The Griffin Report: Johnathan Dudley on forging a reputation as a champion of manufacturing
From the age of 14, JOHNATHAN DUDLEY cut his teeth working in his father’s electroplating business. But when it became a victim of the De Lorean Motor Company collapse in 1982, Jonathan switched to accountancy and went on to forge a formidable reputation as a champion of manufacturing. Now he is calling for the Government to appoint a Minister for Manufacturing. JON GRIFFIN examines why.
It’s well over 40 years down the line – but Johnathan Dudley’s memories of the closure of his father’s electroplating business and the impact on his own life are crystal clear to this day.
“My background was manufacturing. From the age of 14, I was spending weekends and holidays on the plating line. From a very early stage I worked on the shopfloor.
“I very nearly joined the Royal Navy but round about the time I was trying to decide what to do for a career my father had a crisis in his business. He had just rejigged for a particular component for a major Government-backed manufacturing business in Northern Ireland – the bad news was it was the De Lorean Motor Company.
“Effectively it wiped out his cash reserves because it was peculiar for a component – it wasn’t reusable. He took some advice and he just closed his business. When De Lorean went bust what was then a lot of money - £50,000 - went down the toilet.”
Johnathan would never forget the lessons he learned from the demise of his father’s Wolverhampton-based business following the headline-making 1982 collapse of the De Lorean Motor Company after the firm went bust with the loss of 2,500 jobs and over 100 million dollars in investment.
“One of the things that really made me become an accountant was that I worked out quite quickly that just at the time that my dad needed advice from his accountant, he didn’t get it, so he closed his business.
“It was the early 80s post-Falklands boom and if he had hung on he would have done really well out of it. He just needed someone to say pick yourself up off the canvas and carry on fighting.”
It would be fair to suggest that the Walsall-born son of industrialist father Geoff has himself carried on fighting ever since, establishing a formidable reputation as a champion for UK manufacturing whilst carving out a 35-year plus career with national accountancy firm Crowe.
Rising to managing partner of the firm’s Midlands and South-West region at the helm of a tens of millions of pounds concern, Johnathan became one of the area’s best-known business figures, consistently banging the drum for SMEs and the rest of the manufacturing sector.
After qualifying in 1986 he forged a highly successful career which has brought him national renown – and nearly 40 years later is still a force for manufacturing as national head of SME corporates and manufacturing business at Crowe.
“I opened my office at what was then called Clark Whitehill in Walsall in September 1989. I opened it up with a budget of £10,000 which included furniture and everything, so I begged, stole and borrowed everything.”
Four decades at the sharp end has given him a forensic eye for the trials and tribulations facing the UK’s wealth-creating manufacturers – but Johnnathan belies the traditional caution of the accountant to frequently put his head above the parapet.
“Because I come from an SME background I know what most manufacturers go through – all SMEs go through similar challenges.”
Johnathan never forgot seeing his father close his firm and sell his Rover in exchange for an Austin Seven in order to pay staff wages – and today he applies those sort of lessons to his advice for the manufacturers of 2025.
“You never forget stuff like that. I know what those kind of pressures feel like – that makes me feel very concerned and passionate about the increase in employment costs on national insurance, particularly its impact on smaller businesses, because proportionately it is greater.”
Because I come from an SME background I know what most manufacturers go through – all SMEs go through similar challenges.
Rises in National Insurance notwithstanding, he believes Europe’s need for increased spending on defence in the wake of the Trump rethink over support for Ukraine could pay lucrative dividends for the manufacturing sector.
“The tradition of our region in terms of its defence capability goes back to the British Civil War. Walsall, the town of my birth, can date its roots back to making saddles and bridles, going back to arming Cavaliers and Roundheads.
“The point is if all of this money is going to need to be spent in Europe, at the moment the countries in the box seat to actually get that growth are the UK and France.
“The biggest challenge that manufacturing and engineering has now, that it never used to have, is energy prices. We are now paying four times the cost of energy of a manufacturing business in the United States – we are paying between 30 and 40 per cent more than continental Europe. The national insurance increase and their labour costs are also keeping SMEs awake at night.”
He gives a compelling insight into today’s priorities for industry in the global marketplace – whilst renewing his long-standing call for a Government Minister for Manufacturing.
“From last July when the Chancellor made her first announcements, most of the work I have been focused on with manufacturing businesses hasn’t been about growth or forward strategy – it is all about how do we protect our wealth.”
With business facing greater taxation and increased labour costs, Johnathan believes the manufacturing sector deserves a place at the top table of Government policy with a seat in the Cabinet.
“What it needs is somebody who has fought their way to the top of an SME, not a graduate recruit who has ended up being part of a PLC, but someone with a real understanding of what it is like to actually manage and run a manufacturing business.
“There has to be a degree of reality. If that’s the case and there’s an understanding of how the supply chain works with a proper industrial strategy that recognises that, I think there is an opportunity for a real renaissance for our nation – but only if there is pragmatism as to where we are going to get our energy from, where we are going to get our raw materials from.”
Fiercely proud of his West Midlands roots, Johnathan is as much a champion for the enduring ingenuity and knowledge of the region as he is of its manufacturers. “Our local universities have got one hell of a lot to shout about – advanced knowledge and capability is still in our DNA in the West Midlands.
“If it takes a second Cold War and a rearmament process to engineer that, that’s fine.”
But he’s not afraid to risk upsetting the Black Country – or even his home town of Walsall – by suggesting the Greater Birmingham tag should be extended to the entire region.
“You travel around the world... long time ago I said I was from Walsall, and they had never heard of it. If you said you were from Birmingham, you had a fighting chance. We are far too parochial.
“For me, I think the whole region should be Greater Birmingham – I knows that’s going to upset some people in the Black Country - but wake up and smell the coffee.”
Johnathan is now bringing those sort of trenchant views as a new face on the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce’s Council – “this region has been really good for me and my family and this is my way of trying to give a bit back.
“OK, I have done all right but I think you can do all right in life and do well, but actually you are not making a difference. I like to think I have made a difference to some good people’s lives – and I think that is very important.”
Few would argue that the boy who learned about life on the shopfloor from the age of 14 has not gone on to make a significant difference to the UK’s heartland of manufacturing all these years later…
Pictured: Johnathan (right) at the Chamber's Global Business Conference
This article first appeared in the April 2025 edition of Chamberlink magazine.
