VIEWS OF THE WEEK
The Politics of Plane-
We have not thought it right to comment on individual projects whether already in the pro- gramme or under consideration. Assessing and judging the prospects of particular projects is a detailed job for professional experts. (The Plowden Report, paragraph 336.) rinlIE trouble with Plowden is that its con-
1 elusions are so tenuously related to the situation. If you do not examine the individual propects, how do you find out what has gone wrong? If you do not go out and find out just why foreign buyers have been preferring non- British machines, you are hardly equipped to start proposing a remedy. But the Plowden Corn- inittee apparently had a theory to begin with and saw no need for diagnosis. This is that British machines no longer sell and that they will not sell in the future because of 'aggressive' United States competition. Therefore we must do what we can to set up a miniature model of the US aircraft industry in Europe. It may still be com- paratively small, but at least it will be assured of a larger home market.
This, essentially, is Plowden. The rest of it is concerned with administrative proposals, the main theme of which is that as soon as we can regain a captive market it will no longer matter so much about the quality or nature of the machines produced. Comparisons after all, the report takes pleasure in reiterating, between various aircraft are difficult (to the members of the committee?), therefore no one will press them too far. Devise a new structure for the industry, and all its shortcomings will be papered over. The market is more important than the product.
It is true that Plowden recognises, with some irritation, that one of the basic difficulties of planning ahead in the aircraft industry is that requirements change before orders are com- pleted. This must be checked, it argues, by governments not changing their minds from one Defence White Paper to another. But this will not be changed until the designers and technologists come up with the sort of ideas for weaponry that have some chance of being current in the 1970s. It is hard to see the Plowden recommendations ensuring this. They are concerned with struc- ture: if a government and a monolithic industry remain set on a programme long after it has ceased to be viable, it will be even harder and more costly to cancel than in the past. Can- cellation will be more difficult again if a foreign government is involved as well. Decision will always be delayed for political reasons. This is particularly true of the Concord project, which logically the Plowden Committee ought to oppose on the grounds that it is too big a scheme even for European co-operation. The Concord now is politically impossible to cancel, however much its costs rise and however fast the United States catches up.
The proposals for European partnership are a nice aspiration, but they cannot ensure that they will not lead only to the same old mistakes of building the wrong machines at the wrong time, this time on a larger scale. They are also no more than an aspiration because there is no reason to assume that other European coun- tries have reached the same analysis of the situa- tion as the Plowden Committee. France, for in-
stance, talks notably less about co-operation than does Britain. The Dutch are doing very well on their own, co-operating wherever necessary with others in the normal way by incorporating foreign parts. The West German industry is small and if it develops is as likely to do so in co- operation with the United States as with Britain. The politics of it are quite simple: Britain can- not talk of European co-operation only when her own cupboard is bare and expect Europe to listen. The proposal that Mr. Jenkins should call a con- ference of European ministers of aviation is fine, but any results will take a long time to come and, meanwhile, Britain needs to show that she has more ideas on planemaking than a plan for partial state control. There is another report still to be written on who buys what and why and, more important, who will buy what in the future. In the end it is the planemakers who count. Plowden, however, knows only about the ad- ministrators.
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