I became steadily involved with shipbuilding at the time of the UCS Work-in, and from that time onwards remained heavily involved; and in 1978, I became General Secretary of the Confederation [known as the Confed]. I was right in at the beginning of all the work which started with the nationalisation of the industry.

The weakness of the industry was complacency on everyone's part. The managements failed to invest, and there was a lack of forward thinking on their part. Frankly, the trade unions lived a misconception, because we told ourselves that we were part of an efficient, highly productive workforce, when in essence our productivity was rock bottom. Our working practices were outdated, for understandable reasons, maybe, but they were still outdated. Our work rate was absolutely chaotic. The trade union structure in the industry gave rise to all sorts of demarcation problems and industrial disputes. We were not very clever. We were complacent all round. It was the structure, history, and traditions. If you went into ship repair, it was ten times worse. Ship repair was a casualised industry for a long time. It was not until about 1969, that we established a payment for the workforce when there was no work available. That was established at the Elderslie Dry Dock. In ship repair, the ships were queuing up to come in, the management were doing deals with the captains, and vice versa, and our members knew what was happening and put the screw on the management. You could get treble time in wages for doing certain jobs. I have to say that ship repair was almost corrupt in every sense. There was never a policy for shipbuilding. If you take nationalisation in 1977 then you can say there was a policy, a direction. There was a hope.

There never has been under any government an integrated maritime policy. That is why we have seen our shipbuilding and shipping interest decline. We have had no maritime strategy at all. If a country has a government who projects a philosophy and a policy of partnership such as in Japan, where the government, industry and the banks collaborate in order to create industries, and build a very strong domestic market in order to leapfrog into the world market with a competitive edge, that is not unfair.