CCL2
WILDERNESS REUNION WITH CCL
I left Marconi Instruments (M.I.), St. Albans, on Friday 11th February 1966 with six months' salary and a legal agreement that the Company, of English Electric House, would not do anything to prejudice my obtaining other employment. By this time I had applied for several jobs outside the English Electric Group (E.E.) and there was a great deal of interest.
Briefed John Davis and John Hammond on what had happened
From Day 1 met Marconi staff and intermediaries on IEE Committees
On the second post-M.I. working day, Tuesday 15th February, I visited Cambridge. I had appointments at the University Engineering Laboratories to see John Coales, Reader in Control Engineering, and David Marples, Lecturer with a special interest in Design. Next in the list in my pocket diary for that day in Cambridge I had noted "T. Eiloart re Directorship". I had not made a prior arrangement to see him and as it turned out I found my meetings with John Coales and David Marples so encouraging that I made no contact with Tim Eiloart.
Support and surprising comments from John Coales
Amazing comment by David Marples after discussion re jobs
English Electric offers consulting work through John Davis
So ended my first week "in the wilderness", as one M.I. manager described my situation shortly before I departed.
Wilderness Weeks 2 to 5, 1966
News of my departure soon reaches my Lodge via M.I.
Conflicting information about my departure from M.I.
I continue with my activities at the Institute of Physics
Job disappointments with curious undertones
W.G. Pye Royal Military College of Science Kelvin Electronics
Ether Langham Thomson Racal Electronic Instruments Hewlett Packard
Ray Burnett's "I'll wait two years for you"
It is difficult to say the exact day when CCL and I
were in contact again for the first time since December 1965. Probably
the fateful date was Monday 21st March, with a call from me triggered by an
announcement in The Times that Robert Maxwell, M.P. for Buckingham and
Chairman of Pergamon, together with some associates, had invested in
Cambridge Consultants. The investment was of up to £60,000 with a
requirement that further investment must be approved by Mr. Maxwell.
When I phoned Tim Eiloart he told me he had recently sent to me at M.I. a questionnaire about modular construction. This was the fourth of the four areas of instrumentation in which I had a special interest. Tim Eiloart later said he had sent out only three questionnaires so it was clear that I was one of a limited range of targets.
Tim Eiloart said recipients of the questionnaire had been invited to get in touch with CCL. My copy was not readdressed so I never saw it but had I done so I would almost certainly have been prompted to contact him. He went on to suggest I could help on the marketing and applications side of a new range of modular instruments. It was arranged that I would visit CCL on 25th March.
Friday 25th March 1966
I visited CCL at their Histon Road premises and discussed the possibility of my doing some work for them. CCL were interested in engaging my services. Apparently the modular instruments had been designed in CCL but were to be handled by a new subsidiary, AIM Electronics. AIM was an acronym of Advanced Instrumentation Modules. It was thought I could help on the production engineering side as well as marketing.
We had a good discussion about a variety of matters, in the course of which I was asked about my leaving M.I, I said I had done so because in my personal view there had been excessive manipulation - so CCL knew how I thought about such practices from the start of our new association. It was left that CCL would get in touch with me.
The AIM Electronics proposal could not have been more compatible with one of my major interests while at M.I. I had not only circulated a paper in that company about the modular form of construction but a Professional Group I chaired in the IEE had arranged a meeting on the topic in the forthcoming session. Also the work being suggested was to make good the deficiencies I had identified in CCL when I had been asked to give my views on the company to English Electric. Not only that, AIM Electronics was in essence to be the Instrument Division of CCL. It was uncanny how the set-up and activities at CCL mirrored my own in English Electric and Marconi. I was also intrigued to discover some time later that M.I. had a subsidiary in India named Associated Instruments Manufacturers!
'Politics' played down and morale boosted at an IEE event
Monday 28th March 1966
Puzzling remarks by F.S. (Freddie) Barton at the Physics Exhibition
Tuesday 5th April 1966
I had lunch with members of the CCL Board at the Strand Palace Hotel. Tim Eiloart and his father, A.B. Eiloart, were present along with M.J. de R. Richardson (Panmure Gordon) and B. Murgatroyd, an accountant connected with C and A Modes. Mr. Richardson (who became Sir Michael Richardson of N.M. Rothschild) was introduced to me as Robert Maxwell's adviser. The meeting was very amicable and the directors seemed very interested in what I had to say. We discussed the problems of running a business, the extent of my committee work, etc. I was clearly being vetted for something but I had no idea what.
1966/67 CCL Directors & Key Staff
Robert Maxwell's man on the CCL Board was MJ de R Richardson (later Sir Michael Richardson)
Thursday 7th April 1966
Invitation from Plessey's A.J. Robb
Tim Eiloart telephoned and asked if he could come over and see me straight away at my home in Harpenden. When he arrived, he said he had been discussing. the possibility of employing me with the CCL Board and would like to offer me a post at £4,000 p.a. (which was considerably more than I had been getting at M.I.) for a three months trial period. I was to take my time over deciding. He left Board minutes and accounts for me to peruse and said he awaited my decision.
Tuesday 12th April 1966
On the next working day (it being Easter weekend) I went to CCL at Cambridge and told Tim Eiloart that I would not accept CCL’s offer. The accounts had shown a £10000 loss on £50000 turnover and I did not think CCL could afford me on that basis. In any case I wished to remain independent. I had a number of promising job applications and negotiations in hand and I did not see operating in the context of a tiny company as my forte. Instead we came to an arrangement by which I provided services to them as an independent consultant to CCL at less expense. I proposed a fee of £20 per day but reducing to £15 for the 3rd and 4th days if more than two days were worked in any one week. I was asked to wait while my proposals were put to a management meeting. Tim Eiloart came out and told me they had been accepted and I then took part in the meeting.
When the Minutes were circulated, with a copy to me, it was worded the other way round, namely that the management proposed £20/hour etc., which was to be put to me to see if I accepted. Perhaps I should have taken that juxtaposition as a warning. Moreover there was a “one month” stipulation that I had not been told about (see below). Shades of things to come!
MINUTES of Management Meeting.
Those present: AH. DS. GE. JF. TE. H.Beck
Date held: 12th April, 1966.
Date Typed: 13th April. 1966.
Ref: JF/R23.
Copies to: Above.
6. Harold Beck: agreed he should be paid £20 a day (two days a week for a month: perhaps £15 a day after first two days in each week). Tim to see what Beck feels.
From this time on, to justify my claims for the agreed fees, I kept notes in a diary of the work I carried out for CCL and the time spent on each. In the diary entries which follow reference will be limited to the projects which are of particular significance in my period as independent consultant to CCL.
This is an appropriate point to reiterate the uneasy feeling about CCL and especially its Managing Director, which made me hold back from joining the company. Added to a growing feeling that the contacts with CCL while I had been at M.I. had not been straightforward there was a disquieting thought that the early suggestion that I might work on the marketing and applications side had something in the nature of a taunt originating from M.I. There were also the strong indications described above that there was a link between CCL and M.I. and/or E.E.
SUCCESS & UNDERCURRENTS AT CCL
Monday 18th April 1966
After the meeting at which my charges to CCL were agreed I got stuck in straight away. My first task was to help CCL with the granting of a licence to Advance Electronics, another instrument company, to manufacture and market some of the AIM Electronics equipment. As a result, on this day I visited Advance Electronics at Hainault with Tim Eiloart and Adrian Horne, Commercial Director of CCL, to negotiate a licence deal. I knew quite alot about product licences and good progress was made.
Contrasting letters from Sir Fred Brundett
Tuesday 19th April 1966
When I arrived at CCL a Management meeting was already under way and from the Minutes I received a few days later I saw that an item that had been discussed prior to my arrival was extremely thought-provoking. The Minute was as follows:-
MINUTES of Management Meeting.
Those Present: AH, DS, GE, JF, TE, HB (later)
Date Held: 19th April, 1966.
Date Typed: 21st April, 1966.
Copies to: Above Ref: JF/R23/E.
3. Azzz Byyyy: possibilities:
a) holidays
b) say that backers recommend move to Cambridge - difficult within a month
- Azzz would probably not move.
c) further
expenditure to enable Azzz to work at home, undisturbed.
d) Employ him
at CCL - would need guidance.
Azzz should have proper brief.
Agreed: Harold Beck to assist with mediation if possible
Confidence-boosting problem: stress that perfection of logic design is not all
that important, and, to some extent, a matter of opinion.
There were clearly parallels to my situation. The Minute's reference to backers recommending a move to Cambridge, the mention of one month, working at home, confidence-boosting, logic design etc. rang bells with me. Not only that but the man was said to live in Harpenden! All this might have been sheer coincidence but I suspected at the time and I am very nearly certain now that the Axxx Byyyy incident was intended as an allegorical or allusive message to me and if so the intention would have been to get me to accept CCL's offer of full-time employment. I never met Axxx Byyyy in Cambridge or Harpenden and I took no action on the Minute.
So one month after I started as consultant to CCL it seemed the same old tricks I had encountered at M.I. were being used at CCL. I felt even more determined to resist the CCL pressures even though my job applications elsewhere were being blocked and much disinformation was being spread about me. I was left wondering who originated this and later CCL ploys? Did Tim Eiloart learn the techniques from the Department of Experimental Psychology in which he had worked? Was Ray Burnett pulling the strings? I discounted the notion that Shull Arms was responsible as he was more of a blunderbuss operator. Or was someone else in the English Electric empire responsible? Or was this just an incredible coincidence?
Tuesday 26th April 1966
Following our meeting on the 18th, Gordon Pope of Advance Electronics wrote offering good money for a licence for various AIM Electronic modules.
Letter from Advance Electronics
Thursday 12th May 1966
Message and support at IEE/IERE meeting
GRANT THE RUSSIAN
Friday 13th May 1966
To CCL, Cambridge. I was present at a CCL Management Meeting. Was it just coincidence that items came up about Racal and Kelvin?
This was also the first time "Grant the Russian" came up. It may have been on this or the second occasion (14th June 1966) that the CCL management asked me to advise them about employing a Russian named Grant, who had applied to them for a job. I cannot now remember the details of the actual person (who I never met) but I clearly recall that even at that time I was wary about the request and was most circumspect about the way in which I responded. I advised Tim Eiloart in writing that before any other steps were taken, the Home Office should be contacted and asked if Mr. Grant had a permit to work in this country.
Four years later, when I mentioned Grant the Russian to a senior MOD/Cabinet Office man in Whitehall, he scorned the idea that a Russian would be named Grant and clearly he had not heard of him.
Another 17 years was to pass before I read in Spycatcher that after a serial from Golitsin in Spring 1962, a Russian refugee named Sokolov Grant had been detected living near a USAF base at Strettishall, Suffolk. He was thoroughly investigated and found to be in the clear. Sokolov Grant and his English wife had moved from the area shortly afterwards probably, Peter Wright said, because the MI5 enquiries had leaked in the village and they wanted to make a fresh start.
Peter Wright goes on to say that the Sokolov Grant story had always had a symbolic importance to him:
"an ordinary man suddenly falling under suspicion, and just as abruptly cleared again, his life utterly changed because of something a man he has never met says in a darkened room on the other side of the world. The quiet rural world of Suffolk colliding with the secret world of betrayal, where there is no such thing as coincidence, and where suspicion can be fuelled at the sight of an empty desk".
Presumably the job application to CCL by Grant the Russian in 1966 indicated a wish to return to the area.
Wednesday 1st June 1966
At CCL's request I carried out much work on AIM Electronics during May & June. For example, regarding publicity, I was asked to check before printing that presentation was as desired and, regarding facilities, I was asked to look into re-housing the company. An idea I put forward about a slide rule to show which modules were required for different functions was quickly taken up.
Tuesday 14th June 1966
This was when "Grant (Russian)" again appeared on the Agenda of a CCL Management meeting. There was also an item about a quotation for Cambridge Instrument Company.
BOARD-LEVEL DISINFORMATION
Monday 20th June 1966
An announcement of my appointment as a Director of AIM Electronics, dated 20th June, appeared on the CCL Notice Board - I did not see it until 22nd July.
Friday 24th June 1966
During the day at CCL in Cambridge Tim Eiloart and I discussed the pattern of work I was carrying out for CCL, which was very varied. I had been asked to sit in at management meetings, attend Board meetings and contribute to every aspect of the company's operations. I think I can fairly say that I brought much-needed experience to bear on such activities as licence negotiations, financial planning, the formulation of marketing as well as production engineering policies and budgetary control. I again made plain my independent status and Tim Eiloart seemed to accept this.
Tuesday 28th June 1966
In the morning I attended, by invitation, a meeting of the CCL Board. It was held at the H.Q. of Pergamon Press, 4 Fitzroy Square, London and Robert Maxwell chaired the meeting. He was exceedingly well-disposed and gracious towards me and indeed seemed anxious to make a good impression.
After the meeting, which lasted from 10am to noon, I departed for the IEE. About a week later I was astounded to learn that I was reported to be somewhere else.
Friday 1st July 1966
I attended an AIM Electronics management meeting at which Tim Eiloart reported on a visit to Sussex University to see Prof. West. On 21st April I myself had visited Sussex to see Professor West. I had not mentioned CCL during my visit.
Visited University of Sussex about a Lecturer appointment - met Asa Briggs
I had noted that shortly after my visit to Sussex and while my application for a Lectureship was in process, a colleague of Professor West wrote to CCL asking about the possibility of investing in the Company. I learnt from management committee minutes that the colleague followed this up with a visit to CCL and Tim Eiloart was invited to make a return visit to Sussex. Just as I had not told anyone at Sussex University about CCL, I had not told CCL about my application (nor, indeed about any of my applications). The upshot of the Sussex job-seeking was that I was not even invited to a selection interview.
The Sussex University episode gave the strongest indication yet that some organisation was keeping a tag on my contacts and someone associated with that organisation was linking my contacts with CCL and negating my efforts to obtain a job elsewhere. Which organisation knew about my application and who was responsible for creating the linkage?
Tim Eiloart told me after the AIM Management meeting that he had found Prof. West very despondent about the University and that he had told Prof. West what a good chap I was.
Tim Eiloart also told me he was taking a week's holiday - his first for many years - and asked me to write to G.C. Pope of Advance saying that the basis on which CCL and Advance were to collaborate was now agreed, apart from two details.
Saturday 2nd July 1966
It was minuted that at an AIM Management meeting, at which I was not present, Tim Eiloart said he was going to get in touch with Prof. C.W. Oatley and invite him to lunch at CCL.
Monday 4th July 1966
This was very probably the day I received a surprising letter from Tim Eiloart dated 28th June. In it he purported to confirm an offer of a directorship of AIM Electronics which had never been made and extended the offer to Chairmanship of the Company.
28th June, 1966.
WB/P
Dear Harold,
I should like to confirm our offer of a seat on the board of AIM Electronics Ltd and hope that you will be able to accept the post of Chairman. I have asked John to let you have a note on the duties of a director and a chairman. I feel that it would be best for you to defer a decision about whether to accept a directorship until you know whether this will be compatible with your next job. In the meanwhile you can continue to act as chairman at our weekly meetings.
I was glad to discuss your work with us on Friday last. I can understand that while you find the work has a stimulating effect and the environment attractive you also feel that your abilities are being extended by a job that is not particularly vital.
I think we agree that AIM Electronics could barely provide you with a full week's work now or pay for it but I am certainly not convinced that CCL and AIM would be unable to afford you. Whether we can really use you is another matter. There is certainly a matching problem here, as I think you‘ll agree.
I feel that it is quite likely that we will be able to provide a really interesting challenge here when we get AIM launched and move to Bar Hill, particularly if Computer Technology comes with us. To run a company ten or a hundred times larger would of course be a very much more demanding task than to run CCL but if and when we start to grow rapidly again the picture may be quite different. The task of, let us say, doubling in size by acquisition or expansion every year would certainly keep us very busy and after 3 years we'd be overtaking companies that are now ten times bigger anyway.
Of course one is also treading much less well documented and familiar ground if trying to grow so fast. Whereas a fairly slow rate of growth requires a gradual change of control techniques, rapid expansion might presumably require a much more self-adequate control. Any new system would have to be worked out with reference to capacity to handle ten or twenty times more information and so forth.
I am most grateful to know more precisely what the situation is and it would be very helpful if you can continue to tell me about it.
Yours sincerely,
Tim
T.M.B. Eiloart
Wednesday 6th July 1966
I visited CCL, Cambridge, for the first time since Tim Eiloart had gone on holiday. While there I was astounded to learn from Minutes I found in my pigeonhole that I was listed as present at the inaugural meeting of the AIM Electronics Board which was minuted as having been held in the same place and on the same date as the CCL Board meeting, i.e. at 4 Fitzroy Square, the H.Q. of Pergamon on 28th June.
This was more strong evidence that so far as I was concerned there was something radically wrong with the CCL set-up. On this point alone, had Tim Eiloart informed the Directors of my stance in relation to CCL or did he keep our exchanges to himself? Those actually present at the Inaugural AIM Board meeting must surely have noticed the error in describing me as present. Certainly John Forster was in the know for he wrote the false Minute - was he ordered by Tim Eiloart to include my name?
When, a few days later, on his return from holiday, I discussed this anomaly with Tim Eiloart he said my name had been listed among those present due to a misunderstanding. I also had reason to doubt that the meeting had been held at Fitzroy Square and when I pressed him on this he admitted that the Board 'meeting' was actually held in the train on the way back from Liverpool Street to Cambridge.
Friday 8th July 1966
This was when I made my other visit to CCL, Cambridge, while Tim Eiloart was on holiday.
My letter to G.C. Pope of Advance Electronics was now ready. Tim Eiloart had asked me before to contact various outside bodies in an executive capacity and I had previously circumvented this difficulty by drafting a letter for him or another director to sign. In this case, I had to word the letter carefully to indicate my personal standing and I signed the letter as Consultant to CCL.
When on his return I showed Tim Eiloart a copy of my letter to Pope he was clearly upset by the way I had written and signed it.
Monday 11th July 1966
I replied to Tim Eiloart’s letter of 28th June. I cannot find a copy of my letter but no doubt it conveyed a thanks but no thanks message and stressed yet again that I was an independent consultant.
Friday 15th July 1966
CCL was now getting involved in the Physics Exhibition, with which I was closely associated. I also heard that my old friend John Hammond of Cambridge Instruments had visited CCL. When later I asked John how it had come about he said somebody had said it was well worth a visit but he could not remember who.
As I was leaving CCL for home at the end of the day, Pat, Tim Eiloart’s secretary (the one who soon after emigrated to Canada), pointedly said "good luck on Monday”. My commitments on Monday 18th were to see A.J. Wilson, the marketing research manager at STC about an IEE meeting in November 1966 and an appointment at Imperial College to examine a Cambridge MSc student named Olerenshaw. I had not told CCL of either of these appointments.
Monday 18th July 1966
David Marples had asked me to be co-examiner with Joan Woodward of Imperial College of Olerenshaw, whose thesis was on the use of a Solution Development Record for research into Design Processes. We gave him a viva and had no hesitation in passing him.
Tuesday 19th July 1966
I was interested to learn that GWA Dummer, an engineer well known to me, had asked to become a consultant to CCL.
Friday 22nd July 1966
I visited CCL at Cambridge. This was the day I was extremely surprised and not a little annoyed to see a memorandum announcing that I had been appointed a Director of AIM Electronics Ltd. The announcement, which had been issued on 20th June, a few days before I had talked with Tim Eiloart (24th June) and the first meeting of the AIM Board (28th June), was pinned to the notice board which staff and visitors alike could see.
Saturday 23rd July 1966
I expressed myself in writing to Tim Eiloart on the notice about the directorship, letting him off lightly by pointing out that the notice was issued before we had the talk in which I stressed that I was an independent consultant, not an employee of CCL or AIM, hence the misunderstandings - though clearly this had not been the case.
23rd July, 1966.
Dear Tim,
I have just noticed a memo of yours listing newcomers to the Company, describing me as a Director of AIM Electronics, Ltd. This was issued on the 20th June, i.e. before our talk which cleared up misunderstandings on this point. I think it would be advisable to issue an amendment so that my function in the Company is clearly understood, i.e. that I am an independent consultant assisting AIM Electronics and C.C.L. in management and in the formulation of Company policy.
Yours sincerely,
Harold
Come to think of it I was letting him off very lightly because he should have removed the notice after we had our talk.
It would be very difficult to make a mistake about such a matter as the appointment of a Director and I wondered if Tim Eiloart's actions in making the false announcement as well as showing me as present at a Board meeting when I wasn't, were along the lines of "This is what I want to happen so I will act as though it has happened". Perhaps he thought this would induce or seduce me to go along with his wishes. Maybe this was in accordance with a behaviourist theory he had picked up in the Applied Psychology Department.
Alternatively, perhaps intense pressures had been put on him to recruit me to AIM Electronics, if not CCL, and he could have been using the announcement and the Board Minute to mislead people into thinking that he had succeeded. I wondered if John Hammond and Charles Oatley had their attention drawn to it when they visited. Because of my regular contact with John Hammond through Freemasonry I could correct any false impression he might have obtained from his visit but with Charles Oatley it was not so easy. The same was true of others taking an interest unknown to me.
Wednesday 27th July 1966
Tim
Eiloart responded to my representations about the Director announcement
by issuing another memo with ambiguities loaded
in his favour, saying that my
Directorship had yet to be confirmed! When I raised the matter face to face with Tim Eiloart he murmured jauntily that it was such a pity they had got their
first ever notice listing newcomers wrong.
I kept on with my consulting work at CCL for I was constantly being asked to take on new projects. I put in 3/4 days per week which brought me in £55 to £70, and I think I gave very good value. In the meantime I continued to apply for posts elsewhere and my applications continued to be undermined. I felt strongly, however, that I must continue to resist the manipulations and that all would be right in the end.
7a
CCL3