Scott Lithgow Limited was created by February 1970 as a result of a merger ofthe Greenock and Port Glasgow shipbuilding and engineering interests ofScotts of Greenock (est. 1711) and Lithgows Limited of Port Glasgow (est.1918). Ross Belch's father, Alexander Ross Belch Sr., was a leading light inthe shipbuilders’ commercial organization, the Shipbuilding Conference (est.1928).

I began my career in shipbuilding by way of an apprenticeship at Fairfield at Govan in 1938, and combined this with a degree course in Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow during the war years. Inl945, I became an assistant manager at Fairfield, before shortly moving downriver to Lithgows Limited, where I was subsequently appointed Director and General Manager in 1954. By 1967, both Scotts and Lithgows had announced their intention to merge, and by the time of the merger in 1970, I was in charge. I led the merged company through to nationalisation under British Shipbuilders plc in July 1977; and stayed on as managing director and a director on the Board of British Shipbuilders, but subsequently retired in 1980.

The 1940s and 1950s were pretty easy days in shipbuilding; German and Japanese yards were not allowed to build ships after the war. Many of the European yards had been bombed. It was not difficult to get work especially as Lithgows were a bread and butter yard, and completed virtually every contract at a fixed price. This led to tight cost controls, controls that were, by and large, absent in cost plus mixed naval and mercantile yards. Lithgows ran a leaner and tighter ship.

On the whole, labour and management conservatism cancelled each other out. I carried out labour negotiations as well as running the yard. In the post-war period you could make a deal with national officials, but there was no guarantee that it would stick at local level. Labour relations were very much my life as well as trying to sell ships, produce them, and design them. You had to know the whole game if you were to be a reasonable managing director… I think it was inbred, the craft system; the demarcations had grown up in times prior to the war.