Nostalgia with Margaret Watson: Community spirit was a part of everyday life

Margaret Watson writes: It is the bill-post on the wall to the right announcing the film being shown that week at the cinema called “Turn to the Right”

Most people of my generation, no matter which part of Dewsbury they came from, will at some time or other have gone to the Collins.

Even Tom Kilburn, the computer genius from Dewsbury, told me of the many times he had gone to the Collins as a youngster, and loved it.

The Collins was at the bottom of Victoria Street, Batley Carr, and its interior was very basic, with no plush upholstery, and wooden benches at the front for children to sit on, but we didn’t complain because it only cost us threepence to get in.

The manager was called Max and if we kids got too noisy he’d come round and give us a slap across the head, but we didn’t tell our parents. You didn’t in those days.

And, when he was going round in the interval spraying disinfectant to fight off the bugs, he often gave us a spray as well.

The Collins was the cheapest cinema in town, so nobody complained about the lack of comfort or amenities.

Like the houses around it, the Collins was demolished in the 1960s during slum clearance and since then I’ve never been able to find a photograph of it.

The bill-post in the photograph is the only bit of memorabilia I’ve come across pertaining to this lovely little cinema which we kids loved.

Looking at the rest of the picture you can see that it is promoting the Star Laundry in Batley Carr, and if you look closer, you can see strung up in the back of the van lots of men’s loose collars which the laundry did great business in starching.

Younger readers will wonder what on earth loose collars were, but people of my age can remember our dad and granddads wearing them.

They were called “loose collars” because they weren’t attached to the shirts, and there was a good reason why.

Men’s collars always wore out long before the shirt because they rubbed against the neck and had to be given a good scrubbing by house proud wives.

So, it was a good idea to sell shirts without collars so the customer could buy as many detachable ones as he wanted.

The collars were fastened to the shirts with what we called collar studs in the days before we became a throw-away society.

In those days people couldn’t afford to throw away a good shirt just because the collar had worn out.

Making sure their husbands always had a clean shirt to go out in was the bane of most women’s lives because they didn’t have running hot water or electric washers.

In those days most men wore white shirts which easily showed the dirt, and I cannot remember my dad ever wearing a coloured shirt.

My mother always sent his best shirts, and those of my elder brother Joseph, to the laundry to ensure they were brilliant white and the collars were well starched.

And, yes, it was to the Star laundry they went every week, and it was my job to take them every Monday, and then return for them on Friday in time for the weekend.

The Star Laundry, like most of the other businesses, shops and pubs around Batley Carr, like The Collins, were also demolished.

It is only in recent years that we’ve begun to realise just what we lost when the demolition crews turned up to knock down our houses in the 1950s and 60s.

We were all too excited at the prospect of getting brand new houses with gardens front and back, running hot water, bathroom and inside lavatory, to worry about anything else.

We never thought we’d be losing our neighbours and friends, the corner shop, the pub just across the road, and the town centre and cinemas within walking distance.

If the planners had thought a little bit differently, and moved us all on to the same estate, and had made sure there would be shops and schools ready waiting for us, we might have kept some of the old community spirit.

We didn’t realise we were losing something money couldn’t buy, something which bricks and mortar could never replace, things like life-long friends, security, solidarity and community spirit.

The strange thing is, community spirit wasn’t a concept in those days. We didn’t talk about community spirit because it was something which we lived. It was part of everyday life. We watched out for each other.

Most people who lived in these slum clearance areas – Eastborough, Flatts, Eightlands, Crackenedge and Springfield – lived only a short walk from the town centre,

Why the local authorities didn’t let us all go to the same estates, I’ll never know. They didn’t even re-house relatives near to one another.

Elderly residents, who had lived in the same street all their lives and had relied on neighbours in time of need, were shipped off to estates like Thornhill and Chickenley, miles away from those people who had been their life-line.

Of course, we all needed better living conditions and had to be re-housed, but I just wish that more thought had been put into keeping communities together.

But for the generations who followed us, it was different because they’d been born on the new estates and brought up there.

They knew nothing about the old world and grew up to have happy memories of their childhood on these estates.

I just wish they’d share some of them with us, like the Thornhill “Bingo Bus” which took the women on the estate to play bingo in Dewsbury every Friday night.