Building the Trident Network by Maggie Mort, MIT, 拢22.95, ISBN
0262133970
THE MANAGER in your life needs to read what happened when, in the early
1980s, some Quakers suggested to shipbuilding unions that they should make
washing machines instead of Trident submarines. The idea did not go down
well.
But, as Maggie Mort manages, amidst much sociological jargon, to show, it was
the few trade unionists at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow who were looking for
alternatives who were proved right in the end. Instead of washing machines, the
Barrow Alternative Employment Committee proposed wave and tidal power, submarine
oil tankers and urban transport systems.
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They pointed out that, in concentrating on Trident, Vickers had let slip
other highly marketable inventions such as the Constant Speed Generator Drive,
an efficient system for making electricity from ships鈥� engines. The committee
was ignored. But Vickers should have listened to the union.
In the 1990s, as the Trident submarines were completed, Vickers shed half its
14,000 workforce. Too late, workers realised that alternatives might have given
them better job prospects.