Ford's Dagenham Dream

This is the story of an American dream.

Good to see you again.

We were just driving by so we thought we'd drop in and say hello.

It was a dream of happy families on wheels.

The Ford Motor Company brought it from Detroit to Dagenham,

then sold it to Britain.

I'd sure like to shake hands with the man who designed it. Where is he?

Right now, he's working on a dream car for you folks.

A dream car!

Wow, is it going to look like a rocket?

From the 1950s onwards, Ford revolutionised the cars we drove.

They produced dream cars for the average British family.

The Anglia was, to me, the epitome of style,

because of the grace of the cut on it.

In the '60s and '70s, Ford sold dreams to boy racers, too.

When the Capri came out, you just looked at and go, "My God,

"that is just... I haven't seen a car like that before."

You know, not one that I could afford.

That was the power with Ford.

They would offer a dream that was accessible.

But this dream came at a price. The mass production of motor cars

required an army of assembly line workers,

who did jobs that were infamous for their soul destroying monotony.

What you do is little tricks.

I would have imaginary football matches

where I might be playing in the FA Cup,

or designing something in my head.

Anything just to get yourself out of it.

At its peak, Dagenham was producing more than 3,000 cars every day.

Its most popular dream car of all time,

the Cortina, sold around five million in Britain alone.

But the assembly line workers had a love-hate relationship

with the cars they made and for some, the dream became a nightmare.

This is the story of the rise and fall of Ford's Dagenham dream.

The great invention of Henry Ford

was the moving assembly line, which mass produced the Model T.

It would turn the Detroit-based Ford Motor Company

into a global power and transform the car industry.

# Speeding along the rolling highway... #

As part of Ford's worldwide expansion,

they opened a giant factory

in Dagenham, in 1931. Offering jobs to 30,000 workers,

Dagenham was the biggest factory in Europe and it breathed new life

and hope into an economy crippled by depression.

Promotional films made by the Ford film unit

gave expression to the dream of putting Britain on wheels

and selling a Ford car to every family.

This included their own car workers, who, from the beginning,

were paid above average wages in the hope that car and home ownership

would encourage work, discipline and loyalty.

They were all part of what the company called the Ford family.

In the hungry '30s, Ford soon brought new prosperity to Dagenham.

One of my mates, his father was out of work and he got a job there

and his money was half-a-crown an hour.

Unheard of.

Unheard of. Half-a-crown an hour.

He become sort of the millionaire of the street.

Dagenham, built on the Thames marshes, east of London,

became a boom town.

Everyone wanted to work at Ford's, including schoolboy Harry Coleman.

They wanted a tea boy,

and the man who lived next door to me was a blacksmith

and he got a job as a blacksmith

and he said to my mum, "How old is your boy?"

And my mum said, "Oh, 13."

"Oh," he said, "Pity, because we want a tea boy he said,

"and I could have took him down there if he'd have been 14."

My mum said, "He is 14! He is 14!"

And with that, the next day I'm down to Ford's,

making a bucketful of tea for the men.

Harry entered the new time and motion world

of the moving assembly line.

The worker was a small cog in a giant machine.

Production was broken down into repetitive time jobs

and the pace of work was kept up by foremen.

You had to be a big man to be a foreman.

The simple reason is you had to discipline.

That's why they always picked these big people,

because when he said, "I want you to do that,"

either speed up or something like that,

if you're talking to a big bloke you'd think twice,

"Oh, all right, I'll do it."

But if you're a little bloke...

tell him to sod off.

During the Second World War, there was a new spirit of unity,

with Dagenham playing a heroic role in the war production drive.

PERIOD NEWSREEL: Britain's workers, like Britain's factories,

have switched over from peace to war to protect the things of peace.

And if carrying on with the job and keeping up the output of war materials

is going to bring us nearer that next big switchover,

the switchover to peace, then watch our smoke.

Ford supplied the British Army with around a quarter of a million military vehicles and trucks,

along with 130,000 Fordson tractors that helped feed the nation at war.

The war seemed to prove Ford's loyalty and value to Britain.

Suspicion of its American ownership turned to admiration and in 1948,

Ford cashed in by introducing a revolutionary idea to Dagenham.

PERIOD NEWSREEL: This is where a new idea moved in.

At Ford of Dagenham, all plans for car production were recast in 1948

and a new criterion of the road was set.

Five-star motoring.

Ford's five-star motoring aimed to produce cars for the British market

that were sleek, stylish and speedy. Scaled-down versions of American dream cars.

They designed saloon cars as well as smaller cars like the new Anglia and Prefect.

One of the Dagenham designers was Charles Thompson.

We used to spend all day

talking about cars, sketching and drawing and getting paid for it.

It seemed...and I know this is an exaggeration...

it seemed we'd sketch and draw all day long until somebody said,

"Stop, we'll make that", type of thing.

Everything you drew, after a while,

if your chief liked what you were doing,

was translated into three-dimensions

and this was clay modelling.

Shaping a smooth line along the fender of the car,

you'd spend days and weeks just getting it to look right.

Ford's Dagenham plant was geared up to produce the new models.

It was to be a breakthrough in British car production.

The starting point in the whole process

was the Thames Foundry, the largest foundry in Europe.

Dennis O'Flynn began work there in 1953.

My first day there I thought was going to be my last day.

I'd suddenly find myself walking in black sand,

molten metal all over the blooming place, unbelievable noise.

One of the jobs of the foundry men

was casting the moulds for the car engines.

This was one of the most dangerous jobs

in the entire car-making process.

It was here, in these swelteringly hot conditions

that the Ford assembly line began.

The length of the line and the speed of the line

allowed the casting to get reasonably solid,

from the time it was cast.

And then there was what they called the shake-out

and there was two blokes there pulling the moulds off.

The sort of system they had in the shake-out

was so physically demanding and so hot

that they could only work half an hour at a time.

Same team, no extra men for that.

They'd split up and they'd do half an hour on and half an hour off.

Ford wanted to promote a reverential image of the new car-making at Dagenham,

so in 1953, they commissioned a symphony to celebrate their achievement.

I don't know if any of you have ever visited a great engineering factory.

It's quite an experience.

I visited one recently and I was greatly impressed with the common purpose of those who worked there.

There seemed a striking parallel between their skill with the machines

and the skill of musicians playing their instruments.

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

But despite the orchestral metaphor of working together in perfect harmony,

the reality of work on the assembly line proved to be very different.

-Henry Ford's regimented time and motion system for making cars alienated much of his workforce.

If you wanted to go to the toilet, they told you when you could go to the toilet, not mother nature.

Somebody would be standing there timing you and if you were two, if you were three minutes,

the foreman'll come up and say, "You've been away a long time".

He'd put his arm around you and your cards were marked.

And there were occasions when you'd have a security bloke overhead on the balcony watching you.

Ford's orchestral film culminated in the gleaming cars rolling off the assembly line.

This was the great reward for Ford car workers.

Their families could buy one at a 20% discount.

However, for some who worked on the assembly lines, the day-to-day

pressures of making cars dented the dream of car ownership.

If you've worked there, there's no glamour in them,

cos you're seeing them all day long

and working with them, it knocked the glamour out of it, I think.

I've got one and that's it.

You don't go round patting it every half an hour and dusting it.

Well, most people didn't, anyhow.

It's just a convenience.

Nevertheless, for most people it was a dream come true.

PERIOD ADVERT: Beautiful to look at, fast to move with...

The affordable dream of five-star motoring paid off.

MUSIC: "All I Have To Do Is Dream" by The Everly Brothers

By the late '50s, around one in every three cars sold in Britain

was made at Dagenham.

Ford were tuned in to the aspirations of a new younger generation.

Like Derek Forster.

New Year's Day, 1957.

That was when I became the proud owner of a Ford Prefect

and it was the deluxe version.

I could have been driving a Cadillac for all I knew.

And I was very fortunate because my parents had bought me that car

prior to my 17th birthday in the March.

This was a time when car ownership was still a novelty that could set curtains twitching.

I parked at the front door.

I would pretty much guarantee, if my memory serves me right,

we were the only car in the street.

So you can imagine, it was... It made you feel good.

# Dream

# Dream, dream, dream

# Dream... #

The love affair between men and their proud new possession

was blossoming in streets all over Britain.

It was my pride and joy.

I think I polished everything, but the exhaust. I think I polished that, as well.

The exhaust pipe, the engine was cleaner than the outside.

And the pulling power of a smart new car

promised in adverts for Ford's five-star range, seemed indisputable.

It was certainly 17-year-old Derek's Ford Prefect,

rather than him, that most impressed his first girlfriend, Sylvia.

To my way of thinking,

it was as big as any American Cadillac

that I'd seen on the pictures.

I had no idea what it was, what type it was,

but it was just beautiful.

A new courtship ritual emerged in the '50s.

A public display in which young couples showed off this very latest status symbol.

To teenagers like Derek and Sylvia,

their Ford Prefect was sex on wheels.

I really expected the people walking past would be thinking,

"Who is THAT, in that car?"

I mean, when I look, in retrospect, and see it in old family photographs,

where Derek is standing with his arm on the top of the car

and his head and shoulders taller than that, how little it was!

I didn't realise! We possibly used a shoehorn to get inside it!

Derek and Sylvia fell in love and became a couple.

Every spare moment they had, they spent together in their Ford Prefect,

often making for local beauty spots,

but there was to be no hanky-panky in this courtship.

If you drove five or six, maybe stretch it ten miles, you'd gone some.

So you used to identify the lay-bys in a radius of about...ten miles.

And we'd go with a flask and perhaps a sandwich or a little cake

or something like that and sit and pass the time in the car

and if it'd been raining

and the car had got slightly mud-splattered, or whatever,

I would drop Sylvia off at home, six o'clockish, half past six,

drive home, put the car in the garage, wash the car, leather it off

and then polish it so that it was gleaming and as new as if it was in the showroom.

My, dare I admit this?, priorities were to my Ford Prefect!

It won the day every time!

In 1962,

a hit BBC police series inspired even more of the young generation

to dream of driving Ford's new range of cars.

The scriptwriters of Z Cars wanted their fictional cops to drive Ford Zephyrs and Zodiacs,

imitating the real Lancashire Constabulary.

It was the first of many cop shows to use Ford cars

and it made a deep impression on young farmer's son, Edwin Tipper.

I saw these lovely cars,

very American looking, very glitzy, tail fins on...

and lovely sounding engine.

And I thought I'd got to get one of these some way or other to the farm

and the only way to do it was, of course,

get the glossy brochure and keep at my poor old dad,

who at that time was running a Mark One Ford Consul.

Edwin's pester-power paid off and life on the farm would never be quite the same again.

It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the family car, which he still drives to this day.

On the farm, I hadn't got many luxury items in those days

and I think it was just a little bit to make my life light up.

I think, really, that's why I wanted one of these cars so desperately.

# Heartbeat

# Why do you miss When my baby kisses me? #

As a boy, Edwin was put in charge of looking after the car.

He kept it spotless, inside and out,

but when the car first arrived, he was only 13,

so his next mission was to persuade his dad to let him drive it.

Dad was a bit reluctant.

He was very cautious over his vehicles, you might say, really.

He'd spent a lot of money on it, but however, yes,

I was fortunate enough to be allowed to have a drive round the yard

and change the gears, first gear, second gear.

I could even hit top on the bit of concrete around the back there.

Edwin spent four years practising driving around the farmyard, so by the time he was 17

and took his test, he was quite an experienced driver.

When I passed my test...

Great day. It meant that I could come home and I could get behind the wheel of the Zodiac

and my father was really a little bit reluctant, I think, to let me off alone with it,

even though I'd looked after the thing for quite a few years, already.

So, the first trip was to visit the grandparents down in the village and driving down the road, got the wheel,

I was in charge, on my own and absolutely magnificent.

I really enjoyed that.

After they married, Derek and Sylvia traded in their beloved Prefect for the new Anglia.

One of the next generation of small cars produced by Ford at Dagenham.

The Anglia was, to me, the epitome of style

because of the grace of the cut on it.

I mean, I had never known what style was in a vehicle.

It was metal on wheels that you drove.

But impressed as I was with the Prefect...

..the Anglia was just, "Wow!".

MUSIC: "You Can't Hurry Love" by The Supremes

Derek and Sylvia's love for their new Anglia grew as strong as it was for their Prefect.

Their car remained at the heart of their relationship.

The only difference was there was now a new addition to the family.

While Sylvia was sat in the car with the baby and looking after the baby,

I'd jump out the car with a wash leather or a polisher

and start polishing the vehicle, so the Anglia really followed on from the Prefect

and I think it would be fair to say

it was looked after every bit as well.

Yet, despite the popularity of Ford's latest models

like the new Anglia, the American-owned company still had an image problem.

Their cars were perceived to be cheap, flashy and unreliable compared to a truly British-made car.

I'll always remember a neighbour of mine coming up to me one day when I'd bought my first car

which was a 100E Anglia and saying, "Oh, you've bought a Ford, one of those tin things."

I said, "What do you mean, a tin thing?" He said, "Yes!".

He walked up to the bonnet, bumped it up and said it's made out of tin.

It just summarised the general feeling.

You know, British cars are made out of steel, handmade,

whereas American cars were all tinny, mass-produced things.

To improve their image, Ford targeted one of the fastest growing new spectator sports,

motor racing, as a way to give even more glamour to their brand.

By racing for Britain, Ford hoped to promote their national credentials

and provide the ultimate guarantee of the performance of their cars.

They teemed up with racing car specialist Lotus

and by the mid-'60s, the Ford Lotus Formula One team had become a force to be reckoned with in motor racing.

The man who masterminded the reinvention of Ford's image was public relations boss Walter Hayes.

His next step was to move into saloon car rallying.

In a male-dominated racing world, he realised the publicity value of signing up a pretty young woman.

Anita Taylor, from a well-known racing family.

I had a phone call from Ford, from the competitions' manager, at the time.

And they invited me to go down to Dagenham to meet the boss.

And that was Walter Hayes.

At that time, he was a director of Ford

and he was very forward-thinking.

MUSIC: "This Wheel's On Fire" by Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger

Anita won her first race driving for Ford

and, right from the start, attracted much publicity.

She was determined to prove that she could drive with as much skill and courage as any man.

The first corner in any race is frightening.

There's cars all around you and you want to get to the corner first.

I love the feeling of speed.

The satisfaction of doing a good lap...

against the men, being, getting fastest lap was...exhilarating.

# Wheel's on fire... #

Excitement and danger went hand-in-hand.

This was Anita's first big crash.

I didn't remember a great deal because it happened so quickly.

Everything was going round very quickly and I thought, "Oh, dear, this is it, I've had it."

Came to a halt...

and couldn't believe that I was still...

I thought, "OK". I was feeling my legs, my arms.

I felt fine. I was absolutely amazed that I hadn't been badly injured.

The only thing that bothered me,

as a female, was...

I didn't want my teeth knocking out or my face scarring.

Typical female!

In the early '60s, Ford planned to develop the ultimate new family car to sell across Europe

and a race began between the design team at Dagenham and the rival Ford of Germany plant in Cologne.

Dagenham beat off the competition,

but before the car could be signed off,

it needed final approval from American bosses in Detroit.

We had got right to the end, everything was going fine.

Management in Britain had approved everything

and tooling had even started

and the tail lamps were what we used to refer to, retrospectfully,

as the Chinese eye variety,

where the flouting down the side of the body turned round the corner of the back and went down in a slope

and across the back and up again on the other side.

American management came over for the final signing off and...

told us that the new fangled way of tail lamps in American cars were

what we used to refer to as dustbin tail lamps, circular tail lamps

and I was given the job to change the tail lamps to the circular one, which you now see down there.

The car was the Ford Cortina and now there was another race to get it off the production line.

This began at the new foundry at Dagenham, which was geared up for a huge production drive.

But the work remained hazardous which meant accidents happened all the time.

One young lad, he came to work with us,

pulled his flask in one night and it slipped off the roller

and removed his finger.

Whipped him down to the medical.

That was a memorable night for me because about two hours before,

I had become a shop steward, so this was my first accident.

When we got down to the medical,

the...medical bloke said, "Have you got the finger?"

So, we went back to try and find a finger

and somebody said, "Oh, I saw so and so going down there with the finger giving it to the cat."

The grim humour of the men who endured these harsh working conditions turned to anger, however,

when the management increased production targets and speeded up the assembly line.

The speed of the conveyor in the new foundry was 18-foot a minute

and then one day, this very genial superintendent came along...

he'd have been somebody's favourite grandfather, in appearance,

and he said, "From Monday night, we'll be speeding up the conveyor belt to 21-foot a minute."

I said, cautiously, frankly, because I wasn't sure how much support I'd be getting from the rest of the men

and I was a shop steward at the time and I said, "Get stuffed."

Dennis had the full support of his fellow workers,

so when the management refused to back down and insisted on the new line speed,

they all started to go slow.

We carried on for six weeks until eventually the company conceded.

They were not going to win this particular battle.

They reverted to the 18 foot.

That's when the company realised that they had not only lost the battle of the speed up,

they'd lost the goodwill of at least 108 very good workers.

One of the new bosses who would have to deal with some of these issues

was about to arrive at Dagenham, fresh-faced from university.

Ian Gibson.

The first thing that struck me was you turn off the main road

and you're in the Ford site and you kept on going down this road

in the bus and you kept on going down the road in the bus

and you see a thing that says "Dagenham Engine Plant".

You get inside it and the offices are at the other end of it

and you find yourself walking through a factory,

which, at the time, was the biggest factory I'd ever seen in my life

and it was a machining plant for making engines.

So the air is full of that peculiar mixture of... machining fluid and fine metal grit,

walking down through this haze and there's enough haze

you can't see the far end of the building that you're inside

and you're beginning to think, "What am I gonna do in a place like this?"

But at the same time, it was excitement

because production processes and that many people working and machines are going,

have a rhythm and a pace of their own that sort of enters the blood.

The Cortina was a big hit and in its first year, Ford sold a quarter of a million of them.

The Dagenham plant worked round the clock to satisfy demand.

A pressure that led to constant disputes over pay and conditions.

The negotiations were again that both management and unions always had to be seen to win.

Shop steward Dennis O'Flynn's main adversary

was American boss Tru Hayford.

On one occasion, he and I had a confrontation over something.

We had this eyeball-to-eyeball, in every sense of the word,

and he backed off, went down to his office.

I followed him into his office.

We finished our discussion there, came out the office, started to walk down the corridor

and he came to his door and he shouted out after me,

"And let that be a clear understanding!"

I turned and ran back, kicked his door in.

"Look," he said, "for God's sake, allow me to save face somehow, will you?"

That was it. He was a human, but you couldn't help but like the guy.

The brash American cars of the '60s set the tone for the American managers at Dagenham.

They brought a new style and pizzazz that made a deep impression on the young Ian Gibson,

working his way up the Ford management ladder.

Working for Ford in the UK was really carrying a bit of the US culture around with you.

As a member of management, you normally called your bosses by their

first name and they normally called you by your first name.

In that part of the '60s, in most of the UK,

it was all, "Mr this," or "Mrs that", or, "Miss so and so".

But it was Ian and Julia and Fred, you know?

That's the way Ford worked.

But despite the relaxed management style, there was huge ambition and no room for failure.

That's very compact, Keith. What power do you think it will put out?

That sort of Americanism in thinking...

sat pretty well within Ford because it'd grown up that way.

It would have been uncomfortable elsewhere.

And you've got some real characters. You know, you'd get the guy, who'd come over, who was the Texan,

who still wore the cowboy boots, black, underneath his suit and he'd sit there in the office,

put his feet up on the desk and you'd see a pair of cowboy boots arrive.

I bet that didn't happen in Cowley.

Each successive Cortina model proved more popular than the last.

Marketing played a vital role in the success

and Ford had one of the most imaginative marketing teams in Britain.

They used constant media exposure to create a sporty image for their cars.

One of the architects of Ford's media campaigns was Barry Reynolds.

The public perception of this new range of cars was

that all Ford cars are really fast, all Ford cars are really sporty,

but also, we recognise that for specific models...

the real route to follow...

to demonstrate its strength and its quality, durability, speed...

rallying was the route to go.

The rallying success of the Lotus Cortina brought a halo to the entire Cortina range.

With the Cortina, the time was right to go and do endurance rally.

We went off and we won safari rally in East Africa.

Touring cars, we went off with the Cortina and won various championships around Europe.

For Clark, a Wentworth-winning first-in-class

and his team-mates making it a fine two and three, as well.

The big thing about rallying is that it goes all over the world

and you can visibly display your car competing in the snow of Sweden,

in the extreme heat of the Acropolis in Greece,

in the rough tracks of Argentina or East African safari.

Images of those cars in those real rare environments says everything.

If your car's running there and competing and finishing,

it's gotta be strong, it's gotta be reliable, it's gotta be durable.

The stylish, sporty Cortina became the car of choice for middle managers and sales reps,

who in modern Britain, were spending much more time driving long distances on business.

Many were rewarded with a new Cortina company car each year.

Sales rep Derek Forster couldn't believe his luck.

It just felt good in the car. Ford had that edge in those days.

More people had cars,

but they certainly didn't change them every 12 months,

so if you're a company car guy

and you're in that fortunate position,

then you've got the look of the neighbours

because you had the latest Ford model, the latest colour perhaps

and, of course, a new registration to get heads turning.

With each promotion, Derek was able to upgrade his model of Cortina

until he finally got to the top of the range.

I had a regular latest model, latest registration, latest colour

until one of the significant steps I got,

I remember well, was the Cortina GT.

That was, again, a pride and joy era. Had three of those models.

A white one, a yellow one and I think it was a purple one.

Which, you know, they were terrific cars.

Ford was now confident enough to make a film that parodied all the old prejudice against them.

This is a Ford.

What exactly do you mean by, "bad workmanship"?

I mean, they're so tinny, aren't they? I mean, look.

You know, I mean...

You see, and that was just with a sledge hammer.

Ford made their cars even more glamorous by using the American practice of product placement.

Then, perfectly within the law. With The Sweeney, they hit solid gold.

I was very conscious that the Ford perks had to be shown in a positive light.

And I knew that when I put a car with a TV company I had no control over that.

So from the very start, I made up some rules.

By supplying free cars, Ford were able to script the car's role.

The good guys had to drive Ford cars

and...the good-looking girls had to drive the Ford cars.

So, in one of the most popular cop shows of all time,

Ford cast their cars as heroes and rivals as villains.

I also used to supply them, not just the cars for the specific characters,

but there were always a couple of other cars that they would have

and usually the baddies would drive those.

But anybody that watched Sweeney regularly, soon got to recognise

that whenever the baddies were in an old Mark 2 Jag...

it was going to roll.

None of the Fords ever crashed.

Television was also creating new motor sports like rally cross racing

and Ford were quick to realise they could use its heroes to promote their cars.

-That was great. Hello, Barry.

-Hello, Peter.

They signed up the big rising star, daredevil driver Barry Lee.

Barry was every boy racer's dream.

Art of throttle control. Very important.

Look for the grit, see where it is and don't accelerate,

don't spin your wheels too quick or too slow,

but just look for that grit and feel it.

I always used to race with a hard seat, OK, so I was very good at what we call getting out the box.

You can see that Lee has got the latest style of all enveloping crash helmets.

When rally cross won a regular slot on Grandstand, Barry had a bigger stage to play on.

It was an opportunity he wasn't going to miss.

Barry Lee has put up a tremendously fast time in winning that race.

As soon as I'd finished whatever race it is, whatever position I was in,

and this is why, I think, Ford used to love me,

I'd get a camera thrust into me, whatever time, cos they wanted to hear what I said,

because everybody else'd go, "I had a good race", but I'd say,

"Yeah, I had a fantastic race but didn't you see him trying to take me out? But I won!",

Or whatever. That's the name of the game.

In each race, Barry felt duty bound to perform every trick in the stuntman's book.

Whatever Ford he drove was given instant street cred.

He soon became one of motor sport's greatest showmen.

I was a showman. I was Leapy Lee. They nicknamed me Leapy Lee, because when I used to go over the bumps,

my car used to bounce up and down, so they used to call me Leapy Lee, so I worked on that, I had that.

Barry's image was pure rock and roll and to live up to it,

his exhibitionism became even more outrageous.

You don't want to make a mug of yourself, so when you're out there you've put all this flash image on,

you know, "I'm Barry Lee and I've got everything and tattoos,"

which I haven't, but I'm only exaggerating there, but I had the golden suits,

I had the wild crash helmets, I had my long hair so I looked like a bird half the bloody time.

But that was the image you had to create.

Whether Ford liked that or not,

they had to like it cos I was winning races.

In the late '60s and '70s, Barry Lee became a legend.

Each year, he won almost every trophy going in rally cross and hotrod racing.

He was the darling of the motor press, always grabbing the headlines and the front covers.

But once, even he thought he'd gone too far.

And Barry Lee takes the chequered flag and wins in the Ford Escort...

And they put the brand new Escort there on the green and she comes out and we do a nice photo shoot.

Then they said, "Would you mind taking your gold overalls off,

"and could Nicola put your gold overalls on?"

I said, "I don't mind." So, she's at the front of the car

and I'm thinking, "Will Ford really mind that?"

So I'm in my Marks and Spencer's underpants, which are the striped ones,

I'm standing there with my legs apart, shivering like this, in my underclothes,

because the story is she's just nicked my overall.

I didn't realise, she's back to me but on her overalls she's got her boobies nearly sticking out.

Now, if I'd had known that I would have died because Ford don't want to be part of that exercise.

It not only was wrong, a week later when it arrived in the magazine, I was thinking where is it...

I missed the front page. It's the front cover of the magazine.

There's me standing there in Marks and Spencer's overalls

and this Nicola, the model, with all her boobs hanging out.

But it had Ford on it. It had everything else. Is that wrong?

Almost all car makers used sexual fantasies to sell their cars

and Ford was no exception.

She doesn't care that the seats have been ergonomically designed with extra leg room in front.

She just knows she's comfortable.

The idea of women as sexual accessories to their cars

was even extended to their star female driver.

I don't like to think... that Ford hired me for my looks

but I suppose that was part of the deal.

She doesn't care that the wider track and new suspension

have been designed to improve the handling and reduce vibration.

She only knows it's a really smooth, sophisticated ride.

I think at the time, I was so enthralled with the fact that I was racing for...

a massive company, being sponsored by them and winning races and enjoying my career.

It was amazing. But I didn't realise to the full extent that I was being used, really, as a model.

I took my motor racing seriously...

but was asked to do a lot of modelling for different things, different reasons,

draped over cars...

smiling all the time... and I found it quite difficult because I wasn't a model.

Ford were using me as a typical '60s...

chick, a sex object.

I don't like to look at it that way

and I didn't think of it at the time

because I was so engrossed in succeeding in my motor racing

but I think that was the case, that I did attract a lot of publicity.

Women were the eye candy used in every new car launch,

but their work in actually making the cars was invisible to the outside world.

The upholstery of Ford's car interiors,

the choice and style of which was always a big selling feature, was largely the work of women.

Even though it was a skilled and demanding job,

the women were graded as unskilled labour and paid less than men doing similar jobs.

Then, in 1968,

Dagenham's women workers decided they'd had enough and walked out.

-We are on strike.

-All of you?

-All of us.

All us machinists, anyway.

So no car seat covers for Ford?

No, not from us, anyway.

Well, just what are you striking about?

Grading. At the moment, we're B-Grade, which is a labourer

and we think we should have C-Grade, which is skilled labour.

# R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me... #

Ford's women strikers demanded equal rights to men and equal pay.

Their campaign gained national prominence and the Dagenham women won huge popular sympathy.

They decided to lobby MPs and their cause was taken up by Labour Party minister, Barbara Castle.

Together, their campaign helped push through the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

It was a historic victory.

However, at Ford's Dagenham plant, management still refused

to recognise the sewing machinists as skilled workers.

But the women's spirit of resistance remained as strong as ever, as Henry Ford Junior discovered.

Henry Ford was coming down to visit.

He wanted to see what conditions that the machinists worked in,

so everything had to be cleaned up.

You've got to clean this up, clean that up.

We had a woman sat up in the front, we always called her "f-ing Eileen",

cos wherever you went, she was, you know, you went past and you heard it.

So this particular day, as they come in the door,

she's on the front machine, so she made herself a hat

and I've got to swear, she put "Bollocks" across the hat

and she just sat there and the supervision come up,

"Please, please, Eileen, take that hat off!"

"No, I'm not taking it off."

She wouldn't take it off. And he had to walk right by.

He must have seen it, but no-one said,

but everyone was in fits of laughter.

I reckon Henry Ford thought, "whatever's going on in here?"

When Dora became shop steward in 1976, the regrading issue was still on the agenda.

Every time pay day came round on Thursdays at Dagenham,

the women were reminded that their claim for recognition of their skills

was still bottom of the agenda.

It was a drawn-out process.

Nearly every couple of years on the pay claim that went in

on a pay claim, it was just thrown straight back out, cos it was women.

I don't care what the men say,

even the unions, it was all for the men, it weren't for the women.

Dagenham's ultimate dream car was, without doubt, designed to appeal to men...

and their sexual fantasies.

First launched in 1969, the Ford Capri became one of the most emblematic cars of the '70s.

I had been with Yvette the first time I saw it.

The Capri's advertising slogan was, "The car you always promised yourself".

It was a fast back coupe that looked and drove like a sports car.

The baby boomer generation took it to their hearts.

From the moment it was launched it was incredibly successful.

It was the first sports coupe and set a new class within the industry.

And it appealed to young guys.

They loved them.

The sexual promise of the Capri drove sales onwards and upwards.

By 1973, it had sold a million.

The style and speed of the Capri range was constantly enhanced,

making it a big seller all over the world.

But it was in Britain, that its popularity was greatest.

And if you were a manager at Ford,

Capris came free as one of the perks of the job.

I had two exciting cars,

and the first was a bog standard Capri,

in metallic bronze, with what was called tobacco,

i.e. dark brown vinyl roof

and a sort of light beige...

verging on dog poo trim colour.

And what I can't get over now is that in 1974, that was fantastic.

And you look at it now and you think, "Who was the man who ordered that car, Ian?"

And the truth was at the time it was great and you really loved it.

ADVERT: This is Ford Capri.

As luxurious as a limousine.

Powerful as a sports car.

The Capri's flash image also appealed to those who couldn't afford the price tag.

The car's main target owners were young professionals

and the smart new family man who still fancied his chances with the ladies.

But subliminal dream images of speed, sex and romance could also

prove irresistible to those lower down the social scale, like aspiring Essex boy racer, Dave Harley.

When the Capri came out,

you just looked at it and go,

"My God, I haven't seen a car like that before."

You know, not one that I could afford.

I've seen cars that are beautiful, in magazines, but they're like, you know, I'm 17, I'm just a kid.

I can't afford... even if I could, I wouldn't be able to insure it.

That was the power with Ford, they would offer a dream that was accessible.

# You can go your own way... #

When new Capri owners moved up a gear and bought the next model in the range,

their second-hand cast-offs allowed a new class of owner onto the road.

Waiting in the wings to snap them up were the boy racers.

It didn't take long.

Once the Capri was two or three years old, the boy racers had their hands on them.

And once we got our hands on them, we made the most of them cos they were a great great car.

I mean, they didn't just look great, they drove great.

When I got in my Capri, I just felt the bollocks, I just thought, "I look, I'm a dude, in this car."

# You can go your own way... #

When you got in a Capri, they had a sports feel to them. They had a nice dash,

they had a rev counter. Having a rev counter was a big deal because most cars didn't have them then.

They were a car that were built around.

You got into it and went, "Yeah, this is a car that I've dreamt of owning."

It felt like it was my homemade car, you know?

That car was made, produced and designed in Dagenham

and that was the Essex boy's car of choice.

But the making of these dream cars was a very different story.

In fact, many Capris were not made in Dagenham, but in Germany,

part of the new, merged Ford of Europe.

One reason Dagenham lost out was because of its discontented labour force.

In 1978, half the men working in the body plant that year got their cards and left.

They were casualties of a drive towards greater cost effectiveness, necessary for survival

in the more competitive international car market.

-How many do you want now for 52?

-Ten men.

Replacements were hard to find.

When Keith Dover began work on the Dagenham assembly line in 1978, there was no shortage of vacancies.

You'd walk in slow, getting into the place to clock on.

And everybody would be say like that...

get some coffee.

Everybody would be like the living dead going in to work

and then at the end of the shift, totally different.

Everyone couldn't get out quick enough.

Run it round in circles, will you? As you get all this labour on there, just keep running it.

If getting a job at Dagenham was relatively easy, keeping it

and surviving the stresses and strains of the production line was notoriously difficult.

On the assembly line you had no time at all. You was committed to that job and God it was so boring.

And you'd do that over and over,

the same job Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

and you'd go in for eight hours, maybe if you're doing overtime, ten-hour shift.

What you do is little tricks.

You think I wonder how Arsenal are going to do.

I would have imaginary football matches, where I might be playing

within the FA Cup, or designing something in my head.

Anything, just to get yourself out of it.

And eventually, once you'd learnt the job, you could do all this and your mind could be totally...

and you'd do it without thinking.

But if you were new to that assembly line, it might look slow, but once you started, it seemed bloody fast,

because you had to get your bit done before the next guy took over

so he didn't really appreciate it if you weren't finished

because if you slowed him down, then he'd be out of sync.

More and more black and Asian workers were recruited to work on the assembly line.

Shop steward Roger Dillon was surprised how easy it was to get a well-paid job there.

He soon found out why.

Basically, you were tied to the line.

Once that line started, every second is accounted for.

If a cycle of one car would be say, one minute 20 seconds,

you would possibly have ten seconds to pick up a part.

Ten seconds to walk to the car.

Another five seconds to get your position with your tools.

Another five seconds to do whatever.

And they would all add up to maybe one minute five seconds.

Then the remaining 15 seconds was allowing you to walk back up to the line,

back to your station to pick up your parts to go to do the next car.

Many began at Dagenham only intended to stay a short time.

Those who stayed on the assembly line too long could be driven crazy

by the repetitive tasks they had to perform.

There was this guy who was an inspector, middle-aged, very mild-mannered,

intelligent guy, then all of a sudden, it was like the scene when Basil Fawlty attacks his car.

He goes berserk and he's got a rolled up newspaper and he's hitting this engine and he's shouting

and he's swearing at it and I said to the guy I was working next to,

I said, "What's going on there?" He said, "Take no notice, he always does that."

"What do you mean?" He said, "He just loses his temper sometimes."

I said, "Look, he's having a row with the engine.

"He's actually arguing with it," I said "Look, he's hitting it."

But the rest of the guys are looking at me, "What's your problem?"

# ..They love your new car... #

After Ford's new family car, the Fiesta, rolled off the production line in 1976,

everyone joined in with this pantomime performance to promote the image of a happy workforce.

Sadly, in the '70s, one day in every four had been lost to strikes and stoppages.

# We'll check your plugs And oil your tappets, too... #

The line worker always seemed to be angry about something and it was because of the nature of the work.

People would store up all this anger and then when something went wrong,

that was it, they just lost it and my job, a lot of occasions, would be to...

get them to calm down and what would calm them down is if I actually lost it.

If they saw me actually shouting and screaming at the supervisor

and him screaming back, it was a bit of theatre.

So, rather than them do something stupid and them walking out, where they could lose their jobs,

they're quite happy to see me screaming and shouting at the supervisor.

# Thanks again... #

The loss of production due to constant disputes was a nightmare for Ford managers.

Some play acted their way through the minefield of conflicting interests.

# You'll find your prop-shaft... #

Sometimes you'd have to appear pretty damned intractable and say, "It's thus far and no further."

And if that's going to make you guys go home

then recognise that you've gone home for some days

or even some weeks, cos we ain't going to bend on this one, because of its consequences,

and that's the sort of poker bluff, if you like,

cos you never want anybody to go and certainly not for weeks.

And least of all, because when people do go on strike for a long time,

actually getting hold of them to talk them back is an extra problem, cos grudges will only have built.

Ford's tough line on cost control and production targets meant that,

despite all the stoppages, Dagenham and Ford in Britain remained profitable,

at a time when the home-grown British car industry was going bust.

But in the '70s, Ford's operations in other countries were proving much more cost effective

and the abiding memory of this decade at Dagenham is one of loss and regret.

Whenever possible, my middle and last part of the day

was simply to walk to the end of whichever process it was

and look at the cars going up the lift, or look at the cars

going off the end of the line, cos at least you can see that despite all the frustrations

and all the tensions of the day, something's still coming out there.

There is nothing... probably is something sadder, but at the time,

there didn't seem anything sadder than walking round a giant car plant, which from end to end probably has

five days worth of production, so 4,000 vehicles in one state or another, not moving.

And you know that what should be happening is thousands of people,

earning their wages, turning those into cars and it sits there quiet and empty,

cos nobody's in at work.

And there's those thousands of, you know, on their way to birth cars and nothing happening.

That's really very sad, indeed.

In 1984, the Dagenham dispute that changed women's history finally came to a head.

16 years after the sewing machinists first demanded recognition of their skills in 1968,

they again came out on strike.

Leading them was Dora Challingsworth.

We said right, OK, the only way we're going to get what we want

is to all walk out. So that was it.

Everyone went and we was out for, I think it was about five, six weeks.

We brought the place to a close because no-one could work without the seat covers.

Cars can't go out without seat covers.

After rejecting the women's claim,

Ford agreed to independent arbitration and the women won their case.

We was in the manager's office.

We went up there, sat there 'till nearly 10:10, when the news come through and it was really great.

We went down on the floor at quarter past.

We had a meeting with the girls at 10:15

and there was cheers and crying. It was really great.

It was all there. We knew we was going to win in the end.

But the day they was told, they just went absolutely mad, the women.

I don't think anyone worked after that.

The victory was bittersweet.

Ford is one of the world's largest multinationals and Dagenham

had become just one of many plants making cars in different countries.

'Ford is the third largest company in the world.

'It employs 480,000 people in over 100 countries.

'And builds over five million cars, trucks and tractors every year.'

By the '80s, the fierce international competition facing Ford

was heightened by the huge success of Japanese car makers.

Ford responded by shifting production to other European countries,

like Spain, where labour was cheaper and costs were lower.

Dagenham began shedding 1,000s of jobs and the foundry started to look vulnerable.

We're talking about a unique foundry,

the biggest foundry in Europe

and it had all the required skills under one roof.

That, in itself, made it unique.

Such a mass of men of wide and varied skills under one roof,

it couldn't disappear.

In 1985, the foundry closed down.

The rationalisation of production continued throughout the '80s.

The reduction of the workforce was accelerated

by the introduction of automation on the assembly line.

The writing was on the wall for Dagenham.

Dagenham came from an era where they were technologically no longer going to survive

and were so riddled with a distrust between management and workforce

that you could have written that script

and I think many of us did, years before

and said it's going to end up with this ceasing to happen here.

That doesn't mean you're pleased when it does.

The fact that you foresee something doesn't stop it being regrettable in its own way.

The closure of the foundry, once at the heart of the whole plant,

was the beginning of the end of car making at Dagenham.

For some, it was a welcome relief from drudgery.

But a proud tradition of craftsmanship would also be lost forever.

Vivid memories remain for Dennis O'Flynn who went on one last walk

round the foundry, just before it was demolished in the late '80s.

All the extracting units have closed down, the air docks have finished.

It's a dead, dead area.

And as I walked around, particularly in

the moulding lines and that,

I swear I could hear the ghosts of yesterday.

All these blokes that I work with,

who had contributed to the improvement of working and living standards

and wages of the Ford Motor Company, I swear, as I walked around

there on my own that afternoon, I could hear those voices.

The heyday of Dagenham, when it employed over 50,000

and was the largest producer of cars in Britain, is now a distant memory.

Car production at Dagenham was closed down in 2002.

Today, it still has a workforce of around 2,000,

making all the company's diesel engines for Europe.

But all Ford cars are now imported.

The question begs to be asked, where the hell are we going from here?

But I don't think what we'll ever see is the likes of the Ford Motor Company

and its magnificent contribution to the national, as well as the local economy,

I don't think that will ever be equal again...

tragically.

The end of the Dagenham dream is part of the bigger story

of the decline of car-making and manufacturing industry in Britain.

Dagenham's finest hour was in the '60s and '70s,

when it produced the Ford Cortina, one of Britain's most iconic cars.

Despite shifting its car production abroad, Ford has remained

our most popular brand, a name that will always be fondly remembered

for the American-style dream car.

Now long gone, that once broke the mould.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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