This week in 1996

Industry unites for election

At the time of Building going to press this week the world was holding its breath as the US people went to the polls to elect their 45th president. Back in 1996 the construction industry was plotting a campaign around lobbying tactics in the run-up to the UK’s general election the following year.

As the Farmer Review and numerous others have noted over the years, the construction industry struggles to find a united voice when lobbying government and things were no different 20 years ago, with the author of the news article, then-editor Adrian Barrick, noting that the campaign would unite the industry “for the first time since the Campaign against Building Industry Nationalisation in 1978”.

Industry leaders met at the Dukes hotel in London St James’s to discuss how they could “convince politicians of the importance of construction in the lead-up to the general election”. Their intention, reports Barrick, was not “pleading for more money to be spent on construction, but for politicians to start to invest in Britain’s failing infrastructure”.

Two decades later, is that message finally getting through?

To read the full article from 15 November 1996, see the PDF file below.