Today workers at Portsmouth’s threatened dockyard are marching to save their jobs in the wake of the announcement that the 500 year tradition of shipbuilding in the city is to end.
Up here in Barrow, and in the many areas across the country whose local economy depends on advanced manufacturing sectors like shipbuilding, we are sending our support to the employees whose livelihoods are under threat.
Those men and women have performed a proud service to their country through the vessels they have built over the years. They deserve better than this, and the country can ill-afford to lose their prized skills.
Barrow still bears the scars of mass redundancies at the shipyard in the 1990s. There are people who have been trapped on benefit since they were left on the scrap heap in those dark days. For some, once they had been out of work and deprived of hope and dignity for a prolonged period, it was hard ever to get back into employment, even when new opportunities eventually came along.
And it wasn’t just those who lost their jobs directly who suffered – the whole area and hundreds of local firms were dealt a near crippling blow as many thousands of families were deprived of their chief source of income.
The government must not let that happen in Portsmouth. The city will keep its valuable contracts to repair and maintain vessels, but that line of work cannot immediately provide opportunities for all the 940 people whose jobs are set to go.
And the whole country should recognise that, for all the hard losses over recent decades, shipbuilding remains a critically important part of Britain’s industrial future. The sector sustains cutting edge manufacturing jobs that indirectly support a whole host of other markets where the country has an opportunity to succeed. The government says it is committed to rebalancing the economy; this is an important test of those words.
Finally, we should pay tribute to the trade unions who are standing up for their members at this difficult time. The positive way that the GMB and Unite engages with employers and government to ensure shipbuilding remains a going concern in Britain is a world away from the ignorant caricature that David Cameron peddles from the despatch box at PMQs.
They deserve our support right now. And they will have it.
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John Woodcock MP is a vice-chair of Progress and former chair of Labour Friends of Israel
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