L. Gardner and Sons Limited: The History of a British Industrial Firm. A Study with Special Reference to Markets, Workplace Industrial Relations, and Manufacturing Engineering Technology, 1955 – 1986

6CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION What has happened to the motor industry since the 1950s exemplifies what has been going wrong in too many other parts of British industry: higher pay not matched by higher productivity; low profits, so low investment; too little going into R and D and new design ... and why haven't we had the productivity? Over manning. Resistance to change. Too many strikes and stoppages.1 Speaking in 1981, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain’s characteristically forthright observations were patently one-dimensional. Even if they were directed exclusively towards the motor industry, such sweeping assertions seem unacceptably clichéd and glib, and their wider association with ‘too many other parts of British industry’ render them whimsical and far-fetched. It is difficult to understand, for example, how and why so many flawed and inefficient firms could have survived during the thirty-year period that Thatcher referred to, let alone have prevailed over the harsh conditions that many would have encountered during the previous half-century, and yet have foundered seemingly en masse during the 1980s and 1990s. Although something clearly went wrong during the late twentieth century, to indict the majority of British industrial firms in Thatcher’s depreciative terms is an oversimplified – as well as fallacious – concept. Nevertheless, her views probably reflected the sentiments of a large majority of the British population, and several of her comments certainly echo the opinions of many historians and scholars, both at the time and later. A close analysis of a typical Greater Manchester-based manufacturing engineering concern, from its foundation in 1868 until 1955, and a detailed examination of the final thirty years of its existence, reveals many inconsistencies in terms of the conventional mantra of Britain’s industrial ‘failure’. I Rationale This thesis evolved from a dissertation submitted in accordance with the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Master of Arts in 2001. Although it was not surprising that its hypothesis – which was based on the assumption that warfare and government interference impacted negatively on industrial towns in the Northwest of England during the twentieth century – was confirmed, the research exposed perceptible historiographical ambiguities that the time and volume constraints inherent in a Master’s dissertation made impossible to investigate thoroughly. In particular, it revealed apparent disparities and gaps in scholarly analyses and inconsistencies in debates and assertions concerning the question of British industrial ‘decline’ since the mid-nineteenth century, and the so-called ‘deindustrialization’ of Britain during the late twentieth century. In short, the 1 Margaret Thatcher addressing the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) on 6 October 1981, quoted in Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 119.