Ian Beesley’s a familar name in these parts, as he’s worked with us on many occasions and on many different projects.
However he’s also a Bradford lad, and agreed to contribute to our ‘Being Young in Bradford’ series of blogs too.
It’s a fascinating read. And look at the end for his soundtrack too.
He writes:
Growing up in Bradford in the 1970s
I was 16 in 1970. I saw the film “Woodstock” at the Odeon decided to grow my hair long and become a hippy.
It was a phase that did not last long Bradfordians are tolerant, but have sharp tongues; the drizzle of the Pennines is no substitute for Californian sunshine. I abandoned the beads and headbands but kept the long hair.
Working at the mill
I didn’t do very well at school and left in 1972 with one A level. There was no shortage of unskilled work in Bradford; many of the traditional heavy industries were still creaking along. I got work in a mill, Associated Weavers Dudley Hill; I hated it, the noise, the shifts, and the boredom of repetitive manual labour. Health and safety wasn’t paramount, I remember sitting in the canteen looking at workers with mutilated hands and missing fingers.
The wages were good. I could afford tickets to nearly every rock concert at St Georges Hall and Bradford University. I went nearly every Saturday night to the University to see a band, whilst Leeds University could attract the big bands like the Who and the Rolling Stones, Bradford was really good at attracting up and coming bands.
He had his finger cut off
I left Associated Weavers after the man I was working with got his index finger chopped off, he was rushed to hospital whilst the rest of us scurried around trying to find his missing digit, one of the mill cats found it before us and ran off.That was it for me. The following week I got a job at Monkmans foundry in Manchester foundry, that didn’t last long, I liked working there, but wasn’t strong enough, after a week I was dismissed.
The sewage works
The labour exchange then offered me two opportunities: apprentice gravedigger at Undercliffe Cemetery or a labourer at Esholt sewage works.
I opted for grave digging and went for an interview but was told I wasn’t strong enough. The next day I started work at Esholt sewage works, I was there for best part of a year, I worked in the gardens, then the boiler cleaning gang and finally the railway gang.
It changed my life, I enjoyed working there, many of the men I worked with kept telling me not to waste my life there ‘find what you want to do, get an education’. They knew through the bitter experience of lost opportunity that education was a way out of unskilled low paid labour. I liked photography, bought my first camera and began to photograph my work colleagues, with their encouragement and support I applied to Bradford Art College and in September 1974 joined the foundation course.
Art College
The Art College was vibrant, informal, chaotic, exciting, inspiring.
There was a wealth of artists teaching there and a carousel of visiting speakers. Champion Jack Dupree, one of the last blues piano players was a regular visitor, he would sit in one of the studios at a piano sipping whisky, telling stories about his life and teaching anyone who wanted the rudiments of blues/barrelhouse piano.
Pitied for coming from Bradford
At the end of the year I went to Bournemouth & Poole College of Art. The contrast between Bradford and Bournemouth could not have been greater. I didn’t think I had an accent until then; nobody had ever called me working class, I was pitied for coming from Bradford.
It was the first time I had really rubbed up against the class system and seen the true divide that existed (sadly still does) between the north and the south.
The experience made me fiercely proud of where I was from. Bradford was in a steep decline in the 70s but it had then, as it does now, a uniqueness, vibrancy, warmth and resilience that many other cities lack.
Soundtrack
Ian, like our other contributors offered up a soundtrack – Ian has picked Artists that he saw at St Georges Hall ,the University of Bradford or Bradford Art College
One Response
Having sadly missed Ian Beesley’s exhibition at Salt’s Mill recently, I felt a great sense of disappointment that I had missed not only a collection of fine photographs but also an opportunity to connect with the Bradford of my early years and formative experiences.
So I am delighted to have had a chance to read Ian’s words, which in so many ways parallel my own feelings about growing up in Bradford, in my case between 1941 and 1964… from babyhood, through Bradford Grammar Schooldays, to not only working at Assocated Weavers, (though as a trainee in the Design office rather than working with the huge upholstery looms) but then leaving there to go to do Foundation at Bradford Art College!
In my eighty’s now I live in North East Derbyshire, but I still feel deeply rooted in Bradford, where I grew from child to man, where I discovered art and music (Chris Barber at St George’s Hall on a Sunday evening in the 1950s tempted me away from church youth fellowship to the joys of jazz!) and where I met and married my wife, whose great-uncle was the Right Honourable F. W. Jowett MP… Jowett of Bradford!
And today, still with a passion for art and music and politics, I feel privileged to have been shaped by the Bradford of my early days.