DAVENTRY SHUTDOWN: A SIGN OF THE TIMES

The announcement on Monday that the most advanced machine tool company in Britain, Herbert. Ingersoll of Daventry, had finally collapsed, came as no surprise to the 338. workers left in the plant. For the Anglo-American venture had not made a profit since it began trading in 1968. In fact it had accumulated losses of over f4m.

Throughout the fast 18 months Herbert-Ingersoll sacked 215 workers as the company floundered in deeper financial difficulties.

Yet in January 1968 the firm opened with 600 workers. They were skilled workers recruited from all over England, some of them coming from as far away as Sunderland on the North East coast.

Four years and five months later the parent companies, Europe's largest toolmakers, Alfred Herbert of Coventry and the Ingersoll Milling Machine Co Illinois, announced they had had enough.

The now-common figure of the receiver-manager, in this case Kenneth Cork of Barclays hit the machine-tool industry. Today the industry, which employs 55,000 workers, is running at just 60 per cent capacity.

Last year new orders were 40 per cent down on 1970 in the £200m industry. Export orders were down 19 per cent Throughout the 1960s, efforts had been made to change the whole outdated structure of the industry. Today there are still 200 firms producing machine tools, drop of 150 on 196.. Europe's Alfred Herbert, curope s largest toolmaking concern, was severely hit. In the trading year of October 1971 it sustained a loss of over £4m. It purged its workforce ruthlessly. The number of sites went from 15 to 11 and in 14 months they sacked 3,190 workers, one quarter of its labour force.

Chairman Sir Richard Young described bankruptcy reports as 'moonshine'. Sir Richard lives in luxurious manor house in Stratford-upon-Avon and is a director of Rugby Portland Cement and the Commonwealth Finance Development Corporation.

For the company, HerbertIngersoll was an attempt drag the ailing company into the 20th century, to compete on the world market. need by pro for a real went to count tries like Brazil and 'One after stop then went stop-go. people went bought Len Rudkin readily acreed that all int promises of security given in exchange and so nobilit had come to nothing in the en Now Barclays what 50 end.

Their going to the 350 but how back panthe think it pany.

of the people at Rex Arnold, the steel-based furniture frame company. Then last year Daventry Engineering sacked 150 men—one quarter of its, labour force. 'Daventry's imäge is becoming a little tarnished, he said. "There are still jobs about but it's no use my skilled members who came from up and down the country to work at Herbert-Ingersoll taking a job at Green Shield. 'What seems to be happening these days is that everyone is saying it's no good investing in people.

Instead you have to put your money into things like property and land if you want to make a profit,' he told me in his Rugby office. 'This leads me as a socialist to say that places like HerbertIngersoll should be nationalized -and I'm not particularly a nationalization man. If it is impossible to run these industries with private capital then the state should take them over.'