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calverts_north_star_press [2010/03/18 20:31] jessbai |
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| - | === Scumboni === | + | === Lithoman === |
| - | My name is Scumboni. I joined Calverts in 1983 at the age of 25, after working for a couple of years for the anarchist printshop Little A (before that, I learned the trade working for several small printing companies including Heron Press and Swiftprint in Clerkenwell, and Withyham in Ewell, Surrey.) I originally came in as casual printing cover for a friend who had gone for three months to Mauritius, to help a sugar workers union set up and commission a press to print their newspaper. When he returned, I stayed on. I worked mainly as a printer and guillotine operator, but I also made plates and film, and worked on the Linotronic photosetting machine. At that time there was still quite a lot of job rotation. | + | I joined Calverts in 1983 at the age of 25, after working for a couple of years for the radical printshop Little A (before that, I learned the trade working for several small printing companies including Heron Press and Swiftprint in Clerkenwell, and Withyham in Ewell, Surrey.) I originally came in as casual printing cover for a friend who had gone for three months to Mauritius, to help a sugar workers union set up and commission a press to print their newspaper. When he returned, I stayed on. I worked mainly as a printer and guillotine operator, but I also made plates and film, and worked on the Linotronic photosetting machine. At that time there was still quite a lot of job rotation. |
| I'll leave others to give you the lowdown on the early years; there are lots of fantastic stories about locking out the bailiffs, wrong footing the bad boss, getting union cards, earning little or no money for the first six months, and so on. Memories are unreliable - but here are some of mine, of Calverts in the period 1983-1989. I think there were about 9 members when I joined. The co-op had started with a bare minimum of desktop printing equipment and IBM golfball typesetting. They had later acquired a Hamada Star SRA3 offset press, then a Heidelberg KORM, and just before I started they had borrowed £18,000 from Close Asset Finance and bought their first SRA2 press, a single colour Heidelberg SORK. Another great leap forward was the acquisition of a Linotronic 300 phototypesetting machine. When I started, the co-op had just been through a fairly thorough marketing review and business planning process, which they finally decided not to implement when a majority of members got cold feet (I think it involved buying a two-unit B1 perfecting press and specialising in single-colour book and magazine printing. What a bad move that would have been). | I'll leave others to give you the lowdown on the early years; there are lots of fantastic stories about locking out the bailiffs, wrong footing the bad boss, getting union cards, earning little or no money for the first six months, and so on. Memories are unreliable - but here are some of mine, of Calverts in the period 1983-1989. I think there were about 9 members when I joined. The co-op had started with a bare minimum of desktop printing equipment and IBM golfball typesetting. They had later acquired a Hamada Star SRA3 offset press, then a Heidelberg KORM, and just before I started they had borrowed £18,000 from Close Asset Finance and bought their first SRA2 press, a single colour Heidelberg SORK. Another great leap forward was the acquisition of a Linotronic 300 phototypesetting machine. When I started, the co-op had just been through a fairly thorough marketing review and business planning process, which they finally decided not to implement when a majority of members got cold feet (I think it involved buying a two-unit B1 perfecting press and specialising in single-colour book and magazine printing. What a bad move that would have been). | ||
| - | At that time the co-op worked for a wide range of community, campaigning and political groups - notably Child Poverty Action (still a Calverts client) and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) - as well as a number of left-nationalist, anti racist, womens movement, gay liberation and environmentalist organisations, and a raft of 'samizdat' publishers, activists and riffraff. The co-op members were a mixture of anarchists, ultraleftists and radical feminists (the co-op was always about 50:50 men and women, still is), with the odd south african stalinist and apolitical people who came into Calverts from the trade, like film planner/platemaker Jim Woodley (Calverts was a 100% NGA union closed shop, so jobs were advertised through the union call office). [Tired now, more to come ...] | + | As well as straightforward commercial, charity and local authority design and print, we worked for a wide range of community, campaigning and political groups like Child Poverty Action (still a Calverts client) and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) - as well as a number of left-nationalist, anti racist, womens movement, gay liberation and environmentalist organisations, and a raft of 'samizdat' publishers, activists and riffraff. The co-op members were a mixture of anarchists, ultraleftists and radical feminists (the co-op was always about 50:50 men and women, still is), with the odd south african stalinist and apolitical people who came into Calverts from the trade, like film planner/platemaker Jim Woodley (Calverts was a 100% NGA union closed shop, so jobs were advertised through the union call office). |
