The image is of the timeline of engineering in Lincoln produced for the Spark Festival. It was produced by the talented Optima Design.
The Chronology of the past seventy years places into context development in manufacturing. It begins with the Festival of Britain which set out in context the stall for British manufacturing. The forties had seen rationing and nationalisation, fifties now saw the export drive and a nation that ‘had never had it so good’, the sixties the ‘white heat of technology’, the seventies the oil crises, recession and re-nationalisation, the eighties the power of the market and privatisation, the nineties the dotcom boom and crash, the noughties the financial crash and the twenty-teens Brexit.
Companies come and go; some say that an optimum life is about twenty-five years, so around a third of the period under review. Great companies buck the trend, and there are a quite a few. I highlight Jaguar and JCB in the title but could add Rover, Glaxo and, in its current name and form, ICI as AstraZeneca. There are of course others. Vehicles to Vaccines seeks to uncover the story. Here I attempt a brief timeline.
Fifties
The Festival of Britain may be seen as the starting point of what was a new era. It was all about design, new sources of power (nuclear and hydroelectric) but it also celebrated British railways, shipbuilding and aircraft. The 1956 Clean Air Act provided the impetus needed to move the railways away from their dependence on coal. The fifties were a busy decade with motor factories churning out motor cars for export, shipyards building fine yet outmoded craft, aircraft factories exploring the potential of jet propulsion not least with the V Bombers. Christopher Cockerell devised the Hovercraft in 1953. Radio manufacturers turned their hands to transistors and television. Plastics found their way into the home as did detergents. ICI boasted some of the largest chemical plants in the world. Yet, Germany and Japan began to see the fruits of their rebuilt industries whilst in Britain companies made use of old buildings and plant; management had become complacent with the absence of competition from the major industrial nations. America was enjoying a post war boom, but was at war in Korea and was face to face with the USSR in what became known as the Cold War. The Suez Crisis put markers down for Britain’s loss of influence on the world stage but also for the vulnerability of oil supplies and the knock on reduction in the size of cars. The Morris Mini was Britain’s answer in the final year of the decade.
Sixties
Swinging London witnessed the Beatles and the miniskirt. It was a time for change, for the white heat of technology. Government looked to harness the talent within our industries by building bigger companies able to compete on the world stage. GEC joined with English Electric and Associated Electrical Industries to become a company employing a quarter of a million people (I can’t help observing that this was the same size as the RAOC (the corps responsible for the supply to the army of everything but food and fuel) in WW2). It then dramatically slimmed with closures and redundancies. Other initiatives produced the British computer giant ICL, yet more money was spent propping up shipyards. The railways welcomed with trepidation a new chief, Dr Richard Beeching, who both modernised and cut. The QE2, built by John Brown, was launched. Pilkington float glass transformed glass manufacture and this was visible in the concrete high-rise blocks which were replacing war damaged and ageing housing. The ATM cash machine, a British invention, began to appear in our high streets. The motor industry produced the Jaguar E-type, Triumph Spitfire, MGB and Lotus Elan. Paddy Hopkirk won the Monte Carlo rally in a Mini Copper S. James Bond burst onto cinema screens first in a Sunbeam Alpine and then the Aston Martin DB5. Yet, the Rootes Group sold out to the American Chrysler. BMC began to look unhealthy. New aircraft failed to live up to the promise of the Vickers Viscount. We began to buy transistor radios from Hong Kong. Courtaulds became the biggest textile manufacturer in the world but faced a massive struggle. Lines Brothers had the biggest toy factory but didn’t embrace the marketing might of the American. A currency crisis led to a devaluation of the pound. The steel industry was nationalised once more. Industrial unrest was felt throughout the economy.
Seventies
Oil crises caused the wheels to fall off, as rampant inflation tore through the economy. Nationalisation of ailing industries marked the mid-decade: shipbuilding and, by the formation of British Aerospace, aircraft manufacture. The entry into service of Concorde put a beautiful face on the struggling industry. Britain so nearly lost Rolls-Royce in 1971 as the development costs of the RB211 engine ran out of control. The aero-engine business became state owned with the separation of Rolls-Royce Motors. Belatedly, the UK joined the EEC. A visit by the International Monetary Fund in 1976 shocked the nation. Yet, Glaxo, Wellcome, Beecham and Boots each launched drugs that would transform their businesses. The railways began a further transformation with the Intercity 125. The coming on stream of North Sea Oil drove up the exchange rate although making life doubly tough for manufactured exports. Nevertheless, North Sea Gas found its way into most British homes for cooking and heating. Boiler manufacturers did well. By 1977 the North Sea was producing half a million barrels of oil a day, a third of the country’s needs and by 1980, Britain was self-sufficient in gas and oil. Alfred Herbert, the heart of the nation’s machine tools industry, was rescued in 1975 but finally collapsed in 1980; TI bought a good part of its assets. A young company, Renishaw, took up the cudgels of British machine tool making with its revolutionary twin axis measuring device.
Eighties
The cold wind of the free market. The eighties saw a ravaged economy opened to the forces of the market, and, with privatisation, much manufacturing was lost. British Rail Engineering was sold to the Canadian Bombardier. The shipyards were privatised but in the process shrunk with yet more job losses. In the few brighter spots, Jaguar was floated. We welcomed Japanese motor manufacturers to build factories in the UK and also investment by Japanese television manufacturers; home grown television manufacture began to wilt. The rump of the last British volume motor manufacturer, Austin Rover, was bought by the newly privatised British Aerospace; six years later they sold on to BMW who kept Mini – the remainder wilted on the vine. Acorn built the BBC Computer. The privatisation of British Telecom created a crisis for British telecoms manufacturers; GEC eventually bought Plessey but only with the involvement of the German Siemens.
Nineties
The decade of the dotcom bubble with both winners (ARM) and losers (GEC Marconi) in the UK. Technology companies had become the must have investment. With ARM this made sense for they designed the operating software of mobile devices world wide. For GEC, it meant that they overpaid for acquisitions, something that would lead to the break up of this once great company. Government turned its attention to financial services as the nation’s saviour and began to ignore manufacturing. Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to foreign owners. Lucas fell into the hands of the US Varity in 1996 and Racal was bought by the French Thomson-CSF in 2000. Yet, pharmaceutical companies (Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham) combined to achieve economies of scale and a place on the world scene. Rolls-Royce plc launched its best ever engine, the Trent, the origin of which can be traced back to the RB211. BAE Systems was formed by the merger of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems from the break up of GEC Marconi. Babcock International marked out its future by taking over naval dockyards at Rosyth and Devonport.
Noughties
The twenty-first century witnessed the growth of financial services made visible in London’s Canary Wharf. This was followed by the financial crash of 2008 which starved businesses of finance. There was a spate of disposals of building products companies: Redland sold to the French Lafarge and British Gypsum to the French St Gobain; Pilkington bought by Nippon Glass; and RMC sold to the Mexican CEMEX, Blue Circle to the Irish CHR-owned Tarmac and Hanson Cement to the German Heidelberg Group. Jim Radcliffe continued the growth of Ineos by buying chemical plants largely from oil majors who wanted to focus on oil exploration and production. In the background though British companies were working more with universities in developing technologies for the future with new materials such as graphene. Raspberry Pi launched its computer kits to encourage understanding of what had become commonplace devices.
Oneties and early twenties
The financial crash impacted the economy both immediately in the lack of available credit for industry but longer term in the fruits of austerity seen in the deterioration of the national infrastructure. Brexit followed, forcing a massive change in business models with the loss of a huge ‘home’ market. Covid shut everything down and left the UK with a depleted workforce from long term illness. The war in Ukraine set energy prices rocketing and inflation returned. Global warming and the imperative to move to net zero set major challenges throughout society. Traditional methods of steel production came under attack with the proposed alternative of electric furnaces. In the motor industry, manufacturers were encouraged to move to electric vehicles despite issues concerning battery manufacture, the lack of charging points and the inadequacy of the national grid. Lively debate continues of the merits of hydrogen as an alternative. Yet, JCB, which had manufactured machinery for building and civil engineering as well as farming, produced the first hydrogen powered digger. Renishaw produced machinery for additive manufacturing (3D printing in metals). Astra-Zeneca, which can trace its origin back to ICI, produce, with Oxford University, an effective Covid vaccine. GSK became one of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies.
British Manufacturing History 