Paul Graney's archives

On Tuesday evening I went to a talk at Central Library in Manchester about Paul Graney. Organised by Archives+ as part of the Manchester Histories Festival, it was free and only an hour long. David Govier and Fiona Cosson had done a great job distilling a life time of recording, witnessing and collecting into an introduction to Paul Graney's achievements. There were people in the audience who knew him and appreciated his role in collecting social history, folklore and folk music, including Barry Seddon, who has done so much work with his archive and Mike Harding, who was thrilled to see photos of the first Middleton Pace Egg play revival from 1967, featuring him in the role of The Doctor (no, not that one). The extracts from interviews and recordings were great to hear. The taped letters from around the world and the live performance of a collected traditional song about mill girls added to the experience. A lot was packed into that hour, which was over far too quickly. I love listening to this kind of witnessing - oral history interviews, music recordings, interesting radio programmes. As each piece was played, I could relate to it, recognising some connection with my own life and work, even though I never met Paul. My own beginnings in folklore studies took place on the other side of the Pennines in West Yorkshire, and my involvement in social and oral history didn't happen until after Paul's death in 1982. The tape letters, sent between contacts world wide, reminded me of the reel to reel recordings my sisters and I made for my dad when he was working in Nigeria. Nowadays those people would be using social media and the internet to share news and opinions. Listening to forthright opinions on the new fashion for mini skirts took me back to my early teens. I wonder what that woman would think if she knew they still haven't gone out of fashion. Mention of Kennedy's assassination from an American correspondent took me back to the Friday tea time when my sister and I heard the news, waiting for our favourite programme on TV (Bonanza). My mum was doing the ironing in the kitchen. She burst into tears when we told her and I didn't understand why for many years. Ironically I spend some of my time at work talking to visitors about JFK and his visit to his sister's grave in July 1963. I also occasionally talk about Diana Moseley at work, and it was fascinating to hear Paul Graney's first hand account of clashes with Oswald Moseley's Blackshirts. The song highlighting the mill owners' opposition to the Ten Hours Act was wonderful, sung live - 'on the backs of the Lancashire lasses'. Having recently worked at an industrial mill museum in Derbyshire, with its links with Arkwright and Lancashire cotton, it was very poignant. It was terrifying to hear Paul talk about his own initiation experience in the mills of Burnley. A dark cellar, loom grease, cotton lint, a bag over his head and his trousers round his ankles while a group of mill women did their version of tarring and feathering.I'd heard similar stories from the conversations I've had with former workers at The English Sewing Cotton Companies' mill in Belper. There the initiations took place on the works buses home and involved losing trousers. He also had plenty to say about libraries and librarians. When living as a tramp he had looked to libraries as a place of warmth and shelter, and harboured a lifelong resentment towards those officious female librarians who had shown him the door. In the early seventies there was a gentleman of the road who walked to Salford Central Library daily, resting and reading the paper in the reference section. A charming man. Many years later, a similar gentleman spent his days in another small branch library where I worked, accepted and welcomed by the staff if not always by the users of the library. I know Archives+ are looking for ways this particular collection can inspire and create responses. It's an amazing resource available for sharing and a great legacy for the man and his dedicated friends who have made that possible.