- The Independent - London
August 26, 1988
-
- The police said it was suicide, and no doubt they were
right. Ex-Brigadier Peter Ferry, a marketing manager at Marconi's Command
and Control Systems centre at Frimley, Surrey, had apparently killed
himself
by inserting power main electric wires into his mouth and then turning
on the power.
-
- The method chosen was perhaps marginally more grisly
than in the case of several other Marconi employees. In 1986, for example,
Ashad Sharif, a computer analyst who worked for Marconi Defence Systems
in Stanmore, Middlesex, tied one end of a rope around his neck, another
to a tree, and put his car into gear. Two months earlier, the body of Vimal
Dajibhai, a software engineer responsible for checking the guidance systems
of Tigerfish torpedos for Marconi Underwater Systems, was found under
Clifton
suspension bridge at Bristol.
-
- In March 1987, David Sands, a project manager working
on secret satellite radar at Marconi's sister company Easams, in Camberley,
drove up a slip road on his way to work and into a cafe at an estimated
80mph. A year later, Trevor Knight, a computer engineer at Marconi's space
and defence base in Stanmore, died in his fume-filled car at his home in
Hertfordshire. Earlier, two other Marconi employees, Victor Moore, a design
engineer, and Roger Hill, a draughtsman, had killed themselves, both
seemingly
as a result of work pressures.
-
- There have been at least half a dozen more untoward
deaths
among defence scientists and others working in the defence field. Marconi
is not alone, but it is well in the lead. The best efforts of investigative
journalists have failed to establish a link either between the various
deaths or between the deaths of the Marconi staff and the Ministry of
Defence
inquiry, now two years old, into some (pounds)3bn worth of defence
contracts
awarded to GEC-Marconi. No doubt in several instances pressure of work
was the main factor: in a field where millions of pounds hang on the
securing
of contracts, it can be intense, especially if the Ministry of Defence
investigators are hovering, as they had been at Frimley, Brigadier Ferry's
base. It is hard to believe, however, that other factors have not also
been at work. The pressure of work is also fierce in the money markets
of the City, where equally large sums are at stake. Yet the suicide rate
remains unremarkable.
-
- Mr Ferry's death on Tuesday must add to the concern
already
aroused by the alarming sequence of deaths in the defence industry. He
had apparently been depressed since his car collided with a lorry a month
ago; but suicide seems an extreme reaction. In such instances where no
foul play is suspected, the inquiries of both police and coroners are
likely
to be brief, partly for the sake of the distressed relatives. They will
not be concerned with establishing a connection with comparable deaths
in different counties. Since these cases have been spread wide, there is
now a case for pulling the threads together. It may be that there is no
conspiracy and no concerted skullduggery. But these have been talented
men. To allay anxieties, a senior police officer should be appointed to
head a coordinated investigation into the underlying causes of so high
a death rate.
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