I've Been Collared

When I was a young teenager in mid-1980s Great Britain, there was a distinct narrative about work. And specifically, about the type of work someone of my age and background ought to be pursuing.

That I was the son of an engineer, grandson of an engineer (and inventor – more of which some other time), seemed somehow irrelevant. The future, so the pervading narrative went, was not engineering or manufacturing, or any of those other industries which were too often portrayed as outmoded and unfashionable, even ‘dirty’. No, the future was services.

Manufacturing, we were led to believe, was either beneath us or was an industry we should leave to the fast-developing economies – Korea, Taiwan, perhaps even India – whose cost-base rendered our manufacturers uncompetitive and likely always would.

Some leeway was granted to manufacturing considered ‘attractive’ – computing, high-end luxury goods, bagless vacuum cleaners – but let’s be honest, by and large our blue-collar workers were being told to skill up for a white-collar age.

To my great chagrin, I bought into this narrative. Hook, line and steel anchor.

And in my early years of work (banking, sorry) and then marketing (sorrier still), I was happily towed along on the groundswell of seeing this landscape of manufacturer where son followed father, followed grandfather (and much more rarely daughter followed mother and grandmother) as hopelessly last century.

Our textiles trade had gone, our steel trade was following, mining was in disarray; what chance for our cars, buses, aircraft or ships? They were not the glamourous, exciting, futuristic world of computer-led services that my enlightened generation was so keen to inherit.

Looking back, I really cannot conceive my naivety.

But it surely wasn’t just mine? It was a media narrative, and without wishing to entertain political debate, my fervent memory is that the message suited all the prevailing governments of my youth. If it was only me and my perception, why was I spending every other weekend working alongside my dad rebuilding a 1973 British Leyland Mini?

This ignorance of the reality of manufacturing was dispelled for me many years ago, when Engage started working with some of the world’s leading manufacturers. But it was really driven home last month.

I had the great good fortune to interview several shipbuilders as part of a major new film. Among their number was a man who started working in a shipyard aged just fifteen, and who still does nearly sixty years later. And alongside him was a young woman who recently left the hospitality trade to work proudly in the yard where her father and uncle also worked. And what struck me as we spoke was that these were not a ‘flexible labour market’ to be retrained when economic circumstances dictate. These are artisans who can no more cease shipbuilding, than a Premier League player can simply stop being a footballer. These are professional people doing a professional job. One they want to do, are skilled to do, and love doing.

When I asked what happened when the yard was closed by a former employer, one shipbuilder told me: ‘I moved to another yard miles down the coast. What else could I do? I’m a shipbuilder. I went where they were making ships.’ Others will have no doubt moved whole families and swapped friends to do the same.

Some went abroad and yes, some retrained – despite their multi-year apprenticeships and years of unique shipbuilding expertise. Because making a ship sounds so easy to someone like me. And yet it is incredibly, almost unimaginably, hard. Whether it’s made from steel or plastic, large or small, I am in no doubt that most of the skills involved are simply beyond my competence and almost certainly well beyond my patience. Be assured, shipbuilders are clever people doing clever stuff. Much cleverer, I’ll wager, than most bankers and marketers.

I don’t profess to any more knowledge than my incomplete economics degree when it comes to the markets and political discourse. But I do profess to know people and to recognise when someone or something is the victim of an underserved poor branding and reputation.

And that’s where we too often find our manufacturing industries and their people – cast as the past, whereas they are by any sane assessment also our brightest possible future. Because it’s only the minds of these great engineers, young and old, across our manufacturing industries who hold the keys to solving all our major challenges – like climate, technology and security.

For all those years of ignorance, I am truly sorry. But for the future, rest assured I will go out of my way to sing the praises and benefits of our great manufacturers. And I will do my damnedest to make sure their skills and expertise are recognised far and wide.