An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

36A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILCouncil Member James McHugh had hoped:“That the EngC would be able to establish a position similar to that of the Council for themedical profession and thus provide a unified and single voice representing the views,position and status of engineers in the profession. There was a limited number of occasionswhen such a position was achieved but these were exceptions. I recall the debates on theFinniston Report and how different things would be if the Council was a statutory body!”Nevertheless, from evidence available to the compilers of this Chronicle, the feeling amongthe EngC staff at the time was that the EngC, even as a Chartered Body, had achieved asmuch as a Statutory Body could have done in the same period.Council Member John Lyons states:“Of course, others had been pressing for an inquiry. But the TUC resolution [see Chapter 1]was the catalyst, the event that tipped the argument in Callaghan's mind when it mattered. Atthat time he had good cause to want to find something that he could do for the TUC, given allthe difficulties between the unions and the Government there were in that period. (That wasmy motivation in submitting our motion to the TUC in 1976.) It is why Bernard Donoughuegot involved. Donoughue was Wilson/Callaghan's political adviser. We were in contact onand off about the industrial relations scene as it affected the electricity supply industry, andalso became friends as a consequence. Following a meeting I had with Sir Peter Carey, thenthe Permanent Secretary of the DTI, when he told me he saw no point in the inquiry the TUCand others were pressing for, I talked the issue over with Donoughue, ending by asking him ifhe would be prepared to brief Callaghan on it and get him on side. As he records in his book(Prime Minister – The Conduct of Policy under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan –Bernard Donoughue, Jonathan Cape 1987), he agreed to do so.“That intervention was decisive. I drafted terms of reference for consideration that I gave toDonoughue, and they were as close to those finally adopted (about which I was also formallyconsulted by Callaghan) as made no material difference. What was absolutely essential wasthat the Institutions should be kept at bay. I thought at the time, and have not changed myview, that creating a Chartered EC was a fatal mistake, though I did hope - I really did - thatthe work of the EC would demonstrate that I was wrong. Creating it as a Chartered bodyencouraged the Institutions, quite naturally, to think that the EC's modus operandi wasessentially complementary to theirs and, therefore, that it was an organisation which one daythey should and would be able to bring under their wing once the founders of the EC andtheir immediate successors had done their stuff.“It is a very great pity that the Engineering Council was set up just too late. If it had beendone in Callaghan's time I think it is reasonably likely it would have been created as astatutory body. Bernard (now Lord) Donoughue, doesn't think so, but a statutory body wouldhave been much more in tune with the mind-set of the Callaghan Government and, of course,trade union influence would have still carried weight, whereas by the time Keith Joseph wasin charge, we were completely out of the loop. However, whether, in the face of Institutionaland departmental pressures, a Tory Government would have continued to finance a statutorybody after - say - the first five years is another unknown”..© Engineering Council UK 2004