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Aviation History
1965
1965 - 0195.PDF
FLIGHT International, 21 January 1965 121 ACTION AND REACTIO A Crisis-week Diary See also World News page 80 Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, January 14; aircraft industry men hear speeches from trade union leaders Percy McNally, Clive Jenkins and George Elliott Monday, January 11 was a busy day in Paris and in London. The Plowden Com- mittee assembled for its first formal meeting in Shell-Mex House in the Strand, pausing only briefly for photographs before getting down to business. Arriving back in London from Concorde talks in Paris, Sir George Edwards, manag- ing director of British Aircraft Corporation, joined five other BAC directors for a company-requested meeting with the Minis- ter of Aviation that evening. The five were Lord Portal, BAC chairman; Sir Reginald Verdon Smith, Bristol Siddeley chairman and BAC director; Sir Charles Dunphie; Lord Nelson; and Mr William Masterton. After a 1 Jhr meeting at the Ministry, Lord Portal reported: "We had a sympathetic hearing from the Minister. There was no decision about the TSR.2. We pointed out the implications of possible cancellation of the project." The group asked Mr Jenkins to arrange a meeting with the Prime Minister. Mr Jenkins himself had flown to Paris earlier the same day for Concorde talks with his opposite number, M Jacquet. After lunch on Tuesday, January 12, several thousand BAC employees assembled outside the main gates of the company's Weybridge works and were addressed by Mr George Elliott, vice-chairman of the shop stewards' committee. The meeting decided to hold a demonstration in London two days later, in which possibly 10,000 workers would march from Waterloo to Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park. At the Weybridge meeting Mr Elliott said: "We are meeting here in defence of our employment. If this country has to have military aircraft then we must be allowed to build them ourselves." On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 13, the Minister of Defence, Mr Healey, met a deputation from the Society of British Aerospace Companies, at the Society's request, for talks on "matters of mutual .concern." The SBAC representatives were Sir Arnold Hall of Hawker Siddeley; Sir Reginald Verdon Smith of BAC and Bristol Siddeley; Lord Caldecote of BAC; Mr E. C. Wheeldon of Westland, president of the SBAC; Mr C. E. Wrangham of Short Brothers and Harland; Sir Denning Pearson of Rolls-Royce; and Mr E. C. Bowyer, director and chief executive of the SBAC. The talks were "very useful," an MoD spokesman said afterwards. In the monthly staff mess at the BAC factory in Weybridge, Sir George Edwards took time off from weightier matters to present prizes at the apprentices' annual prizegiving. In his address he said: "I don't believe that this country will take any step which would deprive itself of an aircraft industry capable of producing its own defensive devices and developing healthy exports." Constitutency concern was passed on to the Government by Mr Peter Mahon, MP for Preston South; and by Mr Maurice Edelman, MP for Coventry North. Mass meetings were held by BAC workers employed in the Preston area and by Hawker-Blackburn employees at Kingston. "Will personnel from the British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Aircraft please Although most of the January 14 marchers were from BAC, Hawker Siddeley was also much in evidence move towards the exits . . ." The polite monotone of the station announcer at Waterloo on the morning of Thursday, January 14, formed a bizarre preliminary to a march by several thousand aircraft work- ers from the station to Hyde Park. BAC men from Weybridge, Hurn, Preston, Stevenage, Luton and Bristol were joined by others from Hawker Siddeley at Kingston and Coventry and from a number of TSR.2 subcontractors. The total number involved was estimated at between 4,000 and 8,000. At Speakers' Corner the men were addressed by trade union representatives. A resolution was approved unanimously "that the British aircraft workers demand a national plan for the industry and to this end demand that there shall be no reduction in orders already placed or major displace- ment of personnel until alternatives are developed." Following the Hyde Park demonstration, deputations from Preston and Weybridge went to the Ministry of Aviation for a meeting with Mr John Stonehouse, Parlia- mentary Secretary to the Ministry, and the Minister himself. Industry representatives also called at No 10 Downing Street and left a message for Mr Wilson. That morning's Daily Telegraph had stated that Government plans to nationalize the aircraft industry "are well advanced." Mr George Brown, Minister for Economic Affairs, confirmed on returning to London Airport from Sweden that the Government had no intention of nationalizing the industry. Mr Jo -Grimond, leader of the Liberal Party, suggested that proposals for rationalising aircraft production and civil aircraft procurement based on a European "home market" should be made jointly by Britain and the Common Market countries. It was reported on good authority that the cost of the full TSR.2 programme would be at least £75Om. Discussions on Friday, January 15, in- cluded two Cabinet sessions at No 10, with the Minister of Aviation present at both and the Service Chiefs of Staff attending one. Mr Wilson then drove to Chequers where he had invited five industry leaders to join him and Mr Jenkins for dinner and talks on the industry's future. Those invited were Sir Arnold Hall, Sir George Edwards, Sir Reginald Verdon Smith, Sir Denning Pearson and, a late addition, Mr C. E. Wrangham. The dinner party began at about 7.30 and continued until midnight.
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