Free Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology: The Deconstruction of a Myth by Ian Adamson, Richard Kennedy Page B

continual tension between the Sinclair style of business by internal certainty and the conventional but commercially sound approach of Hewett. Although public dissent was minimized, Hewett recalls that he occasionally was forced to play his trump card in the face of Sinclair’s resistance:
Once or twice I simply had to lay it on the line and say that if I didn’t get co-operation I should have to say to the NEB that it wasn’t on any more, and recommend that they take other steps. He didn’t want that because he didn’t want the money pulled out, of course, (ibid.)
    Hewett, fighting a financial battle on the production and marketing fronts, and attacked from the flank by Sinclair, was in an unenviable position. The gradual progress towards an operating profit as television production improved, though slow, was perceptible, but imposing his control on Sinclair as well as doing the job he was supposed to perform was impossible. Derek Holley says:
[Norman Hewett] had the opportunity to stamp on Clive from day one, and did that quite effectively for two months, and then let the reins go. Gradually, as Clive saw that he could overcome this interloper from the NEB, which is how he saw him, it created problems, and that ended up with him leaving ... I find it very difficult to accept that Clive ever [circumvented Hewett] because he had this grand plan to so do. It’s just the way he operated, and he genuinely believes that the way he operates is right. I don’t think there was any grand design, it’s just that he operates by instinct, and those instincts don’t happen to suit the surrounds. (Interview, 13 November 1985.)
    Sinclair’s incapacity to delegate responsibility and allow people to get on with their jobs, to accept that ‘his’ company could run without his control, led him to continue the informal command lines by which the company had previously functioned:
In fairness, he never interfered with how I ran the accountancy and finance, because quite honestly he didn’t understand it, and he let me alone. The ones he interfered with most were the production and marketing departments, because marketing in particular is not an exact science, and he had his own views on marketing, and that was the way the company was going to operate its marketing policy, so the marketing director stood no chance, (ibid.)
    The circumstances changed when the bottom dropped out of the US market, by that time the only market there was. Contrary to Sinclair’s vision, there was a distinctly finite market for a £200 gimmick, even in the States, especially when reliability and quality were dubious. Norman Hewett’s suspicions about its marketability confirmed, he told the NEB that he thought the end was nigh:
I wasn’t proposing to leave, I was proposing to do what I could to minimize the damage and get them out of it if I possibly could. I made it clear to Barber that co-operation from Sinclair was minimal, and he often used to countermand my instructions behind my back, so I wasn’t very hopeful. (Interview, 16 October 1985.)
    Sinclair, his beloved project threatened, seized his chance to get rid of Hewett. Making Hewett the scapegoat for the current ills, he communicated with the NEB directly. The next Hewett knew, Sinclair wanted to see him, told him it wasn’t working out, and the NEB had agreed they should part company. Hewett resigned, betrayed but presumably also relieved, confining himself publicly to the comment that serving three masters, the NEB, the Radionics board and Sinclair, was impossible.
    So Norman Hewett departed, taking as a golden handshake the money from the Radionics shares he had been given, which the NEB, either graciously or guiltily (depending on one’s assessment of the reasons for his departure), valued at the notional value they had had when he received them. Derek Holley, for his sins, got to be acting MD until a new one could be found, which turned out to be a couple of months later. With at least