At a Whitehall meeting four years ago, a senior official ribbed Nigel Whitehead, the man in charge of the day-to-day running of most of BAE Systems’ UK operations, about being in manufacturing, a dead-end industry.

“What are you going to do when you grow up?” he asked.

Three months ago, with the financial services boom having turned to shocking bust in between, the two men met again. “Now I get it,” a chastened official told Whitehead.

“I think we are at a historic segue in people’s thinking about the economy and what it is and should be,” said Whitehead, BAE’s group managing director of programmes and support.

“There is something fundamentally wholesome about seeing a market need, making a product to meet it, and generating wealth from it.

“ We are at a point in our economic history where people will want to invest in things they trust and understand, and that means manufacturing.

“I am not talking about trivial things, things that can be made anywhere. I mean high-value items.” Whitehead gives the example of the super-plastic fusing and titanium bonding, developed in Britain and used in the wing technology of the Eurofighter. It is vital, he says, to keep such skills and expertise in Britain.

If the credit crunch has shifted attitudes towards the role of manufacturing in the UK economy, many will see that as a silver lining in a very large cloud.

Last week the Engineering Employers’ Federation, which represents Britain’s manufacturers, published Manufacturing, Our Future, which it described as a manifesto for UK manufacturing.

“Our economic future is inextricably linked to the strengths of UK manufacturing,” it said. “And for manufacturers the opportunities for generating growth lie in being open to global markets, focusing on knowledge and high value and exploiting fast-growing markets.”

It added: “Only a stronger, globally focused sector will help generate the wealth needed to correct our economic imbalances and contribute to broader national prosperity. To ride through the storm, the economy needs manufacturers to continue to adapt and evolve, preparing themselves for the future.”

The federation and the government appear to be singing from the same hymnsheet. Last week Gordon Brown launched Building Britain’s Future, a programme of government action. Among the priorities were manufacturing.

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