Interviews of Angus William Morrison

In this interview, Angus William Morrison (b. 1956) talks about his life and connections to Harris Tweed. Angus was born in Parc Barvas and remembers that he often went to visit his auntie, who was a weaver – although female weavers were uncommon then. He remembers his mother was always busy, running a home that numbered 8 and included members of their extended family. The croft supported livestock and a peat bank and the yearly cycle included selling turkeys and geese at Christmas and spending time cutting peats in the summer. Family and neighbours contributed to the peat cutting and from an early age Angus was driving a tractor and helping to transport peats and crops for the family and neighbours.

He didn’t like school and recalled having to learn a few words of English before he started school as only Gaelic was spoken at home. After spending time at Lews castle and completing his apprenticeship as a joiner, Angus embarked on a varied working life which included working on the first concrete oil rig and building cabins at Lochcarron. His introduction to weaving came about after a neighbour encouraged him and then put his name forward as a weaver. Out of the blue one day, tweeds arrived with his name on them and so he had to learn quickly. As well as his neighbour, his mum and uncle helped and within a year Angus was going well and able to fix the loom himself – an aspect of the work which he particularly enjoyed. He was soon in demand to fix looms whenever other weavers had machine issues. He continued to weave cloth and would take on other jobs when the tweed industry was slack. When the double width rapier loom was introduced he took a course at the college and was soon helping out there and, in time, preparing work for the students and fixing issues with the teaching looms.

He recalls working alongside John Griffiths and reflects on the challenges of moving the weavers over to the double width rapier machines. Although these were challenging times, he said it was necessary for the industry to move forward if it was to survive. He admits he was very nervous when he started working at the college, but he enjoyed his time there and remained for 7 years, working first with Ian Angus Mackenzie and later with Mal Macleod. He felt one of the main issues for weavers in more recent decades has been the lack of someone local with the expertise to help if things go wrong. A more recent innovation, proposed by Kelly Macdonald, has been to run a course which trained 4 local weavers to be experts at fixing looms. To this end, Angus took the students out with him to fix machines so that they could learn how to work with the weavers to identify and then solve issues. The result is that many more weavers now have a local expert they can call on when something goes wrong.

Other recollections shared by Angus include travelling to Scalpay to install looms before there was a bridge to the island. He also talks about working on Taransay, preparing the pods which would house the castaways on the BBC series, Castaway, which aired in 2000. He recalls the difficulty of trying to keep warm and dry at night, of the cameraderie of the other people on the island and about meeting Ben Fogle, who would go on to build a TV career. Angus said that weaving had provided a good working life for him, partly because he could take on other work alongside the weaving, or when the weaving industry was in a dip. When asked about the future, he reflected that the industry was in a good place and should continue to thrive. Towards the end of the interview he reflects on the changes he has seen in the islands. He reflects on changes in community life and says that it seems no-one has any time now, whereas when he was young there was so much to do but it seemed there was always enough time.