A cold but busy month spent reforming and developing the Comart Group for sale whilst also leading the Microcomputer Industry; as I complete my house improvements, prioritise family life and follow my interests of history research, bird-watching and duck-keeping. All this as Thatcher succeeds in upsetting the Miners, her GCHQ security people, the EEC, the Irish republicans and an increasing number of leaders of all political persuasions with justifiable outrage over the jailing of a civil servant whistle blower for revealing covert deployments of nuclear weapons.
A month spent leading the Microcomputer industry, completing my house improvements and then progressing my own family and local history interests whilst mostly reorganising the Comart Group for its subsequent sale by producing three years plans and imposing a management structure that would attempt to replace me. The improvements were to 6 Willow Close, installing balconies, an open fireplace and chimney stack, which we put to good use as the weather continued cold and frosty this month. As we now have a better view from our bedroom, and I took to researching birds nesting habits and installing nest boxes. With respect to family life, we ensured Daniel’s involvement by collecting him in St Neots after his Saturday Kimbolton School morning and then having lunch before library and shopping trips for books and computer bits etc.
As for other hobbies, our ducks were laying huge numbers of eggs and we sold them in quantity and I also my help for neighbour’s wife Marilyn in tending hers but this makes Di jealous! Poor thing has put on lots of weight and she will not slim, however, and is addicted to food which is a shame for I can do or say nothing to help her. I am planning lots more time with the family including days off and London trips for the weekend. We managed to visit Mum and Dad in Stanton after my Mum’s hip operation and we were also working in our nice garden.
I was driving and travelling all over the place to fulfil me various responsibilities and was therefore prosecuted for speeding during my many sorties; studying local history records as part of my family history research around the John and Merab Broad era. With respect to Local History, I was walking around Little Paxton, imagining the changes that have occurred since it was developed in 1960’s; venturing into Little Paxton Wood for signs of former history and researching that too. I was also buying and reading more Pepys journals and developed an interest in English History for the 1660-1745 period. A low point was me undergoing dental treatment requiring three fillings!
March had been a record month for Comart, which by now is in the top 1000 UK companies and rising in these tables fast! My company and personal influence was developing fast, there being many articles in Computing, Microdecision and Informatics over my views on industry issues and had interviews over budget plans and my views on the budget were supported and published in the Financial Times, Computer Weekly and Computing with me even being interviewed by E. C. Magazine – a European software journal .
Personal involvement followed and I was making BMMG plans for representative meetings with CCTA Director Paul Freeman and IT Minister Kenneth Baker, negotiating with the ECIF with a view to merger with BMMG and attending the NCC Advisory Committee. I chaired a BMMG breakfast meeting and getting DTI confirming that they will support the BMMG plan on local area network standards up to a maximum of 50% of funding. Company wise, I was invited to the Courtaulds Group Microsystems, launch of Redland Construction Software (formerly Gangnail Software) customer of over 100 of our Communicator Micros I was negotiating joint development plans with MPLS BOS owners, the leading MicroCobol business software people.
I was deep in thoughts about the future, developing group 3 year plans involving projected £300-400K of capital expenditure and negotiating a sale to Kode via PA and I reorganise the accounts department, install telephone call monitoring and other efforts to curtail runaway costs. I was often involved in counselling and helping my management and directors in Comart, Xitan and the Byte Shop on human relations and business sense in Service and Sales amidst constant expansion and reorganisation, ending up with me appointing John as MD as I remained chairman. I record at length, my motives for selling up, being partly the problems I have with executives and staff and secondly the business policy of the government which is not encouraging. Our fortunes were closely connected with the industrial and political developments of the time.
Thatcher was claiming victory in her battle over banning GCHQ unions with 90% of staff having sold their future for the £1,000 bribe, but she was losing the PR war as her Tory back-benchers start to make coded criticisms. Tony Benn wins Chesterfield By-election, with Tories placed a poor third as he proposes changes to curb Prime Ministerial powers as she now has to defend her family’s investments in Cementation Construction as PM’s customarily give up shares upon appointment. Oppression was becoming rife with Miss Sarah Tidsdall, the girl who leaked details of cruise missile deployment to The Guardian, was jailed for 6 months whilst only, in my view, acting in the public interest in exposing a subterfuge for employing Cruise by stealth. Thatcher stooge Ian McGregor, who she brought in from America to run NCB, moved to close over 20 pits and shed miners’20,000 jobs to provoke Yorkshire and Scottish Miners’ Strike which then becomes national and needed new laws and injunctions to curtail mass picketing, but it was the Nottinghamshire miners that ‘undermined’ the strike in the end.
In Europe, Thatcher is accused of inflexibility during the EEC Budget talks and there was almost universal disapproval of her actions at the Brussels Summit where she is credited with personally sabotaging agreement by her intransigence. Bank Interest rates starting to fall, but only to 8.5%. There were security problems too, as she played tough in Ireland. The Maze Prison Governor is gunned down early in the month and then Gerry Adams of the IRA survives three bullet wounds and there follows the capture of Dominic McGlinchey, the head of the Ireland National Liberation Army, in the Irish Republic after a gunfight – he had been at large for two years. A British freighter being damaged in the Gulf War and a series of bombs by the Gaddafi regime in London and then Manchester targeted Libyan exiles’ businesses,
The month finishes with the government facing two demonstrations in London over the GLC; more trouble at Greenham Common as the Cruise Missiles are blockaded by peace women; and a day of action in Liverpool with mass public rally over budget cuts! Also six more unions support the NUM strike and pledge not to transport or import coal so Thatcher is succeeding in upsetting everyone!