When perplexed, my late uncle George would invariably shake his head and mutter, “I don’t know”. Usually, he had just recounted the latest goings on at the shipyard where he spent most of his working life.

Like most of his workmates, he was proud of Aberdeen’s record of building ships of exceptional quality. The renowned clipper, Thermopylae, was Aberdeen built: its finest hour coming in 1872 when beating its more famous rival, Cutty Sark, hands down in a race from Shanghai to London.

Living just round the corner, it was inevitable that my uncle would become an apprentice and then craftsman at the long-vanished yard of Hall Russell and Co. Indeed, living so close to the yard possibly saved his life. On 12 July 1940 he had gone home for lunch when the yard was hit by a surprise daylight bombing raid, killing several of those he had been working with that morning.

In the post-war years, uncle George worked on a range of vessels including trawlers and ships for the Royal Navy. The yard built numerous ferries including the MVs Hebrides, Clansman, St Ola and Columba that served the Northern and Western Isles for many years. He is probably looking down, shaking his head and muttering “I don’t know”, over the current shambles surrounding the construction on the Clyde of the Glen Sannox and yet to be named Hull 802. I suspect my uncle and his mates would have had the skills and ingenuity to finish both on time and within budget.

Much of the blame for the current ferry fiasco has been directed, probably with good reason, at the Scottish Government, together with inadequate management and project supervision. There’s been less scrutiny of whether the workforce is sufficiently skilled to carry out the work. Recurring problems with things such as cabling suggest design, technical and construction failings.

Shortfalls in essential skills appear to have been confirmed by the award of subsequent contracts to a Turkish yard. Perhaps significantly, no Scottish yard made even the short list. Set in its historical context, it seems barely credible that the skills required to complete relatively small-scale shipbuilding projects have been lost. After all, Clyde shipyards and their highly skilled workers built some of the world’s largest and finest ships. The roll of honour includes the Lusitania (1906), the ill-fated HMS Hood (1918), the Queen Mary (1936) and the QE 2 (1969). How on earth has that deskilling come about?

One partial explanation is Brexit precipitated the loss of foreign workers, particularly those who had developed their skills in Polish shipyards. The malaise however, started much earlier and runs much deeper. It can be traced back to the short-sighted economic policies of the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 90s.

Instead of investing in new technologies, Britain’s industrial capacity, including our shipyards, was allowed to wither away. Luckily for Mrs Thatcher and the like, North Sea revenues were available to cover the cost of unemployment as entire communities were thrown on the scrapheap. The brave new world was the service economy – epitomised by Harry Enfield’s “loadsamoney” character. Spivs in braces shouting down phones, not skilled craftsmen, were to be the cornerstone of the new economic order.

But even that is not the full story. There’s a deeper, national disdain for those who design and make things. In general, the likes of lawyers, accountants, fund managers and consultants are much more highly regarded and rewarded than genuinely productive designers, engineers and technicians. Mystifyingly, the desk-bound are accorded higher social status than those who work with their hands.

In contrast, German engineers are highly regarded and rewarded, possibly explaining why Germany has a booming manufacturing sector. It’s unlikely the UK’s manufacturing capacity can be extended until the economic and social status of those who make things is redressed. It can’t be right that those who simply move other people’s money around receive (not earn), massive salaries and bonuses, far beyond the reach of engineers and technicians.

The development of North Sea oil and gas has been one of the very few recent triumphs of British technology. It’s no coincidence that much of that is down to the large number of skilled and talented project engineers working in the industry, attracted by high status and salaries. It’s significant, and possibly symptomatic of national perceptions of engineering that many are foreign nationals.

Future prosperity depends on the lessons of the North Sea being replicated more widely. It won’t be easy to alter the mindset that making things is somehow demeaning. Negative impressions of careers in engineering and technology may have their roots in schools where practical subjects don’t enjoy sufficiently high status, especially for our brightest students.

If we’re serious about massively expanding our design, technological and manufacturing capacity, the creation of high-status/high reward pathways for our brightest youngsters is long overdue. If not, we are forever condemned to live with the indignity of our inability to build a couple of run-of-the-mill ferries.

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