DICK LLOYD, Brook Cottages, Sherford, writes:

I find myself somewhere in between those who think that Margaret Thatcher was utterly wonderful, and those who loathed her. This is my own experience of Thatcherism.

For 27 years, until the group of companies by whom I was employed collapsed in 1984, I travelled the globe loyally selling British made construction equipment.

For a few years I chaired the export committee of our industry federation, a kind of 'mutual self-help' export club, where we shared information on market possibilities.

For the greater part of those 27 years, I was the export director of Priestmans of Hull, established for well over a century with an outstanding reputation for excellent engineering quality.

We were over-unionised, and a 'them and us' attitude on the part of the hierarchical works management did not help, but, even so, we rarely had strikes, and we had a dedicated and long-served workforce, who backed us in the sales field well.

Times got more difficult as we headed towards the fateful year of 1984, and we shed staff, restrictive shop-floor practices were got rid of, and we became leaner and fitter, launching new products successfully on to the market.

Had the receivers, after the collapse of the group, had any interest in keeping the business afloat, I believe that Priestmans could have survived, but they did not.

They simply wanted to see what they could recover from asset value and they even tried to get their hands on a large slice of the employees pension fund.

I landed an important overseas order for 20 to 30 machines, which had taken me years of work to bring about, a few days after we went into receivership.

The receivers were not in the least interested in accepting the order nor investing money in materials and components to fulfil it, and, not only that, they reneged on an agreement made with me personally to send an engineer overseas to install three cranes which had already been delivered, which was a contractual obligation.

By the time the guy had got his visa, they said that it was not worth spending the £2,000 needed for the trip. I was appalled and was left to explain the decision to the customer, as if it had been mine!

One of Thatcher's great achievements was to crush the overwhelming power of the trades unions but she did nothing to help companies like Priestmans get back on their feet.

It was a German manufacturer, to whom I was quite unknown, who rescued me from unemployment, and afforded me the chance of an independent self-employed career, and today, the German economy, with its solid manufacturing base, is in a far healthier state than that of the British.