IN May 1970 Princess Anne visited the Yarrow’s yard on the Clyde to launch a New Zealand Navy frigate, Canterbury. Some workers at the yard, however, were far from happy that the company had recently pulled out of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) consortium.

The chairman, Sir Eric Yarrow, was twice interrupted by shop steward Eddy Kelly, convener of the finishing trades at Yarrow’s. As he began speaking, Mr Kelly shouted “Keep Yarrow as part of UCS”. Later, Sir Eric remarked: “I have no doubt whatsoever that the disengagement of Yarrow from UCS will be for the good of UCS, for the good of Yarrow’s, and for the good of the Clyde as a whole”. Mr Kelly: “Rubbish!”

In his memoirs, A Few Memories (2013) Sir Eric related how the consortium had involved the merger, with Labour government financial support, of five shipbuilders on the Upper Clyde.

“Three were making losses, one was making ends meet and Yarrows were in profit. I said to Reay [Geddes, author of the report that recommended the merger] that it would not work and I was proved right”.

Yarrow’s joined the new company on the basis of 51 per cent owned by UCS and 49 per cent by Yarrow and Company. After two years of difficult operations, Tony Benn, the Technology Minister, asked Sir Eric to chair UCS, but he politely declined.

The memoirs continue: “With the help of the Ministry of Defence, Yarrow Shipbuilders managed to get out of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and it was not all that long before UCS went bust, in spite of huge injections of taxpayers’ money.

“I was summoned to meet Harold Lever MP at the Ministry of Trade and Industry; with his legs propped up on his large desk, he announced, ‘You will be pleased to hear that the Government has agreed to the release of Yarrow Shipbuilders from UCS’.

“I celebrated the occasion with a bottle or two of champagne”.

Sir Eric is also seen here, watching his young son Richard turning the wheel to flood a new dock extension at the yard, in April 1959. Looking on are Sir Eric’s parents, Sir Harold and Lady Yarrow.

The Yarrow business was established by Alfred Yarrow in the Isle of Dogs in 1865. “He was a great inventor and had a shrewd commercial brain”, Sir Eric wrote, “and was generally considered to be the designer of the modern destroyer”.

Obituary of Sir Eric Yarrow, 2018

Sir Eric himself died in September 2018, aged 98. Obituaries noted his war-time service in the Burma campaign. During the near-thousand-mile retreat to India, after the Japanese invasion of Burma, two of his assignments, he wrote in his book, “were to blow up bridges and, more ironically, blow up ships of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company built by Yarrows; it was quicker to blow them up than to build them!”

* Read more: Herald Diary