Visit to Bata Heritage Centre
Back in 1932 Tomas Bata came over from Zlin, in what is now the Czech Republic, and set up a shoe making concern in East Tilbury. Being forward looking he was building a town round his factory so that there was everything the worker could need. Contented workers are productive. In 1939 WW2 started and the factory had many air raid shelters to protect the workers. There were different banks of them around the factory and as EIAG is doing a survey of industrial air raid shelters in Essex, a visit to Bata was on the books.
12 October 2016, Bata Heritage Centre, East Tilbury, offered an Open Day which included a tour round the Bata site and a talk in the afternoon along with a photographic display to enhance their display of a range of items. A fair number of people passed through including several classes from the local primary school. Some children were looking at ‘old’ newspapers dated 1971. They looked slightly bewildered when I said the papers were not that old, after all 1971 was the year I graduated. In the children’s eyes that made me something from ancient history!
The tour started with the former swimming pool which is now a car park, leading to the tennis courts which are being eyed up by a ‘developer’ for housing. The company housing style initially emulated that of Zlin with flat roofed houses painted white. A recent block of building, as land is re-developed, contained copies of the company houses along with standard British semis. We were told that the company copies sold off far more quickly. Initially there had been two hostels, one for males and one for females, along with a large hotel to provide accommodation. These are still standing. The first factory building, now grade 2 listed due to the type of welding done, was single storey so that they could get on with their first batch of shoes. This was then followed by standard Zlin style 5 storey buildings built with pillars a specific distance apart dictated by the size of the bricks in Zlin! We were informed that factories all round the world were built exactly the same with machinery placed in exactly the same positions. In this way if an engineer had to mend a machine he would know exactly where to find it in any factory in the world. Being a company town they had their own shop, cinema and petrol station. Initially this petrol station only had one pump and was for the company lorries. After WW2 when cars became more normal it had to expand. The main factory area has now been taken over with some of the buildings being used for national archives. We could only stand outside and peer in. We learnt that employees had to clock in at the gates. At a certain time the barrier would come down and any late comer had to go via the main door and give their reasons with the likelihood of docked pay. We saw their original computer building which is due for demolition. I was surprised that it was as late as 1972. It was in a separate building from the factory so that it would not worry the workers. We admired the statue of Tomas Bata and found out that although he was right in many aspects he lost his life by being wrong. On flying to a meeting he insisted the pilot took off despite the pilot warning of very bad weather ahead. The pilot was threatened with losing his job. He took off and lost both his job and his life. We walked back via the cinema, now a community hall, we examined the original parquet flooring of the hotel ballroom, now in a shop, and compared a range of housing where we learnt that it was the same as Bata company housing anywhere in the world.
The afternoon talk took us through the history of the Bata company starting with the initial Tomas Bata starting life in a cobbler’s family in Zlin. As he grew up he noted how shoes were very expensive because they were handmade and hence many people had no shoes. He decided that he would do something about this and researched into a more automated method of production. He was inspired by the Ford method with each worker having their own small job rather than each worker making a complete pair of shoes. From there he expanded round the world including Britain. After WW2 as the Western World became more expensive for labour so the company moved east and is now mainly where labour is cheaper.
And the air raid shelters? During WW2 there were many banks of air raid shelters around the factory, each shelter taking about 50 people. After WW2 the expansion of the site used the space from the air raid shelters. The last ones were bulldozed a few years ago and a google picture shows the area as a lorry park. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/East+Tilbury+Library/
