The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1966. British Shipbuilding

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30951, 6 January 1966, Page 8

The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 1966. British Shipbuilding

The Socialists’ recipe for the revitalisation of the British shipbuilding industry has always been nationalisation. It was urged once again in recent discussions in Glasgow concerning the future of Fairfields, now threatened with bankruptcy although it is supposed to be one of the best-equipped shipyards in Britain. Level-headed thinkers within the trade union movement recognise, however, that State ownership is not necessarily any more effective —or more popular—than private ownership. Like the aircraft industry, also under critical study in the United Kingdom, the shipyards must depend for their rehabilitation on the rationalisation both of their management and their working methods; and this calls for a more co-operative and reasonable attitude on the part of the unions. The Minister of State at the Board of Trade, Mr Roy Mason, recently told a meeting in Glasgow that the first need in the shipyards was to employ scarce skilled labour more effectively. The advice would perhaps have been better addressed to the union leaders than to the shipbuilders. Restrictive union practices have long put a brake on economic growth—by no means in the shipyards alone. Sir William Lithgow, chairman of the Clyde shipyard of that name, has said that they have become so much a part of the fabric of industry that their existence is scarcely recognised. It is at once ironical and reassuring to find the Fairfield workers willing—even eager—to abandon the old union rule books, a step which might be essential to the success of the Government’s consortium plan under which the workers, through their unions, will go into active partnership with the owners and the State. The Government is to provide half of the £2,000,000 required to give the shipyard a fresh start. That there should have been “ enthusiastic ” applause from the workers for a managerial announcement that in future there could be no strikes, no go-slows, and no banning of overtime will cause some wry smiles in Britain.

It is fundamental to the recovery of British shipbuilding that the industry should regain much of its former share of the export market. The call for rationalisation on the basic principle of merger reflects a recognition that the world’s excess shipbuilding capacity can only be worked out, as Sir William Lithgow has insisted, “ with the nations who “ have created it on the terms they have chosen — “national policy”. The statistical breakdown startlingly underlines the British dilemma. Japan, building 40 per cent of the world’s tonnage, is dependent on exporting a net total of about 65 per cent. Sweden’s share of the building aggregate approximates Britain’s, about 10 per cent; but Sweden exports three-quarters of what she builds. British yards, it has been said bluntly, are simply not participating in the steady growth of world shipping, estimated at 66 per cent in 10 years. The Government undoubtedly sees the general problem of recovery in the light of this basic fact. It is odd, nevertheless, that it should not have waited for the findings of the Geddes Committee before making an unprecedented commitment to salvage Fairfields—the first of its kind in British industrial experience. The Fairfield Shipbuilding Company has one of the oldest but also one of the most modem vards in the country; and it is therefore not a likely candidate for the “ axe ” in the Geddes Committee’s findings. But the Government does appear to have prejudged issues which the committee was set up to resolve. The Geddes Committee’s findings are expected to be known in February; and the Government would have acted prudently, and more properly, had it decided to await the committee’s judgment on Fairfields.