Toby on Tuesday 

‘Business for Britain’

 

This week I’d like to introduce you to Alan Halsall, a classic example of the very best kind of innovative Yorkshire entrepreneur. Now Alan has spent much of his career rescuing and rebuilding the Silver Cross company, based in Skipton. Founded in Leeds in 1877, Silver Cross had run into difficulties when Alan acquired it in 2002. Since then the company has been reinvigorated with nearly 100 employees, one-third of whom work abroad, making baby transport and other baby-related products. These include its iconic prams, pushchairs, car seats, nursery furniture, bedding, toys and gifts. The company sells in over 50 countries, is especially strong in China and has a retail boutique in the Ocean Terminal Centre, Hong Kong. Its offices are in Skipton, London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. And it has just entered into a shareholding partnership with China’s Fosun Corporation, which will strengthen its distribution in the Far East and its employment opportunities in Skipton. Silver Cross is now a truly global business of the future, based here in Yorkshire.

I mention all this because Alan is Co-Chairman of Business for Britain, a new national organisation with strong Yorkshire connections. What may have radicalised Alan is his own experience of trying to sell Silver Cross prams in France, where he believes French pram manufacturers are using spurious safety grounds to ensure that his prams are excluded from the French market in blatant flouting of the EU’s free trade rules. In his own words, “When we tried to export our prams to France we found that they were required to meet additional safety standards for the French markets, even though they conform to all EU safety standards required. As a result we had to pay thousands of pounds to ship the stock which we had sent out for sale to French stores back to Britain. We had to pull out of France. It was annoying and expensive.”

Now Business for Britain describes itself as “independent and non-partisan, involving people from all parties and no party.” Alan’s Co-Chairman is John Mills, one of the Labour Party’s key donors. If you google www.businessforbritain.org, you can find out more about the campaign but its stated position is, “It is clear that the EU needs to change. It is also increasingly accepted that if it refuses to do so then Britain should leave.” As well as having the finest possible Yorkshire Co-Chairman, Business for Britain’s regional operations around the whole country are being co-ordinated from Richmond by the excellent Julie Moody, who is really very good news indeed. So with Alan as Co-Chairman and Julie as Regional Director, Yorkshire brains, energy and creativity are at the heart of what must be a successful campaign.

As for my part, I shall be supporting Alan and Julie to the best of my ability alongside my good friend Martin Vallance of UKIP Richmond. There will be many Euro-realist voices heard over the coming months, but UKIP and Business for Britain will be two of the most eloquent. And as for Silver Cross itself, the truth is that Britain needs literally thousands of new businesses like Silver Cross, selling top-of-the-range products around the world, free from the dead hand of the corporatist and protectionist EU. To achieve this is the mission of creative Yorkshire entrepreneurs with a global outlook like Alan Halsall – they are the very best of the very best!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby