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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Cable: Return of three magic words... Made in Britain
April 16, 2011 7:18 PM
• [Apr 17] Vince Cable writes: PORT Talbot's huge steel complex is flourishing under its Indian owner. Tata Steel - which replaced Corus, and British Steel before it - has invested heavily in sophisticated technology and is now developing plans to open the first deep coal mine in Wales for a generation.
Down the road in Bridgend, Ford's ultra-modern plant is producing more car engines than at any point in its history and is hiring both young apprentices and skilled workers displaced from the closure of the Bosch plant nearby. In Bristol, Airbus is making a major investment and some of the world's most skilled workers are producing wings for commercial jets.
All this gives a lie to the persistent prejudice: 'Britain doesn't make things any more.' It is easy to see where such pessimism came from; the disastrous, destructive industrial strikes of the Sixties and Seventies; the sharp reduction in manufacturing manpower in the early Eighties; and the even bigger retreat in the last decade.
. . Such successes share common threads. Industrial relations are good. Workers are given respect, respect that is repaid with loyalty and flexibility over pay and work practices. At bigger plants, as in the aerospace and car industries, unions care passionately about their companies - very different from the tub-thumping, hostile nature of old. Then there is investment in skills. Flourishing apprenticeship schemes are becoming popular as the snobbery surrounding vocational education breaks down. In Halewood, Merseyside, at a plant once notorious for its bloody-mindedness, Jaguar Land Rover (part of Tata) is hiring 1,500 staff, many of them teenage apprentices. There, and at a car-component plant nearby, many engineering recruits and production-line supervisors are women - another stereotype being broken.
The new industrial Britain challenges traditional ideas about patriotism. There are still such great British companies as Rolls-Royce. But after British owners and managers ran the car industry into the ground, it was Japanese and American investment that turned it around. Some of our most impressive industrial plants are Indian (Tata, in steel and vehicles), German (Bentley, part of Volkswagen), French (co-owners of Airbus), Japanese (Toyota, Honda and Nissan) or Arab (Aston Martin).
Global companies can spring surprises - as when Pfizer recently pulled out of Sandwich in Kent - but Britain is proving that it is an attractive place in which to make things. We should welcome overseas companies that are working to make British manufacturing great again.
• Return of three magic words... Made in Britain [Vince Cable Mail on Sunday Apr 17]
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