Sir Graham Day, who has died aged 92, was a tough Nova Scotian with a strong sense of public duty who struggled to “save the saveable” from the wreck of two of the UK’s lame duck industries, shipbuilding and motor manufacture. Described by Margaret Thatcher as a “superb chairman”, he took the helm at five major British companies, including British Shipbuilders and British Leyland, before returning to business and academia in his native Canada.
In 1970, as an international troubleshooter for the transportation company Canadian Pacific, he found himself supervising the delayed completion of two ships at the strike-torn Cammell Laird shipyard on Merseyside. Day noticed that the pickets went home at night, so he hired tugs and had the ships towed away for completion in Ireland.
