Watching the 1966 World Cup in Germany

Mike Redwood

Columnist

International Leather Maker

The rather orange-coloured balls used for the 1966 football World Cup held in England were made of leather. After blind testing, they were bought from the Slazenger factory in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, UK. The Yorkshire leather ecosystem at the time was large and strong. This was one of many factories I visited while on my Leather Chemistry course at Leeds University. Globalisation and competition from synthetic materials are just two of many factors that have hollowed out that ecosystem.

I watched the final of that 1966 World Cup in a bar in Reutlingen at the end of a three-week British Kid Tanners Travel Scholarship visiting tanneries, chemical plants, product makers and educational institutes. It was the end of my first year and my companions were Graham Currier from Leathersellers College in London and Walter Bolli from Northampton College.

Our photos appeared in a local newspaper cheering for England, albeit I would normally support Scotland, and I seem to remember Walter was Swiss. We had a week each based in Reutlingen, Darmstadt and Reutlingen and out of all our visits only Bader, Stahl and the Offenbach Leather Museum survive working in leather (some chemical companies still exist, but not in leather). Moreover, the town of Backnang that was a dominant name in leather is now totally centred on telecommunications and aerospace. You will find the leather industry in the local Museum.

Threats to Wallsall’s leather ecosystem

Right now, Walsall in England is one of the last towns in the north of Europe grappling with this dilemma of decline. Last week, I read the outcome of their latest decision on their outstanding Leather Museum. But today, globalisation is weakening and the big rise in the price of wool is being heralded as evidence that consumers are turning against fibres from fossil fuels and looking to natural materials for health and environmental reasons.

The curiosity of Walsall has been that although reduced greatly from the past, this rather sad Midlands town still retains most of the essential elements of their leather ecosystem but until now, seems to have preferred to transition towards future employment in distribution, retail and hospitality rather than strengthening the leather community as a major pillar in a renewed society.

I have written about the disaster that might be Walsall before but according to a post by campaigner and designer Lauren Broxton, recent elections have seen a change of administration who have reversed some of this policy. They have now opposed the relocation of the Museum while stating they want to stop the erosion of material knowledge which kills adaptability, the culture, and the capacity to create value over the long term.

This is no easy task. The previous elected officials closed the museum, decanted 90% of its contents, handed its ancient leather factory building over to a local college to be converted to be used by students with special needs (SEND) and bought a new building nearer the saddlery training school to be used as a replacement.

I think this is the gist of what was happening, but if I am wrong, in part a lot of the blame must go to the previous councillors. This, because they commissioned reports that were never made public, held meetings with little or no notice, kept the decision-making away from the main council which should have been involved, and did everything in a rush when they felt they had a window of opportunity. Their deliberate obfuscation made it impossible to be sure of what was happening.

This had defied what should be the most important part of decision making in a town or region which is open to discussion and consensus seeking.

If the new Walsall Council Cabinet finalises reversing the previous decision and keeps the Leather Museum at its current site, this will mean unwinding a 125-year lease the Council signed with Walsall College and huge associated expenditure that was deliberately rushed through apparently with the intention of making it impossible to change.

The new councillors argue that it must listen to the strong public opposition to moving the museum plus an active “Friends of Walsall LM” campaign, the conclusion is that the original historic home itself is integral to the museum’s authenticity and cannot easily be replicated elsewhere.

If it can be done, it appears clear that returning the Museum home is for the best, and that the campaigners have a real and meaningful wide consensus of members. The new council have reiterated some of the key objectives of a museum in retaining institutional memory and the viability of an industrial and craft community. It wants to strengthen the Museum’s role in the “pride in place and associated inclusive growth and wellbeing across the Borough”.

There is a section under museum development roughly entitled “options”, which mentions attracting visitors, keeping it free to visit and benefiting health and wellbeing. It is easy, and now important, to think up many more, although the evidence I have seen suggests the Museum was already a dynamic place.

Future opportunities

Most important is to celebrate the existing industry with displays and events, showcasing what it makes, where it is located and what the career opportunities look like. Moreover, to look beyond its boundaries for collaborators and more that allow it to extend its reach and offer.

The last glove manufacturer to close in the UK was not short of orders, but of workers. Can Walsall help with re-establishing a riding glove production, and in doing so recognise that leather is becoming significant in space travel once again? Opportunities abound in curious directions.

Part of this starts at schools. In many places such as Walsall, older teachers can think of industries such as leather as “smokestack” because they suffered redundancy from it and younger ones were educated through the so-called “meritocracy” era which prioritised university qualifications and devalued apprenticeships and working in factories.

As well as using the Museum as a base for the wider leather community to teach career advisers in schools, there is tremendous scope for primary school children being given access to leather via schemes like “leather in a box” promoted so powerfully by “The Leather Dude” Junaid Vohra – which has had successful test runs in both London and Sheffield.

It is important to find ways to encourage and support student enrolment at the saddlery training school in Walsall, and the bigger offer from Capel Manor in Greater London, as well as providing studio and workshop facilities for graduates. Given the apparent enthusiasm for the four workshops planned in Capel Manor, a similar scheme for workshops should succeed in Walsall and Leicester where supporting elements still exist.

The leather in a box scheme, as tested by Sheffield University, the “Maker (Futures)” initiative supports schools, community spaces, libraries and museums in developing maker education that seamlessly integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM). Leather is good in this space as its transformation from raw material to finished leather depends on chemistry and product engineering but is founded in craft, culture and community. We should not forget that leather now fills some of that space between Art and Craft and is a significant material in the creative arts, interior design and all manner of areas that are completely new or being resurrected from ancient times.

Walsall was part of a wider system that grew at speed post 1840 with curriers and makers in town, as well as tanners working from raw outside or even further away. These links should not be overlooked even if the Walsall Council has no control or link to them. In Britain these days, no municipality should allow further closures of local or nearby slaughterhouse. They should demand that all hides and skins be sent for leather. To keep our ecosystems going, we need to exert pressure to recreate the circular economies of old. There are now many new organisations such as British Pasture Leather, Billy Tannery and Cotmarsh Tannery who can all help to put the structures and linkages together and support the ecology, geography and management of waste.

This is a reminder that while a coal mining community is built essentially around an exhaustible resource, hides and skins will exist while we eat meat and use dairy products. In Walsall, the saddlery business began with lorinery, the trade of making and selling the metal hardware used with horses, the hides and skins continuously arrived from local farmers, oak bark from coppiced and natural oak plantations around the town, and everything relied on the transport and networks of suppliers and sellers. They have declined because of global competition, not through resource exhaustion. But at the heart of it all was the skill and knowledge of the artisans who knew how to handle a natural material through tanning and manage it through the saddle-making process. There is plenty of space for them to prosper and develop today if given full support, something we have seen over many decades in leather in Southern Europe which has fought to maintain its leather regions.

Walsall has benefited from extracting value from saddlery for centuries, and it has a duty to steward the place and its people into the future. A community is not a byproduct to be discarded.

But Walsall remains vibrant – a suitable base for the expansion of the arts, crafts and science of leather and saddlery. For example, rebuilding skills like riding glove making and perhaps other sports gloves that need updating for climate change. Leather is being used in the new space programmes which reminds us it has always been a key material that evolves with society.

As we think back to the World Cup Walsall’s football team, nicknamed The Saddlers, in English League Division 2, the fourth tier. They are due a good season. Nothing can spur them on better than a successful local saddlery industry!

mike@internationalleathermaker.com

You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.

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