Not Tony Rudd's best friend.
Peter Spear was still with Rubery Owen in the early 1980s. He was initially quite pompous in his dealings with me, and seemed to need to impose himself as being quite important and authoritarian.
After meeting him three or four times he became less so, and was actually quite helpful once he realised that I really did intend to present as full and wide-ranging a definitive story as might be possible, rather than everything being slanted from one former employee's narrow viewpoint.
PS had been extremely young when appointed as Head of Research and Technical Director, and it would have been terribly easy for him then to become cocky and rather self-important as he was initially quite a big fish in a really big pond...but, as was the case with so many management figures within British industry, they tended not to look over the side of their particular boat - and to realise that the tide was ebbing so fast and month by month that their particular pond was getting smaller.
Around 1958-59 it appeared that PS had active ambitions to absorb RO's BRM Bourne division under his own management. Sir Alfred - Tony Rudd - and other events - foiled such ambitions.
He was a long-serving and so far as I know very faithful and loyal servant of the company. He rather diminished himself in my eyes by - whenever I would bid him farewell after a visit, under his 'supervision', to the then-Darlaston company archives - he would always say "You will tell Mr David we have done everything possible to assist you, won't you?". Of course I would always tell the always affable and immensely supportive David Owen - The Boss - how helpful Peter had been, but it was a bit of a Uriah Heap moment to be almost begged to do so by the man himself...
I know nothing of the internal company politics of that time - but PS's dealings with me did often seem somewhat self-demeaning. I've been a lifelong people watcher - but maybe I just took some of what he would say to me (or maybe the way he said it) the wrong way. For example, he was also immensely proud (quite properly) of his Rover-BRM project engagement, in which he certainly did play a positive role, and he pressed copies of his SAE paper on me almost every time we met. "Err - thank you very much Peter, I really do appreciate the thought but you gave me one of these the last time we met...".
"Oh did I? Well I am sure you will find it a great help...it really does tell the complete story and it was exceptionally well received at the time we first presented it. Sir Alfred was most complimentary..." - you get the picture?
PS seemed to be an archetypal company man, a big industry figure. He was very useful to the boys at Bourne in providing and fostering contact with major industry helpers and suppliers. He played a major role in creating productive BRM links with Shell R&D. He was in many ways, demonstrably, darned good at what he did.
But within the specialised world of the tight-focused BRM Saga he really played only a peripheral role.
From time to time he served as Sir Alfred's on-site eyes and ears. But then so did others - not least Alfred's brother Ernest (an independent often critical eye) - sister Jean (a variably self-interested but often compassionate eye) - and PRO Rivers Fletcher (usually a breathlessly sycophantic informant, instinctively and adoringly protective of Raymond Mays and Peter Berthon - of whom PS was absolutely - and entirely justifiably - no fan)
DCN
