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Crossing the Bar from Interviews British Shipbuilders Plc
In 1970 I was asked as a trade union official on loan to join the Department of Industry as an Industrial Advisor to advise across a whole range of industry from a trade union perspective, and was designated as a Deputy Secretary. At the time the Secretary of State was John Davies. I was the first ever advisor to be loaned from a trade union. During my first year the UCS crisis broke, and in historical terms, plus the collapse of Rolls Royce, that spelled the end of the Heath policy of non intervention. I stayed on after the first March election of 1974, to advise Tony Benn. I also stayed to advise the new Secretary of State, Eric Varley after Benn had left the department for the Department of Energy. I then helped with the passage of the Nationalisation Bill. Ship repairing, to me, was an irrelevance and I told Varley that. However, it became a political phallic symbol that the Government could not lose. The Speaker's decision was that the Bill was hybrid. I was responsible, among others for recommending that Graham Day should lead the industry. Eric Varley chose Admiral Griffin. After meeting him, I was concerned and said to the Permanent Secretary, “if you appoint him you will have to cover him because he has no experience of real life.” As a result they agreed, and asked me to do it. After Day and others had left, only I and Admiral Griffin remained. We had to appoint a Chief Executive at short notice and chose Mike Casey who was extremely erudite and knowledgeable, but had never ran anything. After British Shipbuilders was formed I was appointed Deputy Chairman, and remained there until 1983.
I can confirm that UCS was Tony Benn's road to Damascus. He met real people there. By the time it was finally over, in my opinion it was because of a report from the Chief Constable of Glasgow warning that there was the likelihood of another Belfast in Glasgow. Nationalisation was put in the Labour Party manifesto of 1974 on the insistence of McGarvey and the trade unions. In my opinion Tony Benn was a right winger when he was Minister of Technology.
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