Word: dagenham
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reluctant to personally wade into trouble on the shop floor. Nor is he shy about lapsing occasionally into the Yorkshire-accented billingsgate that he has perfected over the years in leading T.U.C.'s toughest negotiations-including British Ford's acceptance of unions at Dagenham during World War II. At 61, he lives with his wife in the same small semidetached villa near London Airport he has had for more than 30 years. Though his salary is less than princely ($9,240), he has managed to assemble a good collection of paintings and sculpture...
...because of a strike by 1,050 pilots, who demand that their salaries be doubled to $31,000 a year. BOAC Chairman Sir Giles Guthrie calls the pilots "spoiled children." A three-week-old wildcat strike by 187 female upholstery stitchers has shut down British Ford's huge Dagenham plant, idling 5,000 workers and interrupting the output of autos for the export trade that Britain must increase for its economic survival...
...motorist in Surrey claimed that Roberts held him up and stole his sandwiches. Fifty armed bobbies combed through Dagenham when a bus conductress reported that a passenger had dropped a pistol (which turned out to be a toy). Singer Alfred Hancock, 46, was arrested five times in one day because of his vague resemblance to Roberts. "Why do I have to look like him?" complained Hancock. "Why can't I look like Mario Lanza?" At Sadler's Wells Theater, Tenor Emile Belcourt was singing the title role of Offenbach's Bluebeard when police broke in with growling...
After longtime partial ownership of its largest overseas plant, U.S. Ford assumed complete control of Dagenham in 1960, promised the government that Britons would continue to hold most of the jobs. They do, but no longer the key ones. Even at middle management levels, Americans are now responsible for engineering, styling, production, operating budgets and capital spending. Ford's board remains narrowly British by 7-6, but Stanley J. Gillen, an American, succeeded a Briton as managing director in July. In the past year, three directors and a dozen other British executives, all under 50, have quit Ford because...
...hindsight, some British executives of Ford also blame themselves for the situation. In 15 years Dagenham grew twelve times larger than its prewar size, but British management failed to keep up. When Ford of Detroit took control, it was faced with falling profits, a hopelessly hidebound pyramidal management and an inadequate pool of promising young British executives. To correct the situation, Ford rushed over some of its own bright young men, just as it had done without difficulty at the German Ford plant in Cologne. Some of the Americans are at Dagenham temporarily, will be sent on to other countries...