The Chancellor used the phrase in his Budget statement earlier this week, warning that “unless we fire up the aspirations of the British people, light the fires of ambition within our nation, we are going to be out-smarted, out-competed and out-performed by others in the world who are prepared to work harder for success than we are”.
MacLeod’s rise from galley boy to successful shipping businessman and internationally-respected maritime expert is a textbook example of where aspiration can take you.
“There are a million young people unemployed in this country, we are an industry that is creating jobs,” he explains when he meets Central Lobby.
“I want to ensure that others have the opportunities I had, so that some kid scrubbing pots in a ship galley today could one day lead the
UK Chamber of Shippingin decades to come.”
MacLeod started his life at sea on a Clyde steamer.
“I come from a long line of Scottish seafarers,” he says.
“MacLeods been on Skye since the 10th century so it goes back a long way.
“Crofting and fishing is what they did and I was determined that I was going to be the fifth generation of my family that went to sea.
“My father and mother were equally determined that I was not going to sea.
“My father, who was a Master Mariner, said I was going to stay on at school and go to university and qualify as a medic, an accountant or a lawyer.”
Mr MacLeod decided that a spell as a galley boy on a busy steamer on the Clyde would show his son Ken the harsh realities of life on board.
“His idea was that for this soft boy who had always had a pair of shoes, washing pots and pans would knock any notion of being a seafarer.
“The steamer would do many sailings a week, including an evening showboat for 1,800 drunken Glaswegians and there would be jazz bands and the like.”
One evening his father visited his friend the captain, and was shocked to find that instead of Ken wanting to return to dry land, he had fallen in love with the mariner’s life.
However, while reconciled to his son’s dream, he wanted him to have high ambitions.
“I told him my ambition was to be the chief pantryman, the guy that ran all the stewards and stewardesses and dished out all the food coming from the galley,” Ken recalls.
“He said if you want to go to sea, do it properly so off I went to nautical college.”
In 1960 young Ken MacLeod joined J&J Denholm as an indentured apprentice – he would be at sea for the next 12 years.
In 1972, he moved ashore to become a Marine Superintendent with Henry Abram Ltd and then in 1978 joined Denholm MacLay, where he managed a fleet of roll-on/roll-off, diving support and gas tanker vessels. Like his father, he is a Master Mariner.
He travelled all over the world in his years at sea, and has visited around 150 countries, either by ship or on business trips.
“I wanted to be at sea,” he explains simply. He retains a special affection for New Zealand. “I came very close to moving here,” he reveals.
He spent many months sailing between Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the west coast of the United States.
The births of his children meant that he gave up the sea and his career flourished on dry land.
In 1983 he was invited by the Olsson family, the Swedish owners of the Stena Group, to help establish a UK ship management division, Northern Marine Management.
Ken was with Stena for 29 years in senior management positions and Northern Marine grew to operating 120 vessels and employing 5,500 seafarers.
He remains a non-executive Director of Northern Marine and Director of several Stena companies and Chairman of Stena Line (UK) Limited.
He was a Commissioner of the Northern Lighthouse Board for nine years until 2008 and is currently a Non-Executive Director with Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, the Scottish Government’s ferry and harbour owning company. He chairs the Merchant Navy Officers’ Pension Fund Employers’ Group.
This week be became President of the
UK Chamber of Shipping, the trade association and voice for the UK shipping industry, with around 140 members from across the maritime sector.
The Silent Giant is how he describes the sector, mainly because while it makes a huge contribution to the economy, it gets little of the attention paid to aviation or the rail network.
“The combined contribution to GDP from shipping, ports and maritime businesses as a whole is £32.5bn, £8.5bn in tax and the sector supports 535,000 jobs.”
It also has a role to play in helping reduce youth unemployment.
Ken explains of the priorities of his year-long term of office will be to maximising the number of apprenticeships available in the maritime sector.
“There are jobs that can be created and one of our initiatives will be to plug into government funding available for apprenticeship, for example catering and deck ratings.
“We also want to make sure there is a bridging course in place, so that those young people have the opportunity to progress and go on to become ship’s officers.
“Captains and chief engineers in their early 30s can earn £75,000 a year tax free, for essentially six months work, so it is an attractive career.
“It is not for everyone of course, but we take on around 1,000 young people every year on the officer apprenticeship side and the government does give us SMART funding for that.
“We are grateful that funding survived the most recent cutbacks, after lobbying with the shipping minister.”
A big concern for the shipping industry is international environmental targets to reduce their sulphur emissions by 2015.
A recent report warns they could cause adverse environmental effects and result in a loss of 2,000 maritime services jobs.
“Shipping has many issues at the moment, but one of the biggest is the reduction in sulphur emissions,” explains MacLeod.
“The requirements placed on shipping will be counter productive. The alternative fuel that has to be used is extremely expensive.
“For the ferry companies, it could push the cost of fuel up as much as 70% that will have to be passed on.
“There is a real threat to jobs as some services will not be viable, especially the longer routes.”
He says ministers as “well aware of the strength of feeling”.
The flat lining economy is also of concern to the maritime industry.
“There is less cargo to be carried, less use of ferries and of bulk shipments, fewer oil shipments and freight rates are down. The Chancellor needs to do more to create demand,” he says.
MacLeod is confident the industry will “deliver prosperity” for Britain, helping implement the recommendation in the Heseltine Report that demands Government and industry work more closely than ever before.
He wants to build on the Chamber’s work preparing the ground for a ministerial-level, inter-departmental national maritime strategy and hopes that 2013 is the year it will be delivered.
Finally, MacLeod turns to the referendums on Scottish independence and EU membership.
During his year in office, the Chamber will explore how changes to sovereignty north and south of the border could affect the industry, not to influence the voters but “to get some clarity”.
“If you run a ship out of Glasgow or Stornoway you are regulated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Any accidents are investigated by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch. The SMART funding comes from Westminster. There are important taxation treaties between the UK and other countries. How are all those things going to be affected by independence? These are issues for shipping.
“It is the Chamber’s intention during this year to set up a series of meeting in Scotland with ship owners and managers, and the ports industry, and get some questions lined up. Then we will try and get some answers from the Scottish government.
“In terms of the UK referendum, how does the EU help shipping in the UK and how does it hinder it? We will be asking these questions.”
Along with his work for the Chamber, MacLeod is in demand internationally.
“The World Economic Forum in Davos has different councils that report into the great and the good that gather every January.
“I am on the oceans council and the main issues we have got are over-fishing – 80% of the world’s fish stocks are un-sustainable – drilling in the Arctic and the opening up of the Northern sea routes.
“50 years ago our family had six large fishing boats on the Isle of Skye we are down to one creel boat, that is a decimation of a fishing industry on the island because there was no sustainable policy.”