Educational Trustees Meeting Nov 2017

Recording Our Working Lives - 30 Years of the History Project. There are many reasons why knowing our own history is important, and this is particularly so for trade unionists and trade unions. It helps us understand the battles that have been fought by our members down the years. It helps to explain who we are and how we got to where we are today as trade unionists. It honours the men and women from our unions who have committed themselves to improving employment and working conditions and appreciates the valuable contributions they have made over the years. Since 1987 the members of the British Entertainment History Project have been quietly and painstakingly recording interviews with working men and women from the UK film, television, radio and theatre industries to ensure that their lives and experiences are preserved for future generations. The History Project started in 1986 when two delegates at the ACTT Annual Conference in London got to talking about recording the experiences of their fellow workers in the industry. They decided themselves the ACTT History Project. The ACTT was the Association of Cinematograph, Television and allied Technicians, one of BECTU’s founder-unions. The Project was concerned not only with the history of the union, but also with the history of the film and broadcasting industries as a whole. Its aim was to build an oral history archive, a collection of recorded interviews, about the working lives of people across those industries. Arming themselves with the latest sound technology, Sony Walkmans, the volunteers set about recording a generation who still had memories of the early 20 th century. For example we recently unearthed an audio interview with an early Pathe News cameraman Adolph Simone who was born in 1895 and talks about flying over the First World War German trenches in a French observer balloon. These are valuable social and cultural documents. In 1990 ACTT united with BETA (the Broadcast Entertainment Trades Alliance) to create BECTU, and the Project became the BECTU History Project. We have an interview with Alan Sapper the ACTT General Secretary two weeks before the amalgamation of the unions. It’s an important Trade Union historical document. We have a range of interviews with senior officials and lay officers who were involved from the 30s to the present day including George Elvin, Ralph Bond, Sid Cole, Bessie Bond (Tailor and Garment Workers), Ivor Montagu, Turlough MacDaid from NATTKE, Tony Lennon from the ABS and BECTU and many more. For example there’s an interview in the archive with one of the History Project’s pioneers Alan Lawson which reveals the tireless efforts he made to