The sinking of British IT

Why did the UK computing industry run aground dramatically in the 1980s? Former Computing editor Richard Sharpe goes in search of the truth

IT?S APPROPRIATE that Titanic is the hot movie of the season as Computing cruises towards its 25th anniversary.

The similarities between the Titanic and the UK computer industry are alarming. Both sank in deep waters with heavy loss of life. Both were the pride of their respective engineering disciplines. Each is viewed through the sepia tint of nostalgia. And neither will ever relive their former glory.

In the meantime, the debates about who is to blame for the loss of the Titanic and the UK computer industry rage on.

The staff of Computing and I, as editor, were in the crow?s nest at the time ? that is, the late 1970s to mid-1980s. From our vantage point, we shouted ourselves hoarse about the onrush of icebergs. But our warnings were seldom acknowledged from the bridge, let alone acted upon. I suspect some of those on the bridge at the time, and certainly the owners back at port, were happy to see the ship go down.

Another similarity between the sinking of the Titanic and the computer industry is that there was a far higher proportion of casualties among the steerage class than among the first class passengers.

Yes, back then there really was such a ship as the UK computer industry. It floated high on the tide of UK public sector orders and the patronage of what was then rightly called UK industry and commerce.

And the computer industry was finely engineered. It could boast such triumphs as the content addressable file storage system (Cafs) ? what we today would call a database server. Cafs came from the engine room of UK computing, ICL.

The industry could also boast such wonders as innovative relational databases and world-leading versions of the Unix operating system from Logica. Contrary to current myth, the technology did not have to be large to be on board.

The UK computer industry could also boast a revolutionary microprocessor design in the form of the transputer. Then there was Clive Sinclair?s innovative ZX80 and ZX81, a microcomputer which helped remake the face of computing ? or at least changed the cosmetics used. In doing so, however, these machines cost a host of data processing staff their jobs.

At the time, the shipping company was owned by UK PLC, a new company set up by prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Co. Kenneth Baker was minister for information technology, a post he designed for himself.

Baker leapt on to the IT bandwagon early on. With great enthusiasm, and more words than either wisdom or cash, he puffed and pushed the image of IT through government and beyond. Baker shovelled #2 million into an IT awareness campaign, IT82, headed by an ever-watchful and energetic Alan Benjamin. The campaign managed to achieve one objective: we didn?t adopt the French term ?informatics?, and instead plumped for IT, which has saved headline writers acres of space ever since.

When the successful IT82 campaign was over, it soon became clear that the government had no further intention of looking after the industry. A new officer of the watch had been appointed ? Rob Wilmot. He had been drafted in to rescue ICL when the Thatcher-induced recession and poor management left the company without enough cash to pay the monthly salary bill. Wilmot, supported by his new chairman Christopher Laidlaw, set about ICL?s strategy with an axe.

The axe, as ever, fell on the steerage class. Within a year of Wilmot and Laidlaw taking over in mid-1981, ICL had shed 15,000 staff. Long-term research and development was hacked out. Long-term relationships with suppliers were also severed.

Wilmot was enamoured by the component technology of Fujitsu and forged a vital component alliance to leapfrog offerings from the UK electronics component industry. By dint of this and other efforts, Wilmot and Laidlaw succeeding in pushing the ICL share price back up to 50p from a low point of 25p in 1981.

The prize was more than the improved share price. Laidlaw was given a knighthood, partly for playing benign uncle to Wilmot, in the mid-1982 honours list. They made ICL so attractive that STC, a bastion of the UK telecommunications industry, snapped it up in a dawn share raid in 1984. STC was blinded by a logic which was then all the rage: that integration and convergence of computers and telecommunications would create integrated companies.

By the middle of 1982, users felt some relief ? not that a lot of attention was then paid to them in the columns of Computing. It was then felt ? rightly in hindsight and certainly true today ? that suppliers have far more power than users. At that time, the tactic on Computing was ?watch the suppliers?. Or rather: what they come up with today, the users will have to implement tomorrow.

But implement what exactly? The supply side of the industry, as ever, generates more options than any user can evaluate, let alone implement and digest. An article in this title in mid-1982 predicted the exceptional success of Smalltalk. It was expected by some, and reported by us, that Smalltalk would take over from the operating systems then available on small microcomputers ? operating systems such as CPM and MS-Dos. If this had only proved to be true, a whole generation of software developers could have been saved the pain of C and C++.

At the time, Roger Foster, the Houdini of the UK computer industry, was predicting that MS-Dos would become the operating system for microcomputers of the future, not Unix as many others had expected. At this point, he was filling his pockets and those of other ACT shareholders with the profits from selling Sirius ? a stunning personal computer of US design. Later, Foster launched his own range, called Apricot. He again filled his pockets with the fruits of Thatcher-style entrepreneurship.

Even in Armonk, New York, the penny dropped: personal computers were going to be big. The 1981 PC launch was followed by PC/XT in 1983. By 1984, IBM was on to step three with PC/AT, the first full bloom of the business-ready PC.

The Digital Equipment Corporation ? then known as Dec ? gave IBM a close shave with its mid-range strategy. Digital launched its own PC, the Rainbow, with its own architecture, which was non-compatible, and its own fate: failure.

The big question was, what were the Japanese going to do? As the 1970s turned into the 1980s, Japan Inc stuffed $450 million on the board to bet with the US for leadership of the world industry. Wilmot, Benjamin and a host of others with jet-lag from long-haul flights warned the UK computer industry about the impending hoard of Japanese technology, and the opportunities for an alliance.

But it was not only English voices that were issuing warnings. IBM still faced the rump of an anti-monopoly case brought by the European Commission following prompting by Amdahl and Memorex. Computing published details of IBM?s evidence to the Commission in 1982. Central to the IBM position was a deal: drop the case and we?ll help Europe hold off the Japanese computer industry.

The UK government began to take IBM seriously. By 1983, IBM UK employed more people than ICL. Senior IBM executives were seconded to the public sector to tell the government how to become lean and mean.

Former IBM staff also started to take a keen interest in British Telecom. BT was split from the postal service at the start of the decade and an alternative network, Mercury, was proposed as a competitive spur. BT also fell for the integration argument and laid plans to ship integrated office systems to attack the computer market.

BT?s then senior director of technology, John Alvey, proposed a UK strategic computing initiative and, to the surprise of many, a government-sponsored #200 million programme was launched. But the exploitation of the technology funded by the programme was slower than originally expected, mostly because of inadequate management. It was the last throw of the dice in the slowly listing saloon.

The focus should have been on the small icebergs outside, in the sea. In 1983, Microsoft launched Windows, to cries of pain from reviewers. Apple topped it with the Macintosh, which was at first a slow seller until desktop publishing saved its bacon. And, in 1986, Amstrad launched the innovative 1512 and started to slash the entry price to the PC market.

Of course, there were the usual rogues looking for easy pickings. Several went to jail for supplying IT kit to the Russians. Some built large businesses by supplying programmers, hardware and software to South Africa, raking in profits while the ANC leadership was tucked away in prison. John Foulston managed to fleece users with his Atlantic Leasing flexi-leases. And several bogus computer colleges, clustered in Oxford Street, London, were exposed in the pages of Computing for fleecing students.

There is now no reviving the Titanic of the British computer industry. It cannot be brought back to the surface. It will continue to decompose in the memory of its many passengers and crew ? at least those who survived.

But rather than viewing this Titanic through the nostalgic view of Hollywood, we should view its sinking through the rage of loss. Its loss was far from inevitable. Proper action on the bridge and by the owners would have ensured its survival even to today.

In short, we crammed the pages of Computing with everything we could find, hungry for news, features, opinion and understanding. But nothing was so dramatic, nor, in retrospect, as important, as the sinking of the UK computer industry. I wonder who they will get to play me if it ever comes to the screen?