Giants of British Manufacturing

 If I look at the years from the start of the Industrial Revolution up to the Festival of Britain, I can draw up a list a relatively well known names of the movers and shakers of British Manufacturing. Indeed I have written about them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

Looking at the years since then, I have found names perhaps not as well known, many of which I remember from years gone by, but whose efforts and talents shine out.

Kelvin Bray was managing director of Ruston Gas Turbines (and its successors) for a quarter of a century. The company manufactured gas turbines which would be used by 80% of the world’s oil industry. Kelvin was a Grammar School boy who unusually for the time won a scholarship to Kings College, Cambridge. He went on to work on the development of the gas turbine from Frank Whittle’s jet engine. The company, now under the ownership of Siemens, continues to manufacture gas turbines in Lincoln for world markets. The image is of Bray and his colleagues receiving the MacRobert award.

Ronald Weeks was chairman of Vickers which had been brave enough to invest in a new plant at Tinsley Park in Sheffield in the period between nationalisations when other steel makers held back. Weeks was the son of a north country mining engineer who like Bray had studied at Cambridge. He served in the First World War and then worked at Pilkington pioneering new methods of management. In the Second World War he had responsibility for army equipment as Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff. After the war he joined Vickers as chairman of English Steel where he negotiated first its nationalisation and then its denationalisation. He held the chair of Vickers through a time of radical change.

John Harvey-Jones of ICI had the job of rebuilding the chemical giant after the recession of the seventies. His approach was to allow one thousand flowers to bloom knowing that that way the successes of the future would be found. Affirmation of his approach is perhaps found in ICI’s offspring Astra-Zeneca and its lifesaving Covid vaccine. The ICI bureaucracy remained to be tackled later.

David McMurtry at Renishaw in 1973 invented a touch-trigger probe to meet an inspection requirement of the Olympus engine which powered Concorde. His company, Renishaw plc, has since grown into a major international force leading amongst much else additive manufacturing - the 3D printing of complex components.

William Weir of Weir Group was not only a member of the founding family of the company that bears his name, but he led that company through challenging times and then wrote a very personal account of its history. William Weir was the grandson of the company’s founder and worked in the business from 1954 until he relinquished the post of chairman.

Arnold Weinstock at GEC made money. He took over both AEC and EE and created a massively strong company. He was followed by George Simpson who made fatal decisions in the dot com boom which led to the end of what was then GEC Marconi. The company’s defence interests then combined with the rump of the British aircraft industry and the remnants of the Royal Ordnance factories to become the highly successful defence manufacturer BAE Systems  

Oliver Littleton, at AEI which manufactured the first jet engines, wrestled with the impossible task of bringing together long standing rivals, British Westinghouse and British Thompson Houston. 

George Nelson of English Electric was a truly energetic entrepreneur. English Electric would manufacture iconic aircraft and railway locomotives, as well as giving birth to ICL, not least because Nelson had had the wisdom to buy Marconi.

F.N. Sutherland, was a man with an MA from Cambridge who had worked an apprenticeship at English Electric and who had grown with that company’s overseas operations. He was appointed by George Nelson to lead the Marconi companies following their acquisition by EE. He turned out to be the perfect man for the job. Interestingly, he followed the tradition set by Marconi’s former boss, Admiral Grant, of involving his wife in the welfare of his employees, something I had only ever seen at the Central Ordnance Depot at Greenford in the early years of the Second World War.

Dr Eric Eastwood was recruited by Marconi after the war to lead its work on radar. He undoubtedly enhanced the technical expertise within the company which in turn led to it being the most significant part of GEC prior to that company’s breakup. Marconi Defence Systems was the perfect fit for British Aerospace with which it merged to become BAE Systems, now a respected and successful British company.

Jules Thorn was the driving force behind Thorn Electric making television widely available and forming the powerhouse of Thorn EMI  

Ferranti is a name forever associated with computers and semiconductors as well as early electricity generation and meters for measuring consumption. When the NEB took a stake in the Ferranti company to save it, there were voices who condemned what had become known as the ‘Ferranti spirit’. This spirit was the beating heart of this family company and was a determination to push back the boundaries of technology. In this the Ferranti company was hugely successful. Ferranti’s problem was money. The family was determined not to seek external investors for fear of the constraints they would impose.

George Turnbull was a gifted manager and engineer who had served his time with Standard Triumph. Following the creation of BLMC, he was asked by Donald Stokes to tackle the underperformance of Austin-Morris. He was successful and Austin-Morris was producing half of the profits of the group. His reward was to tackle the Leyland truck and bus business, once more with success. On the reorganisation of the BL group in 1973, Turnbull was passed over for the role of deputy CEO and so the expectation of becoming CEO in due course. He left, and took up the challenge of creating a world class motor company out of the Korean Hyundai. Success followed him once more. For BLMC the story would be less promising.

William Lyons created and Jon Egan saved Jaguar. Lyons’ genius creates the E type and Mk 10. Sir John Egan brought his wide experience in the motor industry to Jaguar where he took a once famous brand which had been seriously neglected and painstakingly addressed areas of shortcoming restoring it to its former glory as evidenced in the price Ford paid for it.

Oliver Lucas embraced vital aspects of manufacturing. He was as interested in the manufacturing process as in the product and so achieved great economies. Above all he was committed to what we now know as life-long learning. He encouraged his managers to learn from each other and from other companies. He espoused relationships with academia including financing a chair, the Lucas Professor of Production Engineering, at the University of Birmingham.Peter Bennett at Lucas built an astonishingly inventive supplier to the British motor and aircraft industries. Once again it was George Simpson who sold out to the Americans.

Sir Arnold Hall was chairman and managing director of Hawker Siddeley from 1967 to 1977. He achieved much but top of the list must be Hawker’s decision to remain with the Airbus project when the government decided to end its involvement.

Rolls Royce had to be rescued from overspending on the RB211 which would become the highly successful Trent engine. Thereafter the aircraft engine manufacturer became number two in the world to the giant GE. I don't think there is one particular CEO to mention. The company has gone through a tumultuous half century since the RB211 and is now exploring the potential for the nuclear technology it has quietly developed since the war.

Sir John Parker studied naval architecture and mechanical engineering at Belfast College of Technology and at Queen’s University Belfast also learning on the job at Harland and Wolff. His first management role was at Austin Pickersgill after which he returned to Harlands as CEO from 1983 to 1993. He then moved to Babcock International from 1994 to 2000 first as CEO and then also as chairman. In his first stint at Harland, he championed the introduction of computers. At Babcock he transformed a revered but troubled engineering company into one focused on naval shipbuilding and repair

Dr Richard Beeching is remembered for closing a great many stations and miles of track. What he also did was to modernise the railways in its management of its workforce, in containerising freight and improving the experience of the traveller with more comfortable trains.

Alastair Pilkington, a Cambridge graduate of Mechanical Sciences, served during the Second World War and returned to Cambridge to complete his degree. He was only very distantly related to the family owning the glass manufacturer. He was discovered by a family member exploring family trees, was interviewed and employed. He rose quickly. His massive contribution was in the invention of the float glass process.

Joe Bamford created and his son developed a massive fiercely independent but private company. In terms of size and privacy they might rank alongside Ineos and Tata. However, they have a passion for engineering innovation.

Anita Roddick founded the Body Shop which championed women, sought natural ingredients, demanded fair trade and refused animal testing.

Garfield Weston set his family company on course to become the anchor man of British food manufacturing. The company is now called Associated British Food. He gave much of his wealth to a charitable trust which supports the built heritage.

Laura Ashley was born in Dowlais, Glamorgan in 1925, moved to London but was evacuated back to Wales during the war. She trained as a secretary and worked first in the War Office and then for the Women’s Institute and it was their exhibition at the V&A which inspired her to try her hand at fabric printing in her Pimlico basement kitchen. From this beginning, she and her husband Bernard created a fashion following counter to the swinging sixties trend, and which espoused something altogether more homely.

Michael Perrin was an ICI chemist who had been involved first with the discovery of polythene and then with the nuclear bomb project. He moved out of research into a more managerial role in which he excelled. He was appointed chairman of the Wellcome Foundation in 1953. Research was key. He championed the company’s investment, whilst at the same time distributing millions to the Wellcome Trust for medical projects.

These are just my selection of post war manufacturing heroes; there are many more most of whom are unsung.

Further reading: Vehicles to Vaccines