Another problem for British manufacturing since the '70s has been governments focusing on growing the financial servicies sector. This increased demand for the pound, keeping its value artificially high, making imports cheaper and exporting harder.

@Vincent-ow9lj

5 ай бұрын

In itself, it would not have been an issue if our productivity had been world class, like Japan and Germany, but of course poor management and union greed put paid to that.

And yet Margaret Thatcher stayed on as Prime Minister until November 1990. Just over 4 years later. She wasn't challenged to the leadership of the Conservative Party until late 1989 as she was becoming less popular than the party; she beat the challenger. The following the resignation of Geoffrey Howe from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over European Monetary Union in November 1990 did Thatcher's hold on party leader slip. She was replaced by John Major after Hesseltine challenged Tatcher's position (she won the vote but failed to secure enough votes to win out right). After she resign a new election was held for leader which John Major won as Hesseltine dropped out due to Major's lead from that election. However, damaging the Westland Affair was to her premiership, it was nothing compared to the Poll Tax or to give its actual name the Community Charge which was introduced in Scotland in 1988 and in the restbif Britain in 1990. This new tax was so unpopular it caused riots in London as it put more tax burden on to the poor from the rich. John Major had to reform this taxation to be based on the value of the property not its notional rental value. A poll tax was one of the causes of the Peasants' Revolt.

@EdgyNumber1

6 ай бұрын

The reason for the revolt was that it was noticeable - people seeing these bills land on their doorstep for the first time. The Conservatives learned their lesson with regard to hugely unpopular policies, and use the 'death by a thousand cuts' method to implement them instead.

@andrewbrown6786

6 ай бұрын

Westland was the first time Maggie decided on a course of action without any discussion with the cabinet - no requests for input or concerns, which was why Heseltine walked out. The Poll Tax being the ultimate outcome of her ‘dictatorship’.

@alangriffths331

6 ай бұрын

😅😅😊😅😅😊😊😊

@martinhow121

5 ай бұрын

The community charge was NOT the Poll Tax. Poll Tax was essentially a per adult head charge with some scaling for location . Community charge is a banded property value based tax which replaced the obsolete Rating system which was based on a fictional assessment of rental value.

@zaphodbeeblebrox5973

5 ай бұрын

@@martinhow121 It most defiantly was the name the Poll Tax went under, it was later reformed by Heseltine under the same name which was property value based this is now council tax

If you think Westland "broke" Thatcher you're plain wrong. I remember it and it didn't. If any one thing can be said to have brought about her demise it was the Poll Tax. That and the fact that the country as a whole was sick and tired of her and her patronising attitude and grating voice.

@arthurmee

6 ай бұрын

I remember this period well too and agree with you that the poll tax debacle led to the demise of Thatcher. She wanted people to call it 'the community charge' but the populace insisted on calling it the poll tax.. . .hmm . . .ostensibly a trivial matter . . .that is what to call it but it was the sign of something much deeper. Thatcher had, to use the vernacular 'lost it'.

@RowdyBorders-ni3ti

5 ай бұрын

What about the island deal with the tag team During the 80 s

@ezzler

5 ай бұрын

Westland was the death of Hesseltine

@chriscorker5634

5 ай бұрын

Not everyone. It's a cheap narrative to portray her as evil. Name the last prime minister you were proud of ?

@RowdyBorders-ni3ti

5 ай бұрын

@@chriscorker5634 Winston Churchill

When you think of what Britain used to manufacture its heart breaking to see the state of us now

@None-zc5vg

6 ай бұрын

The country has been sold down the river.

@claytonbouldin9381

5 ай бұрын

I am in the US and feel the same about my country too. We used to make stuff and now we import it all in to use. Quite a sad state of affairs.

@wobblybobengland

5 ай бұрын

Just be accommodating to immigrants.

@1crazypj

5 ай бұрын

@@claytonbouldin9381 The problem is, no one can afford to buy stuff made in USA or Britain any more. Look at the price of a new pickup from FORD or GM, Union wages have priced it way out of my reach (and why I'm still driving 2004 pick-up)

@kevwhufc8640

5 ай бұрын

I'm English and use to be into off road vehicles, mainly land rovers,( I could pick them up cheap back then) but I've also had a couple of American 4x4s a Cherokee chief, which was ok but it had weird chain drive ( I'm no mechanic) but some of the teeth had worn so giving it any stick in tough conditions the chain would slip and make an awful grinding noise and I'd have to give up whatever I was trying. I had a Chevy blazer I really liked that, i can't remember the engine 5 litre maybe more, that thing would uproot a house if it had a strong enough cable, lol , I had a lot of fun in it ,I took it across the boggy wettest mud fields, up and down the steepest slopes, rivers, through hedges, it never let me down never broke anything, and like all my 4x4s i REALLY pushed them , only downside was the fuel , something like 6 or 7 mpg when off roading , it wasn't much better on the road, mind you I didn't take it easy I loved the roar of the V8, Unlike my land Rovers it was comfy had a great heater and didn't shake rattle or roll all the time. I think it was a late 70s ,but it had English number plates, so I don't know if thats when it was registered in the UK or if it was the correct year . I used to get through a lot of motors back then. Nowadays there's no such thing as a cheap landrover defender Not since SUVs 4x4 became fashion accessories, people who own them don't drive through muddy puddles let alone off road. Id love a 2004 defender , but are way beyond my wallet. Weirdly same reg range rovers are cheaper than defenders yet much better re refinements, comfort etc.. But I don't think Range or land Rovers or any motors are British owned anymore.. Except McLaren and Aston Martin. But no regular vehicles..

Such an atrocity, crushing and selling off British industry rather than making them valuable assets for the UK.

@robsta1980

6 ай бұрын

Yeah, so much for the conservatives conserving our industry. Conservatives have caused more damage to this country than labour. Mass sell offs and privatisation, mass importation and immigration, yet I would class myself as a center right conservative.

@jonathanj.7344

6 ай бұрын

"Britain's future now lies with the service sector" Margaret Thatcher

@Alex-cw3rz

6 ай бұрын

That's Maggie and the tories in general for you

@fndjfgsdk

6 ай бұрын

The centralised approach of the British economy is why they were not valuable assets for the UK. Leonardo Helicopters contributes far more to the UK economy by way of jobs and taxes, compared to the nationalised aerospace industries

@cjclark1208

6 ай бұрын

Legalized monopoly, under the previewing shroud of government, sold off to private hands with gov issued contracts dictated by who again? Exemplary free market skills in motion.

It’s interesting how well the Anglo-French aviation collaborations of the 60’s with the Concorde, Jaguar, Gazelle, Puma and Lynx all turned out.

@zeitgeistx5239

5 ай бұрын

And the Eurofighter was outdated at the developmental stage with Germany even funding their own stealth fighter design once the world got out within the military aviation community about the F-117 by the mid 1980s.

@danieleyre8913

5 ай бұрын

@@zeitgeistx5239 In all respect: The Eurofighter was a follow on from the Tornado project and was first envisioned in the late 70’s (when the F-16 was being ordered all over Europe) and was subjected to endless delays. Its prototype _should_ have been flying in the early 80’s about 5 years before anyone knew of the F-117

@Walterwaltraud

5 ай бұрын

@@danieleyre8913 His stealth comment reflects on a model that is hardly known: Google this one - mbb lampyridae stealth fighter. And thus you are both right.

The westland affair also had an effect on the breaking up and selling off of BL as the Land Rover division was to be sold off to GM in 1986 alongside Leyland trucks. LR was removed from the deal because of the perception of selling off the 'jewel in the crown' therefore GM pulled out. Ford also intended to buy Austin Rover at the same time (for the K series engine design and market share) but that failed too supposedly for similar reasons so both divisions were retained and flogged off to BAE for pennies in 1988

@66kbm

6 ай бұрын

Really? It had nothing to do with any of it, don't be uneducated, as stated in this video, the uneconomical operations of all these State owned Companies that were a leach, sucked endless money, from any Govt and were not accountable to the 10's of millions of Taxpayers that paid for them? This is not Communism, its a Democracy. Money has to made from somewhere, not nowhere.

@frenzalrhomb6919

5 ай бұрын

Ya' just gotta luv Capitalism, eh? "Nothing to see here .. keep moving, move along please!!"

How have thatcher's privatisation schemes and neo liberal voo doo economics worked out for the UK? Her ideological attacks on organised labour? Rivers flowing with sewerage, that's how. Pretty much the same as in Australia. Ordinary citizens getting the rough end of the pineapple whilst wealth trickles, nay, rushes upwards. Her demise as a past leader was met with celebrations, a phenomenon that is hard to recall in western societies and a fate that I predict will similarly occur upon johnny howard's demise

Quite a few people i grew up with in Yeovil have worked at Westlands for decades and they all say Westlands breaks everyone who works there. Until computerised offices 95% of Westlands waste was shredded paper and workers joke that its bloated management regard turning out a few helicopters as a major inconvenience but necessary to justify the office overheads.

What a sordid tale of scumbags all stabbing each other in the back! Some things never change. You can't write a better scandal than that.

@peterthebricky

6 ай бұрын

The slug like fellow was a true wrongun

As someone once said of the economy under Thatcher "You cannot make sustainable economic boom based on imported hand made Belgian chocolates & Suzuki Jeeps." Preserving domestic businesses instead of them becoming merged into foreign competitors makes sense. To not do so means the industrial heart of your country slowly gets hollowed out & this is what Thatcherism ended up doing.

@sandgrownun66

6 ай бұрын

Should unprofitable domestic businesses have been preserved too?

@DrFod

5 ай бұрын

You don't realise how bad a state the UK was in the 1970s. Britain's heavy industry was in terminal decline long before Thatcher came along, she merely pulled the plug on the billions of taxpayer subsidies that was keeping it on life support.

@sandgrownun66

5 ай бұрын

@@DrFod The 1970's were terrible for the UK. Firms were poorly managed, and the unions were causing trouble everywhere they could. Instead of the two working together, like in Germany or Japan. It was a race to see who could lose their job fastest. The Labour government was a joke, with Chancellor Healy having to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bail-out. How humiliating for what was only a couple of decades earlier, the World's second biggest economy. Inflation was also out of control, meaning that prices doubled in the space of a few years. At the beginning of the decade a basic Ford Cortina 1300 cost £914. By the end of the decade the Cortina 1300L was the cheapest in the range. It cost more than double the price of the early 1970's car, at £1,979. By 1979, and the then recent "Winter of Discontent", where rubbish was not collected, and the dead were left unburied. The UK voters, were desperate for change, and that's what Thatcher offered, and it that year's election she was voted in with a landslide. The rest they say, is history.

@aidanpysher2764

5 ай бұрын

British Leyland was beyond saving.

@TheNobbynoonar

5 ай бұрын

In short, yes. That is until the government of the day investigates the strategic, economic and social costs of large companies going bust. It’s not just the financial costs when a long established company goes bankrupt. For example , closing down the coal mines in this country was done due to ideological differences on both sides. The effects on this nation’s industrial base were ignored. Importing coal from places such as Poland might have been cheaper initially, but what about the long term costs to keeping vast amounts of people on welfare, social breakdown, the loss of skilled jobs and the nations ability to produce steel? (steel production relies on coal/gas) As others have pointed out, you cannot run an economy on imported Belgian chocolates and Suzuki 4x4’s. This country used to have a large industrial base that exported goods and services to a large part of the world. Mostly gone now. Today we import goods and services (and people) in vast quantities and our governments have stood by as our national and strategic assets have been sold to the highest bidders. No nation can sustain that sort of economic model for long without consequences. Why do you think there are approximately eight million economically inactive people in this country, wages are low and there’s a shortage of long term, secure, skilled employment? BTW, how much profit do the following make? Schools, hospitals, welfare and benefits payments, the police force, the armed forces, civil service etc…When I last looked they didn’t make a penny between them. In fact, quite the opposite, costing untold billions every day of every year. Perhaps we should privatise those services as well.

A Conservative government tearing itself apart? Surely not!

@johnmccallum8512

6 ай бұрын

It is what happens to any political party if it is in power for a long time.☢☣

@MrSensible2

6 ай бұрын

​@@johnmccallum8512Thatcher & her merry band of radicals & extremists had only been in power for a mere six years when Westland hit. The schism between the sensible/pragmatic & the lunatic/smash-it-with-a-sledgehammer halves of the Tory party goes back to those days & is still Thatcher's poisonous legacy to the nation...

@sandgrownun66

6 ай бұрын

That's nothing, try a Labour one.

@MrSensible2

6 ай бұрын

@@sandgrownun66 Yep! That's the plan. A brand new Labour government, hopefully in the next six months. It's inconceivable that they could be worse than the wog government we have right now.

@1crazypj

5 ай бұрын

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

What the Westland Affair did was provide a foreshadowing of how Margaret Thatcher handled issues that split the Cabinet. She seemed aloof that she couldn't understand why Michael Hessletine took as strong a stance on the restructuring of Westland helicopters. It was unnecessarily messy to encourage a divide in the Cabinet, leading to two resignations. 4 years later, a similar situation occurred, this time over Europe, the Poll Tax and her deteriorating behaviour and lack of respect to her Cabinet Colleagues, not only led to the resignation of 2 of her most senior Cabinet Members, but ultimately, led to her resignation as well.

To keep an industry it has to be economically viable. If your industry is leaving the country you have to address the reasons for it. Simply trying to build a dam against economic forces is a holding action at best.

The whole of the politics, on both sides, Thatcher and Heseltine, was to know the price of everything (only £30m!) and the value of nothing. At least Cuckney knew what he was doing - and why.

Westland was later bought by Augusta, an Italian company. The resulting "Augusta-Westland" later became the present day "Leonardo", still Italian company. Our company have brought and kept many jobs in UK and still continue to offer job to the British people.

I only came for the choppers, and I wasn't disappointed, but discovering the pivotal role that Westland's fate.it played in Thatcher's downfall was equally fascinating. It made no impression on me at the time--tbh, parties of the non-political kind were my only concern back then--so your excellent vid has been an education. Thank you.

I lived in Yeovil from 2003/2007 and the Westland factory was working 24/7 producing the Sea King,Lynx and Apache Helicopters. My place was just a couple of meters from the Massive factory fence,and from 7 am to 6 pm they were testing the Apaches in every way. The Noise was just Unberable, specialy for me because I was working the night shift,and Suppose to sleep from 7am to 6pm. Only took 2 weeks of that Hell,to move to another place in Yeovil but far,far away from the factory.

Thanks for this - I was aware of Heseltine's grandstanding for what seemed a good cause. And only through Kinnock's ability to talk but lack of ability to deliver real blows the UK got another 4 years of Maggie. But Westland was yet another example of the steady dismantling of UK industry - everything beyond the City it seems. The mention of GKN and GEC - the latter gone the former a mere shadow are 'current' examples.. And the Sheikh Tamani deal - if you ever cover that in detail, maybe as part of BAe's 80s history! My remaining memory is simply of Mark Thatcher's get rich quick part in it.

@richardvernon317

6 ай бұрын

He makes a Valid point though, Yanks couldn't sell military stuff to the Saudi's due to Congress rules about threats to Israel. Those rules existed in the 1960's and was the reason the Saudi's bought the Lightning!!!

@MrSensible2

6 ай бұрын

Please don't knock Kinnock! As well as trying to displace Thatcher's destructive extremism, he also had to contend with the Trots that were out to take over the Labour party. Indeed he succeeded in permanently ousting the Far-left Militant Tendency. No Conservative leader in the last three decades has managed (or even bothered) to oust its equivalent Far-right, nut-job wing. Kinnock was a decent & deeply patriotic man. I wish he was around in politics today.

@maunsell24

6 ай бұрын

No idea who Sheik Tamani might be. If you mean Sheik Yamani, he was the Saudi Oil Minister, not Defence. The two Saudis who were alleged to be directly involved in the receipt of BAE bribes in the Al Yamamah arms deal were Prince Turki bin Nasser Al Saud who oversaw the project and Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, the Ambassador to the Untied States. The latter's father was Saudi Defence Minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

@casinodelonge

5 ай бұрын

Yes, Kinnock missed the opportunity to land a killer blow, but to be fair he did make the Labour Party electable after the Michael Foot years. As for John Major, I actually rather liked him.

@1crazypj

5 ай бұрын

@@maunsell24 Usually, if it looks wrong, take a look at keyboard to see what letter is next to the one it should have been. I never heard of any Tamani's either. 🖖

Took and enjoyed 2 courses at Westland’s school, Wessex and Puma. The trips around the factory were most enlightening. The Sea King starts life as a boat and the Lynx has the rotor head linked to the blades by ‘dog bones’ made of two bearings linked by windings of copper wire, then coated in plastic. That’s how I recall it anyway. Early to mid 80s were my courses.

@paulhiggins6024

6 ай бұрын

Tie Bars. Not Dog Bones.

Oddly enough I sat next to Michael Heseltine on a flight over to Germany around the time of the Westland affair. When I say 'sat next to him', I should add that there was a young guy in the middle seat between us who I presumed was his bodyguard. My only recollection of Heseltine was that he was really, really tall & that he silently but diligently devoured three broadsheet newspapers in the hour or so between take-off & landing.

@OscarOSullivan

6 ай бұрын

He recently did an interview with the Guardian

@dasdasdatics420

5 ай бұрын

I investigated heseltine and I found out that he was doctoring the Official journals and rewriting the European laws into UK laws to mean things different to what they were intended. I also stopped the jailing of people who couldn't afford the extortionate council tax.

@MrSensible2

5 ай бұрын

@@dasdasdatics420 Loony alert!!

I laughed at a Monty Python comment that Thatcher was slightly less popular than the Black Death.

@jdb47games

6 ай бұрын

Can you quote where they said that? The last Python series was three years before she became PM.

@darylcheshire1618

6 ай бұрын

@@jdb47games It was from a record, It might have been the “Contractual Obligation” one, I forget the exact title. Also she was unpopular before she became PM. It wasn’t from the series, there were a couple of records. I just checked dates, she became PM in 1979 and the Contractual Obligation record came out in 1980, I can’t confirm if it was that one. I do recall laughing with a work collegue that it was “slightly LESS popular”.

@thomasbaker6563

5 ай бұрын

The pythons are a bunch of absolute tossers of the highest order. Wether there underlying points were right or wrong I just can't stand there attitude.

@simonroyle2806

4 ай бұрын

Funny that she won a landslide election a year later.

This wagon was responsible for a lot for death, destruction and misery which resonates to this very day. A repugnant evil creature.

@jdb47games

6 ай бұрын

Don't big yourself up!

@PeteCourtier

5 ай бұрын

Labour’s response was an infinitely more evil and repugnant individual- Tony Blair the war criminal.

Thatcher is what you get if you mate a vulture and human. Unbelievable hunger for power and attention, and not picky about the methods

@SnappyWasHere

6 ай бұрын

She took notes from us across the pond. Her and Ronald Reagan did so much damage and somehow people loved them at the time and currently want that same craziness to come back to power!

@None-zc5vg

6 ай бұрын

@@SnappyWasHere Both Thatcher and Reagan were just puppets, despite their rhetoric.

@bubstacrini8851

5 ай бұрын

Oh that's a striking portrait indeed, Morten!

@mortenfrosthansen84

5 ай бұрын

@@bubstacrini8851 yeah.. maybe not all that fair, since it was more her character that gave such impression. Hihi.. What is that bird, that favours only one offspring and in the end the bigger one eats the smaller? That has to have been how Martha was brought up

@mortenfrosthansen84

5 ай бұрын

Oh coming back to this, and thinking about Ronald. He was a showman, but had an amazing team around him. They were so brilliant, that to make it look good. They cut off 90% of a chart board. And only display the top part, with the last 2 years. Showing then, how their taxes was a 14% decrease. While over the last 4 years, the taxes rose 21%. Just leave out the bad bit, and they'll never know. Hehe.. It's so despicable but clever. It doesn't really show false information, but just not all the information

Sadly this wasn't the only time Westland was let down by the Government. Prior to the start of WWII Westland had developed the Whirlwind fighter,, this aircraft had great potential armed with 4 x 20mm canons in 39, (2 years ahead of the Spit!) whilst having troublesome engines it wasn't allowed to upgrade them to the Merlin. This was an aircraft that was ahead of both the Spitfire and Mosquito. Being twin engined this had a speed advantage. Instead of just scraping through the Battle of Britain this aircraft could have had Britain firmly in control of its skies.

I'm genuinely surprised that Thatcher wasn't a more vocal proponent of Westland's merger with Sikorsky. Given her love affair with Reagan's America & her infamous hostility to Europe, plus the fact that the Westland-Sikorsky deal might have seen Westland be able to license-produce Black Hawks in the UK for the armed forces & secure the company's future in an economically perilous period.

@oliverwortley3822

5 ай бұрын

i’m guessing because she didn’t believe it appropriate for the government to be meddling and interfering in private and non-public/non-governmental companies and corporations and organisations

@roelkomduur8073

5 ай бұрын

Yes and that's what she got wrong, governments are always interfering and meddling with corporations. This is a prime example( no one else is buying attack helo's...) Her Neo Liberal theories are proven to be a failure. Just look at the utility companies, the rail roads, social housing ect.. Leave it to the companies alone, they go for short term profits and dividends..When it goes wrong,and thy go tit's up, the tax payers pay double by saving them. @@oliverwortley3822

Another piece of history that might be interesting to look at was the Thatcher government trying to kill off the Settle and Carlisle Railway

@user-xq2zn8bu9q

6 ай бұрын

Why would they want to kill it off...?

@uingaeoc3905

6 ай бұрын

That was to do with BR rationalisation. BR eventually made the case for it being a leisure route rather than mainline.

@sandgrownun66

6 ай бұрын

@@user-xq2zn8bu9q Because it was unprofitable. A young Michael Portillo, a rail fan, was instrumental in its reprieve. Or so he contends. The fact that the line run by a not for profit limited company, is telling. However, its future is safe.

She had to pay the yanks off for the falklands

Another excellent video

Most people didn’t like her but she still was the most powerful lady in British politics and changed history forever. Long before Theresa May became Prime Minister which she failed to deliver on what the UK wanted. Including Brexit that made her lose her role as Prime Minister.

Excellent analysis, thank you - would love to see more on the Al Yamama deal….

The way I see it this demise of British aero manufacturers was sadly inevitable - US manufacturers were in general putting out solid products, while ours were only occasionally coming up with genuinely competitive designs (amongst a myriad of mediocre ones or even outright failures). In Westlands case, as stated in the video most of their helicopters have been American designs built under license anyway. Of course the US manufacturers had the advantage that their primary customer, the US military, is both gargantuan and very well funded, so plenty of contracts to go around before you even start with export deals. Though it's interesting to note that they too have seen many companies merged - McDonnell Douglas and Boeing, Lockheed and Martin Marietta (incidentally Lockheed Martin currently own Sikorsky) and Northrop and Grumman as some examples. Ultimately the end users (i.e. the armed forces) probably don't care where their aircraft are from - all they want is for them to do the jobs required as well as possible. In this particular case the UH-60 is an outstanding (arguably the best?) battlefield helicopter, purpose designed and built for that task using lessons learnt with the Huey in Vietnam.

@andypandy9931

6 ай бұрын

The current helicopters manufactured are the Lynx and Merlin, these are Anglo French and Anglo Italian designs, nothing to do with the US. As an ex employee I find it concerning that no future designs are being created in the UK.

@zaphodbeeblebrox5973

5 ай бұрын

The British aviation industry was destroyed by Wilson and Benn, (TSR2, P1154 and even the VC10) Concorde only survived because of a clause put in by the Tories that meant it would be far to costly to cancel. The fact that many of Benn's constituency worked at Filton was possibly also a factor..

@trevorhart545

5 ай бұрын

@@zaphodbeeblebrox5973 Wilson, Benn and Healey total destruction of the UK manufacturing, innovation and independence. Thatcher was even worse. Then we had a recent line of total failures, David Cameron (destroyed half of the RAF), BoJo, Liz Truss and the WHIMP Rishi Sunak controlled by his Father in Law.

Excellent documentary and a great review of a turbulent period in Britain's history. Well researched and presented, ten out of ten yet again and thanks for sharing your hard work.

I don't believe that the resignation of Thatcher and the Westland issues are mutually exclusive. However, I do not believe that the problems over the Westland debacle precipitated her resignation either; well, not directly anyway. I say this only because the government did not experience a major upheaval at the time that the press got ahold of the story. With our limited ability to "look back" or to make voting decisions based on a "complete picture" of the facts, I find that the two were just too remote to one another for the former to have had much of a 'direct' effect' on the latter. But, I am often quite wrong...

I'm not sure that the commentary is correct regarding the Wasp and the Scout. My understanding is that that the Scout and Wasp were developed from the P.531, which was a development of the Skeeter. Furthermore, the Sikorsky based designs, S51, S55, S58 and S61, were all "anglicised" I believe, i.e. re-engineered to become the Dragonfly & Widgeon, Whirlwind, Wessex and Sea King, so not just the latter. The Wessex is notable for being turbine powered from the start. It's like what De Havilland (later Rolls Royce) did with the GE T58 turboshaft to becone the Gnome. Another point is that Handley Page never merged with either BAC or Hawker Siddeley, but the Government enforced consolidation did see them off when they went into voluntary liquidation in 1970. One of my lecturers at Kingston, where I did my aerospace degree, worked for Handley Page. He worked on the Jetstream, the design which was bought by Scottish Aviation.

Thanks for the details. At the time I tuned this out in defence of my will to live.

Thatcher was not a smart cookie

Curious how Thatcher and Heseltine fell out so badly despite sharing a common hairstyle... 🤷

Perhaps RM's most politically analyst and detailed post yet. Excellent job. Much labor.

Thatcher the Contract Snatcher!

@matthewrowe9903

6 ай бұрын

Still haunting you after all these years lol slay queen 😂

@Powerpopper05

6 ай бұрын

​@@matthewrowe9903still haunting millions of communities up and down Britain and hauting millions of young people who can't afford to buy a house and probably won't ever be able to.

@HALLish-jl5mo

6 ай бұрын

@@Powerpopper05Her impact on housing was distinctly mixed. Right to buy is how millions of people who would otherwise be unable to afford a home, bought one. Those people will have a distinctly positive impression of her housing policies. Long term this policy had a catastrophic impact on the supply of council housing, but that could have been resolved by later governments. But in the 33 years since she left office, no PM has scrapped it, and Labour didn’t even oppose the scheme after 1985. Government is complicated.

I remember this in the news and wasnt much of a story. Maggie ended up going mad and got booted out by her own party but they stayed in power til 1997.

I must keep watching this one; I always find political and financial controversies very difficult to follow. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that Mrs. (later Lady) Thatcher was anti-EU and Heseltine was otherwise. Anyway, I'll give this one a Like; obviously very well-researched as always! 😊

@ibex485

5 ай бұрын

One irony about Thatcher & the EU was that she was largely responsible for creating it. In the '80s she was the one who pushed for the creation of the Single European Market, which can be seen as the first step in the EEC later becomming the EU. She was very much in favour of free trade. What she objected to was the moves towards political union which soon followed.

I loved the Lynx! Been a passenger on one a couple of times, and it’s among my favorites! I’ve also been the passenger on several other helicopters mentioned, such as the Sea-King, Iroquois, and Merlin! The Iroquois has been the best experience, but probably mostly due to the sound it makes being iconic, and the times I’ve been a passenger, has been exercises training Air Assault! There’s something about flying just above the tree tops, and then storm out of helicopter as it’s barely touching the ground. But for longer flights, the Lynx was my absolute favourite!

The world wars were the worst thing to happen to the U.K.

My father worked @ Westland from 1959-1962.This experience led us to migration to Australia.Best thing he ever did he reckoned.Westland always had personnel problems.A bloke named Bristow worked there too.He is a separate story.

Great video thanks for sharing

Great, another text to speech channel. Exactly what we need...

Mad isn't it...that. a conservative governemnt would argue so vehimently for a deal with a US company, losing a UK manufacturer, at the expense of further European Integration...

All these people have managed a quite remarkable and unique feat in history: make that their country became a colony of a former colony! Unique.

Thanks for Uploading.

I only know of this because of a bit from the original Spitting Image that appeared for a few seconds. Some guy in parliament asks Michael Heseltine whatever happened to Westland Helicopters and he replied "I don't know" while playing with a toy helicopter

@casinodelonge

5 ай бұрын

The Image was a hell of a show in those days.

@TheSkunkfiend

5 ай бұрын

I remember the queen cracking Charles with butt of shotgun whilst in bed with Phil and the corgi's. Ye was scared of the boggie man. Great t.v show.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. No truer words than with the Conservative Party.

Holy moly, this video popped up in my feed and I was like 🤔but wouldn’t you know, this was pretty damn interesting. Gotta say great comments on this too.

petition to buy this man a microphone

She truly hated this country didn't she.

@MrJimheeren

6 ай бұрын

Well she did love her son Mark, convicted arms smuggler and all around terrible human being

@jdb47games

6 ай бұрын

No, you do. BTW, it's truly not truely.

@Alex-cw3rz

6 ай бұрын

@@jdb47games how do I hate the country, I wouldn't have shut down the mines and made two entire regions of our nation economic blackholes to this day. It was her and John Major who's deregulation caused the finanical crash of 2008. I wouldn't have sold of *our* water for 22% of it's worth and pay off all the debt. I would have invested in this nation, in new technologies, keep British manufacturing instead of taking back handers from anywhere across the world, to chop jobs in this nation. In 1954 the UK economy was 66% larger than Frances, during Thatcher's disaster our economy was smaller than Frances. She introduced an economically illiterate political ideology that is still around to this day.

@alanclark639

6 ай бұрын

@@Alex-cw3rz You cannot continue to run a country's financial system the way it was before 1985 - stockbrokers wandering into their offices at 10:00 in top hats and tails then leaving at 16:00 after spending two hours at lunch in the Baron of Beef - the world had moved without us. Most of our manufacturing was hopelessly out of date because of protectionism and ostrichlike head in the sand attitudes - where you might argue successfully that deregulation could have been better managed - it would have surely come. Without it - you would have had buttons to play with rather than millions.

@Alex-cw3rz

6 ай бұрын

@@alanclark639 do you think I care about stockbrokers? The world has moved on, you know why because we didn't invest in emerging technologies and they did. Most of our manufacturing fell behind because of a lack of invetsment in both companies and education. Sorry did you just say Protectionism was our issue, we are talking about the UK, it's an island off the coast of Europe, yeah, protectionism and Thatcher... You do Baffle me. Singapore and South Korea were both protectionist in this time period and look at them now. It seems you are just totally out of your depth on this topic. Maybe just do some research before commenting. It gets even worse did you just claim Thatcher didn't do enough deregulation 🤦‍♂️ What deregulation did you think would have helped come on, don't just put out something so vague and st upid, without good reason. Also what deregulation you know apart from the one that caused the 2008 crash because that was marvellous of course, meant we had millions rather than buttons. Obviously keep in mind our GDP was lower under Thatcher and Major than it was in the decades prior and wages no longer matched productivity, which caused ecomonic slumps in our economy. So you'd better be very careful and actually research something this time or just admit you don't know and you are simply ign orant on this topic, that's fine.

It was the poll tax that finished Mrs Thatches

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde "to lose one Cabinet Minister is a misfortune, to lose two seems like carelessness".

Can you make a video on the BR Class 15, 16, & 17 please. Please respond when you get this please.

interesting that in 2023 the blackhawk is in the running to replace the puma for the RAF

@70sVRsignalman

6 ай бұрын

Dear @andysheperd5067, well the Australian Army once had S70 Sikorsky Blackhawks, which were replaced by the NH Industries NH90 / MRH90 Taipan ,whose troublesome career in Australia has led to it being withdrawn, to be replaced with the UH60 Blackhawk ! Truly a case of back to the future.

This British hobby of combining smaller firms into large conglomerates, ones that never ever work, is sickening. Nobody in Britain was smart enough to learn from the motorcycle and car industry. One is born stupid, lives stupid and obviously dies stupid in Britain.

Actually the Eurocopter x3 is Fastest helicopter in the world as of 2024. P.S Thanks Thatcher for Getting out jail.

I see, i click like, i watch.

@alancrisp1582

6 ай бұрын

🥱 And so ?. This is important how exactly !!..

Privatisation stitched everyone up.

Time and time again, in every docu concerning the UK, one thing stands out: the losers of WW2, Germany and Japan soon became the "economic winners" of that war. One of the two great militarily victorers, Britain, became an "economical loser"...

All aircraft mentioned in this clip I would love to build in the form of scale model kits!!!

It didn't break Thatcher - it broke Heseltine.

An old RAN Westland Wessex was the first helicopter I ever jumped out of! Horrible & noisy af. _Btw, yep we sang "Ding Dong" down here in Australia too. Thatcher was evil incarnate._ _'Karma' picked both her & Reagan to spend their last years living with dementia. Oh well, s*** happens._

The reason politicians should stay out of the way of industry and public transport.

your delivery and wordsmithy keeps getting better and better, rua. another gem of a docu my guy big up that 💣

Politicians trying to dictate what people do with things they own is a continual problem.

@MrJimheeren

4 ай бұрын

Except for the fact that companies like Westland are completely dependent on government contracts. And if you make products that can’t compete, you’re not getting orders. You can ‘own’ Westland but the only people who buy your products are the government. There is no market for private helicopters, at least not in the UK

So many missed opportunities, "There was some rust below the iron lady's flaking paint"

This one has less motion more politics and opinion. Factually Sir Fred (Frederick Handley-Page) refused to work with his deadly rivals after a lifetime of secrecy and competition. The HS/BAC consolidation did not bring an end to his name and company, a handful continued outside the major groups. The failure of the Valiant airframe and tankers led to work converting Victors, whilst privately developing a medium turboprop feeder liner. With new Government contracts going to the groups lack of funding led to liquidation in 1969 and the sale of the Jetstream programme to Scottish Aviation where it was successful, ironically being subsumed into BAe. I would like to see Motion Histories on each of the 20 or so major British Aerospace companies, rather than the just the selected airframes.

Thatcher was a pure Capitalist. She preferred the private sector making its own decisions without government intervention. There is no love lost on Thatcher here btw, but facts are facts.

It clearly didn’t break Thatcher as she stayed in office for 5 years after that.

Tarzan vs Euro Burger Man. Hezza vs Brittan😅😅

Westland took on the Fairey Rotodyne in preference to its own Westminster.

Not a bad resume of something I lived through - I had quite a few friends who worked for Westland's Hayes Middlesex plant - not high enough up to be privy to much of the politics but well ensconced enough to know what alliance of firms was best. Not much sign of Our Government looking to the National Interest that all shades are so keen to promote - everyone schemed and leaked to favour their own back pockets. Note of caution:- the narrator needs to brush up on correct pronunciations before embarking into English aircraft or famous politicians!

Mahathir was Malaysia’s PM for 22 years. Mrs. Thatcher herself could’ve had 22 years were it not for the Poll Tax and Pro-EU factions sniping at her.

@Rich-on6fe

6 ай бұрын

Nobody should be in power for that long. Malaysia is not an attractive model for Britain to copy.

Now that you’ve hinted at the WW2 helicopters, German & American, how about covering them in a future video, please?

It is ironic that the Thatcher government wanted Westland to go to the States, while Heseltine and allies wanted it to go to Europe. It helped take down thatcher and was thrown to the wolves in the States In the end, it went to Europe. No wonder Heseltine always had an "told you so" attitiude when talking about his time in Westminaters.

Gud vid 👍

She went Nov 1992, 7 years later, so I would say Mrs T survived.

I always thought that it was her poll tax that brought her down because the whole country rebelled.

Arms procurement is a minefield.

Pol Tax broke Thatcher and the tory party - this had little impact compared

Nurturing national champions and capabilities through thick and thin and taking the long term view has worked out well for France, Italy, Germany, the USA, Japan, South Korea ... national capitalism in other words. Whilst the post 1990s British consensus of international capitalism where the only role for the state is ensuring a totally free market with corporate ownership and control being a matter for city traders as well as open borders has resulted in Britain being the only undeveloping country in the Western world where nothing works, is too expensive and key utilities and industries being answerable to no one. At what point will the elite in this country admit the 40 year experiment with international (as opposed to national) capitalism has failed and we should start to slowly rebuild the country and its soul back to where it should be? It will take a couple of generations but if we want to avoid the country sinking into dull, pointless infantilized irrelevance we need to return to robust national capitalism.

As a rule of thumb, always do the opposite of what Heseltine says...

And the main two culprits near sitting next to each other on the front bench......

Interesting, when I was in school we'd been taught that Margaret Thatcher was a robotic turkey sent from the year 9595 to prevent Ronald Reagan from sitting on the Queen's birthday cake in 1983.

I have never been a Tory but I wish Maggie was here and in power now as then we would not be owned by the US and wouldn't have become the worst thing possible, ie. the bullies mate.

The Poll Tax finished Thatcher.

and now we see the results of American take-all defense industrial policy, with the elimination of European capacity to defend itself

At least Norman Tebbit knew something about aircraft, being an RAF pilot. He also flew with BOAC as a pilot and nav.

Oh how great did her policies turn out to be few decades later

You know, if I were Britain, I would sell the whole lot to India for a symbolic 5 Rupie and be done with trying to ruin my own country all the time. Even though you are all succeeding with this task really well. How deep can you dive now. Clearly the bottom is not in sight yet.

I never heard about any of this before, but I knew something was going on, or I wouldn't be listening to The English Beat's awesome Stand Down Margaret...if you don't know this song, learn it. I said I see no joy, I see only sorrow I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow So stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down I say stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down Stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down Margaret I say stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get the chance Just to sing to my children in a holiday jam Our lives seem petty in your cold gray hands Would you give a second thought, would you ever give a damn? I doubt it Stand down Margaret Everybody shout it Stand down Margaret Work, white law Shell shock, world war Stand down please Stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down Margaret I say stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down Margaret Stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down Margaret I say stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down Margaret I always thought it strange that Thatcher could cling to power so strongly, when she was so obviously the problem. I understood that much, despite not having any interest in British politics at the time.

Nationalised Unions did that to our economy, don't blame thatcher. Look with nuance

Actually it was the Community Charge.

😮

That's what you get for having comparatively lousy iron ore.