Sutherland

Introduction

A speech by John Sutherland during a "Marconi Week" in 1973

First may I welcome you to Marconi Radar Systems Limited - it is an honour and a privilege to have such a distinguished gathering today and I hope you find value and interest in what you see and hear, and end the day knowing more about Marconi in general and Marconi Radar — Leicester, in particular. I thought it would be useful to give you a few facts and figures, and a brief historical review before introducing our very celebrated main speaker.

As you know, we are a part of the General Electric Company - this is of similar size to the biggest electrical groups in the World and can boast a business performance and technical integrity second to none. The annual turnover amounts to over £1000 million, and the Company employs about 200,000 people. At the time of the English Electric / GEC merger, all the capital electronic interests of the group (excluding industrial automation) were brought together in a unit called GEC-Marconi Electronics, embracing Radar, Communications, Avionics and miscellaneous other Space and Defence activities, and companies were formed to exploit these four areas of business. GEC-Marconi employs some 30,000 people with a turnover of over £200 million per annum. The Company which you are visiting to-day, and which I and my colleagues run, is called Marconi Radar Systems Limited and brings together the radar interests of all the constituent companies of GEC - English Electric, Marconi, GEC, AEI (both the old BTH and Metrovick) and Elliott Brothers. Each has a fascinating history, which I hope to sketch for you very briefly, but above all the remarkable and gratifying factor is the harmony and goodwill with which the former members of the old companies work together under the Marconi banner. The Leicester unit as you know came from the AEI background, and comprises members of the old Metrovick and BTH teams.

George Westinghouse came from Pittsburgh in 1899 and built "British Westinghouse" in Trafford Park in Manchester, as a replica of his Pittsburgh plant. Two thirds of George Westinghouse capital was written off in the first 14 years, to the disgust of the shareholders! The building was vast and satisfied the needs for over twenty years.

Westinghouse took 40 young British engineers to America for a year's training and. they became known as the "Holy Forty". I worked for one of the last - Sir Arthur Fleming as a Metrovick apprentice in 1941. In 1919 the ownership of Westinghouse became British by acquisition of the capital by Metropolitan Carriage and Wagon Company, then by Vickers and thus Metropolitan Vickers. British Thomson Houston was formed in 1894 as a subsidiary of the General Electric Company of America, and had fiercely competitive rivalry with Westinghouse. Indeed, BTH paid no dividends until the first World War. The main heavy manufacturing unit was established at Rugby, going into production in 1902.

There are many fascinating stories of pre-First War and between-War battles when various mergers and trading arrangements almost took place and failed. In 1921 British GEC and BTH almost merged. It is interesting to think that it took 70 years to bring these electrical giants together.

The first major link-up and the anglicisation of the Electrical Industry was the formation of Associated Electrical Industries, based on Metropolitan Vickers and British Thomson Houston in the 1920s. Initially International General Electrical had substantial share holdings, but less than a majority, and these were gradually reduced.

English Electric was formed in 1919 to bring together a number of smaller electrical companies: Dick, Kerr - Willans and Robinson - Phoenix Dynamo and some forfeit German firms - British subsidiaries of AEG and Siemens. The Company was at a very low ebb in 1930 in the midst of the depression when George Nelson Senior (a Metrovick man incidentally) took over the Managing Directorship and pulled the Company into shape and into prosperity.

In 1946 the Post War Government nationalised Cable and Wireless, and in so doing acquired Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, re-named The Marconi Company ten years ago, and re-sold the assets to English Electric.

This brings me to The Marconi Company, whose history is probably the most fascinating of all, particularly since it is so closely interwoven with the life story of Marconi himself. Marconi was born on 25 April 1874 in Bologna - his centenary occurs next year and we are hoping to celebrate this event very fully. His father was widowed, and remarried an Irish girl - Annie Jameson from the famous Whisky family. Marconi was a born experimenter, and carried out many interesting experiments as a boy and young man, with encouragement from his father who allowed him to set up a laboratory at home. He was the first man to foresee the practical and commercial implications of electromagnetic radiation, and he took out the world's first patent, filed 2nd March 1897. Marconi wanted to exploit his ideas, and this needed capital; he could not muster any interest in Italy and he came to England in 1896 with help from his relatives, and through letters of introduction was able to present his ideas and make practical demonstrations to the Post Office and to the Army and Navy. One famous demonstration took place on Salisbury Plain in 1896. The Company was incorporated on 20 July 1897 as "The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company" to be changed shortly to "Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company". There are many milestones in the colourful history and many "firsts". - the world's first Radio Factory in Hall Street Chelmsford in 1898, in an old silk mill. The South Coast is littered with plaques commemorating historic wireless events — across the Bristol channel, ship-to-shore and, of course, the famous transatlantic transmissions of the world's first public broadcast from Writtle - 2MT in February 1922, then Station 2L0 from Marconi House in London - one of the constituent partners in The British Broadcasting Company in 1922 together with BTH, Metrovick and GEC no less!  The Imperial short wave wireless scheme in the 1920s and thus the link-up which became Cable and Wireless - the equipping of the World's first public television service which went on the air in 1936.

Marconi's activities were of necessity World wide, and there were many subsidiaries (including one in America which became RCA in I919.)

Marconi Radar Systems started life as a Company in 1969 embodying the Aerospace, Radar and Defence Division of AEI, the Airspace Control Division of Elliott and the Radar Division of Marconi.

Marconi Radar Systems Limited has an annual turnover of £30 million and employs about 4,500 people. We are located on two major sites in Leicester, at Gateshead-on-Tyne and on two major sites in Chelmsford. It is truly a 'systems' company in that we pride ourselves on providing a total across-the-board service to our customers. This is a highly technological field, and our annual spend on Research and Development in the Radar Company alone is well over £5 million. Our principal markets are:-

Naval Defence Systems

Air Traffic Control

Military Defence Systems

Control and Instrumentation in Military and Naval systems

Much of our business is overseas and since the war we have exported many times the volume in these markets of the whole of the rest of British Industry put together. For example, we have built over 3,000 air defence radars and supplied over £250 million of radar and associated equipment to nearly half the countries of the world.

For example, one of the great specialities of the Leicester teams has been radar trackers. and they have gained recognition as the British authority in this field over a period exceeding 30 years. Our equipment is always in the forefront of techniques and requires great skill and ingenuity from the men and women who design, engineer, manufacture, test, install, maintain and support it. These qualities have always abounded - I believe that in this country, with little in the way of natural resources, it is just this skill and ingenuity which represents our greatest national asset, and which can help us to achieve national prosperity. We are always looking to the future, and we place great emphasis on education. We have today well over 300 young men and women under training, the majority actually in full-time instruction or a major part of their time under instruction.

I must tell you, as you will already have seen, that we have some industrial relations problems at present in our works. This has shown itself in the absence of a number of works personnel this afternoon - 232 people did not turn up this afternoon, about 45% of the Blackbird Road work force. Many of you will know that industry in Leicester has been enjoying a boom for nearly a year now. Many firms have expanded and new ones have come to the area, and the effects on the demand for labour and on local rates of pay have been entirely predictable, and there are certainly a number of firms now who are more competitive in the labour market in Leicester.

Every firm has been restricted to a greater or lesser extent in its freedom to negotiate new rates of pay since the commencement of the Pay and Prices Control; we, in Leicester, are no exception. This situation has led to particular dissatisfaction with our inability to improve rates or to make promises about our future intentions, and some demonstrations of this dissatisfaction have been going on for the past four weeks.

However, efforts continue to be made to discuss every aspect of this problem, and we hope that some solution can be found which will enable normal work to be resumed on the very significant turnover that we want to achieve this year.

It is now my pleasant task to introduce Sir Eric Eastwood. He is Director of Research of G.E.C. but also Chief Scientist of the Marconi Company, a post which happily still brings me and my colleagues into contact with him from time to time. He has been a direct guide and adviser to many of us for many years, and in spite of his many preoccupations, and national duties outside GEC and Marconi, he is never too busy to have a chat or discuss a problem. Sir Eric had an interesting and distinguished career in radar in the Royal Air Force during the war; after the war he left his academic career to join English Electric and shortly afterwards came to Marconi as Chief of Research. He has achieved a unique position in Radar, and is recognised as a world wide authority in this and many allied fields, and advises the Government through various top-level scientific committees, including of course the Science Research Council - in recent years his career has achieved a triple crown - Fellowship of the Royal Society, in 1967, he is just completing a highly successful year as President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and in the New Years Honours List, he was awarded a Knighthood.

Gentlemen, Sir Eric Eastwood.

Sutherland