Interview of Paul Pierce by Anthony Fisher
Transcript of Anthony Fisher interview with Paul Pierce, 9th November, 2022 transcribed by Valerie Fisher
Anthony
Just a few preliminary questions: your name is Paul Pierce.
Paul
Yes and I live in Ware at the moment, temporarily.
Anthony
So when were you born?
Paul
1956.
Anthony
Do you have any brothers and sisters?
Paul
I’ve a deceased brother and an elder brother and a middle sister.
Anthony
Where you born in Enfield?
Paul
No, I was born in Highbury, Islington.
Anthony
But you’ve lived in Enfield?
Paul
Yes; I lived in Enfield for four or five years in Abbey Road, Bush Hill Park.
Anthony
Where did you go to school?
Paul
In Islington, in Hornsey, in Barnsley up in Yorkshire and then back to Hornsey again and that’s when I left school. I was 15 years and 3 months.
Anthony
What did your mum and dad do?
Paul
My father was a painter and decorator from Ireland and my mother was a cleaner.
Anthony
Did your brother and sister work in Enfield?
Paul
Well, they worked all over really.
Anthony
Are you married?
Paul
I am married, yes. Three children, five grandchildren and that’s enough.
Anthony
What was your first job, I am interested in working in Enfield.
Paul
The main job in Enfield was at Johnson Matthey.
Anthony
When was that?
Paul
From 1976.
Anthony
What did you do in Johnson Matthey
Paul
I started as an electrician’s mate. And that changed my life really. From dead end jobs – I was doing car cleaning, I worked in a wood yard in Cheshunt. I cleaned cars in Islington for a Ford dealer then I got a job with Johnson Matthey which I got through – a Pools man used to come round on a Friday night to do the Vernon’s Pools, to collect the coupons and he was about 110 and he was an electrician’s mate, he was so old. And he said like, they’re looking for electricians’ mates and I thought I’ll have a go at that but it was shift work which I loved, I loved it, it was great. I went there but I didn’t know anything about anything really, you know. I couldn’t even put a plug on and I knew some really clever people. I started going to college – they sent me to college – I done six years at college at Turnford. It’s still there but it’s changed a lot, it’s a really big building now.
Anthony
I once went to Johnson Matthey; getting into and out of the building was quite a thing.
Paul
It was, yes. But if you wanted to come out at dinner time and fix your car they just let you through. Strange isn’t it? In the mornings you could just walk in, clock your card and when you come out at the end of the shift they’d be two or three security guards – ex-army types – and they’d sort of frisk every two or three people.
Anthony
Did they look at the soles of your shoes as well?
Paul
No.
Anthony
They did that.
Paul
They’d look in your sandwich box or in your bag.
Anthony
What did they make?
Paul
Refined gold and silver from x-rays. They used to get all the silver out. All other things, they had a jewellery section as well which was like a tiny building where they’d take all old watches, bracelets and all that.
Anthony
That’s where they would take all the gold out.
Paul
Yes, they melted the gold down and they’d get precious metals in other ones and refine them down. They took ore because that used to go into the smelting works, the furnaces, which was a dangerous place. They had quite a few accidents.
Anthony
So with the advent of digital x-rays and digital photography, it must have reduced their turnover mustn’t it? Because these days they don’t use silver for x-rays.
Paul
But at that time there was no digital photography or x-rays and they did lots of them. They had chemical plants where they put the sheets in and get the copper out, big batteries they were but they were like vast buildings.
Anthony
When you were an electrician what did you do?
Paul
Keep the factory going really.
Anthony
So it must have been quite electric intensive.
Paul
Yes it was, motors and things like that. Just panels and that, we had to keep our eye on everything that was going on.
Anthony
Did the motors break down? Did you have to have them rewound?
Paul
Yes, we used to have a stock of motors. We used to take the motors apart and put all new bearings in, paint them battleship grey and they’d be a stock of them in a shed so they could be changed straight over. We used to do all that.
Anthony
How many people worked there do you think?
Paul
What in the whole plant?
Anthony
Yes.
Paul
Oh, Good Grief, I’d hazard a guess – four hundred people? A lot – it was a big site. Factory and office.
Anthony
Where were you living then?
Paul
Cheshunt. I used to come by bike. I’d just got married and my wife needed the car because we had a small child so I used to cycle – in all weathers! I’m not fit now, I’ve had a hard life in the building game.
Anthony
But you’re still doing it?
Paul
I am still doing it because it is all I know. I’m not a paperwork sort of person, I have to be out. It’s harder when it’s cold and the damp affects me. I’ve got a lung condition.
Anthony
I like your bowler hat.
Paul
I always wear a bowler hat; I’ve got pictures of me in 1983 or something with a bowler hat. I just like a bowler hat and people remember it.
Anthony
You lived in Cheshunt so presumably you couldn’t get involved in the social clubs or groups in Johnson Matthey.
Paul
There was a social club in Goldsdown Road.
Anthony
That’s where the football club is.
Paul
It is the football club, yes. We used to go there occasionally for quizzes and things, cards and all that, discoes but I wasn’t heavily involved in that. It was just Johnson Matthey, not other companies. There was another factory next door called which was a part of Johnson Matthey but not a part of Johnson Matthey. I can’t remember the name.
Anthony
Yes, they’re still there; they’ve got a big chimney but I can’t remember their name either.
Paul
Universal Matthey! That’s it.
Anthony
What did they do?
Paul
I think they done the same sort of thing but we never went in there so I can’t really say. I think the big chimney is actually in Johnson Matthey. I think it’s still there because you can see it from the Sewardstone Road when you come down from Waltham Abbey.
Anthony
When did you leave Johnson Matthey?
Paul;
About 1983.
Anthony
Did you stay in Enfield?
Paul
No, I didn’t, I got a job with British Telecomm. I didn’t want to be an electrician, I wanted to have a look at ‘phones and comms. I had a hard job getting in there because they wanted me to be an electrician and I said I’d had enough of it so I got put on some obscure group which turned out to be not a fantastic time I had there.
Anthony
What was it you did there?
Paul
I started doing data comms as opposed to telephones. That was early modems and data transfer.
Anthony
So the beginnings of what is now very important.
Paul
When you look at all the things we have here; like a modem, it was called a modem seven and it was half the size of a wardrobe and it was twelve hundred bits per second. Now you’ve got your ‘phone and everything.
Anthony
Where were you based|?
Paul
I was based in Winchmore Hill at the telephone exchange on the corner of Firs Hall – opposite Firs Hall is a telephone exchange.
Anthony
Firs Hall isn’t there any more.
Paul
No, it’s a block of flats, isn’t it. Well in the telephone exchange there was a little room out the back, about four by five meters, that was the Data Comms – that’s how important it was – but it had a lot of workshop area.
Anthony
So what was a revolution didn’t actually have much space. What was done with these modems? Who used them?
Paul
All over Hertfordshire really. Big business started getting into it. I worked everywhere; I worked British Aerospace, I worked at all the banks, Smith Klein French, businesses like that.
Anthony
What did the businesses use the modems for?
Paul
To talk to other sites. Via computer. It used to have four wide circuits which was like transmitter received and all the guys at the poles used to do all the wiring.
Anthony
So you had these sophisticated modems but the data was still transmitted down the copper wire?
Paul
Yes, it was. Private wires, not the ones the general public was using. They were in the same cables but because they were called private wires they would go to different stations, different exchanges and in the exchanges would be all the private wire stuff and the guys in the exchange would pair up the cables to another cable going off to somewhere else and it would get to where it had got to go all through the exchanges.
Anthony
Did you have a feeling that it was a revolution in communications?
Paul
At the time probably not, maybe later on because everything started getting smaller and the speeds started getting faster and a modem would end up the size of a telephone. It had become a lot more technical.
Anthony
How long were you there|?
Paul
Ten years, I think. No, I think eight years, I left in 1988/89.
Anthony
Just at the beginning of the internet revolution. Was the internet around then or was it after you left?
Paul
It was after I left really.
Anthony
Were you aware of it coming?
Paul
No.
Anthony
And the unit in Winchmore Hill, was it one of many or was there something special about it?
Paul
It was special in that we covered all of Hertfordshire and London whereas all the local exchanges at that time if you worked in that area, that’s where you worked. I don’t know if you recall the yellow vans? They all had white stickers on? Well, all the stickers denoted an area so if you were out of area and you got seen then someone would know by the sticker. But without one we could go anywhere.
Anthony
That’s fascinating.
Paul
It is. We visited a lot of places we weren’t supposed to go – used to go shopping, Oxford Street.
Anthony
Opposite our factory in Brimsdown was the British Telecomm factory.
Paul
In Bilton Way, yes.
Anthony
And I remember an engineer coming over with a handful of glass fibre and he said, “Anthony these are glass fibres, optic fibres, and that’s the future of communications,” and I didn’t understand at all what he was going on about at the time but I do now, obviously. They are not there anymore but again companies used to talk to each other; people working in the companies – I mean, we weren’t allowed to go in there because of security, but people used to come over and just have a chat. It was interesting and I was wondering whether, when you were with Johnson Matthey, did you have a sense of belonging to a community in Brimsdown?
Paul
No, I didn’t, no -well, apart from the people who worked there who lived in Enfield, yes, because there were some clever, clever people there; electricians, engineers, welders – well fitters as they were called.
Anthony
Did they mainly live in Enfield do you think?
Paul
Yes, they did, yes. The electrician I got put with actually come from Walthamstow. Yes, I think they mainly did. A lot of them didn’t have cars or they used to walk or come on bikes.
Anthony
I remember huge numbers of bikes at knocking-off time, all the bikes coming out at once and also the factories used to shut down at about the same time. How long did it take you to cycle from Cheshunt?
Paul
Twenty-five minutes. I was fitter then.
Anthony
My grandson cycles sometimes from Stoke Newington to Enfield and it takes him an hour and it’s only eight miles.
Paul
I got a letter printed in the Hertfordshire Mercury over the cycling. It hasn’t changed now, people don’t see you, they open car doors and I wrote to the Mercury to vent my anger. It got printed.
Anthony
Is there anything I haven’t asked you which you think would be interesting and useful and you want to say?
Paul
It was a dangerous place to work, for definite. Health and Safety wasn’t up to much, I don’t think really.
Anthony
Did you get training on chemicals at all?
Paul
No, not really, no.
Anthony
You knew they were dangerous but you didn’t know why or how?
Paul
No. You got the furnaces, you got the fumes – people had masks but you know –
Anthony
Poor old electricians not thought of, probably.
Paul
Probably. It was a dangerous place. That big chimney, the brick chimney, there was a – all the dust from the furnaces all went in to this – it was called a precipitation plant, where there all this honeycomb tubes with electrodes in the middle and all the dust and the smoke would go up and it would break the dust down like because of the chemicals in it. Then we had to go in every now and then, maybe twice a week, it used to get rota’d because you used to get “dirty money” for doing it as well, and you’d have to go in with all your masks, full-faced masks, to change the electrodes because it was like very high voltage and it was all key operated, it had to be shut down in a cage and only one person could do it, the foreman, and I think you used to get £4 for doing that, extra.
Anthony
Did you wear protective equipment to go in there? Suits and masks?
Paul
Blue overalls but overalls with hoods whereas the overalls they give you for general use daily were just ordinary overalls.
Anthony
So you had a hood?
Paul
A hood for the precipitation, yes.
Anthony
Did you wear a fresh-air respirator?
Paul
No, they wasn’t fresh-air, they was just cotton, plain white masks.
Anthony
An aluminium frame?
Paul
That’s it, yes. Which is probably why I’ve got a lung condition now. Just walking about you could taste it. You could taste copper in the air, all over the plant. And in the furnaces you’d go in and it would take your breath away but then you’d get used to it, you know.
Anthony
A guy who works for us as a mixer, Steve, his dad was Health and Safety Officer at Johnson Matthey. He must have been there when you were there because – I can’t remember when he died – but it must have been about then.
Paul
We used to have a blood test every six or eight weeks for lead content in the blood.
Anthony
Did they give you milk as well?
Paul
Yes, they used to give us milk.
Anthony
Because that helps with the blood, I can’t remember why but it does. Did they give you a pint a day?
Paul
You could have what you wanted really, there was no limit. There was a lot of immigrants worked there as well.
Anthony
Where from?
Paul
Italy, Jamaica. Generally not English people and they used to do all the furnace work and things like that.
Anthony
It must have been hot.
Paul
It was hot, yes. It was hot.
Anthony
How did you all get on? The immigrants and the local people?
Paul
Ok generally, I think. When I was in the Plant when something went wrong some of them would try and fix it themselves -pulling fuses out and things like that which didn’t go down too well with the electricians.
Anthony
So that wasn’t because they were immigrants; it was because they were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing?
Paul
Yes.
Anthony
So although they had a Health and Safety Officer, it doesn’t sound as though they applied – I mean, was there any kind of Health and Safety training or talks or instructions.
Paul
No, not really. Health and Safety people used to do inspections. The company would know a week before because they would write to them and say they were coming and anything that was iffy, any plants, they would just shut them down.
Anthony
That was the factory inspector?
Paul
Yes.
Anthony
Because in my day they just used to turn up but you are saying the company actually knew when they were coming?
Paul
Yes, they knew and if there was something that wasn’t above board it would get closed down. And they used to pump stuff into the river as well. I think there was a bit of thieving going on. People used to go out at dinner time and take stuff out.
Anthony
Well, that’s a break in security, isn’t it, if you weren’t checked at lunchtime.
Paul
It is because if you went out with, like, a welding bottle if you asked one of the welders if they could come and do your car, they would just open the gate up and they’d just go out.
Anthony
You can weld as well, can you?
Paul
I have had a go because I had a fascination with cars and I still have, old cars. I did buy one, I bought a 1952 MG and I went to evening classes to do welding.
Anthony
Where did you for evening classes?
Paul
Turnford.
Anthony
Turnford again? It was so useful, that place.
Paul
It was. I went there for Maths as well as in the electrical side of things there is a lot of Mathematics involved so I did an evening course for Maths. That’s it really.
Anthony
So in Johnson Matthey that 110 year old electrician’s mate actually changed your life.
Paul
He did indeed, he did. But he just made tea and swept up or helped carry stuff and things like that but yes, he was. He was a game changer for me, I have to say.
Anthony
But why did he tell you do you think? I mean, did you get on particularly well?
Paul
Only because he came round with the football pools, that was the only reason. He come round for my dad but I started doing the pools as well. So he had two for one really.
Anthony
So you learnt a lot at Johnson Matthey which allowed you to go to BT and a bit of welding and you learnt Maths
Paul
I was just interested in using my hands, mechanical things, which has stood me in good stead really because of the things I do now, carpentry, I fitted kitchens for a bit; I do bathrooms. I did do bathrooms up until last year and I said I couldn’t do no more building. It is heavy work, yes, and I couldn’t do it. I just thought, “No, I can’t do it no more.”
Anthony
So apart from Health and Safety issues at Johnson Matthey, what was the worst aspect about it or was nothing really bad?
Paul
Apart from that, nothing. it was a great job and I’m still friends with the welder now after all these years. I see him every couple of weeks. He lives in Harlow, or Church Langley and I see him every couple of weeks or I talk to him on the ‘phone and we always end up talking about Johnson Matthey and the things that went on and how funny it was and what a good job it was. On reflection, I should have stayed there.
Anthony
Did you have a canteen there?
Paul
Yes, there was.
Anthony
So you could have lunch there.
Paul
Yes. You could do shift work and it was subsidised as well. When you done nights there was a canteen and then they brought microwaves in and done away with the staff so all the meals were precooked and you just had to go and get them and put them in the microwave so there was no-one cooking at night.
Anthony
So the company was running twenty four hours a day.
Paul
It was, yes.
Anthony
That’s a lot of output.
Paul
It is. I bought my wife a wedding ring from Johnson Matthey in Hatton Garden because I got a discount!
Anthony
So their gold made the ring that your wife wears.
Paul
You could say that, yes. We went up to Hatton Garden.
Anthony
What does your wife do now?
Paul
She’s retired, she was a dental nurse. A long time, I met her when I was 15.
Anthony
A long relationship. So presumably she was in London rather than Enfield.
Paul
She’s been in High Cross, Tottenham, and then she moved to Waltham Abbey with her parents and that’s where she stayed and that’s where I met her – in a pub. That was it, yes 15, still at school and we’re still married.
Anthony
I think we’ve come to the end now. Thank you very much.