Company and Regional Diversification: The Case of Automobile Manufacture

Abstract

Armstrongs was a leading member of the large class of rapidly growing engineering and metal working industries generated within the coal/iron regions of northern Britain in the nineteenth century. The economic independence of such regions, of which William Armstrong for one was clearly proud, was already being eroded towards the end of that century, long before a ‘regional problem’ was explicitly recognised. This gradual weakening can be made out in Armstrong’s history. It was beginning when the firm became a limited liability company, as the shareholders lists of the mid-1880s show, with their large numbers from the south of Britain. When the link was made with Whitworths, it was decided to hold some board meetings both in Manchester and in London, as well as in Newcastle.¹ In November 1915, when the question of a successor to Sir Andrew Noble was being discussed, it was suggested by one director that the board should consider ‘whether the direction and control of the Company should be concentrated in London’.² A month later a decision was taken to leave this question and that of whether the Chairman should reside in London until after the war.³ Though in a very different manner, the part played by Armstrongs in the growth of the British automobile industry also indicated the weakening of the manufacturing position and potential of the north.