Cyril Harrison (businessman)

Sir Cyril Ernest Harrison (14 December 1901, Sileby, Leicestershire – 15 March 1980, Wilmslow, Cheshire) was a cotton industrialist.[1] He was President of the Federation of British Industry and Confederation of British Industry during the 1950s and 1960s[2] following his work as Managing Director at English Calico.[3]

A portrait of Sir Cyril Harrison

Career

At the age of 16 in 1917 he was an office boy at Perseverance Mill in Padiham, then trained as a weaver, and then became a fabric dealer on the Manchester Cotton Exchange. With a friend he then set up a fabric merchanting business, C E Harrison & Co, in 1928. He later qualified as a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries.[1]

In 1939 he was appointed manager of the yarn sales division of the English Sewing Cotton Company (ESC), Britain's second largest producer of cotton thread. He became managing director in 1948, the business having prospered when wartime conditions restricted competition from overseas.[4][5]

Competition returned in the 1950s from countries with lower labour costs and affected ESC's profits in spite of modernisation. In 1968, ESC merged with the Calico Printers' Association, a dominant textile firm, and adopted the name English Calico.[1]

Harrison was President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce from 1958 to 1959.[1] From 1961 he was President of the Federation of British Industry (FBI)[6][7] and in the same year was conferred an honorary master's degree by Manchester University. From 1961 to 1963 was on the grand council of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).[8] He was knighted for services to industry in 1963.[9]

Sir Cyril with family outside of Buckingham Palace on the morning of his Knighthood in 1963

He was active in the Cotton Board, which represented Lancashire's interests.[1]

He was a deacon and secretary of Wilmslow Congregational Church.[1]

Personal life

After his birth in Sileby his parents moved to Lancashire and he was educated at Padiham Wesleyan school and Burnley Grammar School. In 1927 he married Ethel (c. 1901 – 1971), daughter of Edward Wood, a Burnley accountant, and they had two sons, David Michael Harrison and Ian Wood Harrison.[10]

See also

References
  1. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 17 June 2011
  2. "Sir Cyril Ernest Harrison". Who's Who. 1. 1963. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U155365. ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  3. "Companions of the Institute". Journal of the Textile Institute Proceedings. Taylor and Francis. 52 (12): 692–694. 1961. doi:10.1080/19447016108688627. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  4. Rollings, Neil (December 2013). "Cracks in the Post-War Keynesian Settlement? The Role of Organised Business in Britain in the Rise of Neoliberalism Before Margaret Thatcher". Twentieth Century British History. 24 (4): 637–659. doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwt005. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  5. Toy, F.C. (1956). "Emsley Lecture, 1956. The Impact of New Ideas on an Old Craft Industry". Journal of the Textile Institute Proceedings. 48 (2): P150–P163. doi:10.1080/19447015708688132.
  6. O'Hara, Glen (207). From Dreams to Disillusionment: Economic and social planning in 1960s Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-349-28474-0.
  7. Wood, Stewart (2000). "Why 'Indicative Planning' Failed: British Industry and the Formation of the National Economic Development Council (1960–64)". Twentieth Century British History. 11 (4): 441. doi:10.1093/tcbh/11.4.431. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  8. "Companions of the Institute". Journal of the Textile Institute Proceedings. TandFOnline. 52 (12): 692–694. 1961. doi:10.1080/19447016108688627. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  9. "No. 42870". The London Gazette. 28 December 1962. p. 2.
  10. "England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916–2007 for David M Harrison". Ancestry. Ancestry. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
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