SHIPBUILDING IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21050, 29 December 1933, Page 15

SHIPBUILDING IN BRITAIN

<♦ MEETING NEW CONDITIONS "IRREPLACEABLE MACHINE" (nou ou» ow* co*misPOKD**T.> LONDON", November 24. In a letter to "The Times," Lord Weir (managing director of Messrs G. and J. Weir, Ltd., Glasgow) draws attention to the danger of allowing a great industry such as shipbuilding to fall into decay. In the past, he says, the world leadership of British shipbuilding was based on the demand for merchant vessels of all classes, and the demands made by the British Navy, and to some extent, by foreign navies. "Up to now," says Lord Weir, "the policy of our Government has been wisely directed to do as little as possible on our part to close the door to a return to international sanity in the fields of international trading, naval disarmament, and the avoidance of artificial policies of buttressing up noneconomic shipping. We have done nothing to encourage these policies, but I feel there must be a limit to our patience in these matters for the following, among other, reasons:— "If you deprive a great and technically complex industry like shipbuilding of a reasonable bulk of contracts of varied character for some years, you will find you have wrecked an irreplaceable machine in the form of the technical staffs and skilled craftsmen. "If British shipbuilding secures no contracts for great ships, if no basis is found on which to preserve the comtinuity of technical progress and experience, and if through the policy of other nations, however economically indefensible, they alone secure that experience, we must not fail to realise that, once our machnie is wrecked, it is almost impossible to put it together at any time we may elect. To regain a lost technical supremacy in these days of rapid scientific progress is an almost impossible task. "We showed our adaptability to war; to-day we are facing the more difficult task of adapting ourselves to the peace conditions of an economically distracted world. Old policies will not fit in with the needs of such a new world, and the time is overdue when the shipping and shipbuilding industries and the Government should closely study the framing of wise proposals to meet ihe new conditions."