AS a member of an old Halifax family, I write to express my sorrow at the financial news breaking last week.
Fellow-shareholders will have received the letter from HBOS offering a 0.83:1 ratio of Lloyds-TSB shares in the takeover, and will no doubt be sharing my deep regret that yet another great firm that the town fathered has been swallowed up.
Older people will recall Mackintosh's, who I believe employed about 5,000, the town's second-largest employer, being taken over by Rowntree, with the consequence of the move of the HQ to York.
They, in turn, were absorbed by Nestle in Switzerland, so that the Halifax factory is reduced to mere branch status. Our biggest employer, Crossley's Carpets at Dean Clough, "the world's greatest carpet-mills", was taken over by Carpet Trades at Kidderminster, a huge loss to the Halifax economic area in 1983.
It owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Ernest Hall from Bolton, who stepped in with great interest, finance and plans. The result is that Dean Clough now employs more than previously, a tremendous achievement.
The mass of engineering in Halifax, largely machine-tool firms, has disappeared for economic reasons: foreign competition through low wage costs. In Britain, the town was second only to Coventry, and during the second war it was a thriving place - also second in the West Riding in the league of fund-raisers for the war effort. (Heckmondwike was the first?)
For the "Warship Week," we even adopted a Royal Navy cruiser, Ajax, one of the ships in the Battle of the River Plate, resulting in the Germans' loss of their prize pocket-battleship Graf Spee. Such was the importance of the town then.
Is Bank of Scotland now regretting its takeover of the Halifax some years ago. A takeover by a smaller company, too.
I was in Halifax that black Friday when the Courier broke the news, and its black headlines revealed its intense dislike of the deal. Bank of Scotland's protege has now brought it down too, as HBOS disappears into the maw of Lloyds-TSB, probably the least-worst outcome.
Joseph Horsfall's banked at Lloyds' Queen's Road branch, opened in 1894 to serve this rapidly-growing industrial area, but it is now closed.
The firms I have mentioned are mere examples of many more in Halifax and the Calder Valley, which have been created and nurtured over many decades by local enterprise, not by Government or local government either.
It was largely their leaders who ran the town for the benefit of the owners and employees.
Joseph Horsfalls never made anyone redundant – even throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s. But even they have closed this year, after 150 years in textiles.
What has happened to Halifax enterprise? As existing firms fail or are taken over, new ones have risen to replace them, in their economic sector or an alternative one. However Halifax does appear to be surviving quite well economically, with more people coming in daily to work than exiting.
It does the place a disservice for the MP, Linda Riordan to keep on calling Halifax a small town. This seems to be her watchword, instead of obtaining more finance. Nowadays, it is unfortunately largely about money.
Halifax is NOT a small town, quite obvious to anyone walking about in the town centre, a compact network of many streets. Not long ago, a man commented in the Courier that, as he walked through the crowded streets and markets, it felt to him like a city (which it should be).
W. L. (Bill) Horsfall