No Future

Curry n Chips Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone

This coming Friday 2nd March 2012 the British Aerospace factory that I worked in for thirty-odd years will close it's doors for the last time.  As they have done for years, the staff will 'bang out' each other as they leave for the very last time. 'Banging out' is banging benches with tools or desks with whatever office equipment makes a loud noise.  Going out with a bang. 

The end of an era. 

The factory was purpose built for aircraft manufacture by AVRO and originally opened in 1939.  They built Lancaster bombers here.  Later they built Vulcans and Nimrods as well as civilian aircraft such as the AVRO Anson and 748.  In the 1970s AVROS became part of the Hawker Siddeley group before nationalisation as British Aerospace and finally privatisation as part of  BAE Systems.  During the war it employed 11,000.  In it's post-war heyday it employed 6,000. 

On Friday the final 200ish will bid a forlorn farewell.  Some have managed to get jobs at the groups other plants (all involving a hell of a lot of travelling), others have bitten the bullet and taken redundancy. 

Dearest's mother worked there, my father worked there, Dearest's uncles worked there.  Eldest and Youngest have worked there - Youngest is still based there but will now have to commute 60 or 70 miles each day.  All around the area there are families whose working lives are intricately tied up with the place.  They were good jobs too.  Not McJobs but skilled jobs that paid well.  Apprenticeships and great training schools.  Proper career paths with plenty of opportunities to progress.  All gone now though.   

As well as the work there was also a vibrant and thriving social side to the place as well.  We had a lovely grade II Georgian house surrounded by football and cricket pitches, bowling greens and greenery.  There was a snooker and table tennis tables.  A darkroom for the camera club, discos, gala days, inter-departmental competitions as well as teams that played in local leagues.  Charities in the area benefitted enormously. 

Local businesses also thrived.  From engineering and office suppliers to shops, pubs and other services, the factory was a wealth generator. 

And now, it's gone. 

Sadly it's not alone.  In my local area over the last twenty years we have lost a hell of a lot of skilled jobs.  And I'm talking 1,000s of jobs here.  Within ten miles of my house, apart from BAE Systems there was Ferrantis and Mather and Platts.  Each one of them sustaining a little economic system around them.  Sub contractors, newsagents, pubs.........   Where I work now I can gaze out onto Salford Quays and the neighbouring Trafford Park - one of the biggest industrial estates in Europe employing 30,000 in it's prime.  A shadow of it's former self now with storage facilities and a couple of distribution centres.  Just a little further out is BAE Systems' Woodford factory, flight sheds and runway.  Another employer of 1,000s.  Now just expensive real estate waiting for a house builder to snap it up.  A housing estate in a lovely part of Cheshire.  Nice. 

We live in a post-industrial world. 

Still, it's not all bad news, Gideon and Dave have a plan for growth!  Honest.  In the past few years new jobs have been created in my area.  We have a Mega Tesco, open 24/7, an Aldi, KFC, McDonalds, Morrisons, Lidl.  All of them selling stuff to people with less and less to spend.  A sustainable economic model if ever there was one. 

I watched the first part of Jeremy Paxman's 'Empire' series.  A promising beginning.  Sumptuous photography, dramatic music and a wry presenter with a stiletto tongue (as and when required). 

I'm of an age where, as a child, the Empire was still very much assumed to still exist.  At primary school I can still remember the globes covered in pink.  The heroes we were taught about: Dr Livingstone, General Gordon, the Missionaries spreading good old fashioned English  Christianity to the poor savages of the African interior.  I can't remember any mention of the Empire's involvement in the slave trade or, for that matter, the Opium Wars. 

The world was a simple place as far as us kids were concerned.  Great Britain was the place to be and English was the nationality.  Hadn't we just won two world wars?  Weren't we a mighty Empire with Industrial might?  Nobody told us the Empire was on it's knees gasping for breath.  All these African nations with their 'terrorist' organisations such as the Mau Mau in Kenya were quite simply 'baddies'.  We were the goodies.  We were always the goodies.  We wouldn't indulge in war crimes.  It's just not cricket old boy. 

I thought Paxman got it spot on.  Our arrogance was astounding - especially when we made Egypt a 'Procectorate' in order to keep the Suez Canal open.  But, as Romans discovered, Empires don't last forever.  A lot of those 'freedom fighters/terrorists'' had been reading Gibbon. 

And that 'end of Empire' feeling is very much in my mind with the BAe closure.  During the post-war years the thought that a factory of that size would ever close was unimaginable.  Even during the lean years of the early 1980s when the redundancies first started, nobody could believe that this 'empire' too would one day end.  Unthinkable probably until about 2004/5 when they closed down the manufacturing bays leaving just the design and spares departments.  That's when you realise a tipping point has been reached.  They've nibbled away at it with the vicious tenacity of the savage hordes that finally did for the Romans.  The end really is nigh. 

That was one of the deciding factors when I took my redundancy back in 2007.   You really didn't need a crystal ball.    It's sad though, very sad.  I look at Littlest and think about his future.............................. 

Beach Fish Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone

Beach Benidorm Feb 2012 Samsung Mobile Phone

Super Heroes Benidorm Feb 2012  Samsung Mobile Phone