Page 14 - AVRO News Issue 1 March

T Tom Johnson
ribute to

By Andy Lambert & John Rogers
I first met Tom in 1976 when I was a Director of National

Breakdown Recovery Club and Tom was the secretary of
the Civil Servants Motoring Association, NBRC were the
official rescue service to the CSMA.
We became great friends from then on. In 1983 CSMA decided
to form their own independent rescue club , and Britannia Rescue
was born, Tom contacted me and asked if I could assist him to form
a network of roadside assistance/recovery agents throughout the
U.K. We met at Britannia H.Q. in Huddersfield and in six hours we
had completed our task with AVRO members forming the backbone
of the scheme.
Tom in those days was most famously well known for his “COBRA”
convention days, where he would invite all of the Britannia Rescue
agents to a general meeting, social knees up and live entertainment
get together, over two nights and days. This always took place at
an out of season Pontin’s Holiday Camp usually at Beam Sands
or Southsea. I always used to joke with him that he had shares in
Pontin’s.
Goodbye my dear friend thank for your achievements in the recovery
profession CSMA, Britannia, the IVR and RISC. You will no doubt
be organising your “COBRA” conventions in the sky.

John Rogers Unity Recovery Service Leicester / AVRO.

T om was someone who was respected throughout the industry, I remember in those early days of the

Standards Committee meetings there was understandable a reasonable amount of friction between the
motoring organisation’s representatives. However, in Tom’s case, all would listen to his point of view and
hardly any of us would try and change it.
His background was engineering, and he did his national service with the RAF. He was also a great planner, this meant
that he had a better understanding of the industry problems than a lot of people at the “clubs” and that endeared him
to many of us. Being a Civil Servant and a keen motorist, he belonged to the Civil Service Motoring Association and in
his words “seeing what was wrong with it, I became Honorary Secretary and sorted them out”. He held that post for 25
years, much longer than anyone else.
When the CSMA split from National Breakdown it was largely Tom who moulded the new born Britannia Rescue into
what he thought a motoring organisation should be. It was through Britannia that most of us first met Tom, at the time I
was MD of National Rescue and I am proud to say that we became Britannia Rescue’s agent number one. Many years
later when I left National Rescue and set up MTS, Tom (along with Brian Hagen) greatly helped us to get Turbo Dispatch
accepted as a standard by all the clubs. Tom of course left his mark on the Institute of Vehicle Recovery over a number
of years, plus he was also a Trustee of RISC along with Brian and myself.
I think his love of the industry was obvious to anyone who worked with him and the debt this industry owes him will never
be repaid. I only hope in the years to come, we can find a suitable way to keep his memory and many achievements
alive.

By Andy Lambert

14 AVRO NEWS