When it's gone, it's gone.

Yesterday was like most other week days; I got up, got ready, went to work, came home, did a little shopping and rounded the day off by providing the usual taxi service for my daughter, Lucy.

However, I live in Coventry and the events regarding the demise of even more of our motor manufacturing industry put a different light on these mundane activities.

After rising shortly after six o’clock I stood and looked out of the patio doors whilst the kettle boiled, looking over the fields to gauge the weather, I saw the sun briefly glinting of the rubble of the Jaguar Browns Lane factory a mile or so over the main A45 Birmingham Road, I knew that, whatever was going on there today, is did not involve the manufacture of motor cars. I recalled a story told to me by a colleague from their PR department regarding the occasional request from US Jaguar fans asking about the possibility of having a brick from the factory sent to them as a memento – they could have as many as they want now.

I left the house at around seven fifteen and took my usual route to work. The trip takes me past the Massey Ferguson factory in Banner Lane, A great example of 1930’s architecture with a huge monstrosity of a modern office block blotting the landscape. Not many people know that it started life as the Standard Motors factory, none of the younger generation will remember that this site used to supply the world with tractors and farm machinery. The ‘developers’ are in there now but the current economic crisis has forced even this activity to stop.

In the evening we popped out to Sainsbury’s to top up our provisions, the new store standing on the site of the Rover Canley factory, formerly Standard Triumph and from there we made our way into Coventry city centre past the Armstrong Siddeley and Rolls Royce factory, now a low cost hotel which has retained the old Armstrong Siddeley factory gates as an ornament.

Reminders of our motoring heritage are everywhere in this city. It is preserved in the Coventry Business School building which used to make Morris engines and in the street names which bear the names of the cars, cycles and motorcycles which used to be built here but, sadly, there is not much evidence of a live thriving industry any more.

It is true that we still produce a lot of cars in the UK but for how long? Frequent fluctuations in the global economy result in the need to adjust the numbers of cars built and the truth is that it is simply cheaper and easier and quicker to ‘reduce’ a British workforce than their counterparts anywhere else in Europe.

I was deeply affected by the plight of the Longbridge and more recently LDV workers. They are good, hard working people who are dedicated to building motor cars. They have not lost one minute to industrial action in the best part of twenty five years and have accepted every new working practice – and there have been a few, directed at them with good grace. True, productivity there was low but don’t confuse this with laziness, due to half a century of underinvestment, some of the production lines there were good examples of how cars were built a quarter of a century ago, indeed, until the old mini ended production recently, a visitor could engage in industrial archaeology and see how cars were built fifty years ago.

My own view is that Rover was sold off to BMW with suspicious haste at a time when the company was making profits in excess of £80 million. LDV has suffered the same indifference from our government. Subsequent events have proved that the German management had no idea of the relevance of this company to the British public and, more importantly, media and did not care at all about its importance to the British economy. The Russian owners of LDV have demonstrated that they also could care less about developing a strategic UK industry.

After the inevitable failure of BMW following some rather dubious statements regarding losses using their own eccentric accounting methods, the UK government should have behaved just like a French, German or Italian government would have and acted in the national interest to ensure that a major, strategic part of our industrial infrastructure remained viable. Instead ministers lined up to be seen as being concerned in front of the workers for the benefit of the media in the light of a looming election – just like now. After the election, with the exception of Richard Burden, Northfield’s hard working MP; they simply walked away apart from setting up some sort of task force which remained largely unheard from but has cost £14 million. With LDV, our own minister could not even take place in the negotiations because of a past incident with the Russian oligarch owner and a luxury yacht.

Just like my travels around Coventry demonstrated, when it’s gone, its gone and I am worried about just who is fighting for real jobs for all those skilled workers in our manufacturing industry.

Green Shoots?

According to data from Warwick Business School, the rate of job losses announced by employers has fallen sharply, giving rise to hopes that the growth in unemployment may not be as high or as long-lasting as originally expected. Even the recent gloomy news from CIPD which speculates that over 300,000 jobs could go in the public sector does not necessarily contradict this as Thomas Prosser believes that significant numbers of these would be accounted for by natural wastage over the next 5 years.

Plan, What Plan?

Lord Mandelson has gone to great lengths today to explain why greater links between businesses and our higher education establishments can create opportunities and greater competitiveness for UK business and industry. The fact that our universities are already doing just this and have gained an international reputation for excellence, attracting interest from around the world is an indication of his inexperience and lack of knowledge in this area. What UK business needs is for government to develop a long term plan for the growth of our manufacturing sector, rather than its decline, and that would be helped by appointing someone with some experience of manufacturing industry – but such creatures are rare in parliament.

Support for LDV

Just in case it drops out of the news: Over 800 people at LDV + up to 2000 in the supply chain have lost their jobs because this country is more inclined to support profligate bankers than our hard working and strategically important manufacturing industry. It is incredible that a Labour government can allow so many working people to be thrown out of work, adding to benefits costs whilst losing tax income. There are also the social and personal costs of unemployment to the families of those affected. There are too few politicians who have any experience of, or concern for the UK manufacturing sector. Is this because it doesn’t pay high enough wages?

Politics before People

Managers and workers at Birmingham van maker LDV have been forced to cancel a lobby of parliament because of the cabinet reshuffle. They were told there would be no ministers to meet them because of events at Westminster. A classic example of politicians putting politics before people.

Not Angry Enough - Perhaps.

I know that I can rightly be accused of being an angry old man but I just can't help seeing the faces behind the numbers. The jobs at threat at LDV and Vauxhall with the allied services and supply chain must amount to over 20,000. Every single one represents a man or woman with a family, mortgage, responsibilities and aspirations. It is impossible to describe the gut wrenching feeling that the workers and their families are going through right now. They have done nothing wrong and they feel powerless to act.

If they end up on the dole – and it looks like most of them will, the exchequer looses their tax income and then has to pay out in benefits. That is only a small part of the equation; people loose the dignity of work, families are broken up, Britain looses more skills and another significant part of what is left of our manufacturing industry – and those whose role it was to plan for the future of this country and its people loose even more credibility.

This country needs to put a line in the ground right now and begin to defend our manufacturing sector. To have a properly operating mixed economy without a viable or even thriving manufacturing sector is simply politically illiterate.

Manufacturing may not be fashionable but it is valuable and necessary for the livelihoods of millions of people in the UK. The problem seems to be that very few of our politicians have any knowledge or understanding of this strategically vital sector.

Ghost Town

Do we really have to watch the spectacle of the LDV plant being dismantled and shipped to the Far East, just like so many others. In Coventry there are the ghosts of Alfred Herbert, Churchill, Massey Ferguson, Standard, Triumph, Armstrong Siddeley, Jaguar, Rover and many other icons which made the products from this country respected around the world and provided training and skilled work for tens of thousands of men and women in this city