Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

WELL, what did he say? That's what Granada TV wants to know for a one-hour documentary it is making that follows in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi's famous visit to East Lancashire 66 years ago this month.

The tiny man in a loincloth, sandals and a home-spun cotton shawl, who fought with non-violence to free India from British rule, received a huge welcome - even though he said he feared he might be lynched for putting thousands of Lancashire mill workers on the dole.

For, in Britain for the 1931 Round Table conference on India's constitution, the leader of the All-India Congress was also blamed for the UK cotton industry's slump as a result of his hugely successful call for a boycott in India of British cloth.

And as he came on an unofficial visit at the invitation of Quakers involved in the cotton industry to find out the effects on the depressed mill towns, upwards of 50 journalists from all over the world followed.

They were eager to record his views on India's struggle for freedom, the boycott and, indeed, anything at all.

Trouble was, Gandhi was famous for saying very little. Indeed, on Mondays, he said nothing at all - having reserved that day for silence. And when making rare - and, generally, brief and to the point - speeches, he would frequently ending them by saying he had said all he was going to say.

Someone who didn't get a word out of him was an inquiring weaver at Greenfield Mills at Spring Vale, Darwen, whose socialist millionaire owner and Labour candidate for Skipton Percy Davies, was one of his hosts. Having stayed overnight inside a tight police cordon at Spring Vale Garden Village - at the home of Greenfield's welfare officer Mr Charles Haworth - Gandhi had already been told by a deputation of unemployed from Darwen Weavers' Association that 10,000 people in the town were out of work, "mainly through the Indian boycott."

So when he toured the factory - where the looms in one entire weaving shed were idle - and was jokingly asked by one of the hands: "Would you like to wear some of the cloth we weave here?", the Mahatma laughed helplessly and pointed to his ears, indicating he could not here a word. And when he came out into the mill yard, two middle-aged weavers got hold of him by the arms while others waved and cheered.

However, the Indian leader was far from deaf to Lancashire's concerns and of just two of the giant press and newsreel corps who tracked him at Darwen who managed to interview him about them, one was the Northern Daily Telegraph's man.

To him, Gandhi explained that he had been distressed by the poverty and unemployment he had seen in Lancashire but, compared with that of the starving millions in India, it dwindled into insignificance.

Later, while staying at the guest house at West Bradford, near Clitheroe, that Mr Davies had set up 20 years before as a "haven for working people," the Mahatma explained how he had encouraged hand-loom weaving and home-spinning in Indian villages.

A demonstration of this had earlier been given to a mill workers' and employers' delegation at Edgworth, near Bolton. The work was designed to provide income for the 90 per cent of India's population who were dependent on agriculture and had only work for six months of the year.

But he insisted that Lancashire's slump was more largely due to world causes than the Indian boycott.

Even before it had become most intense the previous year, the county's mills' trade with India had not accounted for much more than 15 cent of their total production, while the boycott had cost them only a three per cent loss of trade.

Gandhi left Lancashire pledging that he would agree with an independent India banning all foreign cloth except that made in Britain, which was still necessary for supplementing indigenous supplies, already accounting for two-thirds of India's requirements.

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