Drop Ten, turn and face’ Quiltys Football Yarns 27

Drop Ten, turn and face’

Quiltys Football Yarns 27

As a seventeen year old I was probably too immature to concentrate on studying and even though attending the best school in East London decided to leave before A Level’s. My cousin Johhny Hill helped me find a role at his firm in the City, Stock-Jobber Berger & Gosschalk. My Headmaster Graeme Walters wasn’t impressed that the job offer came in a hand-written letter.”They can’t even afford a typewriter.” He said. However I’d made up my mind and off I went. The day I left school I walked out with a fellow student Billy Lee. Years later Billy reminded me of that day when he came to visit us in Sydney with his family. Professor William Lee, as he is now called remarked we’d both come a long way, since then, which is true.

Early 1972 in the City of London was an exciting time. Much rebuilding and the Stock Exchange itself being redeveloped from its dusty old self to a new ‘face to face’ trading floor with modern technology. It was the place where I decided I wanted to work, eventually. It was where the excitement seemed to be.  Where I actually started to work was in the  ‘back-office’ operations of the firm. Berger were stocks and shares wholesalers, undertaking thousands of trades daily which all had to be settled. Everyone at Berger & Gosschalk started initially with the messengers, I was no different and indeed nor was the son of the big boss. Messengers was the spot. The Square Mile was unique in that hundreds of Stockbrokers and Financial Services providers relied on letters and documents to be ‘walked and hand delivered’ around the City. Out on one walk one day I actually saw Sidney Poitier in my local restaurant. He was in London filming the movie 'A Warm December" and on this day doing publicity shots.  

The  mountain of paperwork in the City was increasingly being generated by computer. In 1972-4 our particular computer occupied a room 20 yards by 20yards in size. It required a team of 15 ‘punch card’ operators to feed in information as it generated reports on that green and white computer paper from dot matrix printers. I’m told that my present iPhone is hundreds of times more powerful than that gigantic machine in memory and capacity. Who knew?

Like in all work places there was an hierarchy of roles. I quickly moved on to work with the ‘Checking boys’. This was a role where our firm would send workers to a hall underneath the Lyons Tea House near London Wall. Thousands of bargains from the previous days trade would be ‘called over’ with representatives from other firms. We wore a red badge with our companies number on it, ours was 056. Again the hierarchical nature of the Stock Exchange had us wanting  to be ‘blue buttons’ who worked over on the Market itself. My cousin Johnny Hill worked there for us. He was actually a dealer, a ‘Stock Jobber’ who at the time wore a ‘yellow button’ the step before coming a Stock Exchange ‘member’ and graduation to a ‘silver badge’. For now I was content to be suited up running around the city with my good mate Paul Mordecai who had also joined from our school Parmiters Grammar. That time 1972-4 was historically significant. The Stock Market was impacted heavily by the world events of the day. The Yom Kippur war in 73’ sparked a crisis through OPEC that sent the oil price from $9 a barrel to $27 in just a short time. The world impact was a spike in fuel costs for business and at the same time an economic slow down costing millions of jobs. The recession manifested itself in the new term ‘Stagflation’ and we in the city were reduced to a ‘3 Day week’, power shortages, industrial conflict and a general slow down. Personally, I had marched into the bosses office and told him I wanted promotion. Not the best sense of timing but he laughed all the same. In 1974 I took the opportunity to move across from Stock Jobbing to Stock Broking with small firm Blount & Co. I had my job as a Blue Button and was on the Stock Exchange floor. People who know me will recognise that that this was an ideal role for me. Walking around all day talking to people! I was was the eyes and ears of the firm down on the floor reporting back by phone the ‘ blue and red’ of changing prices on the jobbers pitches. It was exciting and it was live. While we moved onto the new dealing floor mid-seventies a lot of the old habits and rules never changed. If you bumped into a member on the floor it was likely that he would report you to the exchange. What you wore was also monitored. The wearing or anything brown was a no no. Wearing a brown suit or shoes would get you whistled off the floor. Dodgy ties would get a warning before literally being snipped off! The archaic rules and traditions were shook to their foundations when the first woman was admitted around this time.  Johnny Hill once told me he could recognise if someone was a buyer or seller, big or small by the way they walked towards his pitch.  Body language 101 he called it. The language of the London Stock Exchange was very particular. The phrase ‘My word is my bond’ originated there. Anyone breaking the dealing rules would be black-balled if caught. People would refuse to deal with them thereafter. One day I was out by the Tele-text news machine when news of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv came through. I rushed back and reported it to Johnny Hill, who was trading oil stocks. Immediately the prices crashed as the implications of the news filtered down. Not that I was always such a vigilant Blue button. My boss Peter Titmus one day left me one job to look out for movements in a particular share. He’d be gone for a few hours all I needed to do was phone back to the office any significant price changes for clients. The market was quiet, so around lunch-time I popped out for a cup of tea. Returning I noticed our phone flashing on the wall. I quickly scanned the floor of the market. All seemed quiet. “Anything happening Steve?” He said. “No all quiet here, Peter” I replied. Angrily he blasted me saying, “I suggest you walk over to have a look at Akroyd to actually see what has gone on!”. A short walk showed me that a cascade of red ink on the board meant that the company I was watching had haemorrhaged at lunch time and I’d missed it! A life lesson learned that if you are going to bull-shit, be sure of some facts!

Peter Titmus was a good man and the main partner in our small firm. We had several South African and Australian associates who brought us business from down under overnight. I remember the Aussies being distraught at a election time in 74’. I think a bloke called Whitlam had won. Every morning our telex machine had piles of tape based orders from Jackson Graham Moore, a Sydney broker. Things were not straight forward. At the time a ‘dollar premium’ conversion had to be done on overseas trades.. Unfortunately, one day the shonky Aussies got my boss in a lot of trouble. They sent an order in ‘Gilts’ which were Government debt securities traded by the ‘posh’ bowler hatted Jobbers like Mullens and James Capel. This was a multi-million pound order. Peter traded as instructed by Jackson’s but they failed to realise it was a ‘cash’ or effectively, 2 day settlement for Gilt trades. They didn’t have the money to pay! Embarrassed Peter had to go back to the snooty firm and tell them the problem. Fortunately they offered to reverse the trade at quite a cost to themselves. 

Towards the end of 74’ the Stock Market was like the rest of the economy slowing down alarmingly. There had actually been an IRA bomb blast in the building in Threadneedle St that year. When I left my job I remember writing a poem on how the Market had virtually come to a standstill. A symbol for the real economy which was really struggling. Little did I know I would be back eleven years later in a very different Stock Market. As it turned out, several of the blokes who worked on the market were Jewish and had decided to just ‘up and go’ to volunteer in Israel on a kibbutz. This was all new to me but it sparked an interest I followed up a couple of years later. 

It was true that I’d grown up alongside many Jewish people at  Swingfield House in Hackney. I’d even followed my mate Stevie Brown down time the Synagogue as he did his Hebrew classes. Many of the more religious older Jewish people used to get us non-yiddisher boys to turn their lights on a Friday evening. I remember being in mate David Bryan’s Buba’s house one day, when she gave us beautiful chicken soup. It was only when David brought over the pot for seconds did I see the chicken claws in the soup. Certainly a culture shock! Our local deli had lovely crusty bread, bagels, smoked salmon and roll mops, we certainly had some Jewish insights.   Our local Hackney community in the 60’s had one person to be wary of a Jewish woman ‘Nutty Anna’. She lived in King Edward’s Road. When you walked past she would shout out “You German bastards” Everyone knew her. She had had lost her family during the war. Poor Nutty Anna.