Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1998 and the presenter was Sue Lolli.

My cast away this week is a trade unionist. He was born in Jamaica but instead of realizing his boyhood dream of playing cricket for the West Indies at the age of 15, he followed his widowed mother to Birmingham.

At the small engineering firm where he found a job, he wanted to wear a white coat and play the boss but fate planned that he should lead a worker's deputation and within a few years he became a shop steward.

40 years on he's the boss at last but of his union not of his firm. His membership has shrunk by half in the past 20 years but he remains an outspoken campaigner for workers rights and conditions.

I was born a socialist he says and will die a socialist but I'm a manager too. He is the general secretary of the transport and general workers union Bill Morris.

So being the boss is what it's all about, is it bill you like being in charge?

Well I like to make decisions and being the chief executive of the organization as well as giving political leadership to the organization gives me a sense of satisfaction not that I always get to my own way but at least I can seek to motivate and infuse others.

But it's interesting isn't it that even at that early age you coveted the role of the supervisor what was it that you fancied about that job?

Well it brings authority but I abandoned my supervisory ambitions because I had one occasion when I returned to my department they had a burst pipe while I was away.

Someone was putting a lot of sawdust I shouted out steady on with that sawdust it doesn't go on trees you know and the man looked me in the eye and it said it does you know so that was my first mistake of management.

But what did you do in that job? That first job you sat at a bench and I was a machine operator making component parts for the motor industry.

And what you had to do to become the supervisor and get the white coat was keep your nose clean presumably.

That's all because there was no equal opportunity policies the job wasn't advertised.

Supervisors emerge like leaders of the Tory party used to emerge in the old days or indeed if you look you will see white smoke just coming out of the chimney that's how you know we have a new supervisor.

But it didn't happen for you because of this fateful day when you had the goal to ask for more I think in your case it was protective gloves.

We had the need to get some protective clothing our representative was off sick but we decided rather than to have one person risk his neck.

We would send a deputation you know waiting numbers so about four or five hours true down to the supervisors office we stood outside having a big conversation as to who would going first somebody obviously pushed me because I found myself standing in front of this man.

And he kept me waiting for a very very long time well at least it seemed a long time and then he looked up and he said yes but I can't tell you we did manage to get our gloves.

Record number one.

Even as a child my mother used to pay additional fees for me to have extra tuition but what she didn't know is that I was playing cricket instead.

The whole thing came to a head when she met up with my teacher at church asked for a progress report and the teacher said progress what progress I haven't seen bill for six months.

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