Plumber Stephen Major was so angry with a Bradford & Bingley questionnaire on whether it should become a bank he decided to do something about it.

Instead of sending a letter to chief executive Christopher Rodrigues criticising what he saw as a series of slanted questions, he rocked the world of finance from his home in Northern Ireland by forcing through a vote at the B&B's annual meeting on converting to a bank.

"After reading the members' survey, I thought that they could have put more emphasis on conversion. I have been dubbed a rebel member - but I am not. I am the sort of person who takes things through to the end and I intend to do that. When press stories came out about my intentions, 145 people contacted me wanting to join the campaign and 70 were valid members of the society."

He decided to push for conversion independently of former royal butler Michael Hardern, who has made a bid to bring about the conversion of six building societies including the Bradford-based Yorkshire and the Skipton. Chief executives of the building societies targeted by carpetbagger Michael Hardern met yesterday to plan how to fight off the latest conversion threat.

The mutuals involved are the Portman, Britannia, Chelsea, Yorkshire, Leeds & Holbeck and Skipton building societies. It is understood the firm's bosses were "swapping notes" on the legal advice they had received on how they could block this latest attack.

Mr Major, of, Lisburn, County Antrim, was surprised to learn that his actions will cost the building society £5 million.

Chris Holland, the B&B's corporate affairs manager, said today: "The questionnaire was not meant to be about conversion. It was supposed to be a marketing exercise which had a question on conversion at the end."

He said the vast majority of the 400,000 people who returned the questionnaire out of the B&B's 2.5 million members supported its mutuality stance. Now Mr Major will be with the other 69 people who support the conversion cause at the B&B's annual meeting on Monday, April 26 in St George's Hall, Bradford, where the vote will be put.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.