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148
FILM & TV TECHNICIAN
November 1957
Lab Topics
BILL SHARP, LABS' FIRST HONORARY MEMBER
The highlight of recent weeks on the Laboratories side was the presentation, at a party held at the Chandos Hotel just as the last issue of the Journal was going to press, of a Scroll of Honorary Membership and a small financial tribute to Bill Sharp on his retirement from Pathe.
Bill thus becomes the fourteenth Honorary Member of the Union, and the first Laboratories member to receive this honour for long and untiring service to A.C.T.T.
Telegram from President
Anthony Asquith, away on location, sent the following telegram :
" I am more sorry than i can say, dear Bill, to be unable to join tonight in honouring a most distinguished member of A.C.T.T. and a greatly esteemed colleague and friend, and I hope you will accept my apologies with all the spirit the occasion demands. The unit join me in wishing you all possible happiness today and every day. Tony Asquith."
George Elvin made the presentation. " Bill Sharp is unique," he said, " we couldn't do better than make him Laboratories Honorary Member Number One ". He recalled how Bill started his working life delivering milk in his spare time to help his parents and from that had gone " to the dizzy height of working at Pathe for some thirty-five years."
Working-class Base
" In our early days," George Elvin said, " we knew that we must have some industrial base to our Union, a hard base of people bred and born in a working-class background. We knew that whatever happened, if there was a row with the management we should have colleagues in the laboratories who would give us sound and solid support.
" When we decided to press for better conditions Bill was in the vanguard. One of the reasons for the respect for our Union in the industry was that we have had
people like Bill Sharp who loyally .-support their colleagues.
" The last thing that Bill Sharp wants is the limelight, but we in A.C.T.T. are everlastingly grateful to people like you and Frank
said. " Without it I should have fallen flat on my face in the first few weeks."
He recalled the day when he joined the Union. " Everybody seemed afraid to say it was a
Labs' Honorary Member Number One
Fuller who have helped to build our organisation."
Mr. Bill Fielder, General Manager of Pathe, who, with Mr. Cyril Phillips of Pathe was among A.C.T.T.'s guests, said : " Bill has worked for Pathe so long that we've got no records to check up on him ! We wish him the best of luck and a happy and long retirement."
Bill Sharp, in reply, paid a tribute to the help of his A.C.T.T. friends in the Lab. " I couldn't have carried on without it," he
Trade Union," he said. " They called it an organisation. I asked, ' Is it a Trade Union or not?' and when they said ' Yes ', I said, ' Well, there's my dollar, take it '.
" After that I thought, ' We've started this thing and we've got to carry it on '. My father had had thirteen weeks on strike and had to go and sing in the streets to get strike pay. That was one of the things that had impressed on my mind that a Trade Union was the one thing I should be in if ever I got a chance."