the other. They asked if I would be interested in sub-letting that part of the shop. As mentioned earlier, the owner of the High Street property was an eccentric and we were beginning to have problems with her so we felt it would be a good idea to have a second string to our bow in order that if relations got worse between us and the landlady we had another base not far away. In fact that is what happened and soon after we opened the shop in Shude Hill we left the High Street premises.
Within a matter of weeks the Cohen brothers decided they could not run the two kiosks and asked if I was interested in buying them out of the kiosk in Shude Hill. This would then mean that I take over the whole of the tenancy and I would need to find someone to look after the kiosk whilst I worked in the barber's shop. Clare was working for her old boss, David Alexander in a small clothing factory on Cheetham Hill Road and I suggested to her that she give up her job and take over in the kiosk. At first she did not agree as she felt she would not be able to do the job. She did not think she could handle the cash as she said she was not good with figures and she would have problems dealing with the customers. As it turned out she did a magnificent job. The customers loved her and I have always said that the success of that business was down to Clare.
We were in the centre of a business area with many offices, banks, warehouses etc. So there were lots of young women in the offices and Banks around us and they made up the bulk of our customers coming with lists of requirements for their workmates. Clare soon got used to the job and got on very well with all and sundry. She has often said that many of her young customers looked on her as a Mother figure and came to her with their problems and experiences.
When we took over the kiosk we had no working capital to buy stock and relied on the Cohen brothers who let us buy very small quantities from them in order to get established. Slowly we built the sweets and tobacco side of the enterprise whilst at the same time the hairdressing side was declining. This was at a time when hair styles for men started to change from the traditional "short back and sides" which needed attention every two to three weeks, to the much longer styles that did not need so much attention.
So as the takings on the hairdressing side declined and the need for working capital grew as we needed more stock for the kiosk, we got into financial difficulty. We were by now getting our tobacco supplies direct from the manufacturers, W.D. & H.O. Wills and Gallaher's, who had a policy that meant new orders were not delivered until the previous order had been paid for. As we had no spare cash with which to buy stock, and the monthly account with the manufacturers became due, I approached the bank to see if we could have overdraft facilities in order to be sure we could pay the monthly account. The answer was, sorry, we are not in the sweets and tobacco business. So we had to find another solution to our problem. We were confident the business would grow given time, so we decided to look for another source of supply that would suit our position better. The first attempt to find a suitable supplier was not very successful. There was a small wholesaler in Swan Street where we could get the goods we wanted and it was only a few minutes away from our shop. So we settled the debt with Wills and Gallaher's and started to buy from the Swan Street warehouse. One week we owed them £50 and asked if we could defer payment for a week. Clare went to see the owner of the warehouse to ask for a week's grace, he refused and demanded immediate payment. So once again we had a problem. As my Mother had recently sold her house and was now living in Shalom House I thought she would be able to help us. Once again the answer was no. Clare has always said since then that she was certain my Mother was making clear her lasting objection to our marriage. Certainly there was always a feeling that my choice of the woman I wanted to share my life with was not acceptable. They had made that clear from the start. I have never been able to understand what the real reason was for this hostility towards Clare, she is a loveable, warm-hearted person who would sooner do a good turn than a bad one. So we had to look for help from some other quarter. Clare phoned her sister Myrtle and within 48 hours we had the cash we needed.
All this hassle over a few pounds started us thinking if we were right in trying to make a go of the business. I remember vividly the day this all blew up. We were at home wondering about the situation we were in, the weather was lousy, rain pouring down, we felt as miserable as you could be. I don't remember which one of us it was who suggested that we sell up everything, the house, the shop, and emigrate to New Zealand. Why New Zealand? Well two of Clare's four sisters had gone to New Zealand soon after the end of the war. They had both been living in rather poor accommodation in London, and at the time both the Australian and New Zealand Governments were offering assisted passages to emigrants from Great Britain for £10 per person. The only stipulation was that the emigrant had to stay for two years, if they decided to return in less than two years then the full passage fare had to be re-paid. So the thought crossed our minds, should we follow Nancy and Hilda? Clare's youngest sister, Myrtle had by this time been divorced from her first husband Morris and had married a man who worked for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, (BOAC), Bill Simpson. In his job Bill travelled the world and he had recently been to Australia and New Zealand accompanied by Myrtle. So we put the idea to Myrtle that we were considering joining Nancy and Hilda in New Zealand and what did she think of the idea? The answer was an emphatic no. She did not think it a good idea at all. Her advice was to stay and make the business work. So we stayed and put all our energies into making a success of the business to the detriment of my political activities. For about the ten years we had the shop in Shude Hill I took very little part in politics. I kept in touch with what was happening through reading the various publications available, the Daily Worker/Morning Star was my regular daily newspaper, every month I would get Labour Monthly, a magazine founded and edited by Rajani Palme Dutt, a foundation member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and as many of the left-wing publications I could afford.
As time went on short hair for men went out of fashion and the barbers shop took less and less whilst trade in the kiosk was growing. So we decided to close the barbers' shop and extend the sweets and tobacco side by using the whole of the premises. We called in a shop-fitter who installed shelving in that part of the shop that had been the hairdressing salon, and fitted security shutters over the front of the shop. In order that we did not lose any opening time it was arranged that the conversion would be done over a week-end so the work-men started work as we closed on Saturday and worked through till Sunday evening. Once the workers had finished it was then necessary to re-stock the shelves in preparation for opening on the Monday morning.
Clare and I, and the family went to a dinner dance on the Sunday evening and Linda's first husband, Clive Weller, had agreed to help me stock the shelves at the shop after the dance. We were both wearing dinner suits and did not bother to change. We arrived at the shop about midnight, threw up the shutters and started to fill the shelves. Imagine the scene, two men dressed in dinner suits with black bow ties, one o'clock in the morning, a guy walks up to the kiosk window, and as though it is the most natural thing in the world he says, "Ten Woodbines, please."
From then on the enterprise grew steadily.
We wanted to sell newspapers and turn the business into a newsagents that would sell 'papers, magazines etc. The only problem was an old lady, a widow, had a stand next to our shop where she sold the local evening paper, the Manchester Evening News. The few pounds she made from the paper were very important to her as she had no other means of making a living. So, in order not to affect her takings we ensured her that as long as she sold the Evening News, we would only sell the morning papers. Nellie, for that was her name, agreed and we applied to the wholesale newsagents for supplies.
Our time in the newsagents was both busy and for the most time enjoyable. We worked long hours, opening at 7am till 5.30pm, which meant getting up at 6am and arriving home after 6pm in the evening. As I have said, my wife Clare, who at first was sure she would not be able to do the job, was responsible for the success of the business. Her personality and the way she dealt with the customers was vital. We tended to split the work between us, I would see to the ordering of stock, filling the shelves, doing the heavy work. Whilst Clare spent her day at the counter selling all the various goods we sold.
One problem that we had to solve was how we would get some time away from the shop. In other words, how do we get an occasional holiday. The business, although giving us a living, did not pay enough to be able to employ staff. Like many other small businesses, we relied on family members to help us out when it was necessary. As for instance when Clare had to go into hospital for a major operation. She had suffered all of her adult life with problems concerning menstruation. Every month she would be in terrible pain and spent two or three days in bed. She had been told by her doctor that she would suffer with this problem until she had children. When Linda was born she did improve for a while but then the problem returned. The same thing happened when Judith was born, a period of freedom from the pain but eventually it got so bad that she was advised that a hysterectomy was necessary.
When some of our young customers, who had come to look on Clare as someone they could talk to and expect to get a sympathetic hearing, got to know about her going into hospital for a major operation, they immediately wanted to show their support for her. Gifts of bunches of flowers and boxes of chocolate were brought with the best wishes of those wonderful young people. Clare always gave those youngsters her time and as a result they showed how much they appreciated her understanding.
This was when we had just got the business into a healthy state. We were then faced with the problem of how to manage without Clare's invaluable help.
Our elder Daughter, Linda came to the rescue. She was by then married to Clive and living on the Sunnybank Estate in Bury. Linda and Clive were married in 1964 and their first child, Julie, was born 19th March 1965. The day Julie was born will of course stay with me for ever. As my birthday is 20th March we were all hoping that the baby would be a wonderful birthday present for me. To get my first grandchild on my birthday would have been marvellous, but Julie could not wait.
Clare was admitted to Bury General Hospital to have her operation in May 1965 so Julie was just two months old. The only solution to our problem of how to keep the business running without Clare was to have Linda take her place in the shop whilst Clare looked after the baby. Not an ideal solution considering the fact that after a major operation like a hysterectomy, the patient should rest as much as possible.
There was no other way out of our predicament.
The certainty was that Clare could not go on without the operation. She suffered too much pain and it was impossible for her to carry on. So, it was agreed and Linda took over in the shop. This arrangement lasted about three months until Clare felt she could start work again in the Kiosk.