Vickers Engineering history

In 1971 the workforce at Crayford were told that the Ministry of Defence work would be phased out with the obvious threat of redundancies.

My late father John Leslie Alexander Roth was employed by Vickers, Crayford all his working life as a Production Planning Engineer. until he was made redundant in 1972 at the age of 62.

He was re-employed a few months later to be a designer (presumably with others) of the new factory and was actively involved in its construction and was at the opening ceremony by Lord Robens in 1975.

In 1977 both the company's aerospace (which by then included a partnership role in the Concorde project) and shipbuilding divisions were taken over by the government.

A partial answer came in 1980, when Vickers agreed to acquire Rolls Royce Motors.

In 1983 Rolls-Royce Ltd. joined with four other European, American, and Japanese…

The ex-Vickers yard at Barrow was the first shipyard of the British Shipbuilders group to return to the private sector. It was sold in March 1986 to an employee-led company, VSEL Consortium, which also included its Birkenhead-based subsidiary, Cammell Laird.

↑ BAe fuels VSEL hopes in cash call for VSEL The Independent, 31 March 1995

In December 1998 the company announced its intention to purchase Norway's Ulstein Holding ASA, a leading marine propulsion systems producer.

In January 1999 Vickers and France's Giat announced plans to enter into a joint venture to produce tanks and other armored vehicles.

In 2003 it became an independent division known as BAE Systems Submarines after BAE systems split its ship and submarine building operations.