Getting Down to Business Britain on Film

Every big town in the world,

and most of the little ones, has its markets.

The place where you can pick up anything from a new suit and clothes

to an argument with a copper!

Part of the knack of selling to the general public is you've

got to have a nice voice.

Anybody want this lot for a shilling?

12 bars of chocolate and six purses for a shilling.

Here, a set of aluminium saucepans,

never seen daylight or moonlight or Fanny By Gaslight.

There's one, let's see if you want to boil an egg quick.

Everything you can think of to buy

and a carrier bag to take it away in.

Hello, love. Seen anything you fancy?

Portobello Road is in the Notting Hill district.

You'll find a lot of citizens here from all over the world.

And good places for picking up foreign coins.

I used to collect them when I was a nipper!

Very handy, they were, for the slot machines.

Many's a time I've been here when I've been hard up,

looking for old clothes and a new conscience.

But nowadays when everything's got to be bigger and better,

they've invented the supermarket.

Spick and span and shining bright - a street market with a top hat on.

The supermarket is the same sort of thing as the old market

but it's mainly for food, you see?

And it's a bit more posh and a bit more modern.

Everything is nice and clean and tidy

and when it comes on to rain you've got a roof over your loaf.

But as far as I'm concerned I feel a bit out of it.

At the old street market I meet all my pals, I have a natter,

it's like a club.

But there's showmanship on both sides. Like a coffee?

Now, the coffee is ready to serve so try a sample

and see which flavour you prefer.

How about a drop of sarsaparilla?

Or a bit of fruit?

Yes, there's a lot of big changes taking place

in people's shopping habits

and there's lots of stuff to be bought now

that nobody ever heard of 20 years ago.

There's one thing that's the same in the supermarket

and the street market and that is the end of the day.

Checking up the lolly!

I reckon that's a job I could handle all right! I asked 'em once.

"No, thank you!" they said.

Well, everybody's shoving off to treat themselves

if they've got any money left.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear, look what they've left behind 'em.

On the other hand, at the supermarket at the end of the day, you could still eat your grub

off the floor - like we had to at home, the time I flogged the table!

Ha-ha!

For more than 250 years, the stock exchange has been

the marketplace for stocks and shares, where millions of pounds

are raised for both public and private enterprise.

The men you see in groups or moving about

are members of the stock exchange and their clerks.

The stock exchange motto is dictum meum pactum -

my word is my bond.

In Britain today are millions of small investors.

Nearly everybody is concerned with share values,

people in pension funds for instance, and those with life insurance.

Nobody can say that our factory benches are exactly crowded

with shareholders yet,

But there are some strange new ways of passing the tea break these days.

I wonder if they're worth buying.

Do you want a safe share with small dividends,

or one that yields more but isn't quite so safe?

Are you a bull who thinks prices will rise,

or a bear who thinks they will fall?

The broker makes his suggestion

and calls his partner on the trading floor of the stock exchange.

Here, stamina counts just as much as brains.

It has been worked out that stock exchange clerks walk 8 miles a day.

At the end of a trail, a deal?

I'll sell you 2,400 at 50 and 10p each. Thank you very much.

And so a deal is done.

A word is enough, and only the notebooks show that someone

has bought and someone has sold.

What news? A sporting sensation, gossip?

But now the chances are that the homeward-bound reader

first wants to see how his shares are doing.

For never have so many people owned so many shares.

They share a common faith, faith in industry, faith in their own efforts.

They hold shares in tomorrow.

He's tried everything, including counting sheep.

No, it's no good, he can't make it.

You can't relax on uncomfortable bed. He'll wear that mattress out!

But not a new one. This testing machine takes care of that.

It simulates 24 hours wear in one and a half minutes.

This one is a man sitting on the edge of the bed to put his socks on.

They think of everything!

Ah, he's finally dropping off. Goodnight.

ALARM CLOCK RINGS

How much brushing will a carpet take?

How much strain can knitted fabrics stand?

Some tennis balls wear faster than others.

A washing machine lined with sandpaper tests

the strength of their covers.

Of course, the only way to see if matches strike is to strike them.

How would you think toothbrushes are tested?

The British Standard mark shows it's been tested and proved strong and hard-wearing.

Before any goods can qualify for the Kitemark, as it's called,

they have to stand up to pretty rough usage.

Chairs get 600 bonks at 20 bonks a minute, and pass the test

only if the springs are still springy and the fabric firm.

She is wondering how long mixture will take,

and so did the Consumers Association who,

in their monthly journal, Which, publish results

of tests of all kinds of consumer goods, about 50 of them per year.

And then there's the user tests for barrier creams.

The best ingredients for this one are four pretty girls

and four bowls of really mucky stuff.

Here's the coal, and the garden dirt.

Is there anything stickier than blackcurrant jam?

Well, there's always oil from the car.

The next stage is to wash it all off and see what your hands look like afterwards.

Serving the public interest, one of the many testing and measuring

duties that the weights and measures department carry out

is checking retailers' scales to make sure they are accurate.

1lb of steak, please.

But she is not just an ordinary housewife.

Round the corner is that car again, and in the boot,

a special set of scales to make sure she has been given the full weight.

The box on the wall is part of the new Battle of Britain

now being fought on the factory floor.

It is a fight that never stops, not just to hold Britain's place in the markets of the world,

but to go ahead, to produce more and more, to live better and better.

The battle is so vital that a national productivity year

has been declared.

It is a huge subject involving everybody and there, in the box

on the wall, is one of the ways of helping - by doing a bit of thinking.

Here is a girl who assembles a hot water valve.

An ingenious piece of mechanism that's exported all over Europe.

Before her work was scientifically studied,

it was a tedious business on these lines.

Then the time and motion experts were called in,

and they noted every movement she made in the course of one assembly.

Then they had a long talk with the girl herself,

because an intelligent operator can often see shortcuts that

would help in the work that she is doing.

This is what they found.

To assemble one valve, the girl walked 66 feet

and had to make 94 separate hand movements.

It didn't take long to sort out this little problem.

The various components were quickly rearranged around her,

rather like a cinema organist with all the stops banked up round about him

So the girl scored twice the output for no more effort.

Studies of this sort can even be applied to the home.

They can certainly be applied to shopping.

One big chain store has rearranged the whole of its sales technique in the last few years,

making an enormous saving in paperwork and wasted effort.

This is how it went in the old days -

a customer would come in and ask for a size that the sales girl didn't have on the counter.

The girl would then trot off to the storeroom

where she would peek through the hatch

and apply for the particular garment.

Sales were lost to the long wait getting goods out.

That's how they worked it, almost like Alcatraz.

But today, they put the fullest trust in the staff and, if a customer wants

a size that is not on the counter,

the girl goes straight off and gets it.

There we are, no time wasted.

Simple. No red tape.

If in doubt, cut it out.

That's the motto, and it's paid off

in increased enthusiasm and productivity.

Think what would happen

if advertising suddenly disappeared, like this.

Or like this.

If the windows emptied.

And the posters went blank.

Before long, we'd get this.

That's why we spend something like £500 million

a year on advertising in the broadest sense.

The critics argue that this is too much.

There are critics in everything.

What's really gone up in the last few years

is the personal spending power of so many of us.

We earn more and we can thus buy more.

In the old days, this would have been the housewives'

unrealised dream of a perfect kitchen,

each piece of equipment well beyond ordinary reach.

Today, thanks basically to advertising,

these things can be mass produced to meet a huge demand

and so marketed at a price that brings them

one by one into everyday life.

Marketing and advertising are the crafts behind all our trades.

One tells us what to make and how to sell it.

The other creates the demand.

Between them, they drive the wheels of present-day industry.

Without them, living standards of a modern country would go drifting

downwards inside a few months.

In whatever form it takes, from the humble sandwich man upwards,

be sure of this -

never have we so much needed our marketing skill as we need it

in the international competition of today.

All over Britain we have the vital production lines, of which cars

are but one out of hundreds.

The lines of national prosperity.

It's essential that we all have the urge to buy

and so keep people working to clear the production lines,

not just of cars but of goods of every conceivable kind.

This is a century of mass production.

To succeed in it, we must always be making more and selling more.

But nobody today would rush into big scale production

without knowing the likely public response.

The advertising agency team will visit the factory

and see the product - a new electric razor.

Meanwhile, the agency's creative people

start off by putting their ideas down on paper.

What's in a name? The answer is - plenty.

Finding the right name is an early vital job.

Then a designer gets busy, for the finished product

not only has to be right -

it has to look right. It has to be attractive.

The image that will sell the product is emerging.

Now to move from theory and sketchpad

into the expensive LSD of a live advertising campaign.

There will be photographic sessions.

In all, hundreds of pictures will be taken, many very good,

one or two outstanding.

Finally, the best are selected

so that this part of the campaign can go forward.

And go forward it does -

into the TV commercials, still reflecting the same ideas

and pattern that will make the product recognisable everywhere.

Success is now as near certain as can be.

Not just success at home,

but abroad, for the same ideas may go into the export market.

Despite intense competition from America and Japan,

Britain is still by far the world's biggest bike exporter.

One Nottingham factory alone produces more than 1.5 million bikes a year.

It exports nearly three quarters of them to 140 countries,

earning about £7 million a year in foreign currency.

There are bikes of every shape and size.

Pushbikes, power bikes, racing bikes, folding bikes.

More than 250 varieties on one huge production line.

Talk about British exports, and most people think of this kind of thing.

Cars, tractors, the big-money stuff.

But Britain's selling some rather surprising things

overseas as well these days.

Just outside Carlisle,

there's a farm that spends all its time breeding exports.

Worms.

Yes, worms!

Earthworms help to build up the soil in the infertile

areas of the world by aerating it and creating topsoil.

One million worms left in an acre of earth will produce a ton

of topsoil everyday.

Foreign governments are negotiating not only to buy worms

from Britain but to get advice and equipment to start their own farms.

This factory at Painswick in Gloucestershire also produces

tiny exports.

Paperclips.

Their goods have been going all over the world since 1847,

and today they sent tons of paper clips to places as far apart

as Rhodesia and Trinidad.

Here's a man who's collecting bits of the White Cliffs of Dover

for sale as souvenirs to overseas visitors.

And tourists, most of them American, buy loads of the stuff each year.

Yes, it really is surprising the things people sell.

And the things people buy.

Maybe all over the world there are people who long to sniff

the air of London once again.

Take one Lord Mayor of London.

Take a parade of pipe men and fly them out,

preferably with some of London's pearly kings and queens.

Take a typically British pub,

a London bus or two - double-deckers are essential,

take a few British bobbies to help control the crowds,

a square mile of Union Jacks, and don't forget the guards.

Mix all these together and you've got a British week in a major city abroad.

Months, sometimes years, of preparation go into every

British week to provide a festival atmosphere for selling British goods.

The image may be traditional but try running one of these weeks

without London's double-deckers and you're on the wrong track.

Here in Brussels, it's rush-hour from dawn to dusk

with 45-minute free rides around the city.

The citizens are used to single-deck trams

and have never seen their city from such a height before.

Behind all the ceremonial and tradition, business, trade.

All the way from kilt to miniskirt, a burst of high-pressure selling

that bridges the old and the new Britain.

But no amount of flag-waving and razzmatazz will be any good

if British exporters treat the British week as a nine days' wonder,

for selling is an all-the-year-round game.

In the end, it comes down to the salesman with an air ticket,

plenty of bounce and a product to sell.

Half a million people man the machine known simply as the City.

£200 million a year is a fair estimate of what the city earns

for Britain by its financial and commercial services.

Without them, the nation would long ago have gone bankrupt.

All this prosperity was first founded on a river

and its ships.

In London nearly 300 years ago, as the ships took the cargoes

around the world, a new form of finance grew up -

insurance. It started at Lloyds.

The City of London is accepted as the insurance centre of the world,

so important that more than 200 foreign insurance companies

are represented in its square mile.

But more than anything else perhaps,

the City remains one of the great international markets

into which pours produce from all over the world.

There are about 20 markets for different commodities

in the City, and the brokerage on their turnover

adds many millions to the national income.

There's a market in cocoa.

Mother of pearl is there for the buying,

and ivory,

and cloves -

two remind us that the spice market goes back for centuries.

Ostrich feathers bought for New York are in from Africa.

The same building holds London's rubber exchange.

Here the dealers will often make prices for rubber

in distant Singapore and Malaysia.

It will go straight to a foreign buyer, earning a turn for the City.

All these city activities depend on one key service - banking.

The City banks, serving the international trading community,

earn Britain £50-£75 million a year in foreign exchange.

These massive city earnings are the solid financial foundation

on which Britain's standing as a world trading country depends.

So it was that his Lord Mayor's Show hammered home the point.

The procession, that has become part of the London street scene,

was adapted to give the man in the street a colourful

reminder of what the City really achieves.

Usually, the City does a silent job,

but this time it reminds the world that without

its hidden strength, none of the people of Britain would be able to

maintain their present living standards.

On that strength, Britain depends for her position in the world today.

In the bustle that is London Airport, the busiest in the world

for international travel, thousands now fly as part of their jobs.

Many take planes as casually as taxis.

Overnight, the VC10 has flown from midwinter, across South Atlantic,

over the equator and into high summer.

Alan Richmond, export manager of an Oxfordshire firm which makes

switch gear has done the trip of 5,750 miles

four times in quick succession.

As captain Terry Maddock prepares to land at Rio de Janeiro,

Mr Richmond feels it's rather like arriving at the office.

The heat haze indicate a temperature of more than 100 degrees.

Back in London, it was freezing.

But changes of temperature are all in a day's work too, and Alan Richmond

has landed a million-dollar switch gear contract for Brazil's

biggest power project, against tough international competition.

He has some business calls to make in Rio before flying up country to

the site with his works manager, Jim McCready,

who will supervise the installation of the equipment.

Business and pleasure?

Yes, of course they mix.

It must be a pleasure to meet a business contact

in a setting such as this.

Back in London, the tide of commuters still surges.

They're not only people going abroad in search of orders or to install

new machinery, or discuss joint business enterprises.

They may be going to make a film.

This unit of 73 are off to Switzerland for location shooting

for Women In Love, with their producer, Larry Kramer.

Last aboard are the stars, Alan Bates, Jennie Linden and Oliver Reed.

Jets bringing most of Europe within three hours

have helped to make London a major film production centre.

Gregory Peck signs an autograph before boarding the world's

longest daily scheduled non-stop flight,

which links the studios of Britain and America.

To many of the passengers,

this 5,500-miles polar flight is commonplace, for today

such flights for more and more people are just part of a day's work.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd