20th century memories

Jeff Mills, Bessie Johnson and Phil Kaiserman were all chosen to talk about their lives on tape - and their testimonies have been saved by posterity by the BBC.

It's part of a unique "sound portrait" of the 20th century, which has been made to mark the Millennium.

The contributions made by the 6,000 interviewees from around the UK will be saved at the British Library.

Tomorrow at noon, BBC GMR will start 16 half-hour programmes called The Century Speaks, containing extracts from their interviews.

The producer of The Century Speaks, Mike Hally, lives in Adlington.

He said about the initiative: "I really like the idea of doing something for the Millennium which isn't just about the night itself, but will be a lasting resource.

"It's also made me realise how little older people are listened to when they have such wonderful memories to pass on - and they won't be around forever."

Next Saturday, at 7.40pm, BBC2 will also show a special programme about the project.

Here, IRMA HEGER, meets the three remarkable people whose voices are set to live on forever and speak to generations to come. Widow, mill worker and mental nurse BESSIE Johnson will be 90 in November. She was born in Little Hulton and now lives on the Bury-Whitefield border.

Most of her memories involve Bury, where she lived the best part of her life.

She thinks The Century Speaks is important because "some history needs to be recorded" and she enjoyed taking part in the programme.

As part of the project, she tells how her family spent a brief spell in the North East, where her father tried to work as a coal miner. To say they were poor, said Bessie, is putting it "mildly". Lodgings

"We just didn't have any money coming in," she said.

In the end, her father walked back from Durham to Bury to find work and he found lodgings for Bessie and a fine spinning job in a mill in Radcliffe.

"From the day I started I really liked it," said Bessie.

Her mother and brother soon joined her in Bury and Bessie carried on working for the same mill for a few years until the work moved to Bolton, which was too far to travel.

In 1936, at the age of 26, Bessie got married - but seven months after their wedding her husband sadly died in a road accident.

"That knocked me out," said Bessie. "I thought we had a good life in front of us, but I was determined not to dwell on my misery."

Always a "fighter", Bessie decided to become a mental nurse in Prestwich Hospital, later transferring to Bury Hospital.

After the war, a five-day working week and no weekend work persuaded her to go back to the mills, which were crying out for workers after the war.

She carried on in the mills, but the day after her 60th birthday she retired, saying her last place of work was a "hell hole".

Always involved with trade unions and welfare organisations, Bessie still campaigns for pensioners' rights now and is an active member of the CND.

WHAT is the most important lesson life has taught you?

LEARNING to think for myself and discuss what I think - I have never hidden from anybody who I am.

HOW would you like to be remembered?

PEOPLE should tell the truth about me, whether I would like it or not. But for myself, I would like to think that, in limited areas, I have tried to make things a little better. Atheist learned politics hard way PHIL Kaisermann is 77 and of Jewish "stock" - with a violinist/joiner father from Poland and a mother from Australia.

But one of his most striking memories is how he actually lost his faith.

He was only a young boy and broke the rule of Passover by eating a chocolate bar. As he hadn't been struck down instantly, he turned his back on religion and eventually became an atheist.

His childhood in a "bug-ridden", three-up-two down in Manchester, was poor, said Phil.

Smell

"The walls were crawling with bugs, I can still smell the things now, it was horrible!" he said.

At 14, Phil left school and went into hairdressing as a lather boy in Cheetham.

It was then that one of the most important things in his life happened - he was taught politics by a regular customer, a Jewish communist. "He had a tremendous effect on me," said Phil.

For more than 30 years, Phil made a living as a gents' hairdresser, working in Lewis's department store and eventually opening his own shop.

He and his wife had two girls, who had two daughters each and they have four daughters between them.

During the war, he served in the RAF and saw people tortured in Saigon - "that picture will stay with until I die".

In 1974, he became a quality controller at British Plasterboard in Radcliffe and moved to the town where he still lives, at Grosvenor Street.

"There was no quality and no control. The managers were swines, they hated my guts and I hated theirs. The only saving grace was my work with the trade union."

His involvement with the union has been strong throughout his life and one of his best times was spent in the former Soviet Union on a trip.

"I had a longing to go there. Leningrad is the most beautiful city in the world. We finished up in Red Square and I cried my eyes out, it stood for so much in those days."

Bulgaria also holds many good memories - and funny ones. Once, his wife brought All Bran on holiday from England and Phil asked the hotel waiter to serve her the cereal with milk in the morning.

The waiter obliged - arriving at the table with an enormous bowl, into which he had emptied the full family-sized box.

These days, Phil - the founder of Bury's Pensioners Association - is busy writing his autobiography and he dotes on his great-grandchildren.

Being involved in The Century Speaks is important for them, he thinks.

"My children, and particularly my grandchildren and four great grandchildren should know who they are and where they came from."

WHAT'S the most important lesson life has taught you?

COMRADESHIP - to know that the people you are working with and are friendly with, are there for you when you need them. I've got people that work with me in the pensioners' organisation that I would give my right arm for and I know they would do the same for me.

HOW would you like to be remembered?

I'VE always said: "Wherever they throw my ashes there would be a plaque saying: 'At least he tried' - because that's what I've done all my life." I've tried to do things for people, try to improve things for working class people. At least I've got out there and bloody well had a go. Poor beginning, but a rich life JEFF Mills is the former head of Rivington and Blackrod High School and his memories go back to when he was two-and-a-half years old.

He recalls sleeping in bed with his mum, who was expecting his brother at the time.

But most of his memories -inevitably - involve education.

At school they called him Cheshire, because he smiled a lot, and he still does.

It's more of a precaution these days - with 5,000 pupils whom he has known in his 15 year as a head, there are always people who remember him when he goes into town.

Graves

Jeff's father was a coal miner from Wingates, then started work as a caretaker and grave digger for the church school.

He was, said Jeff, quite a character, who would dig graves twice as deep for poor people so they could fit in another coffin later.

His childhood was happy, he said, with "my mother and father putting us first". "There was a sense of stability," said Jeff. "They weren't particularly well off, it's only afterwards you realise how hard it must have been for them." Playtime involved football and games around the back of the terraced house, and next door was an "upmarket" shop, ran by four sisters who were the first in the area to have a car.

But soon there was a first for Jeff, when he went to Rivington and Blackrod Grammar School while none of his relatives had made it to a grammar school before.

"I achieved what my mum and dad had hoped," said Jeff, who now lives at Grange Park Road in Bromley Cross.

It was another first for the family when he became a chemistry student at Birmingham University.

His trunk with belongings was sent on a train, and young Jeff found "digs" with a Jewish family.

Every week, he would send his washing home in a parcel, which his mum would return clean, including a Mars bar or other treat.

But while he had good times as a student - visiting jazz concerts, coffee houses and the union bar - he didn't enjoy the studying.

"I felt I was up against it," said Jeff.

One of his proudest moments was when he made it into the second team of the university basketball squad. And in the end, he graduated with a 2:1 degree and became a teacher.

Being a headteacher was "stressful", but he enjoyed it. Yet, he has taken to retirement easier than he thought.

Horse racing keeps him interested now, as do his two children: a computer programmer and physiotherapist.

"These 12 months have flown by," said Jeff.

Looking back, he deplores the media for their effect on children, but he doesn't think children have changed "significantly" since his childhood.

"Children aren't all the same," said Jeff, "but we have to enable them to do the best they can and compare them with their potential."

WHAT is the most important lesson life has taught you?

THE need to belong to a group of friends who you can spend time with - and they probably shouldn't all be in the same sphere of work. It's important to value loyalty, friends and friendship.

HOW would you like to be remembered?

AS someone who in whatever I did I wanted to do the best - not for myself necessarily, but for other people.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.