I was chosen to head the Committee because I had no prejudices about the industry at all. They wanted a general purpose industrialist. The nature of my involvement was simply that report. There was nothing either before or after. The government had decided to have a Shipbuilding Industry Board, and it seemed to me that I had no role anymore. I declined to answer anybody's questions after that because I did not want to cause any confusion. Journalists love to find differences of nuance. I stepped right out of the industry.

I was not particularly keen to do it as I had no special knowledge, but I was willing if Anthony Burney could be the accountant in the team. I knew him well as a friend, and I also knew the quality of his work. The Board of Trade, the sponsoring department, suggested the other members of the Committee for obvious reasons. Fraser was suggested as an engineer; Professor Lighthill as a senior academic research scientist, Scott as a management consultant, Charles Smith as a trade unionist [General Secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union]. Professor Thomas Wilson came from Glasgow University as an economist. Then we were given Victor Chapman as Secretary, who was a very able civil servant. He had been Private Secretary to Harold Wilson, so he was a high flier intellectually. We had one or two meetings where we decided how to go about it, and discussed what was expected by Douglas Jay [President of the Board of Trade] and other ministers. We then worked out the sequence in which we would do things, both in terms of visits, and in terms of hearing chosen witnesses [written evidence was publicly asked for]. We then started the detective work. We included big customers as well as suppliers like the steel industry as important people to question. We cast our net fairly wide.

We had some difficulty in meeting the trade unions. There was a great personality in the industry called Danny McGarvey [a Scot] of the Boilermakers. He would not meet us. We kept offering him dates in Newcastle and in Glasgow. Finally he agreed to come with some of his colleagues and have a meal with us in a pub in Newcastle one evening.