Why buy British?
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by Ron Hancock
MY PHILOSOPHY on buying British is straightforward. We live in a free country, and as customers we can all take whichever route we choose.
But you know, and I know, that driving past the dole queues of Britain in foreign vehicles — made with foreign steel and foreign coal and foreign components — is the road to economic suicide.
The need to think British, act British and buy British is not a jingoistic, flag-waving flight of patriotic fantasy. It is a commercial creed of national self-preservation. It is a necessary act of enlightened self-interest.
It is the action we should all willingly want to take, because buying British products should represent the very best value for money and the finest quality and reflect the soundest of commercial judgments.
But we live in a harsh world, and sadly in the past, buying British has often brought few, if any, benefits.
As a nation we have had to learn the hard way that nobody out there owes us a living. Pa triotism is fine, and we have all proved that we can rally to the cause of our country when we really have to, but patriotism does not make customers buy inferior products.
The British motor industry certainly discovered this fact of life, to its heavy cost, amid the sad and strife-torn spectacle of the not-so-swinging Sixties and Seventies. Many British pro ducts had fallen behind the foreign competition, and we had foolishly handed over on a golden plate huge sectors of our home market to foreign imports. But by now, the long-overdue lesson has been learned. In to day's highly competitive trading conditions, out of sheer economic necessity, there has been a re-awakening of commercial realism — and not a moment too soon.
Today, to succeed and even to survive, trading companies sim ply must have truly competitive products coupled with enthusiastic, dynamic and professional marketing.
British industries everywhere, from pharmaceuticals to machine tools, are fighting back. More and more companies are becoming leaner and keener. The current recession has forced us to put our productive and our marketing houses in order. It has caused us to improve vastly our industrial efficiency. There are plenty of encouraging signs.
There is certainly no shortage of great British companies which have already weathered the recession, by making sure that they were always that little bit better. Household names like Cadbury/Schweppes, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury, Texaco and Tesco are among the many which buy British (also, I'm pleased to say, Leyland Trucks) and have made proud and profitable progress. They have done it by combining high quality with marketing innovation and competitive pricing. That is the real route to recovery and it is certainly the route we are determined to follow to recovery at Leyland Vehicles — all the way.
Each of us in British industry today has one of the greatest marketing advantages of all. We really do have the opportunity to press home the latent desire and the increasing willingness among consumers to buy British. There can be absolutely no doubt, that provided our goods match those of the importers and we really do match them, pound for pound and quality for quality, consumers will support UK products.
It certainly happened at BL. Here is a major act of rescuing, re-structuring, and revitalising In the Seventies many British makers, Leyland included, were living on a market share derived from historical successes. That was the time when profitability hid a multitude of growing weaknesses, and that was the time when imported trucks were at a deceptively low level of only 7.5 per cent of the UK market.
We all know, as taxpayers, what happened next. The cracks appeared, crisis came, the customers went. But in the battle for recovery that followed, it is a tribute to British engineering that at Leyland Vehicles we were able to launch the Roadtrain as such a winner.
• Since that launch we have gone on to renew no less tha per cent of our range.
The same battle raged I across the British motor in try. It certainly raged whet set about launching the Mini tro. That succeeded for reason: the car deserved to ceed. The Metro really was r or break for the whole futu Britain's motor industry.
That little car was success marketed as practical, pos proof that British industry c recover when its back against the wall. To fight with a product that could tal the rest of the world — and them.
Now its big brother, the tro, has been launched — equal success. To prove point beyond question, Ja has done it for Britain to America, they called the JE "the last chance saloon" b getting the quality of the prc right, with continuity of su Jaguar was able to hold c the American dealers anc American market. As a Jaguar has developed its there from an all-time-lovs years ago, to today when il netration figures are the hi, it has ever achieved in Ame Exactly the same has al applied to those worl, nowned products, Land I and Range Rover. Land I many years ago earned a re tion for producing high-q products — the best in the — and it has ensured that retained that reputation.
So let me emphasise wh mean at Leyland Vehicles i "Buy British" campaign. V not expect the customer t low some blind patriotic He must be convinced th decision to buy British is 1 the right reasons — price, ity, reliability, performano livery and style.
Today at Leyland we that we are competitive. 111 absolutely determined to our products positively thi value for money in Britai we have asked the British to give our goods a real c have had to break down nable prejudices — such as ne that says because it is n it must be good, and be it is British it cannot be. ave had to prove that this )f generalisation is unfair, t and untrue.
have simply asked the consumer to exercise his :Is, to give British goods a rack of the whip and we Only could not allow mable prejudice against products to rule the roost. we ever ask is to be given a hance. Today if the cusfinds the British product etitive, with our new stan of quality and perform ] believe there are the gest possible reasons why uld buy British.
:he current economic clino one has any right to ask than that of their custom/e at Leyland do not expect ] asked more, when we our purchasing decisions. course, we have main as wide and as loyal a
base as possible for our )u rchases. Let me give you ample. We have invested d 1_350m in product and ty renewal programmes, n 1982 more than 97 per df our materials were purd from British suppliers. -omise you, we will conas far as we possibly can to hat sort of commitment to 1 industry, because we a what the success of our fehicles means to the ecoof our own nation.
] your own businesses, we been operating under in
pressure. We have imd our operating efficiency ing the bullet — through a ;hie streamlining pro-ne, through more effective ng practices and through
technology.
se have all helped us to am n price competitiveness market. It has not been D apply those measures — deed to accept them. But g done so, we must expect Jppliers to look to similar improvements in their competitiveness — that is only fair.
Now we all know that there are dozens of arguments — philosophical ones and practical ones — for buying British, other than the merit of the product it self. • But some sad and sobering facts are unfortunately all too clear.
In 1970 Britain bought only 40 per cent of its construction equipment abroad. Now it buys more than 70 per cent. In 1970 we bought less than a quarter of our agricultural machinery abroad. Now it is nearly half. In 1970 we bought just 14 per cent of our cars from abroad. Now it is around 60 per cent. The truck business has suffered exactly the same way. In 1970 Britain imported under 5 per cent of its trucks — today that figure is over 33 per cent.
During that same period, unemployment in Britain has risen dramatically to over three million. Buying foreign actually destroys the only mechanism that can create employment — our manufacturing base. Make no mistake, as the wealthcreating capacity of industry declines, so our chances of national recovery become harder and harder.
So let me pose one question: "Is it really in the national interest that BL should recover?" The economic facts show clearly that it is. A quarter of a million jobs and over one million people depend absolutely and directly on the various companies including Leyland Vehicles that make up BL. That is a lot of families whose livelihood is immediately linked to our survival.
But that is not all. BL does business with over 7,000 other firms in Britain, and we spend £2,000m here in the UK buying British goods and services. The incomes created by BL through direct and indirect employment in Britain amount to over £1,000m a year.
Imagine all that spending power flowing through the shops within all those communities. Imagine the hardship if all that suddenly stopped.
There are other key factors too. BL is one of Britain's biggest exporters of manufactured goods, with over £910m worth of export sales last year.
On these positive facts alone, I believe the case is completely made for BL to be rightly recognised as a strategic industry, of vital importance for Britain. The importance to the local and national economy of the 500,000 vehicles BL makes each year can not be underestimated. Just think what the benefit would be to our suppliers, and to the economic situation generally, if the individual BL companies attained their realistic potential capacity of 900,000 vehicles a year.
But we can only increase our output fully if we can export freely and we have to remember this when we see foreign imports flooding into Britain, because we believe in free trade. But we also believe in fair trade and it is no good us playing cricket on exports with the rest of the world playing baseball. • Unfortunately, a succession of British governments has not ensured that all trade is fair. Whether it is unfair restrictions of the direct or indirect kind from the Communist bloc, from Spain, from Japan, from Korea, they still represent a disturbing picture of one-way traffic on imports, like a knife to the heart of our own manufacturing industries. Having now put our house in order, the time has surely come to tell these countries that enough is enough. In the transport business we all have our different loyalties, our different tasks and our different responsibilities. But there is one thing we unquestionably have in common. We all have the interests of Britain at heart. Our roots and our responsibilities are here in this country. The pride of our past and the future of our families is inextricably linked to the success of Britain, its produce and its products.
My argument is that there is no need for anyone in the transport industry to buy foreign.
Surely it must be plain to all of us that every foreign truck imported into the UK means less glass, less rubber, less plastics to be made and transported. Less people manufacturing here means less people earning here, and less people earning here means less people buying here. And that all means more people drawing upon the contributions of those who are working.
I find it inconceivable that a Welsh haulier totally reliant upon the British Steel industry for his income should buy Swedish trucks to carry less and less British Steel. But this actually happens, and there are many more examples of that nature.
I believe we all need to take a long view and to keep at the forefront of our minds, that all of us benefit — our own companies, our customers and our customers' customers — if together we "keep it on the island".
At Leyland Vehicles we have successfully resisted the siren calls to buy overseas. We are a company which says what it means and means what it says. We practise what we preach. It is a philosophy that we believe supports Britain in the best possible way.
For this very reason, despite all the economic difficulties which surround us, I believe that all of us connected with road transport can take heart. For within British industry today there is a re-awakening and a renewal of that vital commercial realism, and that is the best reason of all for Buying British.