Sir John Conant recounts the beginning of his farming career in Rutland in 1949, including the importance of his wife Periwinkle. 
 
Interview with John Conant in 2019, An oral history of farming, land management and conservation in post-war Britain 
 
C1828/10, Track 1 [00:28:21-01:10:24] 
 
Copyright: The British Library Board 

https://www.bl.uk/projects/national-life-stories-oral-history-of-farming

Sir John Conant Recounts The Beginning Of His Farming Career In Rutland

Keith Garrard interviewed by Mark Bilbe, An Oral History of the Wine Trade, 2004, catalogue reference C1088/16. © British Library Board.

Transcript

Retail price maintenance, we must remind ourselves, was the ability of the brand owner to set the retail price at which his bottle of whiskey, or his bottle of gin, or anything else was sold.  That meant that there was no competition in the retail marketplace, because everybody had to sell their gin at £4 a bottle.  They couldn’t use the discounts, and they couldn’t cut their own margin, that’s what it had to be.  And if you undercut, then, as a retailer you were in danger of having the supplier, the brand owner, take you to court, and you would be in danger of losing your licence.  Suddenly, with the abolition of resale, ie, retail price maintenance, with the abolition of that, the supermarkets could start applying whatever margins they wanted to.  They didn’t apply the margin that the brand owner wanted, they could apply a margin that would attract people into their shops.  They were already working for lower margins, the grocery shops were working for lower margins anyway, and so they were used to making six or seven per cent, so they were quite happy to apply that percentage margin application to their wines and spirits.  And all hell was let loose as a result of this, because almost immediately Tesco’s and Augustus Barnett started cutting the prices of the main brands, and the brands were spirits, and wine was very small.  But Harvey’s sherry, martini, the whiskey and gin suddenly was cut in prices, to the great consternation of all the rest of the off-licence trade.  And we would have been supplying Tesco’s with mixed cases of spirits, and mixed cases of sherries and vermouths, and a sprinkling of wines, most of which would have been either Spanish Graves, Sauternes or Burgundy, or alternatively they might have been Beaujolais and Côte du Rhône and a little bit of Nuits-Saint-Georges and Beaune, and a bit of champagne.  Wines and spirits were not important to Tesco’s, and I don’t know, but I don’t think Sainsbury’s had any licences at all, and the other supermarkets might have had the odd one or two.  And what we’ve got to remember as well is that although they had licences in their supermarket, they were kiosks within the supermarkets.  You couldn’t actually go and help yourself off the shelf, that was a long time downstream.  It was rather like cigarettes are today, whereby you had to be served by somebody from behind a counter.  This was all part of the licensing restrictions imposed, locally, because it was going to be, in their view at the time, sort of very bad to expose young people to the ability to take wine straight off the shelf.  And what we saw in the run-up to that first Christmas were huge quantities going into Tesco’s, and I speak of Tesco’s because we have personal example of Tesco’s, but it must have applied to other supermarkets as well, and it certainly applied to Augustus Barnett.  But instead of us delivering mixed pallets of wines and spirits to these four Tesco off-licences, because they had cut their prices and they’d advertised the fact that they had cut their prices, we, in the weeks running up to Christmas were sending lorryloads a day of whiskey, gin and everything else, and the stock was flying out of the stores and they had queues down the road and round the corner as people suddenly found that they could buy their chosen drink - spirits and wine - for substantially less than they’d paid for it in the past.

[ends at 0:04:49]

Keith Garrard (Retail Price Maintenance)

Originally written and recorded as 'Barrett's Privateers' by Stan Rogers

With permission from Fogarty's Cove Records (http://stanrogers.net/)

Performed live and adapted by British Library Writer-in-Residence Rob Sherman and Nick Henderson (http://twitter.com/NickJHenderson) at the British Library, 8th December 2015 

“In the mid-nineteenth century, arguably the brief 'Golden Age' of vernacular organology aboard British ships, Arkwright's Privateers was one of the most popular 'chanteys', or accompanied work-songs, amongst the general maritime population. Though it did encroach upon naval vessels, it was amongst merchant crews and private ventures that it displayed the greatest tenacity; these vessels were often crewed by Midlands men, whose bravery and Romantic fate this song handles. It is also a prime example of the esteem in which sailors from the county of Derbyshire were held, an almost-mythopoeic pedestal from which they have never descended, not even in the present day.

The tune was likely sung on deck to the simple beat of a drum, most often as a 'hand-over-hand chantey', used in the task of setting the jib and other repetitive hauling tasks. The key evidence of this designation is the call-and-response component of each verse's first line, followed by a repeated refrain which keeps a tight rhythm, allowing for methodic application to the task at hand.

Despite its regional appeal, and its reliance on knowledge of mid-English folklore regarding the 'Derbyshire Sailors' and their adventures, versions of it have been recorded by folklorists up and down both littorals of the Atlantic, even as far south as the Antilles.”

Dr. Mark Tollas, from his introduction to 'Hilo, Boys, Hilo: A New History Of The English Ululation'

Learn more about Rob's British Library residency, 'On My Wife's Back' at http://onmywifesback.tumblr.com/ 

Arkwright's Privateers

Where are the current trends in radio and online audio leading? What might radio sound (and look) like on its 2022 centenary? Some leading figures of UK radio come together for a discussion on radio today and tomorrow: Ruth Barnes chairs a panel featuring Matt Deegan (Folder Media/Next Radio conference), Helen Boaden (Director of BBC Radio), Femi Adeyemi (NTS Radio) and journalist/broadcaster Miranda Sawyer. Produced by Rosina Sound & Allanah Chance for the British Library, 16 September 2016.

The Future of Radio

The Copeland-Long restoration of the earliest known recording of computer music, recorded at Alan Turing's Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester in 1951. Read Copeland and Long's fascinating blog account of the all-night programming session which led to its creation, and Turing's reaction on hearing it the following morning:  http://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2016/09/restoring-the-first-recording-of-computer-music.html

First known recording of computer music, 1951

A short stereo excerpt of a longer 8 channel work. This is a sonic investigation into community and gentrification in the London neighbourhood of Walworth. It has traditionally been a working-class neighbourhood with more recent residents coming from all over the world. The area has been subject to several contentious ‘regeneration’ schemes that have already caused the loss of 1100 socially rented homes of the Heygate Estate.

Elephant Endangered Stereo 1

Cataloging

One of the last Black Country chainmakers, Lucy Woodall, sings the worksong ‘Chainmaker lad is a masher’ and talks about singing. 

Recorded by Roy Palmer in Old Hill, Dudley, West Midlands, England. There was much iron and coal production in this area of England since the 1600s and chainmaking, centered around towns south of Dudley, was a flourishing business, now defunct. Songs like these are documents of our history and heritage. 

The full-length recording from the Traditional music in England collection is on British Library sounds: 
http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Traditional-music-in-England/025M-C1023X0040XX-0100V0#

Chainmaker lad is a masher

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