Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom

A History of the British Shipbuilders Corporation

Hugh Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000331899
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom provides a systematic historical account of the British Shipbuilders Corporation, first looking at this major industry under private enterprise, then under state control, and finally back in private hands.

The chapters trace the evolution of public policy regarding shipbuilding, ship repair, and large marine engine building through the tenures of radically different Labour and Conservative governments, and through the response of the board of the British Shipbuilders Corporation, trade unions, and local management also. The book benefits from comprehensive archival research and interviews from the 1990s with leading players in the industry, as well as politicians, shipbuilders, trade union leaders, and senior civil servants.

This authoritative monograph is a valuable resource for advanced students and researchers across the fields of business history, economic history, industrial history, labour history, maritime history, and British history.

1 British shipbuilding under the Labour government, 1966–70

British merchant shipbuilding’s downward trajectory during the twentieth century from 60 per cent of world shipbuilding output prior to the First World War, then a short postwar boom which resulted in a record output of 2mgrt in 1920, which was never again surpassed, and thereafter an enduring interwar depression alleviated only by rearmament post-1935, settled down to one of relative declines through the long economic boom years post-1950.¹ British shipbuilding’s hitherto dominant market leadership was jolted when first Japan in 1956, then West Germany and Sweden put Britain into fourth place in the international tonnage output table by the mid-1960s. From 1956 to the end of the century, Japan remained the world’s largest shipbuilder.²

It had become obvious by the mid-1960s that a combination of declining market share and falling domestic demand meant that the British shipbuilding industry was in trouble and was failing the acid test of competitiveness in the international export market for ships. In 1965, British Shipbuilders built for export 13 per cent of total tonnage launched, the percentages for its three main competitors: Japan (53 per cent), Germany (64 per cent) and Sweden (78 per cent) highlighted the industry’s comparative failure against growing international competition.³ In 1965, Japan launched a staggering 5,363,232grt of shipping, 44 per cent of world tonnage launched. There, some USD 830m had been invested over the past decade in shipbuilding and allied facilities, with government actively promoting the shipbuilding industry.⁴ As an editorial in the influential trade journal, The Motor Ship, put it, rather simplistically: there was no secret to Japanese success, save the only difference being that more preliminary planning was undertaken before the wholehearted adoption of new methods of construction and technology. More specifically, Japanese success had been built on governmental determination that Japan would have a powerful and profitable shipbuilding industry aiding the drive towards increased production and efficiency.⁵

Unable to compete domestically and internationally, in part due to the growth in tonnage and spatially constrained shipyards, seven British shipyards had closed for good between 1962 and 1965.⁶ These, as subsequent events would prove, were entirely rational business decisions.

Shipbuilding Inquiry Committee Report 1965–66

With government increasingly worried about future implications for heavily localised unemployment in development areas of the country, and the growing impact of international competition on British shipbuilding’s prospects, the Labour government commissioned in February 1965 a Board of Trade-sponsored Shipbuilding Inquiry Report (SIC) which reported in March 1966. The SIC’s main task was:

to establish what changes are necessary in organisation, in the methods of production, and any other factors affecting costs to make the shipbuilding industry more competitive in world markets; to establish what changes in organisation and methods of production would reduce costs of manufacture of large main engines of ships to the lowest level; and to recommend what action should be taken by employers, trade unions and Government, to bring about these changes.⁷

The SIC Report’s authors were not shipbuilders. Chaired by A.R.M. Geddes, chairman of the Dunlop Rubber Company, the report was essentially a confidence building exercise in an industry that was rapidly losing the plot against international competition.⁸ Geddes was a ‘general purpose industrialist’ chosen because he had no prior prejudices against the industry, and only relented to do so after his friend Anthony Burney was designated the Report’s accountant member.⁹ The SIC Report was published just before the General Election of March 1966, where Harold Wilson’s Labour Party was again elected to govern but this time with an increased majority of 31 seats. A ‘popular version’ of the main report, titled Fresh Start for Shipbuilding, was sent to employees in every shipyard, ship repair and marine engine building works in the UK.¹⁰ The Report avoided denigrating management and trade unions, much to the relief of Dan McGarvey, President of the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers (ASBSBSW) union – the main hull steelwork trade union – who expected to be ‘clobbered’ in the report, and requested to the SIC that the employers should come in for equal criticism.¹¹ On publication of the main report, British shipbuilding’s percentage share of world shipbuilding output was just under 10 per cent. Thereafter, Geddes had no further dealings with shipbuilding and marine engineering policy.¹²

The SIC was concerned with 27 shipyards regularly building ships of 5,000grt and above, allied ship repair and main marine engine manufacturers (slow speed diesel and steam turbine) providing motive power for these ships, merchant and naval. The SIC’s main recommendations were the rationalisation of shipbuilding firms into four main merged groups based on river centres (Clyde, no more than two groups, and Tyne and Wear, two groups), each group to specialise by products.¹³ Grouping of shipyards into larger units against the prevailing atomistic structure of the industry was seen as necessary to its international competitiveness. The SIC also advised the separation of slow-speed main marine diesel engine building works from shipbuilding firms, and that the sector should be rationalised into no more than four separate works, specialising on one particular design of slow-speed diesel, but with flexibility to take up other designs.¹⁴

To achieve this, the SIC recommended the establishment of an independent Shipbuilding Industry Board (SIB) for a five-year period reporting to the nascent Ministry of Technology in order that the shipbuilding industry should become and remain competitive, reorganise its structure, change its predominantly gloomy outlook and improve its tarnished reputation. Established by the Shipbuilding Industry Act, 1967, the SIB, like the SIC, would contain no shipbuilders on its three-man board (again highlighting the government’s lack of trust in the industry reorganising itself) and would dispense grants for consultancy and grants and loans to achieve grouping of firms. The SIB Board consisted of Sir William Swallow – chairman of Vauxhall Motors – and Anthony Hepper – formerly an executive director of Thomas Tilling Ltd. – and seconded by that firm as an industrial advisor to the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA). The third member was Joe Gormley, general secretary of the North Western area of the National Union of Mineworkers.¹⁵ Under the Shipbuilding Industry Act the SIBs lifetime was circumscribed to the end of 1970 when it would be dissolved, unless the Minister of Technology directed that its life could be extended to a later date but not beyond the end of 1971.¹⁶

In demand terms, the SIC in effect posited three scenarios: decline, holding on and growth. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acts of Parliament, Command and Parliamentary Papers, HMSO Publications
• List of abbreviations
• Key to tonnage measurement
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 British shipbuilding under the Labour government, 1966–70
• 2 British shipbuilding under the Conservative government, 1970–74
• 3 The long road to nationalisation of shipbuilding under two Labour governments, 1974–77
• 4 British Shipbuilders: The first two years under a Labour government
• 5 British Shipbuilders under the Conservative government, 1979–83
• 6 Privatisation of British Shipbuilders under two Conservative governments, 1983–90
• Conclusions
• Epilogue
• Postscript
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index