I started work in Harland and Wolff in the late 1940s as an apprentice plater. I then became involved on the trade union side and was then elected to the Executive of the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers. Eight years later I was elected General Secretary, a position which I hold to the present day.

In the old Boilermakers situation there were seven trades. Each one bordered on the principle of not any one of the other six could partake in the trade of another. There had been no investment in the industry for many, many years. I think the lack of investment was a greater difficulty than the lack of change. The one thing that an increase in investment does, bringing in an increase in the use of high technology, is to in itself stimulate change. The new equipment demands new ways of working. The standards are lifted dramatically. It helps bring about change in the trade union movement. The shipbuilding industry was one of the industries that never had the investment even in the good times. I worked in Harland and Wolff during the good times when they were building all sorts of ships from aircraft carriers to bulk carriers to passenger liners. They were making capital and were not putting anything in. You would work with machinery that had been there for fifty years.

You must create the difference between the imagination of a group of workers, and the imagination of a group of employers. As competition was becoming more severe, because the style of ships were changing, and the market place was getting wider we had a multiplicity of shipbuilders. At no time did I see those shipbuilders say, “let us come together as a consortium.” The old shipbuilding people were a breed of people to themselves. They were families. The Rebbeck's and the like sincerely believed that they were the saviours of society and did not need any assistance. Maybe the Government could help by giving them a knighthood, but they did not need anything else. That was their view of life. Unfortunately, the people who were emerging in the developing countries looked at industry very differently. They examined it from the starting point of what the industry required.