Alan Bristow

by Alan Bristow

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re turning us away,’ the Captain said. ‘They’ve refused us permission to land.’

  ‘They can’t do that!’ I said.

  ‘The controller says that no Bristow aircraft is allowed to take off or land. Union orders. What shall I do?’

  Apparently, the pilots’ union had told ATC that it was calling a strike, and therefore they must not allow any Bristow aircraft to land. I was furious. ‘This isn’t a Bristow aircraft, it’s Charlie Forte’s,’ I said. ‘Land anyway! I’ll come on the controls with you – tell them I’m flying. If they want to prosecute me, let them try.’

  The aircraft landed at Aberdeen – we never heard any more about our supposed lack of authorisation – and I hurried into the BHL offices where the General Manager for Scotland, John Odlin, and Engineering Manager Jim Macaskill quickly explained what was going on. Sure enough, the British Airline Pilots’ Association, BALPA, had organised fifty-five men to go on strike over the dismissal of a pilot.

  The trouble had started when I asked my Operations Director Alastair Gordon to get together a group of S61N-rated pilots for a contract that had come up unexpectedly. I’d had a call from Esso asking whether I could start an operation in Malaysia immediately, and of course I told them I could. We were working flat out on the North Sea and elsewhere, and after I put the phone down I had to figure out how I was going to do it. I told Alastair to identify S61N-rated pilots, preferably bachelors, who could be transferred to Malaysia within weeks.

  Alastair passed on my request to local managers, and enough pilots were identified to fulfil the requirement. Captain John Cameron, Bristows’ Regional Flying Superintendent, identified six men out of the 110 pilots there whose CVs fitted the job specification perfectly. Five of them were keen to go, but one was not. This was Peter Royston, a former BA pilot. When asked why he was refusing to go, Royston said he had ‘personal reasons’.

  I had laid down a company policy that any pilot could refuse a posting if it created personal difficulties for him. Family problems would always be considered when a change of location was under discussion, for both pilots and engineers. We had accepted refusals from pilots whose wives were pregnant, whose children were facing important exams, or whose relations were ill and needed to be looked after. Any pilot was entitled to refuse the company’s first request to transfer between operations. But if he refused a second time he had to explain exactly what his reasons were, and they had to be good. Captain Cameron reminded Royston that he had previously declined a posting to Nigeria for personal reasons, and his refusal had been accepted. This time, he wanted to know exactly why he was turning the job down.

  ‘I’m going sailing in the Norwegian fjords with my brother,’ Royston said. He produced an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to Captain Cameron. ‘This is my request for six months’ unpaid leave.’

  Captain Cameron passed on the letter to Philip Warcup, Bristows’ Administration Director in Redhill, and Warcup wrote to Royston, entirely reasonably, stating that the company had an urgent unforeseen requirement for S61N pilots in Malaysia, that he had previously been allowed to decline an overseas posting to Nigeria, and that his sailing plans did not constitute valid ‘personal reasons’ for refusal. Warcup urged Royston to reconsider and to accept the Malaysia transfer. Otherwise, he said, the company would have no alternative but to terminate his employment. Royston again refused the posting. Alastair Gordon flew up to Aberdeen and met with Royston face to face.

  ‘The new Malaysia contract is urgent and we must begin flying in May,’ he said. ‘If you refuse you will be disregarding the terms of your contract of employment and you will be dismissed.’ Royston replied by handing Captain Gordon a copy of his letter demanding six months unpaid leave to go sailing.

  ‘I am going sailing in Norway and you can’t stop me,’ he said. ‘I am employed on the North Sea and the company cannot send me anywhere else.’ This was untrue. Bristows’ contracts of employment read: ‘During the period of your appointment you may be transferred to another overseas operation at any time, subject to the exigencies of the company’s operations. You will serve the company in such places as the company shall from time to time require and will perform duties in the air and on the ground as directed by the company.’

  ‘I’m afraid all our options are exhausted,’ Alastair said. ‘You are dismissed, with statutory payment in lieu of notice.’ He took this action without reference to George Fry or to me, but had he asked me I would have backed his decision one hundred per cent. Unbeknownst to me, however, Royston and others had been quietly recruiting staff for BALPA for many months, and on the basis of his one-sided version of events, they had called the strike to protest at his dismissal.

  Bristow Helicopters was a great place to work. Some people claimed there was a small disparity in pay between Bristow Helicopters pilots and those of our opposition at Aberdeen, British Airways Helicopters, but they weren’t comparing like with like – the system of night duty and standby payments was different, and help with relocation expenses was far better at Bristows. Furthermore, British Airways was owned by the government, and as was the way with nationalised industries at that time it could always rely on the taxpayer to fund any uneconomic wage demands. Bristow Helicopters had to live in the real world and could fall back on no such luxury, so we had to pay the proper rate for the job. As Bristow pilots and engineers often told me, BHL was a far better place to work; many actually prized the fact that a man could find himself sent anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat. There was more variety, more responsibility and greater camaraderie, and the equipment and working conditions were better. BHL pioneered a number of safety enhancements that were eventually adopted by British Airways Helicopters, and many of our Aberdeen pilots had come over to BHL from BA, including Royston. There had never been any dissatisfaction and we’d never faced a union threat, until now. BALPA was supporting Royston’s claim for unfair dismissal.

  Company policy on union matters was clear. Any employee could belong to any union or religious movement he chose to affiliate with as long as he did not expect Bristow Helicopters to recognise his relationship. One could be a Buddhist or a Hindu or belong to any sect one liked, but it did not mean that the company was in any way obliged to negotiate with that body.

  As soon as I’d been fully briefed I called a meeting of pilots and engineers in the small hangar at Aberdeen. I explained the real situation and offered to reinstate Royston on condition that he went to Malaysia as planned at the end of May. If that happened, I said, there was no reason why the matter should go any further. The audience, most of whom hadn’t known the full facts, agreed. None of them had known that Royston had asked for unpaid leave to go sailing. They clearly understood that Alastair, in the name of the company, had acted reasonably, given the unhelpful attitude of Captain Royston. During the meeting all their claims were examined and misunderstandings clarified, and I left thinking that their responses had put the matter to rest. Afterwards, George Fry and Alastair Gordon rebuked me for having reinstated Royston on condition that he went to Malaysia. Alastair was particularly displeased because he thought it undermined his position.

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s essential,’ I said. ‘We can’t afford to let something like this affect our North Sea operations – they’re far too important. We’ve avoided a strike that might have caused immense difficulties for our clients, and that’s the most important thing.’

  That Sunday evening we flew back to Gatwick, but on arrival we learned to our consternation that the strike was back on again. Royston had persuaded the BALPA General Secretary Mark Young to call another strike ballot, and some of the pilots intended to come out on strike again the following morning. As a result of this action, I dismissed the fifty-four pilots involved for breach of contract. The strike was to last for seven weeks.

  There were three main reasons why Bristow Helicopters Ltd won the Aberdeen strike. The first
was that most of the staff backed the company; the engineers stood with me to a man, and some pilots came back from leave of their own volition to ensure that BHL kept flying. The second was the fact that I had taken steps to ensure that we could fulfil our North Sea contracts in the event of trouble by reinforcing or eradicating the weak links in our supply chain, particularly with regard to fuel. The third reason was that I was determined to win, because to lose would have spelled disaster.

  It wasn’t the done thing to stand up to the labour unions in the 1970s. For many businesses threatened with a strike, the only way out was to capitulate. The industrial landscape was peppered with hundreds of little Arthur Scargills, strutting about causing trouble and costing the country billions, and it wasn’t until the miners’ strike of 1984 that proper action was taken against them. It’s difficult to remember now what a stranglehold the unions had on the economy in 1977. My refusal to be blackmailed was a very unfashionable stance to take at the time. One of the main union leaders, Clive Jenkins, vowed ‘to bring this employer’ – me – ‘to terms with modern trade unionism.’ That was his euphemism for the seedy protection racket that destroyed businesses, jobs and value.

  Once the strike had restarted there was no question of Royston getting his job back under any circumstances. Picket lines formed and the dispute became increasingly bitter, especially as it became clear that the unions were unable to stop BHL flying. Firebombs were put through the letterboxes of pilots who refused to join the strike; fences and gates at non-striking pilots’ homes were smashed. In one of my regular contacts with Mark Young I warned him: ‘If your chaps are going to use these dangerous tactics, you must expect reciprocal action.’ My son Laurence was stopped at the picket line on his way to take an S61 flight to the BP Forties Field, and one of the pickets spat in his face. Laurence, a fit young man trained by the Royal Marines in unarmed combat, responded by knocking the man to the ground.

  The greatest source of frustration for the pickets was the fact that they were unable to prevent fuel getting through. About eighteen months before the strike began I had considered the possibility that at some point there could be industrial action, and that the company’s operations in the North Sea could be shut down if it wasn’t assured a regular supply of Jet A1 fuel for the helicopters. I was constantly reviewing potential threats to BHL’s activities in all corners of the world. Considering the Aberdeen operation, I thought there were two possible threats. Firstly, we were heavily reliant on the S61N at that time, and it had marginal single-engine performance, which did not please the CAA. If the Authority chose to ground the helicopter for technical reasons which they claimed impinged on safety, it would hit our operations badly. I kept in very close touch with the CAA and I believed I had that situation under control. Secondly, if there was to be industrial action, we might find the company exposed. At the time there was a particularly vicious strike in the news at a small photo printing company in London called Grunwick. Secondary picketing threatened to put the company out of business, and I gave a lot of thought to how similar action would affect Bristow Helicopters. The fuel supply system was an obvious weak point. I had faced a similar situation at Gatwick when I was running British United Airways, and we came close to losing our fuel supply to union action. I had had to do a special deal with Mobil to circumvent the problem. Now, I had a vision of Bristows’ flying being brought to a halt through lack of fuel, and a very real vision it was.

  As a result I formulated a plan to build fuel storage facilities on site in Aberdeen, and obtained the support of my colleagues to carry it through. There was no difficulty in getting a site from the British Airports Authority, who owned the airport, and it was only a matter of days before work started to prepare the ground to take four or five large fuel storage tanks, which would be capable of sustaining all our existing contracts out of the North Sea bases for at least three months. BP was contracted to fill the tanks, but I knew we would be unable to rely on BP’s drivers to top them up if there was a strike. It was therefore essential to obtain our own road tankers, and I told Jack Woolley that he should buy as many 10,000-gallon tankers as he could find. He did a marvellous job of finding serviceable, licensed fuel tankers, subject to minor maintenance work being done on them. When the strike came, I had them all painted white. After all, Bristows were whiter than white in this issue. They became known as the ‘white ladies’.

  With the strike under way, our original sources of fuel would have been closed by secondary union action, but I was assured of all the Jet A1 fuel I wanted from three totally independent sources run by friends of mine. The first was Rex Smith, Managing Director of CSE at Oxford Airport. Then came Doug Arnold, who ran the Sunday market at Blackbushe Airfield and had a passion for collecting Spitfires. He told me: ‘Alan, we’ll buy all the fuel you need, we’ll stock it for you – you just come and pick it up’. The third source was Mike Keegan at Southend, who at that time was running British Air Ferries and a freight operation, Transmeridian Air Cargo, with Bristol Britannias. As a cover, I put it about that we had a ship coming from Rotterdam full of Jet A1. In ports around the country, the unions kept watch for the phantom tanker; British Airways even sent out an S61N every day to look for it. Meanwhile, with our own fleet of road tankers we were able to keep the fuel farm at Aberdeen Airport topped up, and it never fell below eighty per cent capacity during the strike.

  Whenever a road tanker arrived at Aberdeen one of the engineers would go out to escort it, walking in front of it through the picket line. Several of BHL’s most senior engineers, men like Jim Ward and Reg Owen, were at Aberdeen for the whole of the strike. I knew most of the engineers personally, and their opposition to the BALPA strike gave me a great feeling of support and friendship. There was one marvellous man, a big South African engineer called Ian Dobson, who walked up to the picket line carrying a heavy crowbar, which he used to probe along the ground like a blind man with a white stick. As he circled the pickets the crowbar thumped the ground with every step, close to somebody’s feet. ‘Any of you son of a bitches that stops my tanker going through gets this through his foot,’ Mr Dobson informed them. The pickets evaporated before him, and from that moment on they behaved correctly.

  Throughout the strike we did not miss a single day’s scheduled flying. Pilots came in from leave to take the place of strikers, and even more were brought in from other operations to maintain our commitment to our clients – long-serving Bristow men like Ken Bradley, Ian Clarke, and John Willis, who understood what was at stake. I was prepared to go up there and fly myself if necessary; I was still an S55-rated pilot and could have flown as co-pilot on S61Ns. In the event, I wasn’t needed; enough of our pilots shared my views to ensure that our service was uninterrupted. It seemed to me absolutely vital that Bristows remain a non-union company. The unions had far too much power already, without putting North Sea oil at their mercy. The shareholders backed me all the way. The Labour government of Prime Minister James Callaghan could not be expected to offer any support, but what surprised me was the uninvited involvement of a Conservative MP called James Prior, who called me early in the strike and urged me to capitulate.

  ‘You can end this thing today,’ he said. ‘Just reinstate Royston and all the strikers, and it’ll be over.’

  Prior was a pig farmer from Essex who had some influence in the Tory party, and I was concerned at his intervention on what seemed to me to be the wrong side of the argument. I sought the advice of Cranley Onslow MP, who had been Bristows’ retained lobbyist in Parliament on a substantial annual fee for many years, and who himself came to wield great influence as chairman of the back-bench 1922 committee. Onslow arranged a meeting with Prior and Frank Cooper, who’d been an RAF pilot during the war and was then a Permanent Under Secretary at the Ministry of Defence. They came to my flat in Roebuck House in London and Frank Cooper, who later became a Privy Councillor and Chairman of High Integrity Systems, a technology company that made night vision equipment for the armed services, imme
diately came out wholeheartedly in support of the action that Bristows had taken in dismissing Royston. It transpired that James Prior was a card-carrying member of APEX, the union that had tried to shut down Grunwick.

  ‘I’m really speaking on behalf of BP in Aberdeen,’ Prior told me. ‘They want this issue settled.’

  This didn’t ring true because BP had told me they were very well satisfied with our helicopter service between Aberdeen and their platforms in the Forties Field.

  ‘Look,’ Prior went on, ‘there really is no sense in trying to keep Bristows as a non-union company. Why not accept the inevitable with good grace and end the strike.’

  ‘I’m operating in seventeen different countries,’ I told him. ‘How do you suppose I could do that and cope with BALPA representation? We’re a non-union company and will so remain. I’ve never had my engineers request a union, and there’s never been any problem with the pilots until Mr Royston started causing trouble.’

  My main objection, however, was more fundamental. North Sea oil was vital to Britain’s future; surrendering control of it to the unions would have been like handing them a knife and inviting them to cut the country’s jugular vein and bleed it white.

  ‘Mr Prior,’ I went on, ‘just consider for a moment the consequences of what you suggest. If North Sea oil is stopped, it will be a catastrophe for the British economy. What you propose would put us permanently at the mercy of secondary action by BALPA and other unions. There are regular strikes at BA’s main fleet – they may choose to bring their helicopter pilot members out in sympathy. If North Sea flying were to be brought to a standstill, within days oil platforms would begin shutting down for want of men and materials, and all over some trivial and unrelated dispute. The oil that’s out there is vital to Britain now, and will become more so in future. What I am doing is keeping the union’s hand off the tap.’