Britain Again Telling Her Own Time

Waikato Independent, Volume XLV, Issue 6233, 2 May 1949, Page 2

Britain Again Telling Her Own Time

In 1938 hardly a watch was made in Britain. Today production stands above the half-million mark for a year and will in time reach three million a year, says the Recorder. In this growth is reflected the revival of the whole British, clock and watch industry which before the war was depressed to the employment of only 4,000 people, where 70,000 were once engaged, and now employs over 35,000 people in Welsh and Scottish Development Areas. At the first showing of the film "Once Upon a Time", a 15-minute documentary on the clock and watch industry, Mr G. B. Strauss, Minister of Supply, and Mr D. W. Barrett, chairman of the British Clock Manufacturers' Industrial and Export Group, and director and general manager of Smiths English Clocks, Ltd told of,the e&rii of the industry to re gain its traditioa.U place in lh.< world manufacture of clocks and- watches.

) Production of clocks by the end of 1949 will almost have reached the six million per annum mark, including tlie doubling of alarm clock production from the present two million a year rate.

i CLOCK EXPORTS ! Exports of clocks, which did not exist in 1939, numbered 875,000 in the first ten months of 1948; not including thos-j fitted to export cars which in the same period were valued at about £200,000. The equivalent export figures for watches came to 27,800, the total, expori figures for the period coming to well over £l-million.

If Britain is to build up her clock and watch export trade, especially to the dollar areas, there is a need* for a reduction of some tariffs (in the U.S.A.) and for Canada to reduce her luxury tax on clocks.

There is also a need, says Mr Barrett, for the imposition of a protective 50 per cent tariff by Britain.

Although Britain was at one time the largest producer of clocks and watches in the world, her struggles in this century to re-establish her supremacy had been partly due to her lagging behind in mechanisation (which had been widely adopted in Switzerland, Germany and the U.S.A.), and partly due to protective tar iffs impossed in other countries; Russia impossed one of 300 per cent., Germany one of 100 to 110 per cent., and the U.S. tariffs, landing charges., today to , 180 per cent. | MARKET FLOODED

Various efforts to revive the trade were obstructed in the immediate pre-war years by the flooding of world markets with German products subsidised by 40 to 45 per cent, of their invoice value by the Nazis,

j By 1939 watch production was at a standstill and clocks were produced at the rate of one million a year.

Imports for the same period amounted annually to seven million watches and five million clocks.

1 The clock industry emerged from the war economically sound, but the watch industry was in need of assistance I Not wishing to be caught in any future war without a thriving industry to ■turn over to the manufacture of fuses, and anxious to find a new industry for tho Development Areas, the British .Government gave assistance to certain ' firms—there are four main watch manufacturers in the country, Benson (J. W.) ! Ltd,, Dennison Watch Case Co., Ltd., 'ingtTsoll, Ltd., and Smiths Industrial Instruments Ltd., in the form of machine tools supplied on easy rental terms with the option to purchase at the end of five . years.

This assistance, which also came in the form of selection of special ' dust-free factories essential for the production of high grade watches and allocation of raw materials, did not extend to the clock industrv.