I joined the Navy as a cadet in 1934, and spent forty-two years there. The last five years I spent as Controller of the Navy, and it was there that I became closely involved with the shipbuilding industry, especially the warship builders. I left the Navy in December 1975. I think it was largely because of that experience and because various trade union leaders had declined the job of Chairman of British Shipbuilders that I was invited to do it. On the morning I left the Navy, I had my first meeting of the Organising Committee the same afternoon. I was only too glad to do so because I had seen enough of the shipbuilding industry to know that, especially as shipbuilders were severely threatened, something needed to be done urgently to co-ordinate them, and bring their very substantial skills to bear on a highly hostile world situation.

Having collected a team largely selected by Graham Day [Chief Executive Designate] we set about our job with a view to becoming a formally established corporation in the middle of 1976. We had to work extremely swiftly to consult with the industry and the unions, and to work out our plan. Our broad objective was, first, to co-ordinate the very substantial talents in the industry. The warship yards were among the best in the world with very advanced facilities. Secondly, we had to eliminate several weaknesses. To these ends we needed money to promote and sustain operations, and the authority to apply new ideas. This, essentially, is what nationalisation did, and meant so far as I was concerned.

It did not mean the same thing to a lot of other people, notably the workforce who felt that nationalisation was a way of simply securing their jobs whether the company was solvent or not. So a lot of our time was spent bringing home the reality of the international scene, where it was clear that in the post-war period the developing world in many areas adopted shipbuilding as an industrial plank in their economic recovery and development. They were perfectly prepared to engage in major loss leading activities to this end. This crippled not only British Shipbuilders, but practically all Western European yards, including some of the best in the world, like the Swedish shipbuilding industry.