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• First Person - Percy Timberlake
"I have very good memories of my meetings with the "48" Group who did a lot of trade with China. They were the "Icebreakers" and weshall never forget those who broke the ice in the difficult years." Sosaid Chinese Vice-premier Zhu Rongji during a visit to London in November 1993. Percy Timberlake recalls that momentous first trip.
Icebreakers are needed when there has been a freeze-up. The trade freeze-up between China and the West began in 1949 at the height of the Cold War when America, Britain and several others placed an embargo on the sale of "strategic" goods to Soviet bloc countries. Nobody knew it at the time but this embargo was to last until the middle of 1957.
Long before that, however, the "Icebreakers" had been chiselling away at the long list of goods, winning exemptions here, exceptions there. The "Icebreakers" themselves, when they first met the Chinese in Moscow in 1952, did not know that they would meet again in Beijing in the summer of 1953 and sign the first "Business Arrangement" between the West and the China National Import and Export Corporation (CNIEC) on 6th July 1953. This quickly began to be translated into contracts, and the Chinese publicly hailed the British signatories as the "Icebreaker Mission".
The leader of the mission was Harold Spencer of Crompton Parkinson. Other signatories to the historic agreement were William Gomersall of China Engineers, Wilfred King of Dominions Export and Jack Perry and Bernard Buckman, both of London Export Corporation.
This was the beginning of a 36-year long march in which the "Icebreakers" gradually won their way from an object of derision to official recognition. The first step was the enlargement of the 1953 mission of 16 into "The 48 Group of British Traders with China", so named because 48 British businessmen had been present at its inaugural meeting.
The profile of the larger group was more representative of the overall composition of Britain-China trade. It was to enable the "48" to mount, as time went by, the pioneering British Mining and Construction Equipment Exhibition (1964) and the British Broadcasting, Radar and Instrumentation Exhibition (1976), both in Beijing.
The 48 Group, from the beginning, was a viable vehicle for engendering a technically advanced volume of trade. The original "Icebreaker Mission," for all its thrust, had been limited in this respect. The composition of the original team was almost entirely fortuitous – companies who were prepared to run the gauntlet of hostile trade associations and Hong Kong agents – among them Rubery, Owen and Co. under the enlightened regime of Sir Alfred Owen.
In the early 1960s the trade generated by the "48", both imports and exports, began to reach considerable values, notwithstanding the embargo. As the months passed, a growing contribution was being made by an inveterate band of questioners in both Houses of Parliament and commentators in the press, all briefed almost daily by The 48 Group and its member firms on the losses sustained by British trade as a result of the embargo. This auxiliary army of supporters were, in effect, part of the "Icebreaker" operation. The "48" did the trade and the publicists fed by them rubbed it in with the government, gradually extracting concessions and finally precipitating a series of breakdowns of the embargo itself.
The culmination of these was a decision by the president of the Board of Trade, Sir David Eccles, to break with the committee of Western governments operating the more onerous embargo for China. To leave no doubt about the reason for their dramatic move, the government rather graciously sent an emissary to Wembley to seek out the group's premier questioner, Viscount Elibank, to ensure that he should hear the news first from them. For their part, the "Icebreaker" traders were developing new strategies with the Chinese, one of the most productive being a technical exchange programme, in which Chinese corporations assembled audiences of technicians to hear expositions of advanced British products.
This led gradually to a situation that had not been foreseen. Before long there would be at any given time a score or more of "48" group firms in China on missions, following up missions, lecturing or negotiating contracts. Nothing like this had been seen before (though a Chinese commercial attache had disclosed much earlier that more than 60 per cent of current Sino-British trade was being concluded with The 48 Group members).
The proportion continued to expand but in London the government still had not ceased to hold the "48" at arm's length. It fell to two successive British ambassadors, Sir Edward Youde and Sir Richard Evans, to perceive that this was an anachronistic relationship. They used their position to call an end to the ostracism of the "Icebreakers". Members of The 48 Group were no longer just invited to the Embassy and Consulate but greeted as old friends and fellow toilers. As one of them said, "We brought the "48" in from the cold."
Nor was this to remain a diplomatic gesture. The refrain was taken up in Whitehall. One of the acid tests that had not changed since the days of the "Icebreaker Mission" was whether government financial support would be forthcoming for "48" group visits to China on the same terms as for the various official and semi-official agencies. The situation, in fact, went into reverse and the "48" found that it had begun to be offered support on more generous terms than it had hoped.
Percy Timberlake is the author of The 48 Group: The Story of the Icebreakers in China.
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