Luton manufacturing history

 Luton is well known for hat making, cars and lorries and Eric Morecambe's love of the town's football club.

Hat making did of course come first and there are suggestions that the plaiting of straw and the associated making of straw hats dates back many centuries. It was said that the best hats came from Leghorn in Italy and we can once again see the hand of Napoleon in the development of British manufacturing, for Italy fell into the hands of the French and supplies were cut off. It was left to the people of Luton to improve their skills and the quality of the plait, which they did. Luton was protected by prohibitive tariffs during the Napoleonic Wars and to a reducing degree until the mid nineteenth century; in both quality and efficiency Luton could compete with the best.

The industry boomed. It was largely home based with the involvement of the whole family; there were plaiting schools where children would learn the necessary skills and, if they were lucky, also reading and writing. In time the Factory Acts put pay to to this. Luton market was a vital hub providing a place to buy straw and plait and to sell hats. In time the manufacturer/merchant appeared providing straw and collecting hats, in a way similar to Manchester's cotton merchants. Unlike the cotton industry, plaiting and hat making did not benefit from steam power, and mechanisation was limited really to the sewing machine.

Straw hat making was seasonal and in time businesses explored adding felt hat making in the quiet months of the year. Men's felt hats were made particularly in Stockport and Atherstone, but Luton attracted the making of women's felt hats. As with cotton and wool, hat making needed dyers and a number came to the town including Laporte which had originated in Shipley in Yorkshire.

Luton was not well served by communication. The Grand Junction Canal passed it by and a road journey to Leighton Buzzard was required to link to it. It looked as if railways too would pass by, with Luton having to wait until 1858 for a branch line whilst Leighton Buzzard had received their connection in 1838. When they came, the railways did of course attract industries. As well as those connected with hat making, other businesses arrived. Hayward-Tyler made soda-water machinery (soda-syphons) but also hydraulic pumps, and Balmford made boilers. The Davis Gas Stove Company moved from Scotland and became a major employer providing all that was needed for domestic heating systems.

The Luton local authority took the initiative to provide electricity rather than leaving that task to a third party, the hope being that cheaper electricity would result. It was successful and Vauxhall motors moved to Luton from the south bank of the Thames in London in 1905 attracted by the space to expand but also by cheap electricity from the Luton Electric Works which had begun generation in 1901. Vauxhall was followed by Commercial Cars (known later as Commer and part of the Rootes Group) and by George Kent which made meters for measuring the supply of water, gas, steam or oil. The Skefko Ball Bearing Company of Sweden (later known as SKF) set up to provide these essential components for motor vehicles. Electricity was perfect for hat making because it could be supplied to the houses where the makers worked in quantities appropriate to small scale production.

The impact of hat making on Luton was considerable. Len Holden, in his Vauxhall Motors and the Luton Economy 1900-2002, argues that the town's growth was comparable to that of Middlesbrough, Crewe and Barrow -in-Furness which I have written about as being towns created by the nineteenth century railways. Luton did it in hats and then added other industries to give it a more balanced economy and one able to ride out the economic cycle.

Luton played its part on both world wars. In the First World War there was a shell filling factory at Chaul End and the town's engineers turned their hands to the requirements of the war effort with Skefko employing 7,000 workers and Kents 8,000. Interestingly in the Second World War, the Board of Trade had wanted to relocate hat making to Gateshead leaving the town with capacity for the production of armaments. The town rebelled and the Board retreated. None-the-less hat making became a shadow of its former self. Of particular interest to me in the context of my first book, War on Wheels, it was Vauxhall which designed and made the Churchill Tank.

The interwar years saw Electrolux of Sweden set up manufacturing as did the Percival Aircraft Company. After the Second World War English Electric carried out research, development and production of aircraft ice protection industrial heating systems. Clothing manufacturers arrived. It was though Vauxhall which dominated the town. The New Industries Committee, which the town had set up to plan its growth away from hat making, could do little in the face of the decisions of General Motors, the owners of Vauxhall, who wanted to take advantage of the boom in UK motor manufacturing particularly in the sixties. This resulted in Vauxhall being a very large employer with plants also in neighbouring Dunstable and Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

Like the rest of the British motor industry, indigenous volume car production declined under concerns about industrial relations, pressure from imports and foreign companies invited to set up in the UK. Commercial vehicles bucked the trend but eventually succumbed to consolidation. I write of both in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Further reading:

• James Dyer, Frank Stygall and John Dony, The Story of Luton (Luton: White Crescent Press, 1964)
• Len Holden, Vauxhall Motors and the Luton Economy 1900-2002 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press and the Bedfordshire Historical Records Society, 2003)