Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 5440 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUTH | 1958 | 1958-01-01 |
|
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Sound Duration: 6 mins 12 secs Subject: Working Life Industry |
| Summary This is a film of the opening of a new apprentice school for Forgrove Machinery Company in Leeds. The film shows the machinery and apprentices at work. The opening is performed by Robert Carr MP. |
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Description
This is a film of the opening of a new apprentice school for Forgrove Machinery Company in Leeds. The film shows the machinery and apprentices at work. The opening is performed by Robert Carr MP.
Title – Opportunity for Youth
Forgrove Apprentice School Official Opening March 18th 1958
Inside the new apprentice school, apprentices are busy cleaning and polishing the new machinery. Two of them are working on a desk lamp and calendar the apprentices have made to be presented to L. Robert...
This is a film of the opening of a new apprentice school for Forgrove Machinery Company in Leeds. The film shows the machinery and apprentices at work. The opening is performed by Robert Carr MP.
Title – Opportunity for Youth
Forgrove Apprentice School Official Opening March 18th 1958
Inside the new apprentice school, apprentices are busy cleaning and polishing the new machinery. Two of them are working on a desk lamp and calendar the apprentices have made to be presented to L. Robert Carr MP, who is performing the opening ceremony of the school on Dewsbury Road, Leeds, on Tuesday, March 18th. Robert Carr arrives in a chauffeur driven car. He is given a tour of one of the workshops, looking at the wrapping and packing machinery being assembled. The Managing Director, Mr Wenban, points out some of the features of the machinery. There are examples of the products of clients who have sent them to find out the best method of wrapping.
In the kitchen the cooks are preparing lunch, and the tables are laid in readiness. Inside a hall the guests, all men, sit to listen to speeches. Mr Horn, the Works Director, introduces Mr Carr, who in turn is thanked by Mr Braithwaite, Vice-Chairman of Baker Perkins Ltd. One of the senior apprentices, Keith Brown, presents the desk lamp to Mr Carr. Carr cuts the tape and they all inspect the lecture rooms and workshops. There is a small exhibit of goods wrapped by Forgrove machines. There are also examples of the work of the apprentices. A school teacher meets one of his former pupils. Carr chats with Mr Walmsley, the apprentice supervisor. All the guests adjoin to the canteen for a cup of tea. Back at the school the apprentices work at their individual work benches.
Title – The End
Context
Here, the later employment secretary under Ted Heath, Robert Carr, gets a chance to see some young machine makers at work in a newly opened apprentice school for Forgrove Machinery Company at their Dewsbury Road works in Leeds in 1958. Made at a time when apprentice schools in engineering were much more plentiful, the film makes for interesting comparisons with the current school leaving situation, when the issue of apprenticeships is back on the political agenda.
Forgrove Machinery...
Here, the later employment secretary under Ted Heath, Robert Carr, gets a chance to see some young machine makers at work in a newly opened apprentice school for Forgrove Machinery Company at their Dewsbury Road works in Leeds in 1958. Made at a time when apprentice schools in engineering were much more plentiful, the film makes for interesting comparisons with the current school leaving situation, when the issue of apprenticeships is back on the political agenda.
Forgrove Machinery Company, which made packaging machinery, had opened a new works at Seacroft on the other side of Leeds in 1957. These apprentices, about 30 that year, may have been recruited to produce the new “Flowpak” machine at Dewsbury Road, designed to wrap ice lollies. It was claimed that it was, “A school where a 15-year-old ex-secondary modern school boy sits with a public school boy and both have an equal chance of rising to a seat on the board of directors”. At the time Robert Carr was a junior at the Ministry of Labour, and although he may not have had much factory experience, having attended Westminster School and Cambridge, he did have a metallurgy degree and his family had a metal engineering firm. |
