Margaret Thatcher

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Before his actual obituary in 2006, Sir Freddie Laker, who helped democratize plane travel and opened the heavens to the masses, “died” once before in the early ’80s, when the wings came off his business model. The opening of Terry Smith’s 1982 People article about Laker Airways when the Skytrain was falling:

If any doubt remained that Sir Freddie Laker is a knight of the people, the events of this month have dispelled it. The bankruptcy of Laker Airways, which in 1977 pioneered cut-rate transatlantic air travel, struck Laker’s countrymen like the demise of an old friend. Within hours of the announcement a group of private citizens set up Freddie’s Friendly Fund, quixotically dedicated to saving Skytrain. In the first 24 hours they received $1 million in pledges—and by last week the tally was up to $5.5 million. In addition, the rock group Police promised to turn over the receipts of a Los Angeles concert totaling $185,000. From two schoolboys who donated 16 pence at a Laker airport counter to the group of Liverpool businessmen who offered $1 million, grateful travelers have rallied to Sir Freddie’s side. Says Laker stewardess Lisa Holden, who has spent her recent days gathering signatures on a petition of support: ‘If public opinion was anything to go by, we’d never go out of business.’ 

Unfortunately, Laker’s $388 million debt is more than even such extraordinary goodwill can erase. A British bank hoping to raise a last-minute $64.7 million fund to keep Laker flying admitted defeat, and an offer by the airline’s 2,500 employees to take a huge pay cut was similarly futile. For Laker staffers who lobbied vociferously at 10 Downing Street last week, their plea for government assistance was largely a symbolic last stand. ‘I’ll go under with Laker,’ said Capt. Terry Fenton. ‘I won’t find another job as a pilot, I won’t find any other job. There are no jobs. I’ll have to sell my house, just the same as 90 percent of the people here today.’

Laker was a victim of problems that have thrown other airlines into a tail-spin—skyrocketing fuel prices and decreased passenger traffic. When Pan Am (which lost $348 million in 1981) slashed its New York-London fare last November, Sir Freddie’s prospects darkened. The decline of the British pound also sapped his resources. Currently trying to sell the insolvent British Airways, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government announced that it could not intervene on Laker’s behalf.”

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Thirty years after trying and failing to turn the UK into a hub for robotics, technologists and politicians are having another go at it. From Amir Mizroch in the Wall Street Journal:

“For the past 18 months, everyone who is anyone in the U.K.’s robotics sector has been hard at work on making sure everything goes according to plan, drawing up a strategy paper to determine the future of intelligent, autonomous machines—AKA robots— in Britain.

A final version of the document, written by the 20 experts of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group (RAS-SIG), is to be officially unveiled by Science Minister David Willets on July 1.

According to interviews with two members of the interest group, an external consultant, and a summary of earlier drafts, the strategy rests on several key pillars.  Legislators will make the U.K. the world’s most welcoming place for robotics research, testing and development. It won’t be just about creating robots, but also about creating standards and regulations that allow for easier testing of autonomous machines. Areas of industry will be created to tackle some of the country’s most challenging problems, like the decommissioning of nuclear sites, opening up farming productivity, and robotic monitoring of sewage pipes and offshore gas and oil rigs.

Government will deploy robots to build schools, roads and hospitals, and care for the elderly. It will help fund robotics research at schools and universities to raise the number of people who can make and work with robots.  New technologies that improve the ability of humans to control multiple robots simultaneously will be highlighted. Culturally, there will be an emphasis on explaining that automation does not cost people their jobs, but actually creates more opportunities and opens possibilities.

This is not the first time that a U.K. government has looked to robots to boost the economy. Mired in recession, the Thatcher government launched a campaign in 1985 to increase the number of robots in industry. According to the British Automation and Robot Association, in 1982 only 100 robots out of 439 installed in the country were built by U.K. engineers. Most of the robots were installed in the auto industry sector. Thirty years later, the number of new robots working in the U.K. in 2012 alone was 2,447—none of them were manufactured in the U.K.

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