Sir William Barlow - Telegraph In 1962 he was promoted to managing director of the company's Liverpool operations, with 14,000 employees in turbine, aero-engine, electric power equipment and domestic appliance manufacture. Despite local union militancy, he did not have a strike in the last two of his five years. Barlow's focus changed in 1968, when he became managing director of English Electric Computers. With government backing, he organised the division's merger with International Computers and Tabulators to create ICL. Within weeks of this, English Electric decided to merge with GEC - a move with which he disagreed so strongly that he resigned after 21 years" service. His next challenge was in the ball bearing industry. Labour's Industrial Reorganisation Corporation had merged Britain's three leading companies to create RHP, and Barlow was appointed chief executive. Dismayed by the obsolete equipment he found, he embarked on a total modernisation and rationalisation which made the company for a time highly competitive. He also organised Europe's ball bearing manufacturers to fight back against dumping by Japanese firms. In September 1977, shortly after being knighted for services to industry, Barlow was appointed chairman of the Post Office. He took on an organisation with 420,000 employees, and a government commitment to subordinate it to an Industrial Democracy Board with union, management and independent members. After a two-year trial, Barlow pronounced the board a failure and abolished it. He soon realised that he was running two very different businesses, and that the telecoms half could not develop unless it embraced new technologies, introduced new working practices and offered a better service. This would require competition between suppliers, an end to the situation in which one could buy a telephone only if the Post Office agreed to supply it, and a dilution in the power of the unions. Labour was not prepared to see the organisation split, but Mrs Thatcher's incoming Conservatives were, and Barlow went ahead with the separation of telecoms from posts. Even Sir Keith Joseph, however, her supposedly radical Industry Secretary, was not ready to see private capital injected or shares sold to the public; and, faced with continued Treasury control, Barlow left soon after the split was complete in September 1980. He continued to press for privatisation, and it came about in 1983. Barlow then helped to merge Thorn Electrical and EMI. He took the chair of the merged group in 1980, overseeing 46 companies in Britain and the United States in the fields of electronics and defence. In 1984 Barlow moved on to be chairman and chief executive of BICC. Its cable business - one of the world's largest - was developing optical fibre capacity and very high voltage cables, and its construction arm Balfour Beatty was heavily involved in the design and construction of the Channel Tunnel. Barlow took a keen interest in the project, retiring in 1992 as excavation of the tunnel's three bores was giving way to fitting-out. He also chaired Ericsson UK, SKF UK, Barking Power and Kennedy & Donkin (later Parsons & Brinckerhoff), and held numerous directorships, including a decade as a founder director of Vodafone. From 1991 to 1996 Barlow was president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He used this pulpit to stress the importance of engineering to the economy and press for investment in transport, particularly the railways. He also did much to raise the Academy's profile with government and industry . Barlow chaired the Nationalised Industries Chairmen's Group in 1980, the Design Council (1980-86) and the Engineering Council (1988-90). He served on the Industrial Development Advisory Board, the council of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and on the National Electronics Council. He was a trustee of the Brain Research Trust; a governor of the London Business School; and, in 1986-87, Master of the Worshipful Company of Engineers. Bill Barlow married, in 1948, Elaine Adamson, with whom he had a son and a daughter. Sir William Barlow, born June 8 1924, died May 19 2012