Mortimer Grimshaw (1824/5–1869)

Mortimer Grimshaw was born into a working-class family in or near Great Harwood . He worked intermittently as a cotton weaver, and achieved local — briefly, national — fame as a strike leader and political activist in the mid-1850s.

He rose to fame in the village of Royton, near Oldham, as a factory reformer, and claimed to have been blacklisted by the cotton manufacturers for his political campaigning, including supporting the Tory – radical enemies of free trade as well as being involved in Ernest Jones's ill fated Labour Government in 1854. Grimshaw opposed unrestricted competition within the industry and feared the class power of the mill owners.

In 1853 when the Preston workers went on strike for a 10 per cent increase in wages, Grimshaw was an ever-present figure at their mass meetings, defending the ‘factory slaves' against repression by their masters. He was, along with George Cowell, seen as the acknowledged leader of the seven-month strike. Speaking at sixty or more public meetings during the strike, he urged the construction of co-operative mills as a long-term challenge to the power of capital.

After the strike Grimshaw had no further purpose and despite attempting to intervene in several other strikes, and voicing his Tory sympathies during the American civil war, he died in obscurity on 22 December 1869 in Rishton.

Extracted from a piece by
J. E. KING
Source unknown

The 1911 Cotton Lock Out

In 1911 a major event happened in North East Lancashire. The Weaver's Union, which by then was a very old established and creditable organisation, took a decision that all those working on looms in North or North West Lancashire should be members of the union. The union thought this could be achieved in a peaceful way by persistent persuasion and clever tactics. There were very few who rebelled against joining the union but support for those who did grew as others, who had joined against their will, rallied in support of them. Efforts were made to get shot of the non-union workers but when these failed the unions called upon the Masters to dismiss the rebels and to undertake to employ only union members in their mills. After two years of downturn the weavers possibly thought that a time of coming prosperity would sway the Masters into conforming to the union's wishes, it is reported that this would only have earned the contempt of everyone who believed in the reality of freedom.

At Helene Mill in Accrington Joel Riley and his wife Sarah refused to join the union and in Great Harwood a Mr Scott and Margaret Bury also refused. Scott later capitulated but Miss Bury continued to refuse. She had previously belonged to the union but had withdrawn after she felt that the she got little for her money.

The Masters decided upon a general lockout, which resulted in 400 workers at York Mill, Great Harwood going out on strike. The knock-on effect this had was felt nationwide as other mills were closed and it is estimated the event involved 16,000 weavers and 150,000 spinners who were put on half time working. Overall around 3million people were affected as far afield as Nottingham and Glasgow in the lace-making industry and affecting the woollen industries in Yorkshire and Argyle.

It is unclear how this dispute finally ended but ended it must have done as weaving was continued in Great Harwood until the early 1970's.

100 members Apr 13 2002