Sir William BarlowSir William and friends, first I want to say a very warm ‘Congratulations’ to all those people who have won prizes in this competition and say what a tremendously exciting thing it is not only for me, not only for your teachers, not only for your parents and schools, but for the whole of Britain that young people can produce outstanding work of this quality and function. Congratulations to you all.
Sir William Barlow told you how I first became interested in design—at least he did not quite go back to the beginning, let me just tell you now. Many years ago, about thirty years ago to be precise, I first went to a lecture on design in the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. The lecturer was a man who is now Lord Reilly, and I remember vividly some of the demonstrations he showed us of what was good design and what was not. I remember the exposition which Mr. Bache gave couched in the right technical language and jargon but I have remembered the exposition in much simpler terms that something must not only work but it must look good. Now that was at a time when nothing like enough attention was being given to good design and I can remember from that lecture (Lord Reilly will remember too) some demonstrations of good and poor design of street lighting. And ever afterwards I have gone around Europe or wherever I have been and looked at the street lighting for good and poor design. And he taught us really two things: first, yes it had to work, second it had to look good, but thirdly also don't destroy the best from the past but don't rely wholly on the past for your future. Well, I found this very impressive and after that became quite a frequent visitor to The Design Centre in the Haymarket, and to this day I wish that it figured more prominently on the visiting schedules of tourists. Because you know, as a Prime Minister I do like to think that our greatness lies not only in our past, but really in the fact that the same talents which produced a great past, and particularly a great engineering past, can likewise create a great future.
Shortly after that when I became a member of Parliament I was visiting one of the cities in Europe where there was a British Week. So I went to see what the people of Stockholm were being showed as examples of the things that were being made in Britain. And I will tell you, I was very disappointed because they were all reproductions from the past, both in furniture, in silverware and in kitchenware and I said—I got hold of the organisers and said ‘How can you send all this stuff over’—you know, I usually go straight to the point(!) and they said ‘Well, as a matter of fact this is what sells here’. And I said ‘Look, you've got to get them more aware that we in Britain can produce good design.’ And after that I went round some of the shops known for good design in Stockholm and began to look and watch for good design. Two of the things which I liked best, and that happened to be in furnishings, I said ‘That is marvellous design’. What I can again remember to this day was a table about the size of this one, and it did double function, it looked a rather nice low coffee table of the kind which you often see in many, many people's sitting rooms, and [end p1] then it could be brought up to serve also as a dining table for two. Excellent design and beautiful woodwork and it worked. And I said ‘You must have very very good schools for design here’. ‘Oh’, they said, ‘That's a British designer. He couldn't sell it to any company in Britain’. And there you see one learned that we were doing good design, it was going the world over, but we hadn't yet got to the stage—this was a long time ago—when we were having the best design in Britain, and it was they when I got back, and I started to enquire further, they said ‘But those things don't sell in Britain’.
Then I became Secretary of State for Education (Lord Reilly was quite right in what I have told you), by this time, being a scientist by training, and also passionately keen on design by choice, and having the chance to become Secretary of State, and was Secretary of State, I got a whole lot of teachers in one day, one Friday I remember, into my office and started to talk about design and said just exactly what you reported, Sir William, ‘Please can we not teach good design right in the schools?’ Now this was early 1970s and I, as a matter of fact, did not get very much of a response and I was a little bit disappointed. But we are now getting that response and it is absolutely vital that we do. Sir William gave me one or two statistics as I came in. He said ‘Don't you realise that what we see is only one per cent of the talent that there is in Britain, because we have got demonstrations and prizes here and entries only from 70 schools out of 7,000 secondary schools that we could get.’ Now do you see the message that we are all constantly putting across? Please, yes, first of all professionalism—and I think one of the most striking things about the young people's designs was the amount of research they had put into it. We have to have the best professionalism—there are no short cuts. Those who get them do it the long way round because they get the good product. Secondly, it must look good and we have to give more and more attention to the appearance of things. Thirdly, each and every one of us really has two capacities: we produce some things, and we buy, and I hope that having seen superb design today from young people they will also be discriminating buyers of products, because it is the buyers who determine in a way the designs of the future by showing what they like and by buying it is they who will bring success to the company and also success to the inventors.
I would just like to say one or two things about the sponsorship of the Schools Design Prize. We have been very fortunate in having excellent sponsors, first the General Electric Company and now Rolls-Royce. We owe a great deal to our sponsors and I am sure that you get a great deal of inspiration out of doing this and seeing the amount of work that is done and I know that Rolls-Royce visited 200 schools. I hope that in years to come there will be so many entries and so many schools that you will be overwhelmed with the interest and go to many, many more schools and see many, many more products. I want, too, to say the warmest congratulations to the teachers. If you can't win prizes yourself, the greatest thing in life is to see your pupils win them, and to know that you really are creating the society of the future.
One final thing: today, when so many people spend so much time in front of television it is marvellous to come to an occasion where we see young people and teachers who are what I would call [end p2] part of the active society and not merely part of the spectator society. So, many, many congratulations, you will derive more satisfaction from having taken part in this exhibition and in this competition then you ever would have watching the other people do things. It really does auger extremely well for Britain's future and I am delighted to put the whole weight of the Government, and a little house called No 10, behind the importance of design now and in the future.