The Singer Story: Made in Clydebank (2019), BBC Scotland, Directors Barthelemy Francis Corbelet, Yoann Fabrice Le Dantec, Narrator Marc Jennings.

The Singer Story: Made in Clydebank (2019), BBC Scotland, Directors Barthelemy Francis Corbelet, Yoann Fabrice Le Dantec, Narrator Marc Jennings.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00051z7/the-singer-story-made-in-clydebank

I’m old enough to remember Singers. All that’s left is some red brickwork and the original staircase that leads up to Kilbowie Road. All of my partner’s aunts worked in the factory and her sister and her brother-in-law. The guy up the stairs from me, Daft Freddie, worked in Singers. I wondered what he did, because he wasn’t the brightest. When the factory closed, he never worked again. But he was that age when nobody much expected him to. He was over 50.

Scotland’s population is ageing faster than the UK average. Clydebank is ageing faster than Scotland.

Clydebank’s population has halved and is full of all folk like me. We used to make things here. Comedian Marc Jennings makes a joke about it. I knew it was an old production when I watched him being filmed outside The Playdrome. That’s no longer there.

Let’s quantify it.

Industrial employment loss

Peak: 30,000 industrial jobs

Now: <1,000 industrial jobs in Clydebank itself

Loss: 29,000 jobs

Percentage decline: 96–97%

 

Population loss

Peak: 47,000

Now: 28,000

Loss: 19,000 people

Percentage decline: around 40%

Singers was a multinational company that at its peak employed around 11 000 workers.

Many of them women. Singer’s employed thousands of women. Dalmuir employed thousands of women during WWI (Beardmore’s). John Brown’s remained the elite employer for men. The Singer’s Taylorism model relied on low-paid and pliable women workers. The 1911 Singer’s strike wasn’t resolved, but it was ended with the sacking of 500 workers, mostly women as the production process was speeded up and the terms and conditions of workers were watered down. Singers was good for Singer family. Ironically, the Singer’s model is the basic service model. The Amazon model and also the model for care workers (mostly women) striking outside borough offices in Dumbarton about offering health care to clients in seven minute slots, what can you say?  Have we moved on? Gone sideways, with longer and longer working weeks. Or backwards, getting older and sicker, younger. Dying sooner than expected. What’s that got to do with this celebration of Singer’s?

Well, we know behemoth employer like this largely no longer exist—not in Scotland, and mainly in the military-industrial process, which Singers adapted to and benefited from during both World Wars. Towns are not built around workplaces. Built in obsolescence is part of the process. No jobs for life. People are living longer. ‘Never underestimate nostalgia. It’s a powerful thing.’ But that doesn’t make it true.    

Notes.

1 in 5 households in the world had a Singers sewing machine.

Comedian Mark Jennings has lived in Clydebank all his life.

Singers Clock. You could see it from miles away. It set you off  your day and ended your day. It was never out of time.

26 feet in diameter. Four faces. Singer Name on each side (lit up). Minute hand 13 foot 6 inches long. Hour hand about 8 foot.

Singer sewing company brainchild of Issac Singer. Son of German immigrant. He grew  up in New York.

Alex Askaroff, Singer sewing machine specialist.

Singer invented the first practical sewing machine. They called it a ‘sewing engine’. In 1851 he patented his first model. That changed the world.

Forever people had hand-stitched ever item of cloth together. So along comes this machine. That supposedly joins it for you. But nobody really believes it.

So they put on public shows. And you’d go and pay 10 cents to go and see.

Singers sent men all over to look for the perfect place to build a factory. And they came across this lovely wee place in Kilbowie that had everything. It had the wood. The steel. The great River Clyde. Everything they needed at that one spot.

They didn’t just supple the sewing machine. But everything that went with it. To the threads to the attachments. Needle bars. Bobbins. Wheels. Treadles. Cabinets.

Issac looked at the factories. Because if you could make a hat or an overcoat, in 2 days instead of 2 weeks that’s a product you could sell to that factory and they’d buy it.

Factories were the first buyers. And they bought 10 or 20 machines. 100 machines. 1000 machines.

Never underestimate nostalgia. It’s a powerful thing.

When you bought a Singer, you were buying the best. (But) when it’s not special any more…?

Helen

I have 11 machines from the 1860s, all made in Clydebank.

 

Lin Gardner, Textile History.

Issac Singer was a brilliant showman. He was very good at selling the sewing machine. He opened up plush showrooms in major cities in America. He would take it to fairs. Circuses. And he was very much aware he had to persuade not just manufactures but the buying public. Sewing machines were as good as or better than hand-sewing.  

Professor Andrew Godley, Management and Business Historian

He wasn’t the only inventor. There were around ten inventions. Isaac Singer along with the others set up their own businesses.

Things began to change around the 1870s. Several of these leading companies began to realise they could sell their machines overseas. And the most obvious market to experiment in was the UK.

Dr Valerie Wright Economic and Social History.

Singers was an American firm. And they decided to locate in Scotland. The manager who made that decision had emigrated to America from Scotland. They first set up near Queen Street station in Glasgow. They chose Glasgow because you’ve got lots of migrant workers in the city. A cheap labour force.  

At first they assembled the machines from parts imported from America. Though they made 1000 machines a week, they couldn’t keep up with growing demand. It was clear they needed to move to a bigger place.

Construction of the factory started in 1882. And was completed in two years. When  it opened. The Singers Sewing Machine Factory was a state-of-the-art facility. Largest of its kind in the world. In pride of place, iconic clock tower.

There’s a brilliant map, 1861 and all that’s in there is a train line, the canal and the edge of the Clyde.

And if you look at the map, 1891 all you see is this warren of street and this enormous factory right in the middle of it. It literally changed the geography of the whole place.

With John Brown shipyard already employing a huge number of people in the area, the Singers Sewing factory employed thousands more. A deluge of industry had created a brand-new town that came to be known as Clydebank.

By 1906 there were 20 000 people in Clydebank.  Singers factory was a catalyst for the community. It created that local economy.

Isa McKenzie. Born 1929. Employment Department.

Frances Railton. Wages Department.  If you were a minute late they were taking 15 minutes off your wages. One of the thing I really liked about Singer was the friendships we made. I’d gone to the interview and I’d met this girl, Maureen.

 

Maureen Smith, Parts Department. It was twenty-to-eight when the horn went off. You had to be there about half-seven. Cause you’d all those stairs you had to come down from Kilbowie Road.

The men. They always get paid more. Always. Always. Always.

Strikes. Rent strikes 1915 in Govan.

Women’s strike. 1911 also created better working conditions.

 

Charles Fraser. Drawing Office. The Singers factory from one end to the other was probably about a mile to a mile and a half. It was very strict. You werenae allowed to go for a smoke and that. Although they did, on the fly.

Dougall McIntyre, Operations Analysis. It was enormous. One of the big suprises was how widely spread it was.

They  thought they didn’t really have to worry about improving things.

Elizabeth McGlaghlin, Parts Department. The toilet was called ‘The Tinny’. Because it has a corrugated iron  roof. And that’s were some of the folk went to hide from the gaffer and put in their rollers for the dancing. And some of them would have a wee fly puff.

[after the closure] it became a different place.

Nothing could take the place of these big engineering…

It was like a ghost-town.

Colin Scott, Needle Department.

And my first day was an office boy and you were finding your way about. And some of the places where you visited. Where my sister worked for instance. It was all females. And all these females were shouting extremely rude remarks. And then this voice shouted out: ‘That’s my wee brother. Leave him alone. He’s a virgin. And he’s gonnae stay that way.’ Which caused a great deal of hilarity. But some of these women…If you shook hands with them they could crush you to pulp.    

The Clock came down before they closed the place (your time is up).

 

Every department had to make different things for the sewing machine.  There were 56 Departments at the time. Each Department was numbered.

1 was the foundry.

4 was the hardening

5 was the dry…

6 wet-milling.

7 the shuffle.

There were other departments it was so dusty

Jim Mailer Quality Manager. All the dust. It was like being in a smog. You blew your nose and arghh. The only way they could make a profit in Clydebank was to make it cheaper (than other Singers in other countries, not in competition with other sewing-machine manufacturers [which was a mistake])?

Anna Stones, Parts Department. We just made tiny wee parts and your hands would be all skelfs and all mucky. That was one of the bad jobs…You were proud to be making a small part. And to know you were making a  Singers sewing machine. And it was going to give somebody so much pleasure. And it was going to be sent all over the world.

One of the thing I really liked about Singer was the friendships we made. I’d gone to the interview and I’d met this girl, Maureen.

We got sent to the same department. And that was us, inseparable.

On the first day we were quite excited and I had to go to the toilet. And they told us you had to go through the main department were they assembled all the machines.

I was shaking like a leaf. It was my turn to go and I realised not only had you to go out. You had to come back that way as well.

Clydebank was buzzing. It had picture houses. Dances. Anything you wanted.

To give the machine its signature look it was covered in a tough black gloss and baked in a process called ‘Japaning’.

The machine was then finished with exquisite designs. And gold-leaf. 

Although it was revered as a technological marvel, the Singer’s machine did not make it into people’s homes straight away.

The initials machines brought out in 1851 were not interested in domestic sales. They were interested in manufactures.

But their usefulness went beyond garment manufacturing.

They could change the shell of the machine, the size of the machine, the bed of the machine, So they could adapt to make all sorts of unusual shaped objects. Making shoes. Things like that. Hats. Gloves. They were working this out along with the manufacturers.

At a bookbinding company in Glasgow, the industrial Singer machine continues to hold a century-old tradition.

John Allison Bookbinder.

Different books require different methods. So we have a Singer sewing machine… such a robust machine.

Twentieth century, finely crafted. Constructed with cast-iron and combination of alloys, the machines were built to last.

The sewing machine Singers designed was really a great piece of engineering. Cast-iron shell. Pretty indestructible. It has this long life.  That’s what they were building in the nineteenth century. The idea of inbuilt obsolescence wasn’t really something they would have considered. Some of them last 100 years.

There was however one snag. The machines were tremendously expensive. The machines would have cost the typical worker at least half a year’s salary.

So they developed an idea that was completely novel in the mid-1870s. (Credit). Why don’t we give the customer the machine and let them pay us back over 5 years. 10 years. 15 years. 25 years?

That’s what enabled people to invest in the machine, because they could pay this small amount a week.

In the first year, sales went from 5000 to 25 000. And every year after that they were doubling.

That was a complete game-changer. Hire-purchase. Invented by the Singer company and changed the company beyond all comprehension.

By 1918, at the end of the First World War, Singer sewing machines were so popular 1 in 5 households in the world had one.

Innovative HP scheme and clever marketing made its sewing machine affordable and accessible to people all over the world. But they didn’t stop there. They took the sewing machine to people’s homes.

In the UK, they’d go to almost every house in the entire country. Knock on the door. And ask if they’d like to buy a sewing machine.

They used beautiful women to advertise their products. They put them in high streets. Sewing inside shop windows. And this attracted crowds (watching). So they were very good at marketing.

This concentrated effort created an appetite for the Singer brand. Put it ahead of its competitors for decades to come. They established factories all over the world. But Singer’s Clydebank factory remained its largest in Europe.

Singer’s Gala Day highlight of the year. One year Dorothy Lamour (famous film star)

Clydebank, catastrophic damage during the Blitz. Slowly getting back normal.

Singers sewing machine based on its reliability. Early 20^th century. Quick. Efficient. Clean. Strong.

Clydebank, thriving industrial powerhouse, 1950s.  

1960s-70s women spending equivalent of two days a week on clothes manufacture and repair. The opportunity to learn at its many sewing centres. 

Singer machines not just relics of the past?

Refurbished machines sent to Accra, Ghana.

1915 Rent Strikes and Red Clydeside.

1. Overcrowding

Tens of thousands of workers flooded Clydebank:

Singer’s: 7,000–10,000

John Brown’s: 10,000–12,000

Dalmuir: 10,000–14,000

Housing couldn’t cope.

2. Landlords raised rents

With demand soaring, landlords increased rents by up to 25%.

3. Women were the organisers

Women from:

Singer’s

Dalmuir

Shipyard families

all united.

4. Shared grievances

Low wages (Singer’s)

Dangerous work (Dalmuir)

Irregular pay (John Brown’s)

Overcrowded tenements

Exploitative landlords

5. The rent strikes were a cross‑industry uprising

Mary Barbour’s Army included:

Singer machinists

Dalmuir munitionettes

Shipyard wives

Labour activists

Socialist women like Agnes Dollan and Helen Crawfurd

6. The result

The government passed the Rent Restriction Act (1915) — a direct victory for Clydebank’s working-class women.

1. East Clydebank — Singer’s (Kilbowie)

World’s largest sewing‑machine factory

1 million sq ft

5,000–11,500 workers

Dominated the skyline with the Singer Clock

Light engineering, precision machining, huge female workforce

2. Central Clydebank — John Brown’s Shipyard

One of the world’s most famous shipyards

Built Lusitania, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, QE2

8,000–15,000 workers depending on era

Skilled male labour, heavy engineering, cranes, slipways

3. West Clydebank (Dalmuir) — Beardmore & the National Projectile Factory

Former Beardmore shipyard site

Became a National Projectile Factory in 1915

10,000–14,000 workers at peak

Heavy munitions: big shells, casings, fuses

Later reused for aircraft, tanks, engineering, and eventually ROF Dalmuir

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