© Tony Hall, for permission to re-produce contact rpm
The skills and abilities of experienced manufacturing workers are often
lost once a company closes or moves production overseas. MG Rover workers
in the west Midlands have been amongst those affected when the company
sent out redundancy notices in April 2005 and announced the Longbridge
plant’s closure.
With the then General Election only weeks away Tony Blair and Gordon Brown
were forced to abandon some of their election plans and rush up to
Birmingham to take part in a hasty press conference where they announced
that £150 million of government aid was being made available in a move
clearly designed to prevent any outbreak of militancy amongst car workers
before the May 5th election.
The Government money meant that redundant Rover workers obtained around
£5,000 each before the election. This was a paltry sum for many who had
worked at Longbridge for much of their lives. Norman Hanson, aged 48, was
a logistics operator for 20 years and had been paid £9.95 an hour. He
felt
that he would never “earn that again” and he had been putting “down
£5.50
an hour” in response to the various employers application forms asking
what he’d be willing to work for.
© Tony Hall, for permission to re-produce contact rpm
After it was revealed that
the ‘Pheonix Four’ of John Towers, John
Edwards, Peter Beale and Nick Stephenson, who together bought MG Rover for
a nominal £10 in May 2000 could make millions from its collapse the
Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Alan Johnson was forced to
commission an official enquiry into the affair’s of the company. There
have even been reports in the newspapers of the four being prosecuted.
With their redundancy money’s now being quickly used up Rover workers
were
then forced to listen to the Work and pensions minister Margaret Hodge on
June 16th 2005 urging them to find jobs at retail giant Tesco.
Interviewed in the following day’s Daily Mirror a former driver at
Longbridge, John Rudge, was scathing in his attack on Hodge saying
“workers who took big mortgages on the strength of Rover wages can’t
afford to take a job stacking shelves on £5 an hour.”
© Tony
Hall, for permission to re-produce contact rpm
The closure of Longbridge, bringing to an end car manufacturing on the
site stretching back decades is a devastating blow for the workers and
their families. For local young people it reduces the opportunity of
getting a decent paid job when they leave school.
June 23rd 2005