HARRIS TWEED OUTER HEBRIDES DECREED CLOTH’S LAWFUL WORLD

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30634, 28 December 1964, Page 10

HARRIS TWEED OUTER HEBRIDES DECREED CLOTH’S LAWFUL WORLD

IBy a special correspondent of the "Financial Times," recently tn the Outer Hebrides.; (Reprinted from the "Financial Times" by arrangement J

Now that a decision of the Scottish Courts has made it clear to all the world that Harris Tweed must be “hand-woven, wholly made, manufactured and producted in the Outer Hebrides from 100 per cent pure Scottish virgin wool,” and no less, the men of Lewis and. Harris, of South Cist and the other islands whose economy depends on it. are in a happier frame of mind. Last month the mainland producers abandoned their appeal against Lord Hunter's judgment earlier this year upholding the definition. It ran to 315 pages and came after the longest hearing in Scottish legal history.

The Orb and Maltese Cross —the trade mark of “true” Harris Tweed, stamped every three yards on the reverse side of the cloth by the inspectors of the Harris Tweed Association—has thus defeated the Shield of the mainland producers. Small wonder, perhaps, that the Islanders refer to the mainland as “Scotland,” with no great love. There are some 32,000 people in the Outer Hebrides. Lewis and Harris, really one island, is the biggest, measuring 85 miles from tip to toe, and Stornoway is the only town with] 6000 inhabitants. Prolific People The islands are losing “the equivalent of one family a week.” as a local man put it, though he added that this did not make much overall difference—“we are such prolific people.” Nevertheless, if it were not for the weaving, “this would be a land for old! people.” There are some 1500! active weavers on the islands.! Their number has remained! fairly constant over the! years. Most of them are crofters -—small holders I whose two to four acres j need supplementing with | eash. But there are also the! cottars, the second and third, sons of crofters, who simil-, arly own their bit of land! and their house. These say! that the “only advantage of being a recognised crofter is] that you can get good loans from the Department of Agriculture.” Some weavers live in council houses, with their loom in a nearby shed, and there are even Englishmen among them who married local girls. All are self-employed, though ironically, they also belong to the Transport and General Workers’ Union and negotiate yearly contracts with the producers, that is to say the mills which spin the yarn, warp it, supply it to the weavers, and take it back woven for final processing and despatch. The weavers have to spend about £134 on their foot loom, and maybe another £3O on a bobbin winder. Altogether it is reckoned that between them they have some £J million invested in their tools. A man can weave about 2] webs, or tweeds, a week (one web equals about 80 yards, 281 inches wide). He gets a reward of about £7 per web, according to the intricacies of design or the number of colours involved, which is paid out by a mobile bank making the rounds. Five Mills

There are five mills on the islands. Kenneth Mackenzie, with 250 mill-hands (they are said to earn about 4s lljd an hour for a 43-hour week) takes about one-fifth of the market. Then there are James

Macdonald. Thomas Smith and S. A. Newall and Sons. They were joined only last year by Stephen Burns. Originally merchants, or what is known on the islands as small producers, Stephen Burns took on a Board of Trade factory, though, it admits, with some trepidations lest the “Case” were to go against te islands’ interest, and started production. The firm has no regrets now. Apart from the mills and the merchants there are those who only spin, or finish. But there is an increasing awareness of the fact that even in the Outer Hebrides it takes a high turnover to make a good profit. (It is reckoned that the mills make a clear Id to 6d a yard profit, depending on turnover.) thus Kenneth Macleod (Shawbost) is currently investing £50,000 to £60,000 in putting up a carding and spinning plant. So far it has had to buy the yarn

from competing mills at 9s to 10s a pound. (701 b of yarn make 90 yards of finished cloth.) Raw wool at present costs 8s a pound—at least according to one wool broker travelling the islands. Between them the Harris Tweed mills consume almost one-third of the Scottish wool clip. The native Western Islands' crop is sufficient only for about three weeks’ production: 10001 b of raw wool end up as about 885 yards of finished cloth and lhe annual Harris Tweed yardage is no less than 6 million or so. (Production rose from 2.8 million yards in 1951 to a peak of 61 million in 1959.

worth around £4 million. The drop last year to 5.6 million was largely attributed to the uncertainties arising from the “Case.”) The wholesale price of Harris Tweed is about 13s a yard, and the island producers must absorb transport costs to the mainland of perhaps 7s 9d per 160 yards. Two-thirds Exported Two-thirds of all Harris Tweed is exported, much of it to the United States. All markets make different demands. The United States consumers, for instance, want soft blends and up to 10 shades in one piece. "The United States market is getting very complicated.” sighed one producer. The United Kindom market on the other hand, prefers hard blends—calling for more black-face than Cheviot wool. There are thus some thousands of patterns, traditional and new ones, and many varying types of weaves. And by striking a skilful balance between a true domestic craft product, selling in limited quantities at a high price (up to 1934 the Harris Tweed definition included hand-spun yarns and hand finishing) and a massproduced article, the industry has managed to expand steadily—to the economic salvation of the islands.

The mills employ about 1000 and thus represent 95 per cent of all industry—not counting of course, the 1500 self employed weavers. The rest consists of a fish reduction factory, employing perhaps 20, two small prawn factories and a projected seaweed processing plant. And though some 3000 Lewis and Harris men are in the merchant navy, and there is work in fishing—now much reduced—and the shops (shared with Italians and Pakistanis), the rate of unemployment still stands at 30 per cent. So the anticipated expansion of the Harris Tweed industry by at least another 10 or 15 per cent will be very welcome to Stornoway and its hinterland —where “you have to add 20 per cent to the cost of living in the rest of islands,” meaning Great Britain.