David Cameron Visits Owen Mumford in Woodstock

Date published: 16 December 2008

On Friday 24th October, the Office for National Statistics released figures showing that the UK economy fell for the first time in 16 years between July and September; economic growth fell by 0.5%, bringing with it the prospect of a recession.

Late in the afternoon the day before, our company PA and OM Eye Editor Angela Wiggle received a telephone call from the offices of Rt Hon David Cameron MP, Leader of the Conservative Party and MP for Witney, Oxfordshire.  They asked if it would be possible for Mr Cameron to visit Owen Mumford at 10 am the following day, to have a tour of the facility and also to film part of a televised BBC broadcast that would be shown in a special News feature entitled ‘The Downturn’, on Britain’s economic climate. 

This was late in the day, and it was surprising how much preparation was needed for a 30 minute visit with just a couple of hours to do it in!  In addition to making sure that all divisions were prepared, Mr Cameron’s office also requested lots of company information in order to ensure that he would be fully briefed on the day.  Incidentally, this was to be his third visit to Owen Mumford, having been to Chipping Norton previously in May 2007 to open the new Cotswold manufacturing facility, and Woodstock in 2005 when he was newly elected leader of the Conservative Party.

The following morning Mr Cameron’s assistants arrived early to check out his route before he arrived.  He is on an incredibly tight schedule and literally keeps them updated by the minute as to his whereabouts and estimated time of arrival so everyone is ready.  In addition, the BBC cameras and a press photographer arrived on site, and at 10 o’clock, Mr Cameron’s car swung into the car park, and after signing in at Reception, the tour party, led by Mark Owen (Production Director) and Adam Mumford (Sales and Marketing Director), was taken through SNU and Unistik Production, where Mr Cameron’s many questions were ably answered by Chris Ball (SNU Production Manager), Mike Bridgman (LPD Divisional Manager), James Golder (Unistik Shift Supervisor) and their teams.

Mr Cameron’s short speech, filmed in Surgical needle unit, was shown nationally on that day’s news, with his statement (making reference to the economic announcement made that day), “We will get through this, but we need change; we need change to support more small businesses, we need change to bring a more balanced economy, more businesses like this, involved in manufacturing and trade and technology; that’s what we need and we need change to bring that about”.

The News at Ten showed a slightly longer bulletin, showing the party touring Unistik 3 Production.

We were very proud to have been invited to take part in this opportunity on what was a very significant day for the UK economy, and would like to thank Mr Cameron and his events organisers, as well as all those from Owen Mumford who took part in arranging and conducting the visit and doing us justifiably proud on the day!