The NCR UK (Retirement) Fellowship (1982  onwards)

The history of the Fellowship by Geoff Jackson

The Company over the years has waxed and waned where employee welfare is concerned. If you look through old copies of "POST" you will find reports of swimming galas
at the local Marylebone swimming pool. Picnics and sports days were held at the Welsh Harp in suburban London.
There are many other examples of a similar nature.

I was fortunate to be at the start of a burst of company care for its employees and still there when many of the benefits were withdrawn when times became hard. 

Now comes the first of the employee welfare moves mentioned above. Harry Redington, a Senior Personnel Manager suggested this, and I was the implementer. This innovation was Pre-retirement Training.

It had been noted that many NCR employees, especially field engineers, gave virtually every hour that God had given them to the Company. By the time they retired they had
adopted few outside interests to fill their nonexistent leisure time and were left with little to fill in the enormous amount of time that they found that they now had. It was suspected
that some even died early through boredom!

In order to better prepare employees for their retirement, I was charged with creating a course to rectify this and the said employees were to be invited to attend it some two years before their actual retirement. The course I devised contained many elements and many speakers including such subjects as Health, Finance, Leisure Activities, Fire Precautions and many more. The courses were residential and held in several seaside towns lasting two and a half days, thus making it possible to hold two in a week.

The first course was held in 1982 and at least four a year were held right through until mid 1990 when the company felt it could no longer bear the expense and they were terminated. This was a pity as they proved to be very popular and, I am sure, did a lot of good.

The second employee benefit was, once again, suggested by Harry Redington and that was the formation of a retirement organisation. Fred Newall, MD of the time, wrote to all NCR pensioners who had retired directly from service inviting them to join what we decided to call 'The NCR Retirement Fellowship'. 

Once again I was asked to work with Harry to create a structure. I can still see the box of mapping pins and large UK map I used to plot the distribution of members! If you look at a current copy of Postscript you will see the structure we created. Regional Organisers were recruited and soon lunches were held in each of these Regions, all paid for by the company.

Obviously a newsletter was required and Postscript came into being. Named thus to reflect the fact that it followed (NCR) POST. The latter now defunct. It required an Editor and I became that person back in 1985. 

The first issue was an A3 sheet folded in half to form four black and white pages. Over the years we have grown to a 20 page full-colour edition as you will see on this website.

Once again, the company decided some years ago to cease supporting the Fellowship and it all looked doomed to failure. However, this was not to be. Your Management Committee were determined not to let this happen and, by dint of a very reasonable subscription and the efforts of many enthusiastic volunteers it was decided that, if members were prepared to pay for their own lunches, we could survive. And here we are today, still reading Postscript and attending regular lunches.

Congratulations to you all for allowing this to happen.