Cyril Harrison (businessman)

Sir Cyril Ernest Harrison (14 December 1901, Sileby, Leicestershire – 15 March 1980, Wilmslow, Cheshire) was a cotton industrialist.

[3] 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.

He became 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.

[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.

A portrait of Sir Cyril Harrison
Sir Cyril with family outside of Buckingham Palace on the morning of his Knighthood in 1963