Page 47 - Sample pages "Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber" by Jon Pressnell

Slipped into a volume of Morris boardroom minutes is a single sheet of paper that it is hard not to find extraordinarily poignant. It is the resignation letter of Cecil Kimber. Dated 26 November 1941, it is on Morris Motors Ltd notepaper, rather than on M.G.-headed paper – suggesting that it was dictated and signed immediately after Kimber’s final meeting with Lord Nuffield, in which he tried to discuss his intended dismissal.
It opens with a coldly impersonal ‘Sir’ rather than a more personal ‘Dear Lord Nuffield’. The letter simply reads ‘Will you please accept my resignation as a Director of the M.G. Car Company Limited and Morris Motors Limited.’ It is then signed ‘Yours faithfully’, with Kimber’s characteristically neat signature in his trademark green ink. There is no reference to happy days creating and building up the M.G. marque, to shared memories of those pioneer times, immortalised by so many photos of the two men together, smiling for the camera. Kimber had been sacked, and he wasn’t disposed, it is evident, to waste his time on niceties.
Building the Albemarle nose section was a fearsomely complex operation. M.G. workers were justifiably proud of mastering this challenging contract. (Author’s collection)
So how did this sad state of affairs come to pass? It is generally accepted that it was largely because Kimber secured on his own initiative that government contract for M.G. to build the front section of the Albemarle bomber – although John Howlett, writing in The Guv’nor, makes no mention of this, and attributes the sacking to the obtaining of the earlier contract to repair tanks. Perhaps Kimber had exceeded his authority in these two matters. But it seems that there were personal factors at play. The Albemarle affair surely entered into things, but it was probably merely the final – or maybe the penultimate – straw.
For some time Kimber had been seen as exalting his own personality, and forgetting that within the Morris group there was only one hero to be worshipped – and that was Lord Nuffield. In particular, Kimber had run that series of very personal M.G. advertisements before the war, each one signed with his name. “He put all the directors at Cowley against the M.G. because of that,” family friend Carl Kingerlee told Andrews and Brunner.
387 Chapter Eighteen: Victim of the Snakepit
ABOVE: The Armstrong Whitworth AW41 Albemarle was designed as a medium bomber but was soon used instead for transporting paratroopers, towing gliders, and other general duties. (Wikipedia)
OPPOSITE: Kimber’s resignation letter to Lord Nuffield: less is more. (Author)
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