I served my time in a textile engineering company, Mackie of Belfast, and accumulated the qualifications necessary for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I then went to sea, and ended up as a Second Engineer. To have been Chief would have meant waiting to fill dead men's shoes. I then came to Harland's as an assistant manager in the ship repair company. I was then appointed as Deputy General Manager, and then General Manager in charge of the Southampton facility, where I remained for two and a half years. I then returned to Harland's in Belfast to take charge of their entire ship repair operation on four separate sites. We employed over 20,000 people in ship repair. On the arrival of the Dane, Ivor Hoppe, I took over ship production, but kept the responsibility for ship repair, closing down the three mainland yards in London, Liverpool, and Southampton in order to concentrate our business, with Government support, in Belfast. After three or four years, I went to South Africa and managed a subsidiary of a large mining company for six or seven years, before being headhunted by British Shipbuilders to head their ship repair companies. I was then asked to go to Govan Shipbuilders who were making tremendous losses, and stayed there until the company was privatised and subsequently spent a further three years with the new owners, Kvaerner.

In Harland's there was a great deal of technical strength and practical management, but we were hardly strong on management skills. Management were always at the will of the owners of a shipyard. Senior management would overrule junior management on the threat of strikes in order to get the work out. They would allow money to be paid, or the conditions to be altered to suit the workforce without trying to control it. On the other hand, it was a terrible thing to see men standing outside the gate waiting for two or three weeks work, before being put out on the street again to join the hordes waiting for work. This had happened for generation after generation, and as a result there was that much distrust between management and workers. They believed that they were merely a tool for the job and would be discarded afterwards.