Cyril Harrison (businessman)

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A portrait of Sir Cyril Harrison

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]

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

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

Congregational Church.[1]

Personal life

After his birth in Sileby his parents moved to

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. ^ a b c d e f Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 17 June 2011
  2. ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1
    . Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  3. doi:10.1080/19447016108688627
    . Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  4. doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwt005
    . Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  5. doi:10.1080/19447015708688132
    .
  6. ISBN 978-1-349-28474-0
    .
  7. doi:10.1093/tcbh/11.4.431
    . Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  8. 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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