Friday the 25th October we had our usual club night. The usual raffle which Janet May has kindly taken over the mantel of running this

fund raising and of course the usual club business and natter.

We had a guest speaker Alan Mead who worked for Tate & Lyle.

The company was formed in 1921 from a merger of two rival sugar refiners: Henry Tate & Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons.

Henry Tate established his business in 1859 in Liverpool, later expanding to Silvertown in East London. He used his industrial fortune to found the Tate Institute in Silvertown in 1887 and the Tate Gallery in Pimlico, Central London in 1897. He endowed the gallery with his own collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Abram Lyle, a cooper and shipowner, acquired an interest in a sugar refinery in 1865 in Greenock and then at Plaistow Wharf, West Silvertown, London. The two companies had large factories nearby each other – Henry Tate in Silvertown and Abram Lyle at Plaistow Wharf – so prompting the merger. Prior to the merger, which occurred after they had died, the two men were bitter business rivals, although they had never met in person. In 1949, the Company introduced its "Mr Cube" brand, as part of a marketing campaign to help it fight a proposed nationalisation by the Labour government.

IT WAS ALSO ANNOUNCED THAT THE CLUB HAS RAISED £98.319.80P OVER THE LAST 15 YEARS FOR LOCAL CHARITIES,

WHAT AN AMASING TOTAL