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When the town looked to Africa

17/ 5/2008

AS MAJOR unrest continues in Zimbabwe against a backdrop of rampant inflation, electoral fraud, and failing crops, it’s perhaps not all that well known that Rochdale was once a major trading partner of the African country – then known as Southern Rhodesia.

In February 1954, Fothergill and Harvey opened its second mill in the country, in the capital Salisbury, now known as Harare.

Bosses at the Littleborough firm, which had a worldwide reputation for its pioneering work into cotton research and new materials, became aware of the need to set up factories as close to the source of supply of raw materials as they could.

This would save costs all round.

In Fothergill’s case, they were major cotton manufacturers and, at that time, Rhodesia was a major cotton grower.

Sadly, as with most of Zimbabwe’s industries in the 21st century, that is no longer the case.

But in the 1950s there was a thriving market for cotton and a large workforce available in Southern Rhodesia and, as a rotation crop for maize, cotton was hard to beat.

Cotton was becoming more important every year as a source of income for countries that made up the Central African Federation, such as Rhodesia.

Opening the new factory in Salisbury, Mr Charles G C Harvey, chairman of the parent company, said they had decided to establish a plant in the Central African Federation for three main reasons.

These were that basic types of cloth could obviously be produced as near as possible to sources of raw material and to markets; they felt that Britain should concentrate on the techniques required for synthetics and such highly specialised products; and a situation might arise in which the new federation might become the strategic centre of Africa and a point of great importance to the whole world.

He also paid tribute to the local workers.

"Africans are now looking after four looms each – not as good as Littleborough but not bad after a couple of months."