4 - Sir Eric Yarrow, Weir Engineering, Cathcart, Yarrow Shipbuilders

Summary

I served my apprenticeship with Weir's of Cathcart, and I was at Glasgow University, but when the war started I had not completed my full training. I served six years in the Army mostly in the Burma area, and was demobilised with the rank of Major. I then spent some time in a number of shipyards and engineering works for the best part of a year before joining Yarrow's. I started in a relatively junior capacity [his father and grandfather were both chairmen of the company] and made my way up through the company becoming Managing Director, and later Chairman and Managing Director.

I think really one of the three reasons for the success of Yarrow Shipbuilders was the fact that we concentrated on one particular type of ship, which was the naval ship or the highly sophisticated ship. One of the reasons why the shipbuilding industry declined was that some companies tended to do a too great a variety of ships in one yard, and I do not think that is very effective. It is very difficult to build a frigate or a destroyer alongside a bulk carrier or a tanker with overall financial success. If someone asked us to tender for a cargo ship or a tanker, we would not look at it. I think a second reason why we proved successful, was that we did plough a lot of money back into the business to keep it up to date. We were the first yard to have a covered building berth of any size, and we spent considerable sums of money every year on the company. The third reason is that we did take a lot of time and trouble over labour relations. We thought it was very, very important. At one stage in the history of Yarrow's the shop stewards actually convened a conference to pay tribute to the relations between the management and unions.

The fact remains that the profits Yarrow's attained prior to nationalisation were to a significant extent due to building ships for overseas customers, not from the Ministry of Defence. At one time, there were fourteen warship building yards in the UK, which was far too many. During the 1970s Lord Carrington made it clear that the Ministry of Defence should concentrate warship building [submarines and frigates] in just three specialist yards, of which Yarrow was one.