Quote Originally Posted by Muskett View Post
You are quite right. I don't know the chap but a good education doesn't automatically mean business savvy. You may well be right on this one!??
The high business taxes of those times stopped anyone chancing much. It was all risk aversion. Why take a chance? If it was a success then the government just taxed it all away anyhow, so no one did anything but down scale.
Think we are being a bit unfair. He took over Sterling and ran it fairly successfully, introduced new products, AR18, a revolver, developed the SAR80 for Singapore, HR81 series as well as being a reputable small engineering company. He and Sterling were royally shafted by Royal Small Arms Enfield, a monopolistic MOD procurement policy and finally, being prosecuted for being involved in the 'arms to Iraq' affair, in which Sterling was operating as a quite legit exporter, apparently with UK blessing by selling some Sterling SMGs. The then government lied, nobbled witnesses, and hid the fact that they had involved themselves in a huge cover up to keep their own (illegal and morally indefensible) policy hidden. Even one of the government witnesses noted at the inevitable following inquiry that he had been 'economical with the truth'. It was a scandal.

I suspect that the day of small arms companies (especially int e UK) was ell over by then. Even once mighty BSA had got out of everything bar sporting guns.

Be that as it may, the HR81 was a very dated design and more research into what users wanted might have been undertaken. Roy Hutchinson maintained that one of the issues was that he came up with a design which his manufacturers then altered having applied 'value economics' to keep costs down. Its one of the reasons he stopped designing guns.

Nevertheless, I ma happy with my three HR81/83s, and if I could find a UK built HR8 I would have it like a shot .