AUTHOR
The author, Frank
Major MBE writes his memoir following a career of nearly 55 years service in both
the public and private sectors.
He left school
at sixteen and joined, as a trainee, the port services contractor Rea Limited.
In 1966 he
joined the newly formed cargo handling division of the Mersey Docks and Harbour
Board and over a period of eighteen years rose through the ranks, holding
appointments of increasing seniority and diversity, to become Director of cargo
operations, effectively running, at that time, the largest cargo handling business
in Europe.
One such role was of a uniquely
pioneering and innovative nature, leading the transition team that developed
and implemented the gradual, evolutionary modal switch from traditional general
cargo services towards specialist deep sea container and Ro/Ro operations in
the Port.
This was a
policy that eventually presented the Port and Industry at large with
unpredictable challenges in its already precarious labour relations and a steep
decline in the demand for Dock side personnel.
Leaving
Liverpool in 1984 he then worked for Scruttons Plc, a London based maritime
services company before being appointed in 1985, as General Manager (Chief
Executive Officer) of the local authority owned Port of Sunderland.
During his
twenty years in the North East he led the strategic transformation of the Port
from its shipbuilding and coal shipment heritage towards a more diverse port
business.
He was a
founder member in 1992 of the British Ports Association of which he was Chairman
from 1996/1998.
Working with
north east MEP Alan Donnelly at a European and national level he was actively
engaged in the promotion of short sea shipping as a strategic growth
opportunity for medium sized ports and was a member of several Boards associated
with the Ports Industry.
Chairing a
joint DCLG/DFT working party on the future of the local authority owned ports
sector, his 'legacy' was published in
2006 as Opportunities for ports on local authority ownership; a review of
Municipal ports in England and Wales which contained radical recommendations
to improve governance and finances.
Since
retirement he was appointed by Defra as Chairman serving until 2013,
Northumbria Regional Flood and Coastal Committee and was a Non Executive
Director until 2014 of QE Gateshead, a Foundation Trust acute hospital.
He is
currently Chairman of the 3 Rivers Local nature partnership, Chairman of
Sunderland RNLI lifeboat Station and a member of RNLI national Council.
He was
commissioned in 2007 as a Deputy Lieutenant for Tyne and
Wear and appointed MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours list 2013 for services
to flood and coastal risk management.
He is a
Freeman of the city of London and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of
Shipwrights and a Freeman citizen of Glasgow and a member of the Incorporation
of Hammermen.
INTRODUCTION
I’ve reached a
stage in my life that seems to justify penning my recollections of a career in
the Ports Industry.
So what has
prompted me to do it? Could it be that I’ve been flattered to receive a letter
from a firm telling me that I’ve attained an age when I may possibly have
interesting stories to tell or simply that when I see twenty something year old
football starlets and other self-acclaimed celebrities writing
auto-biographically about their short, tinsel-town lives, I merely think that
the world’s somehow topsy-turvy and that the common man may risk having
something more interesting to say.
As an avid
reader, for some peculiar reason, of obituaries in the Daily Telegraph and the
Times newspapers, I am regularly amazed by the exploits of ordinary folk.
Ordinary only in the sense that these people often have what they themselves
perceive as orthodox interests or pursuits or careers which to many of us are
beyond our comprehension.
Misfits, pioneers,
highly ranked naval officers, fighter pilots, soldiers, scholars and the landed
gentry have carved out their own niches by way of their eccentricities and
exploits and by their heroism of the hour, but where do mere Port managers fit
it into this complicated matrix of character, pedigree, personality and talent?
I don’t really
know, but it’s probably worthwhile trying to find out.
By the way, I’m
not setting about writing my own obituary; this will be more of a canter
through the first forty or so years of my life of which, significantly, some twenty-five
years was spent in a fascinating industry characterized by so many wonderful
people.
It is also a
recollection of some incidents and experiences that, upon long reflection,
reveal the gritty and witty side of an industry that for many still remains a
mystery.
It may even be
viewed as an informed commentary about a remarkable and turbulent twenty-five
year period in the social and economic history of a great institution, the Port
of Liverpool. If I have learned one lesson from my experience in business, it’s
simply to have fun in whatever you choose to do!
In a timely
book entitled Cargo Handling and the
Modern Port published by Pergamon in 1965, the author R. B. Oram observes
that:
It is becoming an increasingly recognized fact these days that no
single factor can so directly affect the standard of living of a maritime
people as the speed with which ships can be turned round in her ports. In
addition, the last 15 years have seen an increasing Government interest in the
running of our ports, a distinct raising of the status of the port worker by
the wholesale introduction of modern machinery into dock work, and the
development of an entirely new conception of the functions of a port.
Already emerging is a kind of port physically different from its
conventional predecessor; the port that both in America and Europe is
becomingly increasingly integrated into the new forms of national economy.
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