was born 25th March 1934 in Wood Green to working class parents and evacuated with her brother at the beginning of World War 11 when they were both shunted around the country finally staying in Maltby, Yorkshire.
Returning to London in time for the last of the V2s, she passed the new 11+ exam and got into Latymer, she left after a Sixth Form Year to start a career in advertising at the London Press Exchange finally landed a job in the Advertising and Publicity Department of United States Lines. where she obtained a notable polish on her speech.
Married in 1963 In early December 1964 she, with her husband and son Gavin, emigrated for a new start in life in Australia as “Twenty-five pound Poms”. In the twelve years she spent there she qualified as a Professional Librarian and a Teacher Librarian. Most notably, she entered local politics and became the first woman ever to be elected to the Melton Shire Council and in her last year on Council became the first woman to lead Melton Council as its Shire President.
On her retirement from Council, and after her divorce she, with her two children, Gavin and Jennifer, returned to the U.K. in 1978, to start a new life. After a year she found a job with the now defunct ILEA as a School Librarian. She moved into Further Education running various libraries until retirement in 1993.
Seeking something worthwhile to do, she became a school governor and, courtesy of David Blunkett and his dog, joined the Enfield North Labour Party. As another interim diversion, she joined with Audrey Hardwick to found the early Enfield Older People Forum. In due time she became Chair of Enfield North CLP, stood for Enfield Council, was elected in 1998, and served for 8 years with distinction.
Interview of Irene Richards by Anthony Fisher
Oral History project
Anthony Fisher interviewing Irene Richards on 12th July, 2023 transcribed by Valerie Fisher
Anthony
What is your name?
Irene
Irene Mary Richards.
Anthony
And your date of birth?
Irene
25th March, 1934. I am 89.
Anthony
Do you have any siblings?
Irene
Not living; my brother Don died many years ago, I can’t remember exactly how many. He died from prostate cancer.
Anthony
And where were you born?
Irene
I was born in Wood Green, in a road named Maryland Road which has nothing to do with my middle name actually. I’ve no idea why my mother called me Mary. She called me Irene after Irene Dunne, the actor.
Anthony
Where were you educated?
Irene
First I started in Edmonton at the Hazelbury Infant School but, of course, war started very, very shortly after that and then my brother and I were evacuated to Frinton so I went to school in Frinton for a while and then the powers that be decided that it wasn’t a safe place to be because it had German aircraft flying over it on a daily basis and dropping random bombs here and there so Don and I were shifted to a place called Marshfield, which is not far from Cardiff and we were there for about eight or nine months. We were moved again because they decided that it wasn’t a safe place either because there was a munition dump very close by. But interestingly, the people to whom we were evacuated to in Marshfield was a man called J. C. Walker and J. C. Walker was the principal cartoonist for the News of the World. Many years later I went to Kew to look at the News of the World to see if he had used my brother and myself in his cartoons, but I couldn’t find anything which I was a bit miffed about. I thought it would be nice if he had done. And then from there we were shifted to Ramsey Mereside in Lincolnshire. We were living in a very small cottage, a very small line of semidetached houses, council houses, and we stayed there for a while so I went to school there as well and then from there my mother and my father decided they weren’t very happy with this at all so they asked my aunt and uncle, Uncle Charlie and Aunt Doris, if they would have us. They were in Yorkshire so we went up to Maltby in Yorkshire and spent the rest of the war years there.
We came back to Hazelbury School and then it was just about the time the 11+ was being instituted after the 1944 Rab Butler Education Act which gave kids like me an opportunity to go to a grammar school. I took the 11+, passed it and went to Latimer. After Latimer further education later on, you might say very much later on, when I was in Australia I qualified as a librarian and also as a teacher librarian and then came back to this country after my divorce and got an Honours degree with the Open University. That’s my education – it was an education in life as much as anything else because shifting from one place to another made both my brother and myself very, very self reliant and I consider it to be a very valuable part of life education.
Anthony
And you went to Australia with your husband?
Irene
That was in 1964, Catherine was about, let’s see about seven months old, something like that. We spent about twelve years or so there where I got my qualifications at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Hawthorne College and we were living in Melton and I got involved in local politics and was elected as the first woman councillor there.
Anthony
As you know, this is a project specifically about industry in Enfield but afterwards I would like to come back and talk to you about your life in politics in Australia and the politics in Enfield. That would be interesting but in this interview I would like to talk to you about Klinger’s in Edmonton. Your life sounds fascinating, I wish we could do it now but I think we would run out of time so, with your agreement I should like to come back and interview you about your life story.
Irene
Yes, we can do that.
Anthony
So, to Klinger’s who were based in Edmonton, weren’t they?
Irene
In Silver Street, Edmonton. Where the current Klinger’s estate is. The building itself, which was a workhouse, was actually torn down in order to facilitate the construction of the Klinger’s estate. My father and my mother both worked for Klinger’s. In fact, my father knew old man Klinger very, very well indeed and he was extremely kind to us as a family. When Dad got T.B. he used to slip the odd fiver and so on to my mother who continued working there. As a result, of course, of my father’s not working we had National Assistance which you will have heard about and it was in 1945. I came back to Hazelbury School at the end of 1944, towards the end of ’44 so I had about two terms there. It was during that time, the very first Christmas I had back at home – my brother stayed in Yorkshire by the way because he wasn’t terribly well – and anyway when I got back Mum and Dad took us down to the factory and I remember – whether this is half remembered or false memory or whatever it was – but I do recall being immensely impressed by this huge building and I’d never ben in a building quite that big before and I suppose in recollection I think of it as Gothic. I don’t think it was actually Gothic, I think it was probably built during the Victorian time; about 1850, something like that and it had a dispensary, which was an interesting fact, and that dispensary formed the nucleus of the North Middlesex Hospital. which is an interesting connection between the two because when I first read that I thought, “Is this the Klinger factory?” and when I read it more carefully I realized that was a separate part and the two co-existed. Probably they had a dispensary there because of the type of work they were doing. Anyway, I have got a photograph which I can show you.
I remember going into the place which was cavernous, full of machines, and one of the things that stuck in my memory very, very clearly is the taste and smell of metal – when you chamfer, the smell of steel and oil mixed – that smell and the taste of it has stuck with me all my life. I can still imagine it and this is 80 years later; and the fact that it was dark but it was Christmas and they had all the decoration up that they could find at the time and I seem to think also that – I was aware of all this machinery around – it was quite dark but quite jolly in a way – old man Klinger had gone to town and all the children of all the people who were working there got a stocking which he probably had made specially, although how many children were there I have no idea. Anyway, we sat down and we had something to eat, the usual jelly and cake and whatever and I am pretty certain we were shown a film and the screen had been put up so that you could watch it either side so some people were watching it to the right and some people were going the other way.
I think we had a couple of Christmases there, one after I was 11 and was at Latimer, that would have been in 1945, but the interesting thing is I would say that my Dad, Mum, Uncle Jim and there was another uncle too and their wives, they all worked at Klinger’s and they were very typical of the people around. I would say that it probably gave employment to Goodness Knows how many people. And also something I found out when I went to Latimer, I got friendly with this girl called Edna, and her parents also worked at Klinger’s and they didn’t live locally, they lived in Exeter Road which is off Bounces Road which gives us an idea of how far away they actually worked at Klinger’s. But it was the building that impressed me and, you know, I was looking up bits and pieces to see if I could find out about it as well from the point of view of doing research as I am a librarian and I thought I would use my skills to do that and, as I said, I found this photograph which gives a bit of information about it as well.
Anthony
What did your father and mother do there?
Irene
Dad did all the machinery around and about. My mother did a job – stockings which were not quite perfect weren’t thrown away or disposed of they were given to this small group of women – I don’t know, I think they were called something like “scratchers” or “tearers” or “rippers” or whatever and they used to put the stocking on a form and they would literally do this with some instrument they had and they would take out the fault and it would be a perfect stocking so they didn’t waste it.
Anthony
Was this stockings or socks?
Irene
Stockings and, of course, stockings were very valuable. They were currency to some extent and that was the days when they had a seam down the back which you had to get straight or you felt, you know, you hadn’t got it on right.
Anthony
So that’s where you Mum worked?
Irene
Yes, Mum and Dad and the in-laws on my mother’s side.
Anthony
Did they all work in that special room?
Irene
No, no. I think the men were mechanics because it was a huge place and, as I say, I’ve got no idea how many people it employed.
Anthony
It is interesting that, in those days, when I was talking to my father because he came to Enfield in 1946, the owners of the businesses tended to know people; I mean the workforce knew the owner and the owner knew the workforce. It’s more remote nowadays.
Irene
It was like a family.
Anthony
Apart from the Christmas party which was obviously a major thing were there any other social clubs or social activities based on Klinger’s?
Irene
I can’t be certain of that. My father used to play football for the Wood Green league, he was in goal and for a very small man, he was only 5’6” he was a very good goalie apparently. Mum was born in Tottenham in the shadow of the Spurs ground and had a few connections.
Anthony
So when did your father have to stop work?
Irene
Well, he was in the Home Guard during the War because he was too old to enlist and he developed pleurisy and I think that must have been about 1944 or thereabouts. He was in the North Midd – I don’t think I ever visited him when he was in there – he was in the North Midd when it was bombed which was right towards the end of the War because I remember you could see the flames from where we lived in Harlow Road in Palmers Green and obviously my mother was desperately worried about this and using the one of the two telephones we had in the street, she tried to ‘phone through and couldn’t get through to anyone to find out what was going on so she got the owner of one of the only two cars in the road to drive her to the hospital to see what was going on.
Anthony
So your father stopped working at Klinger’s but your mum carried on?
Irene
Yes, she carried on working there.
Anthony
So how did your dad react to that because in those days it was usually the other way round?
Irene
I don’t think he was in any position to make any adverse comment about it. Dad was a fairly old fashioned sort of bloke, he had the Daily Mail delivered which, at the time of course, I had no idea was a terrible paper. My grandfather on my father’s side was a newsagents and tobacconist in Friern Barnet in that was the back door into the old Cable & Wireless before that estate became completely transformed when they pulled down the old building and put in a proper industrial estate. It used to have queues outside the shop on a Friday because that’s when they got paid and that’s when the delivery of cigarettes and things like that used to come in. So, anyway, I was just trying to think of other things. I’m not sure, I don’t know if you know the road that runs parallel to the High Street in Edmonton. You know where the cross roads, the old Regal used to be there on the other side. You go a bit further along and there’s a road that runs parallel to the High Street, I worked there for a while for a pencil factory called Pencils Ltd.
Anthony
Good Lord, that’s interesting. I didn’t know there was one there. I only knew about the Venus Pencils factory.
Irene
I used to cycle there and there and along the same street was a Jameson’s chocolate place because my Aunt Doris used to work for the chocolate people.
Anthony
How old were you when you worked for the pencil factory?
Irene
I was about 21.
Anthony
What did you do?
Irene
I was a clerk of some sort. I did it because I had been working – I started off in advertising, working for the London Press Exchange which the first job I ever had, but I still had an ambition to become a P.E. teacher and I did eventually go to the Chelsea College of Physical Education which was based in Eastbourne but, for some unknow reason, they decided after a year that I wasn’t any good so far as becoming a P.E. teacher went. I never understood why they asked me to leave so I came back and did lots of odd jobs. The other place I worked was British Oxygen on Angel Road.
Anthony
About the pencil factory, how many people did it employ?
Irene
It was quite big actually, although I can’t remember too much about the actual size of the place but it was a thriving concern just making pencils.
Anthony
Can you remember anything about the process?
Irene
I don’t think I ever went into the factory, the only thing I got involved in to earn a bit of extra money was going in on Saturday mornings to pack orders. We used to get paid a little bit of extra money for that which was quite helpful. The British Oxygen job was one of those fill-in jobs and my principal job there was converting from imperial to metric. All of their boxes, they made all sorts of things – screws and things – everything that was imperial had to be converted to metric and they gave me a shed, that was five times the size of this house, with tables because it was a question of typing it out, running it off on a Roneo, you know – skins – and I think I was working there up to six months and I wanted to go back to the job I had in advertising and I got a job with the United States Lines I their advertising and publicity department and so I went back there but when I left British Oxygen they said, “Can’t you possibly stay please? You are doing a fantastic job,” but I wanted to get back into advertising.
Anthony
So how old were you then?
Irene
I would have been about 24, 25. The early sixties.
Anthony
We went metric in the seventies but we were a small company so it is interesting they went metric earlier because they must have made all their gauges and connectors for the bottles. What did you actually do to convert them?
Irene
I literally was given the imperial measurements and I had to work through every page converting every single thing into a metric measurement.
Anthony
Using a calculator?
Irene
I think I had a very primitive thing that helped me out and I also had a book but it was very hard work, and concentrated because I couldn’t afford to make a mistake so every page, before I typed it up, I pencilled every page before I converted it to run off It was just me doing it, nobody else, it was quite extraordinary.
Anthony
It must have been quite a significant moment in the company.
Irene
I suppose so, yes, because they said, “You’ve got too many virtues, as it were, we’d like to continue to employ you if we can,” and I said, “Sorry, but no.” I had this fixture in my head, I wanted to advertising. I started about 1950 and I worked for U.S. Lines for about six or seven years, something like that. That was the company that owned the S.S. America and the S.S. United States which was the Blue Ribbon holder and, as far as I am concerned, it is still the Blue Ribbon Holder (inaudible) and his motor boat don’t deserve to be given the title. You can’t compare something that’s half a mile long to something perhaps the size of this house. I don’t know. I enjoyed that job, met some interesting people. I met Stravinsky, Thomas Beecham, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor because they weren’t allowed to sail on British boats which was something I didn’t realize, Howard Keel – oh, all sorts of people. I was in the advertising department and one of my jobs was to compile the passenger lists and the extract from the passenger list on the V.I.P.s and type it up at the end. Back to typing imperial and so on. From time to time my boss would say, “Irene, I want you to go down to Southampton and meet and make sure that everything is set up and o.k. for them.” One interesting occasion was when the Wightman Cup team (they don’t play the Wightman Cup any more) the Women’s Tennis Cup in the days of Louise Brough who was my idol actually and I went down there and had to look after the team and get them on to the train and off the train and into a taxi from a taxi into the Dorchester and I was also given the job of carrying the Wightman Cup and looking after it to make sure that they didn’t have to worry about it! I got separated from them and we got to London, I’d shoved them all in a taxi and forgot that I couldn’t get in it as well because there wasn’t enough room so I had to get another taxi and they were going frantic wondering where the Wightman Cup had disappeared to! Anyway, I ended up at the Dorchester and managed to contact them again much to their relief.
Anthony
That wasn’t based in Enfield unfortunately.
Irene
Unfortunately.
Anthony
Well, I think we’ll stop there, Irene, that’s half an hour and, as I say, I’ll come back if I may and discuss how to structure it more so I’m going to switch off now.