I left school at sixteen and gained a student apprenticeship in an engine building firm within the Swan Hunter group of companies. I ended up in the Technical Department, went to sea for a while, and came back to the Technical Department at Wallsend. Post the grouping on the Tyne under the aegis of Swan Hunter [1968] I was eventually moved into general management and naval architecture, and from there progressed to deputy managing director and then, three years before nationalisation, to managing director. In 1977, I was seconded to British Shipbuilders Headquarters, becoming a Board Member in 1981, first for engineering and later for the composite merchant shipbuilding division. Later on I was Board Member for ship and engine building, which covered all that remained in operational terms after the warship yards had been privatised. Ultimately I left in 1990, having completed almost thirty-nine years in shipbuilding.

The strength of Swan Hunter was volume of output and technical capability. We ran six shipyards, and we built a wide variety of ships, and remained profitable up to nationalisation. In common with a lot of other shipbuilders we did not realise that we were going to have to get smaller. Shipbuilding has tended to follow low labour costs, because it is labour intensive, and the cheaper you can build the more work you will get. We did not perceive quickly enough that foreign competition was going to have an impact on us. It never needed to be as bad as it became. It became a political problem. The survival of shipbuilding capacity became a question of political will. So we had countries like Italy, Spain, and West Germany who believed that shipbuilding was an important part of their maritime infrastructure, and who have kept fairly substantial shipbuilding capacity. Unfortunately, we took a contrary view, and we have not got a great deal left.

The weaknesses that we had are that generally we did not have enough talented people in management. Rather belatedly, firms started to train and recruit managers who were graduates, and who were well qualified, but the talent was thinly spread. The other area that we were weak was at the supervisory level. People had been promoted from being very good tradesmen, but were not very good foremen.