Keith Adams recalls Sir Michael Edwardes, the Chairman and Chief Executive of British Leyland’s turbulent ride at the top of the company. It might have been a rough ride for the unlikely South African car boss, but he almost managed to turn around company in the most trying of circumstances.
Sir Michael Edwardes: the miracle man
Sir Michael Edwardes, the South African-born boss of British Leyland has died aged 88. He will be forever remembered for his time at the helm of BL during some of its darkest days. Edwardes was encouraged into taking the toughest gig in the British car industry in 1977 and, from day one, was thrown into the most trying of circumstances. He was a master tactician, and stood up to the Trade Unions at a time when such a feat was considered impossible, and was responsible for both saving the company from closure and ushering in a a product-led recovery, with the Austin Metro leading the way.
On 1 November 1977, Edwardes would end up being appointed Chairman and Chief Executive of British Leyland by newly-installed Chairman of the National Enterprise Board (NEB), Leslie Murphy, but only after some tough talking. This was not going to be an easy job and, with the British Leyland industrial crisis deepening by the day, Edwardes would need to take swift and decisive action. In fact, the 47-year old South African wasn’t immediately keen on taking the job, as he was in a pretty comfortable position as the Chairman of Chloride Batteries.
The previous month, Murphy had telephoned Edwardes and asked him if he wanted the job. Edwardes recalled that it took him at least 30 seconds to utter a reply to Murphy, such was his shock, but once this had passed, he saw a certain logic in his appointment. Michael Edwardes, therefore, deliberated the offer and told Murphy that he would get back to him. Edwardes knew he would take the job; in his own words, ‘Do you think one can refuse a task like that?’
Backed by the Government to rescue British Leyland
When Edwardes accepted the post, it was with the knowledge that his actions would be sanctioned by the then Labour Government. Such was the strength of his position, he even managed to persuade the Government to accept his appointment to British Leyland on the basis that it was on a three-year secondment from Chloride Batteries, his then-current employer. But he was in a good position – he was a member of the NEB board, had been previously awarded The Guardian Young Business Man of the Year in 1975 and had earned a reputation for tough talking and turning around companies.
On the day Michael Edwardes took up his new post, Leyland Cars was hit by another stoppage. Some 1500 workers at the Triumph Speke No.2 plant on Merseyside, which produced the TR7, walked out only a few hours after they had resumed work. They had been laid off for over three weeks by a strike since settled at Triumph, Coventry. He was asked on the day if he could bring about the recovery of British Leyland. He replied: ‘Yes, if I have to stand on my head to do it.’
Within days of being installed, he was making changes. They were needed – in 1976, more than 250,000 cars had been lost to industrial action, and 1977 was shaping up to be more of the same. Firstly, he renamed the company BL Limited with the intention of this being first step in a wide-ranging reform of the company. The shockwaves were massive – Alex Park resigned immediately, Derek Whittaker followed him within weeks and it soon became clear through a series of controlled ‘leaks’ that Edwardes was there to slim the company down by reducing the number of model ranges and the factories that produced them.
He knew where the problems lay and he felt that, in order to save BL, he had to employ ‘management’s right to manage’. There would be a plan to overhaul the model range and produce cars people actually wanted, and he signed that off. Then he needed to overcome Trade Union militancy in order to increase productivity and quality.
A tough start for Edwardes
What Edwardes faced first though was an enormous cash crisis. BL may have been (to use the words of Edwardes), ‘one of the largest public sector lame ducks’, but on the very week of his appointment, it was about to run out of money again, just as it had done at the end of 1974 necessitating it to be bailed out by the Government. He had to approach the clearing banks in order to obtain funds, simply to stay in business. He then approached the Government to secure finances to develop the next generation of cars.
The Labour Government agreed to this proposal, as it had done previously. But it questioned Edwardes’ intentions for Speke, asking for a full and frank account of why this closure should take place. He met the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, and explained that the Triumph TR7 was to remain in production, but it would be transferred to Canley. Callaghan replied that a more sound business decision would have been to scrap the car, not move the assembly of it.
In February 1978 and in his first major speech in his capacity as BL boss, Edwardes laid out his plans to save the company to a delegation of 720 Shop Stewards, Union and Employee representatives. He pulled no punches, his programme was going to be ruthless – he needed to cut out the excesses in the company in order to save it. But he could save it. When balloted, this assembly backed him by a majority of 715 to 5.
Unions support Edwardes’ plans
Edwardes later said in an interview published in Autocar in November 1978, that, ‘the remarkable reception I got (made me happy) when I addressed the Shop Stewards and the national union officials. Also when I went around SU carburettors, I got a standing ovation from the work force, who shouted support for what we are doing’.
Yet, even armed with this knowledge, industrial relations between Edwardes and the Trade Unions took an immediate nosedive. Too often, strike action became the first, rather than the last resort in dealing with industrial issues; Longbridge, Cowley, Solihull, Canley and Speke were bought to a standstill. Edwardes responded by saying, ‘What made me unhappy is that the 99% of the workforce who want to get on with the job have not yet found a way of neutralising the 1% who want to paralyse us.’
Speke would end up being the battleground. When the management requested union assistance in getting the production line moved out of Speke, they were met with the Shops Stewards’ disapproval – they feared for the jobs of the production line workers. The assembly line staff staged a sit-in at the factory, while Edwardes delivered his ultimatum: assist the management or lose the entire factory for good. He had the Government behind him and he was prepared to ‘do what it takes’.
In a letter to The Times in 1980, he said: ‘The content of the 1980 plan has been welcomed by the unions as ‘the best the company has ever had”, and it is on this basis that we move forward into 1980 confident that we have the support of the workforce. Is it not time for responsible people (Left, Right and Centre) to support this last chance of retaining an indigenous motor industry; to stop sneering at those remaining managers and employees who are still determined to secure BL’s recovery?’
Getting the job done by spilling blood
After protracted union belligerence at the Merseyside plant, which involved not only sit-ins, but also acts of sabotage, Edwardes finally called time, and closed down the entire car producing facility at the factory. The cost of this action had been huge. As well as jobs lost, it saw the end of the promising V8-engined Triumph Lynx (above). But a line had been drawn, and the battle to save BL was gaining momentum. In the end, this would lead Edwardes into his most famous confrontation.
At Longbridge, Trade Union convenor Derek Robinson was fighting management at every turn and, in doing so, was gaining notoriety outside of the company. Support for Robinson and his countless strikes from the Longbridge production line staff had been on the wane for some time, and the closure of Speke had left the workforce with little appetite for a fight, even if Derek Robinson wanted to march them into battle.
For Longbridge to return to a sensible level of productivity, Robinson had to go. The national media was calling for it, BL management wanted it and, increasingly so, the Longbridge workforce wanted it. When this man was finally relieved of his duties at Longbridge, in November 1979, a marker had been laid – Edwardes would do what it took in order to turn BL into a profitable organisation.
After a failed appeal for his reinstatement in February 1980, Robinson would say of Edwardes, ‘He talks as though someone else was Chairman while plant after plant has been closed down and home markets are handed over to importers. My record of commitment to British Leyland is second to none. I have solved more strikes in BL than Sir Michael Edwardes has provoked, and that is saying something. British Leyland’s industrial relations policy seems to be one of blackmail. As for Sir Michael, he either sacks or intimidates people and in myself thinks that he has found a scapegoat for the company’s problems.’
Restoring sanity on the shopfloor
Sanity was, however, beginning to be restored in the car plants. When a march was held in the centre of Birmingham, culminating in a meeting of support for Robinson, the full extent of how politically motivated were the people that supported Robinson was sadly obvious. There were a lot of people at the meeting and those present comprised a great number of people with very far-left political affiliations. Very few of the delegates at this activist meeting were actually the car workers of Longbridge – the people actually affected by all these stoppages.
So, that was the state of affairs with the Unions. But market share for the actual products was tanking, and BL had far too many factories producing far too few cars that not enough people wanted. Other factories needed to go the same way. Time was called on MG at Abingdon in 1980 and, later on, the car making facility at Canley went the same way. Then came Solihull, which had its Rover SD1 and TR7 production lines halted. Eventually this plan of closures cost 90,000 jobs.
Meanwhile, the product plan was coming on stream. His first marketing shuffle was to undo the ‘lump it all under Leyland’ approach recommended by the Ryder Report, finally burying the Leyland name for good. In a reversal of the Ryder plan, Edwardes restructured the company so that it was split up into four main divisions; Special Products, Trucks and Buses, International and the motor division – something that eerily resembled the structure that Donald Stokes had put in place.
Although this may have looked to be the case, Edwardes denied this vehemently, ‘In no way are we going back to how Leyland used to be!’, he proclaimed, ‘On the outside, it might look as if we were going back to what the company was like before BL was founded. This is not so. It is true that we have done a lot of decentralising. We have decentralised operations, but we are centralising decisions.’ Edwardes had reasoned that the Leyland name was toxic in the marketplace, be reserved for trucks and buses only.
The ‘product-led recovery’ plan take shape
Plans were drawn-up to introduce a streamlined package of small-to-medium sized cars encompassing work already done on the LC10 project which had been started in late 1975 – and expanding it to include a larger saloon-bodied version. They would be launched in 1983 and ’84, following on from the Austin Metro, which would be the first of the new-generation models to hit the market. The LC8 and LC10 had to be good enough to save BL.
There would be some tough years where the Marina and Allegro would have to live on far longer than their sell-by dates and, even with the cosmetic improvements they were continuously receiving, these two volume-selling cars would be seriously over the hill – they already were. What was needed was a stopgap in order to generate sales until the new cars came on stream – and that’s where Honda came in. Edwardes had always made it known that he wanted BL to play a greater role in the world affairs – companies were all linked to form a ‘spider’s web’ of collaboration and assistance and the company needed to be a part of this.
After much deliberation and a great deal of groundwork by Ray Horrocks and Mark Snowdon, Honda was chosen from a short shortlist of companies that were deemed suitable to do business with. Once it was determined that Honda was keen to collaborate with BL, both companies quickly established a favourable working relationship after Michael Edwardes signed the deal with Honda on Boxing Day in 1979. What followed came quickly – the Honda Ballade was chosen as the basis of the new car and following extensive development work done on the company’s newly-opened test track at Gaydon, Warwickshire, the Triumph Acclaim was launched in October 1981. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with Honda.
Margaret Thatcher and Sir Michael Edwardes
When Margaret Thatcher swept into power in May 1979, she made it clear to Edwardes that she was extra-keen to return BL to the private sector as soon as possible. Her feeling was that the Government should no longer continue to fund the car company: it had already cost the taxpayer £2bn to this point in time and the economy could not realistically continue to fund the company at such a rate. Declassified documents which emerged in 2013 reveal just how close the company came to closure at the end of 1979 – with the Honda deal and Sir Michael Edwardes’ future plans ensuring the Government chose to keep the company open, despite front bench opposition.
Edwardes possessed enough acumen to convince Thatcher that, if privatisation was the ultimate goal, then BL should not be carved up because he figured that without Jaguar, MG and Rover, the high image parts of the company, there would be the ‘unsaleable rump’ of Austin-Morris left over. Edwardes managed to persuade Thatcher to release further Government funding of £990m in order to increase the development budget of the LC10 in order to get both versions into production as painlessly as possible. The fact that he managed to persuade her not to carve up and privatise the profit-making parts of BL would later become a bone of contention between the two.
During his tenure as Chairman of BL, Edwardes and his team had successfully broken the Union stranglehold on the car factories, streamlined the array of factories and, most vitally, had put in place plans, for a logical range of cars: Metro, Maestro and Montego. He had trimmed production volumes to realistic levels and improved productivity at both Longbridge and Cowley.
When his contract came up for renewal though in 1982, the eve of the launch of the Maestro, Margaret Thatcher did not renew it. Thatcher felt that Edwardes had stood in the way of rapid privatisation of the firm and she couldn’t forgive him for this. So much so, that by keeping BL together as a group, he had increased the burden the company was already placing on the economy. Edwardes had been smart enough to choose the man to replace him as Chairman, 67-year-old Sir Austin Bide, before the event, knowing that as a ‘strong businessman’, he would continue to run the company the way that Edwardes would have wanted.
Edwardes saves the company
The legacy that Edwardes had left was a leaner, fitter car producing company, one with an image that was improving – and one that was a player on the world stage again, having forged a lasting partnership with Honda. It is fair to say that quoting an oft-paraphrased statement of the time, that Edwardes had brought the company ‘back from the brink’ and allowed it to fight another day. Unfortunately for Edwardes, his grand plan of a ‘product-led’ recovery, relying on the massive success of the Maestro and Montego models, failed fundamentally.
The two cars had both emerged as worthy, but rather dull cars, not selling nearly well enough, not making a big enough return on their development costs, or enough to cover the £147m investment in the modernisation of Cowley. This meant that the products that he had conceived in order save BL from closure in the 1980s sold only adequately and merely maintained the question mark that was hovering above the whole operation.
Thankfully, in the Honda tie-up Edwardes had engineered, he had left BL with a resource to call upon in the development of future cars.
Is the Editor of the Parkers website and price guide, formerly editor of Classic Car Weekly, and launch editor/creator of Modern Classics magazine. Has contributed to various motoring titles including Octane, Practical Classics, Evo, Honest John, CAR magazine, Autocar, Pistonheads, Diesel Car, Practical Performance Car, Performance French Car, Car Mechanics, Jaguar World Monthly, MG Enthusiast, Modern MINI, Practical Classics, Fifth Gear Website, Radio 4, and the the Motoring Independent...
Likes 'conditionally challenged' motors and taking them on unfeasible adventures all across Europe.
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sad to hear of the demise of Sir Michael.
Sorry to be a pedant though, Tony Benn was replaced as Industry minister in June 1975, over 2 years before Sir Michael arrived at BL.
Thank you. Now fixed.
Sad to hear of his death and thank you for this fair assessment of his contribution to BL. Sad that the direction and drive to put the company right was not there from the start and we did not have the wasted years of the Ryder Plan.
Just heard the sad news on radio this morning and read Keith’s piece about Sir Michael. I think history will be kind to him. I will always remember him for setting up the joint deal with Honda to build the Acclaim and that in turn progressed to the SD3 and R800, 600 etc.
Sadly, all these years later even MG Rover is no more. As my Father used to say – “nothing is forever”
My industrial hero! No one is perfect and Michael made mistakes like everyone else – I think he missed an opportunity to make MG the greatest name in sporting cars – but he still saved BL. Pity four gentlemen a few years later did not have the same commitment!
From 4 decade ago….
September 18th 1979
BL LTD – The news was bleak for British Leyland today when all major unions rejected the plan by chairman Sir Michael Edwardes to streamline the ailing car giant. After a four-hour meeting in Coventry, the newly formed 28-member emergency committee, consisting of full time national union officials and senior BL shop stewards, said in a statement:
“The Edwardes plan is not acceptable to the trade unions. Full support will be given by the trade unions to stop implementation of the plan. All members are called upon to refuse to accept plant closures and mass redundancies.”
I’m somewhat reminded of the Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron and a man by the name of Admiral Roshestvensky when I look at Micheal Edwardes.
He managed to get a God awful pile of outdated crap and a load of bolshie subordinates into some sort of order only to get done over good and proper by central command (aka the Iron Windbag) and watch it all fall apart soon afterwards (Montego & Maestro).
He even had his own “Sink by Themselves Squadron”, in this case the All-aggro (the only thing quick and lively about it was the rust), the Marina and to a lesser extent the Princess.
On the upside he didn’t have Giant Hognose snakes, a Crocodile, the Kamchatka, a paper eating goat, some Chameleons, the Kamchatka – etc etc. Although you could at a stretch liken the Allegro to the Kamchatka (with a distinct lack of 300kn Japanese torpedo boats toddling around the dogger bank to be sure).
I feel sad that he hasn’t got more recognition – but even if he’d managed to save the company and it was still going today (a situation roughly akin to surviving Omaha beach in an Astramax DD) I doubt he’d have gotten any thanks. We don’t seem to honour people even when they deserve it.
Was sad to see the headline here and the way it was utterly ignored everywhere else.
If you are unfamiliar with the 2nd Pacific Squadron and the joys of their experience I suggest Drachinifel on YouTube.
RIP
History will show that the tough medicine he prescribed kept the volume car business going for another 25 years
I suppose a contrary view is that by slimming BL Cars down too much, he left it too small to ever be viable as an independent volume manufacturer. Even if the “M” cars had been a success, would what became Austin Rover have been viable selling 600000 cars a year, from 2 plants in the UK?
I guess that depends. If they’ve have been successful and reintroduced some of the untainted names and done upmarket versions of the Ms – like the mini-xx that was based on the Montego they might have made a pretty good go of it, and if they had – then they’d have been much more likely to get investment when the R8s were demoed – giving them a chance to develop something better than R3 and negating the need for cityrover.
Honda wouldn’t have legged it if things had gone better and even if they had there would have been a much better chance of getting a buy out or tie up out of it.
BAE would probably not have sold them to Bavarian Money Wasters and we wouldn’t have ended up with the cretinwagens we are deluged with via BMW and JLR. Incidentally an article on the new Ineos Defender replacement backs up the comments I made on the JLR one – farmers would love an updated version of the Defender – just not the technocack leather seat horror that JLR have come up with. They want a reliable vehicle that can carry what a defender can carry and be cleaned out inside with a power washer. I’m almost tempted to suggest someone tries that on a current JLR product and then tries to drive it – I’m thinking instant electrocution.. Like an electric fence with air con.
But in the end they had chance after chance after chance for decades – arguably the only product they made that was in any way completely successful was the Mini (and the 1100/1300) and they lost money on a fair percentage of those. And even those had their problems. The 1800 ADO17 was really 30 years before it’s time and to be scrupulously fair not exactly attractive and I could go on. And that’s not including the strikes etc.
After the 1980s it wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.
The problem with the BL car strategy in the late 70s and early 80s is that it ended up with both
a) A volume car business that was too small to be competitive in the long run
b) An abdication of most of the speciality models that potentially could make more money once the market turned around
With volume cars you have to have volume, whereas with more premium models, the volumes don’t have to be so great. Throughout the 80s BMW produced 2 to 300000 of the 2nd generation E30 3 series a year and would have made a fortune doing so.
I can’t help thinking that the Triumph SD2 (with better styling) would have made a lot more money than the Montego for example.
The question would have been where the money would have come from not to slim it down, given they had neither the product or the European sales network (BMC network was lost with the failure of the Allegro) to sell the volumes necessary.
The Government saw BL as something to sell off what they could and keep alive until alternative employment opportunities i.e. Nissan came along. Thatcher and Tebbit had to fight the treasury to fund the M cars and the K series engine, because the treasury wanted to let it all go.
So in the political reality of late 70s / early 80s Britain, there was no hope of getting the funding to do anything more than he could and what he did save was more successful than anybody could reasonably expected at the time.
Very sorry to hear of the death of Michael Edwards back in his native South Africa. He certainly had an interesting career and a front row seat to the British industrial anarchy of the 1970’s. I do however think its something of an exaggeration to say he saved the company. He certainly tried his very best but all he really achieved was to spend a lot of taxpayers money trying to stave off what was pretty much inevitable. You do however have to give him credit for finally getting rid of red Robo Robinson. The much hyped M cars that were supposed to save the day turned out to be something of a disappointment. They failed on the market which quickly realised how lack lustre they really were despite all the patriotic advertising taxpayers money could buy. The Maestro was probably the worst of the trio of saviours and looked very dated from the word go. And of course as was the tradition at BL there had to be a strike on the day of its launch just to remind everyone a leopard never changes its spots and nothing in the company had really changed. It was still the same old BL whom we all loved to hate. RIP Sir Micheal they really didn’t deserve your valiant efforts and you outlived the company by 14 years.
He saved British Leyland from collapse and for all the Maestro and Montego weren’t the company’s savours, Edwardes scored some decent wins for the company such as the Metro, a new range of trucks, the partnership with Honda and the Jaguar revival. Also by the end of his reign, a lot of the pessimism had gone from British Leyland and while this was painful for workers who lost their jobs, the Survival Plan saw a large increase in productivity and an end to union militancy and pointless strikes.
I think Michael Edwards had absolutely the right strategy for BL in the late 70s/early 80s. Unfortunately it was badly executed. Edwards went out on a limb to convince a very hostile government that it should invest in the M cars and the re-equipping of BL plants to build them whilst all the time fighting off the unions. In that respect he worked miracles. He was badly let down by those tasked with implementing this strategy and responsible for delivering such hopelessly inadequate products as the Maestro and Montego.
Quote: “My industrial hero! No one is perfect and Michael made mistakes like everyone else – I think he missed an opportunity to make MG the greatest name in sporting cars – but he still saved BL. Pity four gentlemen a few years later did not have the same commitment!”
Re; the four gentleman who I presume you mean Messrs Towers, Stephenson, Beale and Edwards? The situation for them was completely different in that they were on their own with no likely government bailout or collaborative partner in place at the time of taking on the Rover Cars business in May 2000. What they had was a dowry of £427 million from BMW to help keep the company running on a day-to-day business and a large stock of new unsold cars which had to be gradually released to the dealer network over a period of over one year or more, and at a carefully discounted price, without having the effect of creating a disruption in the supply of new cars. Nor could they afford to affect the residual values of those new cars being built.
I genuinely believe these four gentleman did have the same commitment. However, with no financial saviour behind them or a government ready to intervene, there is only such much they could do when the Longbridge operation was burning into that dowry on a daily basis and you are selling products which are predominantly middle-aged and have only a limited market (and not helped by many national sales companies being previously linked in with BMW and Land Rover sales outlets). The financial analysts gave MG Rover Group three years at best, but in reality they survived just one month shy of five years. And, yes, they did more for that ‘flawed’ brand MG in just under five years of trading than many of their predecessors had achieved over a longer period. I have two MG saloons and like them more for their ingredients than the badge on the grille.
Michael Edwardes had an almighty task ahead of him and I am sure there were businesses and brands he would loved to have saved if there had been an opportunity for sentiment. Sadly there wasn’t.
Keith,
Really enjoyed your very fair obituary of Michael Edwardes. He will be very much part of our story when we launch “The Great British Car Journey” attraction next year. http://www.greatbritishcarjourney.com
Very best
Richard Usher.
Edwardes did make people believe British Leyland could succeed. I quite liked a bullish advertising campaign they had in 1981 with the strapline, British Leyland Fighting Back, which was vastly better than the pleading adverts from the late seventies like Buy British, You Know Why. Indeed the company was fighting back by 1981 with the success of the Metro, the tie up with Honda, and improvements to their family cars. Also it seemed the endless falling market share was being reversed, strikes were on the way out, and quality was improving.
Keith – sorry to hear that Sir Michael had passed away. But a very fair obituary to the man who took on the most difficult and controversial job in British industry at the time.
Interesting that in his book ‘Back From The Brink’ he identified Jaguar and Land Rover as the star brands within BL. All these years later one can only concur.
I have read “Back from the Brink”, Edwardes did indeed predict only Jaguar and Land Rover as having long-term prospects, and that happened. I do not recall any predictions by Edwardes of a diamond in the coal pile, that being the BMW MINI. Edwardes was scathing of the Ryder Report, declared as unachievable, his assessment of his predecessors was equally scathing, predecessors allowing a vacuum of new models in development and vacuous leadership which allowed an excess of union control on the shopfloor. Edwardes, was sipping from a poisoned chalice, of the M cars, the Metro was pushed ahead of the Maestro/Montego in release. Metro saved the company, but Maestro/Montego missed the boat
When Edwardes took over British Leyland, it was a national joke and any comedian could raise a laugh by mentioning its products, but by 1983, when he left, there was a genuine feeling of goodwill towards the company and car magazines seemed excited by products like the new Maestro. A shame the Maestro and Montego that Edwardes had put so much effort into turned out to be unreliable, but when they were launched, there was a feeling both cars could really challenge Ford and win back market share.
Cheers, Keith – an excellent summary of Sir Michael’s achievements at BL. I was surprised to read of the circumstances behind his departure in 1982 as his own account of it – in his contemporary, superb book “Back From the Brink” – claims that he chose to step down, feeling that he had finally achieved his primary aims of saving BL and launching a new range of vehicles fit for the 1980s.
I have the Edwardes book, his diagnosis of BL troubles included his predecessors in management of the early seventies, management who created a vacuum in both lack of new models to sell and a vacuum which allowed union-led militancy to flourish and his acumen included the prediction of only Jaguar and Land Rover having a long-term future, and, his name for the Ryder Report: the UnAchievableRyder Report
His biggest achievement, giving Jaguar home rule and freeing it from the dead hand of BL bureaucracy, allowing the company to start a successful revival and return to the private sector in 1984. Yes we know there were problems with the XJ 40 that made Ford buy the company, but the privately run Jaguar in the main has been a success and is one of our biggest export earners. Makes a change from a company that 40 years ago was near death with collapsing export sales and terrible reliability.
I can remember watching That’s Life, a consumer show watched by 17 million people, regularly receiving complaints about British Leyland cars and the Princess being crucified by Esther Rantzen and her panel, Also there was a feature called Heap of the Week where unreliable consumer products were destroyed on air( not a Princess, as the budget wasn’t big enough) and many of these were British. I do recall someone destroying a Bush television on air, another make that once had a good reputation like the forerunners of British Leyland, as they were tired of it breaking down,
The Bush story has many comparisons to that of British Leyland and the Japanese coming to the rescue. Bush, part of the wider Rank Organisation, was a well respected brand in the fifties and sixties, producing stylish radios like the TR82 ans producing decent quality television sets. Unfortunately cost cutting, staid designs and issues with quality saw Bush’s reputation fall and the company was hobbled by having to deal with seven unions that made any kind of negotiation difficult and hindered productivity. By 1981, the company’s plant in PLymouth faced closure and over 2000 people faced redundancy.
Fortunately Rank had signed a deal with Toshiba to share designs and components and Toshiba decided to take over part of the factory and produce its own branded products in Plymouth, ending the Bush brand for several years. Rather like what was occurring at British Leyland with the Honda based Triumph Acclaim, the new television sets built to Japanese standards and 500 jobs were saved. Also job demarcation was ended, a single union replaced seven, and the factory began to grow, producing microwave ovens and video recorders and doubling its workforce by 1985. Eventually Toshiba did move production to Poland at the end of the noughties, but their takeover of Bush, simultaneous to that of Honda’s involvement at Austin Rover, saved a considerable part of the television manufacturing industry.