40 - Victor Chapman, Board of Trade, Ministry of Technology, DTI, SIC

Summary

I was having a sabbatical year in 1964, and towards the end I was called from it to take charge of the shipbuilding branch of what was then the Board of Trade. Almost immediately afterwards, the Shipbuilding Inquiry Committee was set up. I was Secretary of that with very full time involvement. That was the year of 1965, broadly speaking. Then, in 1966 I switched attention to my real job, as it were, as head of the shipbuilding branch. There was at this time the promotion of legislation and the setting up of the Shipbuilding Industry Board. I continued with that same job as it was moved about from the Board of Trade to the Ministry of Technology, and then back to the new Department of Trade and Industry. I was then posted to quite different duties in 1970.

One had to see the shipbuilding industry against the background of the general industrial psychology at the time. Looking back, we were stuck between two things. On the one hand, there was the late 1940s phrase, “the commanding heights of the economy,” and in that context, shipbuilding came near to coal and steel. This was combined with the feeling that Britain was a seafaring nation that built ships to travel the world. On the other hand, one was already beginning to see that the shipbuilding industry might become, what is in the language of the 1980s, a “smokestack industry.” We were between the two in the 1960s. Shipbuilding was seen to have its special problems.

When we looked at shipbuilding the first thing that hit us, and me particularly, was that it was an odd man out. In a sense it had no home market. One has to remember that a British ship owner could buy a ship from a British yard, and once it was fitted out and left the berth it would not necessarily come near this country. You were selling to an international industry, with one exception, and that was the peculiar exception of the Royal Navy.

As a Committee, we went round the yards, and we talked extensively to both sides of the industry. That is all set out in the Report. One learned a lot from that. There were two real gaps in the information. One was inherent, and is a concern of mine.