The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 7

THE GUARDIAN Tuesday February 22 1972 7 Shipbuilder's call for increased aid Traffic threat to the Lakes Student plan to improve an area By ROSALIND MORRIS Direct Government aid totalling about 70 millions is essential to the shipbuilding industry if Britain is to compete successfully in world markets, Mr Jim Venus, the managing director of Appledore Shipbuilders, part ox tne court Lane group, said in a public lecture at Newcastle University yesterday. None of the measures taken over the past few The baronial atmosphere and the Green Knight is of Peckforton Castle, near Tarporley, Cheshire, where the being filmed. legendary tale of Gawain Picture by Don McPhee. Case for Cleveland years by any Government tne problem lacing the industry," he said. "The danger would appear to be that Governments will try to shed what they perhaps consider to be a never ending ana increasing liability, because thev feel that the Droblems are insoluble." Japan had destroyed the myth that centuries of tradition, long apprenticeships, and inherited skills were necessary for an effective shipbuilding industry, and as in several Dther countries, her success had been aided by large Government investment.

World shipbuilding was not declining, and although Britain was now responsible for only 5 per cent of merchant tonnage, Ihe total number of ships produced had almost trebled in the last 18 years, while actual tonnage had gone up by iOO per cent. If the Government of the day wanted to preserve the British shipbuilding industry, even at its present level, it would be better that it should be encourage a planned shipyard programme. "It should recognise that an urgent injection ot wo.rKing canital was required." Mr Venus continued. In my view that amount required is 01 tne order of 20 millions. This should be concurrent with a planned investment programme aimed at drastically improving productivity in the industry.

I consider that this would require an initial investment programme of about 50 millions, and that this must be spent on shipyards of a completely new By JOHN ARDILL, Regional Affairs Correspondent Teesside County Borough Council, created four years ago by the amalgamation of six local authorities, is prepared to be dismembered in the creation of a new county council embracing both Danks of the Tees. By our Correspondent Lovers of the Lake District continued thedr evidence yesterday when the A66 inquiry at Penrith entered its fifth week. They are opposing the plan for an improved trunk road across the area to provide a link between West Cumberland and the M6. Lord Chorley of Kendal, a native of the Lake District now living at Stanmore, Middlesex, said that if the national park was to be saved from murder by fast and heavy traffic" the authorities would have to face up to the use of controls. An alternative route by way of Sebergham, advocated by some of the objecting bodies, appeared to be the key to the whole problem.

Lord Chorley. the president of the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society, added "The deep love of this countryside, with its literary association, which I share with so many thousands of others, makes me sensitive to every threat of spoilation and moves me to object to the proposed rebuilding of the A66 which would inevitably do damage to a scene which is so easily damaged." The same feeling of anxiety existed, he felt sure, among tens of thousands of citizens who would be watching the inquiry with anxious attention. Speaking for the London Mountaineering Club, of which he is a past president, Mr John S. Whitehouse. a civil servant, of Raynes Park, London, said Almost all our members have been to the Alps many times Some have been to Turkey and to Greenland, to the Himalayas to the Andes, and to th Rockies.

But 'all of us com back, time and again, to the English Lake District, to our own hills, for the peculiar intimacy of their peace and charm." There was nothing intimate, peaceful, or charming about a major highway. The inquiry continues today. Act will be repealed 9 Mr Harold Wilson yesterday gave TUC leaders a categorical assurance that the next Labour Government will repeal the Industrial Relations Act. the first of a series of monthly meetings between the TUC. the Shadow Cabinet, and the National Executive, Mr Wilson insisted that agreement must be reached on legislation to replace those parts of the Act such as the outlawing of unfair dismissals which the unions wanted to keep.

Mr Vic Feather, the TUC general secretary, promised to provide a working paper for next month's meeting. On t.ie economic front, there was 'i'j attempt yesterday to get down to the detail of a new prices and incomes policy. But the TUC made it clear that its aim was to discuss the entire range of economic and social polices, and not just wages. Proposed Cleveland Counry. JUTg--TEESSIIE STDKESLEY RB WHITBY RB county among the whole of their it says.

The pattern of communications in the area focuses on the Tees and there is a high level of commuting between residential areas and work centres within the proposed Cleveland county. Almost all the employed population 97 per cent works within the county. Its people use Teesside as a centre for public services and recreation. of the contributions to the standing committee debate which led to the Go ernment't, decision relied on information which appears erroneous or incomplete and did not pay sufficient or proper regard to the evidence and arguments which the council believes are essential when considering the reorganisation of local government in the area The council's case consists of a closely argued statement of nearly 50 pages, a bundle of maps, and a line-by-line commentary on the official report of the Commons committee debate. Cleveland county it says, has problems in promoting employment and urban renewal not snared with Durham and North Yorkshire.

It also has a potential for economic and population growth recognised by central government. "What it now needs is the proper recognition of its common aims and potential by administrative unification the best means of ensuring a common pursuit of progress." Leading article, page Two hurt in gas blast Tw fitters, converting a house in Nethercote Farm Road. Ramsgate. to receive North Sea gas yesterday, were badly burned in an explosion The kitchen was badly damaged and a shed attached to the house collapsed. The men, both from Maidstone, were taken to hospital.

has really got at the root of type, and not on trying improve existing yards." to Mr Venus said that a more eflicient shipbuilding industry in Britain should concentrate on technically complex ships in which specialist knowledge would be required, and should not try to compete wnn omer countries in the market for large bulk carriers and tankers Even Japan, with labour costs now comparable to our own, was now being threatened by newcomers like Greece. Spain, Portugal. Korea, and Singapore, which were in a very strong position to compete on prices for large ships. The industry certainly requires assistance of a short term nature because working capital requirements are urgently in need of reinforcement, but even if the Govern ment were to make finance of this type available, it is not enough for the long term requirements of the industry at its present level. New shipyard construction for medium-sized specialised vessels should be started, and if this were done immediately, a very different pattern for the industry would be apparent in Tnree io nve years.

"It could be transformed from a lossmaker to a profit- maker, and it could specialise in a type of vessel which is going to be increasingly in demand over the next decade," Mr Venus concluded. "The eventual aim would be to safeguard the employment of some 50.000 people in the industry, starting initially with four or five new shipyards employing 20,000 to had been sent only that day to tne law courts, he said, immediately informed. I protested about the delay, but the Embassy could tell me nothing about the reason for he said. There was now no reason for it," he said. There was now no reason why the reports should not be on their way to France within a day or so.

Mrs Desramault's husband, Rene, took Caroline to France after the Gosforth magistrates gave him custody in separation proceedings in December, 1970. The decision was reversed on appeal and a legal tussle over Caroline began in France. In July, a French court put the baby, now two years old, in the care of Mrs Desramault's mother-in-law. stolen cheque books, credit cards, and other methods, are Woolf Seeberg, of no fixed address Ian Donald Purdie, of Tyneham Road, Totting; Jack Prescott, of Roehampton Way. Putney Martin Housden.

of Ashburnam Road, Amprhill Christopher Bott Peter True-of Maida Avenue, Paddington Rosemary Fiore, of St Luke's Road, and Christine Haysell, of Colville Terrace, both North Kensington. France is asked to speed baby case Bv JOHN WINDSOR and to divide the area between the new Durham and North Yorkshire counties. As long as the Government intended to set up a Teesside county in the local government reorganisation, Teesside County Borough Council argued that its area should become a single district within the new county This argument backfired when the Go eminent accepted that the area of Whitby and Stokes-ley should not go in with Teesside. Mr Graham Page. Minister for Local Government, said that in the circumstances the rest of the proposed new county would not be viable because it would be dominated by the county borough He said there would be fresh talks with local authorities on the basis that the county borough should go into the new Durham county.

In counter proposals, the county borough council says there is overwhelming evidence to support the creation of a Cleveland county divided into appropriate districts to facilitate which the council has agreed to rescind its previous resolution calling for the retention of one district council for the whole area, and is prepared to discuss the division of the Teesside County Borough into smaller districts." Cleveland county would cover the area proposed for a Teesside authority by the Redcliffe Maud Royal Commission, with a population of about 600.000. Teesside says the name Cleveland from the Cleveland Hills which mark the southern edge of the lower Tees Valley would probably be acceptable to the whole area. It says the area has natural boundaries and that there is a community of interest greater than that existing between the area and either Durham or North Yorkshire. Few of the other county areas proposed in the Government's reorganisation proposals for local government could demonstrate such strong affinities and interdependence Mrs Linda Desramault's MP, College wants to launch diploma By RICHARD BOURNE, Education Correspondent vlnh ttwc Northumberland county at the French Embassy tion service ha(J been By ALEC HARTLEY PROPOSALS BY THE Skef-fington Committee on public participation in planning have gathered some theoretical support and a lot of dust since Whitehall pigeon-iholed them some years ago. At a time when the Department of the Environment is known to be redrafting a circular giving guarded approval to some of Skeffington, a team from Liverpool University has been putting its proposals into practice in a project in the Old Swan area of the city.

Student enthusiasm, according to Mr Ron Hancock, director of the university school of architecture's projects office, was responsible for turning a simple commission from Liverpool corporation, asking the projects office to prepare display materials and preliminary proposals for a new general improvement area (GIA) into a "textbook justification of the Skeffington approach." The eight fourth-year students working on the project will be explaining their proposals for the new. GIA including possible play areas, rerouting of through traffic, position of parking and tree and grass-planting at an exhibition being mounted in the area this week. Christened the DASH Show (DASH being a combination of the initials of the main streets in the area), it will use slides, models, plans, and three video-taped television playlets performed by members of the University Dramatic Society. There will also be a local children's art competition. Report sent A report has already been sent to the corporation's house improvement department recommending that the district be given GIA status, and the projects office hopes to finish another report on the project's wider implications by Easter.

Its most important proposal, according to Mr Philip Matthews, one of the team's senior members, will be the management structure which should be set up in the area once it has been improved. Accordingly, the team is trying to encourage residents to set up 'their own association. A working party has already been formed, and is helping the students to organise the DASH Show. Mr Matthews said that the team would recommend the corporation to appoint a community information officer (Skeffington recommended community development officers with some similar functions), who would sit on the association with a veto but no vote. The team is also concerned that the issues raised by its suggestions should be given a thorough airing before any formal plan for the improvement area is attempted.

It is an essential proviso, since what it is proposing is a forward-looking partnership between the local residents and the corporation. Each party must know what the other is thinking. There shouldn't be this lack of communication that there is between planners and the people for whom they plan." Mr Matthews said. The project began in November with a physical survey of the condition of each house. Surveys were then carried out, trying to find what local people thought of their area, the problems thev saw, and the solutions they had in mind.

Meetings were arranged in each road, to test residents' reactions to proposals, and experts were consulted about traffic movement in and through the district. By DENNIS BARKER mittee, spoke yesterday of the "grave deficiencies" in the present system of training. Some conservators estimate that these deficiencies have led to the loss of 400 years of medieval painting in the past 130 years, through lack of a centralised institute through which techniques could be made known. At present the chances of getting adequate advance training in historical, scientific and technical matters were extremely limited. He a warning that the problems would become more complex when modern works of art had to be preserved as well as' the Michelangelos.

With these the inbuilt problems would be far more complex. The committee would like to see their proposed centre responsible for restoring paintings and drawings from public and private collections. It would supplement but not replace the conservation and scientific departments in public museums and galleries. Research into scientific and London yesteraay mat further delay of the court rehearing involving the disputed custody of her baby daughter Caroline would be a complete and utter outrage on a British subject." 'The British Embassy in I'ans has been about as useless as a neutered tomcat in this case," he added, Mr Brown, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne West told Minister- Counsclloi Angles that when Mrs Desramault was in France to visit her baby last week, notlvng appeared to have been done to obtain social and back- ground reports on her French husba-i-l which the French High Co-rl ordered nine months ago. Documents calling for reports in Britain on Mrs Desramault This is part of the Case for a Cleveland county which the council has sent to the Environment Secretary, Mr Peter Walker, in response to the Government's decision to drop proposals for a Teesside county Members of the college were confident that there would be a considerable demand for the DipHE from students who had no intention of entering teach- ing.

At present, as a purely teacher training college, Dids bury has three applicants for every place. Mr Gorner, who welcomed the option that the James Report gives to any universities which might wish to validate the pro posed DipHE, said that unless there were changes at Manchester Univerny, there seemed little prospect of its accepting Didsbury DipHE. We have no doubt that for us the body is the CNAA." he said. He believed that the university had asked the Manchester Education Authority to put a brake on Didsbury's application. Hall could cost county 255,000 By our own Reporter Cheshire County Council, which is faced with a likely bill of 255.000 for buying Mottram Old Hall at Longdendale, and restoring it and adapting it for use as a field studies centre, is being recommended to compromise by buying the building and carrying out first aid repairs.

This will cost only 31,000. The hall is a complete nineteenth-century house of the Greek Revival period, and parts of an earlier, seventeenth-century building survive in the outbuildings and adjacent property The county agreed last year to buy, for 2.000, a 12-month option to purchase the hall, and has since calculated that it could be used as a field studies cencre, providing places for 24 residential children and 24 day pupils, and a teaching centre. Even after contributions from the education committee and Longdendale urban council, however, there would be 94,000 short. Because of this, the council is being recommended to purchase the hall to prevent its demolition, and to carry out work that will prevent further deterioration of the fabric. Boys gassed in classroom Three boys overcome by carbon-monoxide fumes in the metalwork room at St Mary's Roman Catholic Secondary School, Leigh, yesterday were detained in hospital overnight for observation.

Explosions trial for after Whitsuntide One of the biggest colleges of education sent a deputation to London yesterday to say that it was ready to launch as soon as possible the diploma of higher education recommended in the James Report. Mr Frank Gorner, principal of Didsbury College of Education, Manchester, brought a group of his colleagues and the president of the student union to tell a press conference that the college was ready to go ahead on an experimental basis if necessary. It was already preparing a submission to the Council for National Academic Awards for a degree and a certificate of education which included the concept of a two-year period of general education. Among the large number of courses from which Didsbury students could choose for their DipHE were environmental design, computer programming, newspaper and journalism studies children's literature, an observational approach to the handicapped of all ages, and chilj development with refer-1 ence to intelligence and attainment. i Students would follow several such courses, the college sug-gestei We have no doubts about the intellectual respectability of; a course, even if it's only for' 30 hours of teaching," said Mr Ian Kane, a course development tutor.

technical problems and maintenance of records could also be handled by the centre. But the training of professional conservators were the crux of the committee's recommendations. "We found it sad 'that there was no recognised professional status in this field. Because there is no recognised status it is easier than it should be to set up as conservators or menders, who tend to have no special training but whom the average owner of a picture would find it very difficult to judge," said Sir Colin. The committee recommends courses of up to five years.

The preparation of the report was authorised by the Government. Sir Charles Whishaw, British trustee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, said that Lord Eccles, Minister for the Arts, had expressed no firm view but Sir Charles said he was encouraged." The foundation will put forward 150,000 if the recommendations are carried out. 707 Daily 1130. Earliest London-Boston departure. An artistic clean sweep rtT fT" Xt 1 1 4stS2v ftrvr7 The trial of a group of men and women charged with conspiring to cause explosions will take place in about three months' time.

Mr Justice Forbes said at the Old Bailey yesterday that it would start on the first available date after the Whitsuntide break, which ends on May 30. Charges of conspiracy to cheat and defraud, connected with some of the accused and others, will be proceeded with immediately after that trial. Applying for a trial date vesterday, Mr Kenneth Richardson, for the Crown, said that, as far as the first trial was concerned, there would be 173 witnesses and hundreds of-exhibits. The task of compiling them was not finished and even the Director of Public Prosecutions has not yet had the papers. The difficulties for the defence would be even greater.

Referring to the second case of conspiring to cheat and defraud. Mr Richardson said: It is a complicated conspiracy, involving the stealing of cheque books on a large scale and the forging of cheques and the money, the Crown was used to finance communes and the Angry Brigade." Charged Charged with conspiring with Jack Leonard Prescott and others unknown, to cause explosions in the United Kingdom are John Barker, also known as George Buchanan, of Amhurst Road, Stoke Newing-ton James Greenfield, Anna Mendelson, and Hilary Creek, all of Amhurst Road; Christopher Michael Bott, of Hunger-ford Road, Holloway; Angela Weir, of Haverstock Street, Islington Catherine McLean, of Grosvenor Square, Highbury; and James Stuart Christie, of Gilbert Place, Camden. Accused of conspiring to cheat and defraud by using POLITE WAR was declared yesterday on the retired colonel who takes to restoring old paintings on the billiard table by rubbing them with half a potato or spitting on them. More professional conservators are prepared to accept that the colonel means well, but as a restorer of an unrecognised Rembrandt from the servants' quarters they believe he is a national liability. A committee set up by the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation yesterday reported strongly in favour of a central Conservation Institute for paintings and drawings in central London.

The capital cost is estimated at 180,000, and the annual running cost at 95,000. The committee believes it should be grant-aided by the State. Sir Colin Anderson, Provost of the Royal College of Art and chairman of the corn- Twin beat in 707 economy. Only TWA gives you this twin seaton.707 in economy. It canbe three across, or if the plane's not acxossorevenacocch..