IN the sixties the troubled Fairfield yard in Glasgow was subject to what became known as the Fairfield experiment. As the great journalist, Ian Jack, once described it, “work at the yard was reorganised and remanaged” and management “stressed to workers that they were all (as it were) ‘in the same boat’, via speeches at many mass meetings at the old Govan Lyceum. It worked for a while...”

The first ship to be built from start to finish under the new management at the yard was the bulk carrier, Atlantic City, one of two that Fairfields was building for the Cardiff line, Reardon Smith, each of about 41,250 tons deadweight.

The carrier was put into the water on the scheduled date. It was said to be the first that hads been built fron the stern forward, which allowed the fitting-out trades to start work on the ship earlier, and the first that the yard had constructed using computer-controlled network analysis techniques.

When it was launched in February 1967, the yard’s chairman, Iain M Stewart, said the Fairfield experiment as a proving ground for industrial relations was working, and that the yard hoped to be a viable concern by the end of the following year.

But, he cautioned, the experiment could never succeed unless they pumped in as much work as was being turned out throughout the critical year of 1967. Nevertheless, they hoped to acquire a full order book.