My discipline is chartered accountancy. I joined Vickers at Barrow in 1954. After a number of jobs at various Vickers concerns I joined Smith's Dock and after they merged with Swan Hunter I became Company Secretary of Swan Hunter. I then went back to Smith's Dock as Financial Director. On nationalisation I became Financial Controller of British Shipbuilders, then Director of Finance, and subsequently Board Member for Finance. I was made redundant in 1991.

Prior to British Shipbuilders I thought the industry's major weakness was a lack of marketing skills. When I worked at Vickers High Walker yard in the 1950s we built a ship for the Orient Line, and made a genuine, very large profit. The Chairman of the company gave some of this money back to the ship owner against my advice. I thought this was absolutely ridiculous. He disagreed, saying that the reason he was doing it was because the ship owner was a friend of his, and that he wanted to stay friends with him. He said, “when the difficult times come this man will remember that and he will be loyal to us.” The very next time Orient asked us to tender, they went to the Far East. We lived in this false world where we thought out friends would be faithful to us. If it had been me I would have gone to the cheapest market as well. In the old days things were incredible; I have seen a contract of sale not signed until after the ship was delivered, because it was all done on trust. Overheads were kept to a minimum, which was one of the reasons we were poor on marketing and on estimating. In the old cost plus days there was no incentive in getting the estimate right.

Even before nationalisation the government were supporting the industry financially, and continued to do so until 1988 when the Conservative Government said, “enough is enough.” The reason they stopped supporting us was not because we were making losses, but because we could not predict how much those losses were going to be. I had to go back to government and say month after month, “you know I told you that I wanted £100 million for this year as a subsidy. I am sorry, but it is now £110 million.”