Planning for War 1935-1939: A Carbide Factory at Kenfig
Conall Boyle
My talk on the Kenfig Carbide Factory 1940-1966 gave little indication of how it got there. Even the two main sources that I used (Denis H Jones, Ian Pincombe) suggested a hurried scramble to get going that began in December 1939. Not so.
Signalling the need for carbide Preparations for the next war against Germany had begun in Britain by the mid-1930s and the strategic need for carbide had been signalled to the Government and Parliamentarians ‘in a Memorandum by the Board of Trade in June, 1935’. [1]
Decision in Cabinet By February 1937 the discussions had moved on. The Cabinet minutes record (having first looked at means of preventing British volunteers fighting fascism from reaching Spain; and the all-important seating arrangements for the forthcoming Coronation): “It was suggested also that the production of calcium carbide was important not only from the Defence point of view but also because it was entering more and more into all kinds of chemical manufacture. The key question, however, on which the Cabinet desired further information was as to whether a factory, whether in Scotland, South Wales or elsewhere, was necessary from the point of view of Defence.” [1]
Setting up a committee 17 March 1937 Sir Thomas Inskip Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence and the Secretary of State for Scotland, announce that “I am now taking steps, in consultation with other Ministers concerned, to set up a small committee, composed of persons not in the Government service, to advise the Government how best the country can be provided with a supply of calcium carbide and allied products and where best that supply can be produced.”
The Committee reports On 28th October, Inskip says “the report of the sub-committee has to be regarded as a secret document”. This would have been a very interesting document, but unfortunately I can’t find it. Reading Hansard, it is clear that there was a major push by Merthyr Tydfil as well as South-West Durham to obtain this plant. So too was the Scottish dimension, with BOC and Highland hydro-electricity producers making a great play for a carbide plant as well. [The upshot was that a single factory at Kenfig was built, although plans for another at Corpar in Scotland were announced. Shades of Ebbw Vale Steelworks!]
Announcing to the public On the 19th of November, 1937 readers of the Daily Telegraph would have encountered a well-researched report of the Government’s acceptance of two proposed schemes submitted by the British Oxygen Company to build Calcium Carbide factories, one in Port Talbot, in South Wales, the other in Corpach near Fort William at the West end of the Great Glen in the Highlands of Scotland. The Corpach factory approval was provisional, depending on a water-power scheme (later cancelled) but the Government “intends to proceed at once with the erection of the factory at Port Talbot”
“The factory in South Wales will be built on Morfa Moors, an undeveloped tract fringing the seaboard on the south side of Port Talbot docks; it will cost more than £1,000,000 and cover 150 acres.”
The local reaction: comment from two local Davids Mr E.U. David, agent to the Margam Estate, who assisted the Government surveyors in the preliminary plans, said last night that “the site was near virgin coalfields. As the power required would be gained from coal it would mean a tremendous fillip to the mining industry - new collieries would be opened at once”.
Maj. Llewellyn David, managing director of D.R. David, tinplate manufacturers of Port Talbot, stated, "This will be a wonderfully good thing for the town and district. It is bound to have a tonic influence upon subsidiary industries such as, for example, the anthracite coal industry in the Vale of Neath, the limestone quarries at Cornelly and the docks. I understand that it will mean the almost immediate employment of something like 300 men.”
[Well done to Rob Bowen at kenfig.org.uk for spotting this report and posting it on Facebook. Although access to Welsh newspapers up to 1919 is available to researchers f.o.c. from the National Library of Wales, after that date newspapers are pay-walled]
[Maj. David, MD of his father’s firm of D R David was 2nd cousin of my mother-in-law. Both were due to star in my forthcoming talk on “Tin-plate Gentry”.]
A Wobble? Western Mail - 31 March 1938 A report on a letter received from B.O.C. (the firm selected to build the Carbide plant) to the Mayor of Port Talbot, Sir Geoffrey Byass (another tin-plate manufacture). Reports that approval for the Scottish Carbide plant had been delayed had obviously set alarm bells ringing in Port Talbot, so this letter was intended as reassurance. Specifically it mentioned that —as of March 1938 Carbide Industries (a subsidiary of BOC) has taken out a lease for the land in Kenfig from Great Western Railways. —this commits the Firm to initial capital expenditure of at least £100,000 eventually rising over £500,000 —details for the leasing of limestone quarries are on-going. —BOC’s construction and electrical engineers are drawing up plans for the works with the help of experts from BOC’s Norwegian carbide factory. — The first unit that was intended to lay down at Port Talbot would produce at least 20,000 tons of carbide p.a. — factory and plant extensions are being provided for in the lay-out of our works at Port Talbot if increased demand for carbide eventuates. —although the cost of electricity would be higher in South Wales compared to the Highlands, Port Talbot has the advantage in transport costs of raw materials—anthracite and limestone as well as closeness to customers. The Mayor of Port Talbot expressed confidence in the fact that BOC would construct their proposed carbide factory and that they could look forward to the factory being erected during the next 18 months. That would suggest that the factory should have been ready by January 1940, although production might have taken longer.
According to Jones Construction only started in Jan 1940, and it was not until September 1941 that the first carbide tapped. Eventually, after extensions to the factory, production in excess of 100,000 tons was achieved.
Bibliography
For more on the substantial and strategically savvy preparations made by England (sic) for a second round of war with Germany, I read: Edgerton, David (1991) England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation U Manchester/Macmillan. Paperback 2013 subtitle changed to Militarism, Modernity and Machines London Penguin
Denis H.Jones A Souvenir History of Kenfig Factory (London: Distillers’Company, 1967 Ian Pincombe, ‘The Emergence and Development of South Wales’s Military Industrial Complex, c.1930s-1950s’ Welsh History Review, 27, No 2, (2014)
[1] Minutes of the Meeting of the Cabinet held at No. 10, Downing Street, S.W.I., on WEDNESDAY, 17th FEBRUARY, 1937, at 11. 0 a. m. from the National Archives. Item 4. CALEDONIAN POWER ORDER, 1937: PRODUCTION OF CALCIUM CARBIDE. Who was Thomas Inskip? From Wikipedia
On 13 March 1936 Inskip became the first Minister for Coordination of Defence. His appointment to this particular office was highly controversial. Winston Churchill (who said he "had the advantage of being little known and knowing nothing about military subjects") had long campaigned for such an office and when its creation was announced, most expected Churchill to be appointed. When Inskip was named, one famous reaction was that "This is the most cynical appointment since Caligula made his horse a consul".[10] John Gunther, who described Inskip in 1940 as "the sixty-three-year-old man of mystery", reported the "cruel story" that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin wanted to appoint someone "'even less brilliant than himself'". His appointment is now regarded as a sign of caution by Baldwin who did not wish to appoint someone like Churchill, because it would have been interpreted by foreign powers as a sign of the United Kingdom preparing for war. Baldwin anyway wished to avoid taking onboard such a controversial and radical minister as Churchill.
Inskip's tenure as Minister for Coordination of Defence remains controversial, with some arguing that he did much to push Britain's rearmament before the outbreak of the Second World War, but others arguing he was largely ineffectual, although his ministry "had no real powers and little staff".
