TEXTILES boss Brian Bowker is calling for quotas to control cheap, ready-made imports which threaten to devastate the industry in the UK and Europe. Mr Bowker, the managing director of Dewhurst Dent in Vernon Street, Bolton, is writing to politicians, employers' organisations and newspapers to highlight a major crisis. Hundreds of jobs are being lost - 400 in St Helens recently - through factory closures and cut-backs brought on by competition from imported items such as clothes, curtains and duvet covers made in low-cost countries like China, Morocco and Tunisia.

Companies such as Courtaulds Textiles have warned that there could be more UK redundancies on the way. Dewhurst Dent produces rolls of cloth and is one of the oldest and largest stockists of textile fabrics in the UK.

But turnover is down significantly in a climate which is reducing the number of customers they deal with.

"At the present moment it is a very big struggle," said Mr Bowker, who has been with the business for more than 40 years.

The Bolton workforce, which was 89 in 1994, is now down to 65 through people not being replaced when they leave.

Mr Bowker takes a gloomy view of the future for Britain's workforce and the high cost to the country of keeping people on the dole in a nation stacking-up future problems for itself in maintaining existing services and structures with fewer people paying tax.

"I don't see there being anything left of the textile industry in the next five years," he said.

"We will become a nation of distributors and not manu- facturers."

He says he is all for helping other countries to develop, but disputes the politicians' views that there is no easy way out for the industry at home. "Yes, there is - through the existing quota system," he said.

"For example you allow half a million shirts in one year into the EEC and then after that no more, so that the shortfall can be made here or somewhere in the EEC.

"The answer is simple."

He believes there should be a Government-imposed quota for ready-made products similar to the one which exists for cloth.

Mr Bowker is writing to politicians of all persuasions, but he does not really think a change of government will make any difference.

"It is the policy of all the governments that we have an open door policy to allow developing countries to flood us with items," he said.

"It is a vicious circle and we need to get the nation back to work."

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