Who Dares Wins

by Dominic Sandbrook

As a result, Joseph wanted to honour Labour’s plans for a major computer drive, pumping at least £125 million into the electronics industry over the next five years. ‘As you know’, he added, ‘I am in principle strongly opposed to support of this kind’. But since other Western governments were investing in their own industries, ‘we have little option … if we are to have the capability in this country to supply the needs of user industries and to achieve a reasonable share of the rapidly expanding world market’.13

  Judging by the vehemence with which Mrs Thatcher scribbled the word ‘No!’ in the margin, all this came as an even bigger shock than Joseph’s support for British Leyland. To John Hoskyns she ‘dismissed [the] whole thing as socialism, a waste of money’. But Hoskyns thought it was a good idea. So did the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Biffen, who told her that if Britain did not change its ways then ‘our relative competitiveness will suffer seriously’. Given the backwardness of Britain’s computer industry, Biffen said, ‘leaving it entirely to private sector initiatives’ was not an option, so they must support their domestic manufacturers. That evidently did the trick, although not before an overwrought meeting between Thatcher and Joseph, in which the Prime Minister came ‘close to tears of frustration’. ‘Now, I’ve upset you, Keith!’ Mrs Thatcher said at the end, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘No, no, Prime Minister. I’m not sensitive about this. I’ll come back again later,’ Joseph said. ‘No, Keith, I have upset you!’ she burst out. ‘If I’ve upset you, you’re not to go away!’ Who could have guessed that financial support for the electronics industry was such an emotive subject?14

  Despite her misgivings, Mrs Thatcher’s conversion to the microcomputer revolution was remarkably convincing. ‘We have been slower in embracing new technology than other countries,’ she told the Sunday Times in 1981, because people had been afraid that ‘the jobs would go’. But now Britain would copy those ‘countries that have gone hardest and fastest for technological change, notably the Japanese’. By now she appeared to be a fully paid-up computer enthusiast, with 1982 designated as the official Information Technology Year, with plans for conferences, exhibitions and even commemorative stamps. Indeed, far from being embarrassed by her financial support for the micro-electronics industry, she now positively gloried in it. Her industrial interventionism was different from Labour’s, she told the CBI, because it was ‘stimulating industries which do have a future, rather than shoring up lost causes – helping to create tomorrow’s world, rather than to preserve yesterday’s’.15

  Her most eye-catching innovation came during the reshuffle of January 1981, when she appointed ‘the world’s one and only Minister for Information Technology’, as he liked to introduce himself. This was the 46-year-old Kenneth Baker, previously one of Edward Heath’s most devoted lieutenants. Later, Spitting Image depicted him as a slug, a tribute not just to the tremendous oiliness of his slicked-back hair but also to his undeniably oleaginous public persona. Behind the caricature, though, Baker was a bookish, good-humoured and irrepressibly energetic man. It was true, admitted the Guardian, that he was a former secretary of the Oxford Union and a member of the Carlton and Athenaeum clubs. But he was not quite your typical Tory. ‘He wears jazzy ties and lightweight suits; he talks with unhealthy zeal about the need for rapid change in education and industry; and worst of all, he knows what’s he’s talking about.’

  This was true. Before entering Parliament, Baker had been a business consultant specializing in computers, so he did know what he was talking about. Indeed, nobody could have thrown himself more eagerly into his new job than ‘Mr Whizz’ or ‘Mr Chips’, as the press called him, and the sight of the pinstriped minister grinning at a monitor became a familiar fixture in the newspapers. It was ‘absolute balls’, he insisted, to say that computers would throw millions out of work. ‘The information technology industries’, he told the New Scientist, ‘are going to be the wealth creators in Britain – and therefore the job creators.’ Was he worried that computers in schools were going to distract children from more serious subjects? Not at all. ‘Just give the hardware to the kids and let them play around with it,’ he said cheerfully, adding that using computers would soon be ‘as important as reading or writing’.

  What about arcade games like Space Invaders? Baker was all for them. Children soon learned to recognize the patterns, he explained, and it helped them to get used to the technology. His own 11-year-old son, ‘not exceptional, not a genius’, had grown up with computers and was much better with them than Baker senior. The Guardian asked if Baker was worried that, one day, computers would ‘outthink us’. Absolute balls again. All the really important decisions in life, he said, were about judgement, ‘like falling in love’, and ‘the computer can’t give judgements based on experience’. ‘Never?’ asked the interviewer. ‘As long as man is on this planet …’ Baker said thoughtfully. Like any good politician, he had left himself a loophole.16

  Baker’s real enthusiasm was for putting computers into schools. This had been mooted during the dog days of the Callaghan government, though it had done nothing about it. In April 1981, however, Mrs Thatcher unveiled Micros in Schools, the biggest secondary-school computer drive in the Western world. ‘My generation has perhaps been too cautious about accepting new technology in micros,’ she admitted, but now the computer would become ‘each pupil’s own personal teacher – a teacher with infinite patience which can work at his own pace’. And there was money to back up the rhetoric. Not only did the Department of Education stump up £9 million to train teachers in computing, but the Department of Industry agreed to find half the cost of every school computer, as long as the school paid the other half itself.

  Schools could choose from two British models: the RM 380Z, made by the Oxford firm Research Machines, or the new BBC Micro, made by Cambridge-based Acorn. In the end, the vast majority went for the BBC Micro, which was cheaper, more modern and had the imprimatur of the national broadcaster. On the surface there seemed a hint of amateurism about the schools campaign, since it was run from a semi-detached house in Newcastle by a local education lecturer, Richard Fothergill, and three assistants. But they knew what they were doing. In just twelve months they organized courses for some 11,000 teachers, while almost every secondary school in the land had its own computer by the end of 1982. This was nowhere near enough, complained the New Scientist, which thought a typical sixth form needed at least twenty computers. Yet coming at a time when so many budgets were being slashed, the government’s programme spoke volumes about Mrs Thatcher’s newfound commitment to the microcomputer age.17

  The BBC Micro had its own semi-legendary origin story. Even as the government was finalizing plans for the Micros in Schools programme, a second computer education drive was already underway. This was the work of the BBC’s Continuing Education Department, which had been given some money by the Manpower Services Commission to raise public awareness of computers. In November 1979 the BBC decided to launch a Computer Literacy Project, modelled on an adult literacy drive starring the actor Bob Hoskins, which had been immensely successful a few years earlier. Specially commissioned research found that most people were keen to learn more about computers but had no idea where to start. So the BBC project would be aimed at the widest possible audience, ‘women as well as men … working-class viewers as well as middle class … older age groups as well as younger’. And by the end of 1980 they had devised plans for a major ten-part series, a book and a thirty-hour teach-yourself-computing course, as well as nationwide networks bringing together teachers, lecturers, computer enthusiasts and interested viewers.18

  There was one more element, the most important of all. Instead of using an existing home computer, the BBC decided to commission their own machine, with high-class sound and graphics and its own version of the computer language BASIC. This, they told the press, would be a machine that could do everything from ‘domestic income tax accounts and car maintenance to stock control, Space Invaders and do it yourself horosco
pes’, a machine for ‘the businessman … amateur astronomer, musician and photographer’. Since it would carry the BBC’s name, it would obviously have a gigantic advantage in the marketplace. Not surprisingly, executives were determined to award the contract to a British firm, but they were also acutely conscious that they might be criticized for favouring one private company over its rivals.

  The answer was to pick a firm that was already publicly funded. The first choice was Newbury Laboratories, which was backed by the National Enterprise Board and was working on a machine called the Newbrain. But by December 1980 it was clear the Newbrain was not going to be ready in time. With the clock running, an alternative manufacturer would have barely a year before it had to go into mass production. So the BBC hurriedly drew up a list of specifications – colour graphics, interfaces for a cassette recorder and a disk drive, decent sound, lots of peripheral ports – and sent them to half a dozen firms, who were asked to present their pitches in the New Year.19

  The obvious candidate was Clive Sinclair. No other manufacturer had his name recognition or nationwide reach; indeed, he had just struck a deal with W. H. Smith to sell his forthcoming ZX81. But when the BBC visited Cambridge at the turn of 1981, he treated their specifications with open disdain. His designers were already working on the Spectrum, and Sinclair insisted that the BBC should take that instead, rubber keyboard and all. Would he consider making a new machine? No: it was the Spectrum or nothing. Would he give it more memory? No: that would be too expensive. Would he produce a custom-made version of BASIC? No: that would undermine the rest of the Sinclair family. Would he allow them access to his network of retailers? No: his contacts were for Sinclair-branded machines only. Sinclair thought he was negotiating from strength. Nobody could match his experience; he was confident that the BBC had nowhere else to go. But they did. They had been there earlier that day.20

  At the turn of the 1980s, Cambridge was already established as the epicentre of the emerging British computer industry. Every year the local university was producing dozens of clever young graduates with interests in science, engineering and computing, while the opening of a new Science Park in 1975 had cemented the city’s reputation as the place for technological entrepreneurs to set up shop. Among hundreds of new hi-tech firms was one called Acorn Computers. Then almost completely unknown, it had been founded by two men in their early thirties: Chris Curry, who had worked for Sinclair until the late 1970s, and his Austrian-born friend Hermann Hauser, a Cambridge physics graduate.

  Curry, who became Acorn’s public face, had dabbled in politics, standing for Parliament in Cambridge in October 1974 on behalf of the United Democratic Party, a fringe assortment of hard-right Eurosceptics who were disillusioned with Edward Heath.fn4 The Cambridge electorate’s loss, however, was the computer industry’s gain. Eager to emulate the start-ups he had seen in California, Curry parted company with Sinclair at the end of 1978, and the result was Acorn. Its first significant product, the Atom, sold about 35,000 units in four years: not spectacular, but not bad either. This inevitably meant direct competition with Sinclair, yet at first theirs was a relatively friendly rivalry. Nobody had heard of Curry, or indeed of Acorn, whereas Sinclair was becoming a household name. What could he have to fear from his former protégé?21

  For Acorn, the prospect of a deal with the BBC was a spectacular opportunity. In stark contrast to his old boss, Curry strained every sinew to match the corporation’s specifications, even though most of his team thought it was completely impossible. They had already been working on a follow-up to the Atom, called the Proton. But the tight deadline gave them only three days to put together a prototype before the BBC arrived to inspect it. They worked flat-out, yet computing legend has it that the evening before the BBC were due to arrive, the machine was still not working. Then, almost in desperation, Hauser cut the earth wire, and the prototype sprang into life. Whether this was true or not, the BBC liked the machine. Even more importantly, they liked Acorn’s enthusiasm, eagerness and can-do spirit. In the afternoon, the BBC delegation visited Sinclair; in the evening, they went to the pub with the team from Acorn. On 13 February 1981 the BBC rang Acorn and told them the contract was theirs. The Proton was no more; the BBC Micro was born.22

  Sinclair was outraged. How could this have happened? ‘I was, and still am, disgusted at the way the BBC handled things,’ he said later. ‘Acorn quite reasonably got the business and good luck to them. I am not complaining about that, I am complaining about the BBC’s behaviour.’ Precisely what the BBC had done wrong was never clear: the most likely answer is simply that they had given the contract to somebody else. The computer-game historians Magnus Anderson and Rebecca Levene suggest that if they had given it to Sinclair, then ‘Britain would have emerged from the eighties with a single, strong computer brand with real survival power’. But the BBC had good reasons for overlooking him, and the result was a manifestly more powerful and versatile product. Indeed, given how quickly Acorn turned the BBC Micro around, it is remarkable how good it was. On the outside it was a big beige typewriter with a proper keyboard and a reassuringly sturdy feel. But inside it came with an unparalleled advantage: the ‘unusually intuitive and friendly’ BBC BASIC, accessible to children and casual users. Even I got the hang of it, and that is saying something. ‘If there is a single tool that opened up computing in Britain in the eighties, and that laid the foundations for its vibrant games scene,’ write Anderson and Levene, ‘it is BBC BASIC.’23

  For the rest of 1981, Acorn’s engineers worked frantically to get the new machine ready for its television debut. The potential rewards were enormous, yet even before the BBC Micro reached the shops, there were rumours of trouble. Acorn were a very small outfit, with thirty-six employees and a turnover of just £1.3 million. They had very little capital and, like Sinclair, used subcontractors to build their computers. But they were facing two gigantic challenges, because the BBC Micro had also been chosen as one of the approved secondary-school computers. The schools contract required them to produce 535 working machines by September and 3,000 a month thereafter, while the BBC series was bound to bring thousands of orders on top of that. And as early as June 1981, some critics were predicting disaster. The Guardian’s economics editor, Victor Keegan, rang the company to get a reaction. But ‘it took the best part of a week to get through to them’, he reported, ‘as the phone was always either engaged or not answering. I wondered whether I would have persevered if I had been a customer.’

  The critics were right. Not only had Acorn underestimated the level of demand, they had disastrously overestimated their ability to cope with it. At first they expected to make about 12,000 machines for the private market, yet by Christmas 1981, before a single episode of the BBC series had been transmitted, their order book was full. Months before, Curry had talked grandly of having multiple factories making the new computer – three in Britain, one in Hong Kong, one in the United States and one in Australia – but this was hot air. In fact, there were only two, in Staffordshire and South Wales. Even at this early stage, Acorn were grasping for excuses, telling reporters that it was all the BBC’s fault for misreading the demand. As a result, the BBC had to postpone the series for a month, because none of their viewers had been able to get hold of the new machines.fn5 ‘Once again’, the Guardian said gloomily, ‘a small British company, challenging the Americans and the Japanese for the rich market of home computers, has – like Sinclair – underestimated the initial demand.’ It would become a sadly familiar story.24

  On 11 January 1982 the former That’s Life! presenter Chris Serle, smartly dressed in a sports jacket and tie, stepped in front of the camera to welcome BBC2 viewers to the first episode of The Computer Programme. ‘You may have noticed,’ he said affably, ‘1982 is Information Technology Year. There’s a Minister for Information Technology, and the government’s even spending a great deal of money on publicising it.’ So what was information technology? Well, Serle said, ‘all it really means is the world of com
puters. But why have they suddenly become so important? And what should we, as non-computer experts, know about them?’

  Making the series had been an immense technical challenge, not least because the computers themselves arrived so late. All the same, The Computer Programme was a resounding success. The accent was firmly on the everyday, showing how computers could do everything from booking a holiday to running a sweet shop, while Serle was perfectly cast as the curious everyman. According to a BBC report, some 7 million people watched at least part of it, and the audience defied the stereotypes. Almost half of all viewers were women, while one in four was aged over 45. By the summer, the accompanying Computer Book had sold more than 60,000 copies, while viewers sent in an estimated 2,000 letters a week. Given that only a few years before most people had barely heard of computers, these figures were extremely impressive. As the BBC report put it, the days of ‘computer anxiety’ were over; the age of ‘computer enthusiasm’ was at hand.25

  There was, however, a problem. Everybody agreed that the BBC Micro was an excellent machine, but very few people could get their hands on it. By April 1982 Acorn had produced only 10,000 machines, far short of their original estimate, while the waiting list stretched to a staggering 20,000 names, some of whom had been on it for months. As BBC executives reported, the Cambridge company had been completely unprepared for the mass market, which meant a twentyfold increase in its turnover. But Acorn had also misjudged people’s willingness to spend a lot of money. Curry had assumed that, given the grim economic situation, most people would want the cheaper Model A, which cost £235. But in fact most wanted the more powerful Model B, which cost an extra £100.

  Acorn’s co-founder Herman Hauser pointed out that the current production rate, 1,500 machines a week, still put Acorn in the top three computer firms in the world. Yet not until October, when sales finally passed 50,000, did Acorn manage to clear their backlog. For almost a year, therefore, they were completely unable to tap the world export market. There was nothing wrong with their product: pound for pound, it was probably the best home computer in the world. But they would never have such an opportunity again.26