AUTOMATION IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27961, 7 May 1956, Page 13

AUTOMATION IN BRITAIN

Conference To Study Impact (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, May 4. The impact of automation on industry is expected to be one of the subjects raised at the Duke of Edinburgh's “study conference on the human problems of industrial communities," to open at Oxford on July The conference will bring together some 300 persons from employing and employee sides of industry—including nearly 150 from Commonwealth countries. In addition to delivering the presidential address, the Duke of Edinburgh will preside at a number of conference sessions and at two dinners. Industrial dislocation stemming from the automation problem extended today when about 450 men employed by a Birmingham firm of car-body builders were told they would be laid off to-night as a result of the strike in the Standard Motor Company’s Coventry factories. Today, the 11.000 Standard strikers appealed to workers in other factories for support. The Minister of Labour. Mr lan Macleod. will speak on the problem of automation on the 8.8.C.’s television programme “At Home and Abroad” to-night. At a workers’ conference in London today, Mr Macleod said that the streamlining of industrial processes in Britain was necessary if the country was to beat its export problems. “This country, above all others, must not be afraid of change,” he said. “Change is our ally and wc must welcome it.”