We simply cannot afford to lose the Barnoldswick battle

As workers start their sixth week of strike action at the Rolls-Royce Barnoldswick plant in Lancashire, the stakes are getting higher. The factory faces hundreds of redundancies stemming from short-sighted and uncaring decisions by the company that would offshore jobs, leading to potentially catastrophic impacts on the local community and the wider supply chain. And Rolls-Royce announced even more job cuts a week ago.

It was a great privilege last week to chair the third edition of Our Collective Voice, a new initiative from Unite politics that aims to highlight the connection between the industrial and the political and how completely intertwined they are. We focused on the nature of the ongoing struggle at Barnoldswick, now an all-too-familiar feature of Britain’s troubled economic landscape under the Tories – just one of many major industrial disputes in which workers around the country are starting to take action. It was a solidarity event that sought to give voice to the working people living and breathing the reality of these unaccountable corporate decisions and what they actually mean on the ground for our communities and local economies.

The stories we heard underscored the evident commitment of local and regional trade unionists in the face of the incredible injustice of these attacks on working people, a grim reminder that footloose corporate decision making all too often takes place with no concern whatsoever for workers and the wider community. We saw the dedication and hard work of these Unite members – exactly what being in a trade union is all about.

One of the most poignant moments of the evening was when Catherine Greaves, an engineer and the fourth generation of her family to work at the plant posed the simple but powerful question: “Please give Barnoldswick a chance – we can’t have been that bad for 78 years?” The Barnoldswick dispute is not a case of layoffs being driven by technological changes and automation but rather a pure profit-seeking exercise and race to the bottom in which jobs are being exported overseas. It is being carried out by a company that has been the recipient of considerable largesse in public funds. And it is occurring under the watch of a Tory government big on promises of ‘levelling up’ the North and greening British industry but very short on delivery when it comes to real action on the ground.

The loss of skills both immediately and in the future represents an avoidable tragedy. These workers are among the very few people in the world who have the requisite knowledge and experience to perform such highly-skilled work. They have a demonstrable desire to evolve as is necessary, and would like to be part of the journey Britain as a whole needs to make toward the greener jobs of the future. The planned redundancies would represent a serious loss of Britain’s engineering capacity at just the point at which it is going to be needed.

We heard how Catherine has been going down every day to the Barnoldswick picket line to support dedicated trade unionists like Ross Quinn, regional officer for Unite, and Rolls-Royce convenor Mark Porter, who have been out every single day in all weathers in the midst of a global pandemic. It was difficult to hear how history is once again repeating itself as we heard tales from community members, who were part of past disputes and strikes in the 1970s, devastated that Barnoldswick finds itself back in this awful position.

Also in the discussion were MP for Easington and chair of the Unite parliamentary group Grahame Morris and MP for Luton South Rachel Hopkins. A fight is currently going on in Westminster, and Grahame and Rachel issued a call for action. It is vital that we all show support and spread the word, emailing and putting pressure on our local MPs to sign Early Day Motion 1200 on the subject and get on the case. The Tories must be made to feel that they cannot simply avoid or wash their hands of this dispute, which is occurring on their watch.

While the strikers at Barnoldswick deserve our full support and solidarity, this is not only about them. It is also about the history and future of our country. Rolls-Royce has styled itself as ‘the best of British’ but that is the result of the skill and dedication of the workforce, not of company management – and management is now proposing to simply throw all that away. The outcome of the struggle in Barnoldswick will be critical in shaping the future of communities all over country, especially in the North of England. It is a dispute that both the Rolls-Royce workers and the wider trade union movement simply cannot afford to lose.

There have been over 30,000 views of Thursday’s event at the time of writing. Word is getting out, but it needs to get out still further. We all need to do our part to show solidarity and keep up the pressure — on both the company and the government.