The Coventry Motor Industry

Birth to Renaissance

David Thoms, Tom Donnelly

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138739260
• eBook ISBN: 9781351730402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This titlewas first published in 2000: Coventry is synonymous with both the creation and relative decline of the British motor car industry. This volume utilises the extensive range of primary sources on the subject to explore the relationship between the car industry in its local context and the wider economic, social and political environment. It analyses the emergence and early dominance of Coventry's motor manufacturers, the rise of volume production in the 1930s and the instabilities and renaissance of the post-war era. Specific chapters deal with the industry's response to the demands created by the two world wars. A number of themes run throughout the book including the structure of the industry and the relationship between its various sectors, resource provision, management and labour relations, and the nature and response to market demand. The book also provides fascinating insights into the history of some of the most evocative marques in the car industry, including Daimler, Jaguar, Alvis, Siddeley, Standard and Rover.

Chapter 1
The Coventry Motor-Car Industry: Parameters and Significance

The foundations of British motor-vehicle production were laid in Coventry in the 1890s as the city moved away from its traditional industries of textiles and watchmaking towards the manufacture of cars and their components. Daimler, Rover, Standard, Siddeley and Riley are among the famous marques associated with Coventry from its early car-making days and, although competition soon arrived from other parts of the country, for a short time the city represented in essence the British motor industry. Coventry's rapid industrial expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was also associated with electrical and aeronautical engineering, machine tools and artificial fibres, producing a cluster of enterprises based on relatively high levels of science and technology.

The reasons for Coventry's chequered experience during this period centre upon the replacement of the ailing crafts of silk weaving and watchmaking as the principal sources of income and employment by the new engineering products of cycles, motor vehicles and machine tools. By 1911 the vehicle and metal industries together absorbed just over 41 per cent of Coventry's occupied population, while watchmaking and silk weaving, which for most of the nineteenth century had dominated the labour market, accounted for less than 6 per cent of the total. These changes were accompanied by a rise in the scale and complexity of production. Although factory organisation was found in textiles and watchmaking, both industries relied heavily upon relatively small-scale enterprises. Many of the early cycle firms were also modest in their resources and output, but with the expansion of demand and greater capitalisation the industry became dominated by a number of very large firms such as Rudge Whitworth whose 2,700 employees in 1906 were responsible for the manufacture of 75,000 cycles.¹ By 1914 volume production had modified traditional work patterns, though in most areas, including motor vehicles, the specialised skills of the craftsman had not yet been superseded by the more routine activities of the assembly-line worker.

The social impact of Coventry's relatively late industrial revolution further illustrates the exceptional speed and magnitude of change. After a reversal in the 1860s, the earlier pattern of steady population growth reasserted itself. In 1901 the city's inhabitants numbered 69,978 but by 1911 the largest recorded decennial increase of 52 per cent had taken the total to 106,349. During the 1890s, inward migration became a significant factor in Coventry's demographic experience, but between 1901 and 1911 it emerged as the dominant element with some 67 per cent of the population increase of that period being accounted for by immigration from outside Warwickshire. The nearby counties of Worcestershire and Northamptonshire were major contributors, though some people were attracted from more distant locations, including almost 3,000 from London.² One of the consequences of this phenomenon was that it helped to produce a relatively young population, which no doubt influenced other social trends, such as marriage and birth rates, both of which were above the national average in 1911.

The peak year of the cycle boom in 1896 brought a flood of immigrants to Coventry and an immediate housing crisis. According to the city's Medical Officer of Health, 'Houses could not be built fast enough to accommodate the inrush.'³ The city's electric tramway helped to ease the problem by facilitating the development of outlying areas, such as Foleshill, and by 1906 the building rate had improved substantially, reaching around 800 houses per annum compared with less than 200 a decade earlier. Nevertheless, the acceleration of population growth in the early twentieth century meant that Coventry's relatively small-scale building contractors found difficulty in keeping pace with the rising demand for inexpensive property, and one result of this was that many hundreds of workmen were obliged to lodge in the city during the week, returning home for Sundays. Although overcrowding remained a problem in 1914, it was largely confined to the central areas where it was exacerbated by the narrow medieval streets which restricted the ventilation and natural lighting of the houses. On the outskirts, to the north-east of the city, where most building work had been concentrated, relatively prosperous artisans rented or were purchasing accommodation which was officially regarded as of good standard. The 1890s saw a considerable increase in the provision of mortgages and between 1896 and 1914, for example, the the total advances held by the Coventry Permanent Economic Building Society increased from £12,106 to £102,166.⁴ Yet, with the industrial expansion and population growth of the war years and beyond, inadequate supply remained a continuing feature of Coventry's housing market.

Similar difficulties plagued education as the schools bulged under the impact of a rapidly expanding child population. When the Local Education Authority assumed its responsibilities in 1903 it was already disadvantaged by the laxity of its predecessor, the Coventry School Board, which had been slow to respond to the new pressures, but the problem was compounded by the development of the peripheral areas where school building had not been designed to cope with the heavy demand which appeared after the turn of the century.⁵ Only three of the authority's thirteen elementary schools were said to be free from overcrowding in 1908 and by the outbreak of war the Board of Education estimated that some 28 per cent of Coventry children were handicapped in this way, with the area to the north of the city being a particular worry. Although the LEA was penalised for its overcrowded elementary provision, board officials recognised that serious efforts were being made to rectify the deficiencies, and appreciated that Coventry's phenomenal growth rate rendered it virtually impossible to devise an effective school-building programme.⁶

Although the local authority was slow to respond to Coventry's housing shortage, important steps were taken to ameliorate other concerns in the decade before the First World War. Environmental health was gradually improved and by 1910 this was said to have contributed significantly to the city's declining death rate. Maternal and infant health care received particular attention, with the appointment in 1901 of a woman health visitor and in 1905 the introduction of a limited scheme of school medical inspection. Under pressure from the local branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild, Coventry was one of the first cities in Britain to establish an infant welfare clinic in 1915.⁷

Despite only a limited development of trade union organisation in the pre-war period, Coventry wages were generally good, certainly compared with rates of pay traditionally available in the textile industry.⁸ Incomes were vulnerable to periods of unemployment resulting from trade fluctuations and the seasonal nature of work in the cycle and motor industries, but the Medical Officer of Health's comment in 1910 that Coventry children were well nourished and that this was due to the city's commercial prosperity is indicative of a broad rise in living standards.⁹ The general work environment seems to have benefited from the structural changes in employment. It was reported in 1890 that in the new industries 'the artisan works under conditions more favourable to health than the watchmaker or weaver did'.¹⁰ Apart from Courtaulds's viscose plant where employees could be obliged to work in an unpleasant and even dangerous atmosphere, factory conditions some twenty years later did not cause any serious concern. The new generation of Coventry workers were not only better paid than their predecessors, but in general by 1914 enjoyed substantially improved living and working conditions and, according to The Times, were soon to demonstrate a greater sense of industrial pride than could be found anywhere else in the country.¹¹

When representatives of the Reform League visited Coventry in 1868 they reported that 'Party feeling runs very high in the Borough, nearly every man being an active Politician.'¹² This was given a new twist from the 1880s by the city's accelerated economic development and the general spread of interest in socialist ideas. Traditional working-class support for the Liberal position was shaken by the commercial treaty with France in 1860 which was widely held responsible for the downfall of the silk ribbon industry, but by the early twentieth century support was growing for more radical politics reflected in the formation in 1902 of the Coventry Labour Representation Committee. Although the first election success arrived in 1905, it was not until 1937 that Labour gained control of the city council, though in the intervening period it came to exercise considerable influence over local affairs. The new business community also became involved in municipal politics and when George Singer, the cycle and motor manufacturer, became mayor in 1891 his election was indicative of the growing dominance of the new economic order.

The crisis in the silk ribbon industry following the removal of tariff protection revealed the inability of Coventry producers to meet the challenge of Swiss and French manufacturers whose competitive prices and attractive designs enabled them to capture a major share of the British market.¹³ The advancement of factory production had been inhibited in Coventry by local craft traditions, while the unattractive economic climate after 1860 deterred businessmen from investing the capital required for modernisation. For a brief period in the late nineteenth century watchmaking became Coventry's principal source of employment, but eventually it, too, was eclipsed by foreign competition as American and Swiss firms, using mass-production techniques, came to monopolize the market for inexpensive timepieces, which was growing quickly in the 1870s.¹⁴

The cycle industry provided a timely, if fortuitous, solution to Coventry's economic predicament. The pioneering work of the Coventry Machinists Company, formed in 1869, laid the foundations of the British cycle industry. Apart from its technical and production achievements, the firm became the starting point for many of Coventry's leading cycle manufacturers, including George Singer and John and Thomas Bayliss. The origins of Coventry's economic and social transformation are varied and complex, but the growth of the cycle industry was enormously influential in the diversification of the industrial base, for it was the pivot of a development block incorporating machine tools and motor vehicles which underpinned the city's prosperity during the formative years of the new century.

Coventry s occupied population almost doubled during the interwar period, confirming the city's promise as one of Britain's most dynamic growth areas and contrasting sharply with the manifestations of industrial decline in many other parts of the country. Immigration continued to supplement the natural population increase, though by the 1920s migrants were drawn from more distant locations than earlier in the century, including substantial numbers from Wales, Scotland and the northern counties. In addition, it was claimed in 1929 that some 27,000 workers commuted daily to Coventry, mainly from Birmingham.¹⁵ Although job security continued to be threatened by trade and seasonal factors, the general economic expansion ensured that favourable employment prospects and relatively high wages remained a powerful attraction to labour. By 1939 Coventry's population stood at 220,000 compared with 136,000 in 1919, giving it the distinction of the fastest-growing city in Britain during this period.

The tension which accompanied rapid economic and social change was again apparent in housing and education. Demand for residential property remained high around the city's northern fringes where many of the major engineering firms were situated, but new areas of growth like Stoke, which had developed swiftly during the First World War, placed additional strain upon the limited resources of the building industry. Construction increased steadily during the interwar years, aided in part by a more positive approach from the local authority, seen mainly in the form of municipal housing. Land was acquired at Radford in 1923 for the first corporation estate which by the late 1930s contained almost 2,500 houses, making it one of the most densely populated districts in the city. Coventry also enjoyed an exceptionally high rate of owner occupation. Between 1932 and 1938 over 18,000 privately financed houses were built in the city, dwarfing the public provision for that period.¹⁶ Yet the supply of both private and council housing was persistently outstripped by demand and employers complained frequently that this rendered it more difficult to attract suitable manpower to the city.

The provision or school buildings remained an issue throughout the interwar period and in 1938 one of His Majesty's Inspectors commented that 'the rapid growth and development of the City made the Public Elementary School accommodation problems bewilderingly complex.'¹⁷ However, increasingly, the problem of overcrowded schools spread from the elementary to the secondary sector fuelled by growing public interest in more advanced education as well as the continued upsurge in population. In 1925 the secondary allocation was about 1,400 places below the Board of Education's target and the real shortfall was probably far greater than this. The LEA responded by introducing a selective central school and a limited number of elementary 'higher tops', but plans for a major building initiative did not begin to take shape until the later 1930s when Stoke Park School was rebuilt and land was acquired for the construction of Caludon Castle Boys' School. Technical education experienced similar pressures as a growing number of employers and their workers came to appreciate the benefits of college-based training. In January 1933 some 3,000 technical students petitioned the local authority for improved training facilities but, although an impressive new college was opened in 1936, the additional accommodation quickly proved inadequate for by the end of the following year over thirty classes were forced to meet in neighbouring outposts, while enrolments in engineering had been suspended due to excess demand.¹⁸

In the interwar per...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• 1 The Coventry Motor Car Industry: Parameters and Significance
• 2 Origins: From Cycles to Cars
• 3 Organisation and Growth to 1914
• 4 The Impact of War, 1914–18
• 5 Between the Wars: Mergers and Mass Production
• 6 The Motor Manufacturers and the Second World War
• 7 Growth, Stagnation and Merger, 1945–68
• 8 The End of the Boom
• 9 Renaissance or False Dawn?
• Bibliography
• Index