Michael Clapham

Sir Michael Clapham KBE was a prominent British Industrialist who served as president of the Confederation of British Industry in the mid-1970s during a period of significant economic turmoil and as a senior executive of ICI throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. As CBI president he witnessed the fall of the administration of Edward Heath in the wake of the miners' strike, and the re-emergence of the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. He was directly involved, along with CBI director-general Campbell Adamson, in intense and volatile debate on voluntary pay restraint and price controls with Heath and trade union leaders. Remarkably, Clapham who was a classical scholar and a master printer by trade, also invented an isotope diffusion barrier whilst working on silk screen printing techniques during World War Two which led to him being seconded to the Tube Alloys Project pursuing the development of the atom bomb.