Starting in West London
I was offered the job of an engineer at the Metal Box factory in Acton. I was almost but not quite twenty years old, although they wanted me to start as soon as possible. I would have to remain as an apprentice until my birthday in May. As an apprentice I was required to wear the company uniform for an apprentice - a green boiler suit. Once I was over twenty I could ditch the green apprentice identifier and wear the blue boiler suit of an engineer. It seems strange now, looking back, but it was a big step. I discussed various options with Mum and Dad. It would mean leaving home from at least Monday to Friday, then coming home to Gravesend on weekends. There was more confusion because when I returned to Metal Box at Strood and told them I would be leaving to go to Acton, the factory manager offered me a job as an engineer but in a different department than where I had worked as an apprentice, meaning I would not have to leave home. I was very torn; staying on at Strood would, on the face of it, have been a good, safe option for all sorts of reasons, not least Mum's cooking and laundry service!
The decision to move to Acton rather than stay at Strood was ultimately wise. The Strood factory was closed only a year or so later, and everyone became redundant. The factory site eventually became a Tesco warehouse before the old buildings were demolished and a new Royal Mail sorting office was built.
Also, at this time, the steel can-making industry was in the middle of a technological change. Almost since the invention of the tin can, it had been manufactured from three pieces of metal, a cylindrical body, and two end pieces; one was added during the manufacturing process, and the other after the can have been filled with its content. The body part was made from a flat sheet of tin-coated steel formed into a cylinder with the two edges soldered together to provide a leakproof container. The type of solder used was influenced by whatever would be put into the can: soup, beans, peas, etc. Many of the solders used were lead-based, sometimes mixed with tin. On the inside of the can, the soldered area was covered with a coating that prevented contact with the can’s content. This construction method was okay for traditional content. Still, there was a growing soft drinks industry where the contents, such as cola-type drinks, were quite corrosive, and conventional soldered body seams had a long-term weakness when the filled cans were stored for a long time. There were also health issues with the long-term use of lead-based solders. The cost was also an issue; any material savings considering the volume of cans made had a huge implication. Manufacturers have developed a new type of can in the USA, one made of two pieces. However, most of this development had been done with aluminium instead of tin-coated steel - aluminium is a lower-cost material in the USA but is more expensive in the UK. Metal Box had developed a tin-coated steel version of this new can and built a pilot plant to test manufacturing at volume at the Acton factory. When I accepted the engineer position at Acton, I would be working in this new plant reasonably soon after it had moved from an R&D operation to a production operation that was to run commercially.
There were lots of changes and differences that I would need to overcome. Firstly, I needed to find somewhere to live. Metal Box put me in a hotel near the factory for a few weeks while I looked for a room to rent. They would also subsidise my room’s rent for a year, which was particularly good of them. Finding a room near the West Acton factory took me about two weeks. Over the years I worked for Metal Box in Acton, I would move home a few times into what I perceived to be better, though always more expensive, locations than the last.
The factory worked a two-shift production system, 6:00 am to 2:00 pm and 2:00 pm to 10:00 pm, the same as I was used to at Strood. However, because this plant was a cross between R&D and commercial production, it needed a lot of maintenance, and the engineers, including me, would be required to work a night shift every third week, from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am the following day, Sunday evening to Friday morning. Night shifts were a new thing for me. For at least the first year at Acton, I stayed there Monday to Friday but went home to Gravesend on weekends. I had never had any particular problem working two-day shifts in Stood or Acton, but adjusting to the night shift took a lot of work. If it were not a busy shift, which was sometimes the case, I would find myself falling asleep in some corner! The night shifts were also strange because only about four people and a couple of security gatehouse staff were on the site during the night. During the day, there were several hundred, if you included all the office staff.
The other significant change was Acton; the factory and surrounding area were racially diverse. This was a new experience and something I had yet to be exposed to. The Strood factory reflected the area at the time, and there were not any non-white people working there that I can remember. There were the beginnings of an Asian community in Gravesend that would eventually grow considerably, but by the time I started to work in Acton, it was not that noticeable. At the Acton factory, finding every race and culture you could think of was possible. Many people of African-Caribbean heritage are referred to now as the Windrush generation. They or their parents had come to London at the end of WW2 to take up vacant jobs due to the losses of life in the war. Lots of them worked on the buses or the underground trains of London Transport. There were Indians, Pakistanis, and even Europeans; I particularly remember several people of Polish descent who had settled here after being displaced as a result of the war.
As mentioned, the factory engineers, including me, worked a rotating three-shift system. There were meant to be two engineers per shift, so six in total, but during my time as an engineer working in the factory, I don’t think there was ever a time when we were a team of six. This meant we often worked a twelve-hour shift to cover; we were paid overtime, but they were long days. The summer of 1976 was sweltering, the demand for drink cans shot up, and the factory was required to produce cans twenty-four hours a day instead of the usual sixteen hours. This meant the maintenance night shifts were cancelled, and the two production shifts were extended to 12 hours for several weeks. This was very hard for everyone involved. Besides dealing with heat, the factory was not set up so that many people could work at night. So catering, medical nurses, etc., were also needed during the night, and it became quite complicated. Everyone was also concerned about how the factory would run without the usual night shift maintenance. Most of the machinery ran very well, I think because it reached a constant temperature and didn't stop/start or cool down between shifts.
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