Shildon railway works

rdf:langString Shildon railway works

rdf:langString Jim Gilchrist

rdf:langString John Pilger

rdf:langString Sidney Weighell

rdf:langString Dennis Lees - Acting Works Manager

rdf:langString END OF THE LINES AT DOOMED WORKS

rdf:langString Neil Kinnock MP - Speech 28/04/1984

rdf:langString Norman Lamont, Minister for Trade and Industry

rdf:langString Official at Mass Meeting - May 1982

rdf:langString Policy Resource Committee

rdf:langString Bishop Auckland Herald 03/09/1863

rdf:langString Daily Mirror 04/10/1982

rdf:langString Evening Despatch 07/06/1982

rdf:langString Evening Despatch 12/08/1983

rdf:langString Evening Dispatch 14/04/1982

rdf:langString Interviewed 07/05/1990

rdf:langString Letter 23/06/1983

rdf:langString Northern Echo 25/06/1984

rdf:langString Northern Echo 29/05/1982

rdf:langString Northern Echo 30/04/1982

rdf:langString OUR FUTURE

rdf:langString Railtalk Special

rdf:langString Sedgefield District Council

rdf:langString 'Foreseeing the position which will arise in 1984, a Working Party of representatives from BR, British Steel Corporation, and the Scrap Federation plans to introduce a nationwide rail service in new purpose-built wagons for which a grant from the Government under Section 8 is required if the scheme is to be viable.... The ADC points out that for such a grant to be forthcoming the support of local authorities whose road network would be affected by the lorry movement is required and Councils are asked to write to the Dept. of Transport supporting grant aid to the Standard Railway Wagon Company Ltd which is prepared to build the special new box wagons'.

rdf:langString 'Only about 50 persons employed in the works, and few of them skilled, with no tools except hand lathes.. no means of raising heavy parts, but the screwjack of old fashioned make. Boiler and cylinder, mine old friends tell me, were got from Newcastle"

rdf:langString 'Workers at Shildon Wagon 'Works are to receive drastically improved redundancy pay offers. In a surprise move BREL has offered to increase the maximum pay-off to aver £5,000, an increase of £3,000. BREL are also sending a team of redundancy experts to the Works to give advice to the 1,000 men who face the dole if closure goes ahead. The increase will be seen as an incentive to the workers to accept BREL's offer. But the introduction is conditional on the unions agreeing to the closure of Shildon, Horwich, and Temple Mills. A BREL spokesman, Bernard Ault said, 'This extension of supplementary payments will increase the financial terms available to many employees not wishing to transfer to other areas'".

rdf:langString 'As you are aware we are currently facing serious workload shortages... It was agreed with the Special Working Party that we should first offer voluntary redundancy to all adult staff... In the event that sufficient volunteers do not come forward, the alternative at the present time can only be a shorter working week for everybody as there is no intention to enforce redundancy. If we are to survive, it's absolutely necessary for us reduce our present staffing and our overhead costs. Every effort is being made to seek new work and to find new ways of reducing our costs. It is, however, vital that we reduce the size of the workforce in keeping with the workload available, as a shorter working week will increase costs and therefore not attract work to this factory. For this reason I am again asking for staff to apply for voluntary redundancy'.

rdf:langString 'Walter Nunn has been a railwayman since January 1938... standing beside a replica of the Hackworth's locomotive he said, "The process has already begun. The community is already divided by the "offer" of redundancies. What does the alder man say when the carrot of a pay-off is dangled? What does a man say if he is tired or ill and handicapped from an injury? It's a terrible dilemma, because we know when the redundancies are taken up, the workforce is weakened and fighting far survival then is much harder. No apprentices are to be taken on this year. This had not happened for 150 years. They're cutting the bloodline"'.

rdf:langString "Saved!" The six week battle to save Shildon was won on Friday night when British Rail management postponed controversial plans to axe the whole work force from April next year."

rdf:langString 'Why Shildon? Shildon is BREL principal wagon-building works and has a capacity to build some 1,200-1,500 wagons per year, and to repair in excess of 20,000 wagons per year. There are no new build orders in for 1983 and prospects for 1984 and 1985 indicate that future needs are insignificant in relation to the capacity available. Operating Shildon on the substantially reduced repairs workload only would not be viable and would lead to substantial losses in 1983, with no prospect of a return to profit in the future'.

rdf:langString "I wish I could come here with good news, or a change of view by the Government, but I cannot. Reminded every day of Shildon by Derek Foster, my PPS, which, for Derek, stands for Preserve Production in Shildon I know what you have been through. Any other Government would have been impressed by the fight, the faith, trust and loyalty and would have changed their decision. The Prime Minister is constantly preaching 'Do it yourself', but what complete hypocrisy... You have had accolades from BREL, even by Thatcher's ideals you have done enough to exist, but no, you can't exist due to dogma. We have a run-down British Rail - she never uses it - and an ageing wagon stock... The Tories cannot adjust to the idea that unemployment is not free and it is growing more expensive every year. We shed jobs when we should be investing in a properly up-to-date system. Other Governments see the need of railway networks, good connections, why not this Government? Instead we have a Government which seems to have declared war on work. With work you get income, freedom and rights, without you have to fall in line..."

rdf:langString "Shildon rail workers joined a national fight with BR today over the expected shutdown of vital rail works... This could mean the complete shutdown of one or more railway engineering plants... Worried union leaders from Shildon and York joined a demonstration outside BR's London HQ"

rdf:langString "Whenever you had a meeting of branches the people from Shildon always stood out. The others would be perhaps a bit pushy. Argumentative, but those from Shildon would be quieter. It was bit like they were not used to having to fight their corner. I know it may sound strange, but they were sometimes like country people, unused to meeting the sort of people you'd get at a general meeting. The Branch was a big one, one of the biggest, and yet it rarely seemed to have much clout. Bit subdued. Nice people though, but maybe a bit too accommodating."

rdf:langString 'The last rites have started as Shildon Wagon Works' proud 150-year history grinds slowly to a halt. The doomed works are now echoing to the sound of the mechanical digger as the old tracks are ripped from the ground... The remnants of a once-mighty workforce looked solemnly on and knew there was no going back. Yard transport worker, Colin Russell, said "They are cutting the head off before the body's died. It's a sign of the end and it's now irretrievable- there's no going back now."

rdf:langString "More than 5000 people poured through the doomed railway town yesterday in the biggest show of strength in its history. The protest line was a mile long... Shildon came to a sudden standstill as 2,500 wagon workers marched to save their jobs joined by women, children, and pensioners."

rdf:langString "I remember being on the platform and watching the faces down there in the crowd. As the politicians and union leaders spoke you could see their faces changing. They'd been full of enthusiasm marching through the Town, full of hope. But as they listened to the tired old clichés coming out of their "leaders" you could see them losing heart. They started to leave before the end. On the fringes of the crowd, with the speakers still talking, you could see them going. Derek Foster, he knew what was happening, tried to rally them, to get them lifted again, but they'd heard enough."

rdf:langString "When I had first heard about the closure, at one of the regular lunches [Sir Peter] Parker and I had started having, when he put this paper in front of me I said 'No way are you going to close Shildon, no way!' I was determined and he knew that. I had agreed, I had to realistically, that there would be cut-backs, but I was determined to try and keep Shildon going somehow. I knew that once you closed it down it'd never be re-opened. They never are. To close something is too easy and to start it up almost impossible. So he had backed down."

rdf:langString 'Yesterday's announcement that the Prime Minister was to involve herself with the proposals came as a surprise to the local union leaders. They said they were delighted with the news. 'It came out of the blue.' said John Priestly who, with the NUR and Boilermakers' Society convenors, had an hour long meeting with Transport Minister David Howell in London on Thursday... 'The Minister said he would look into our case and appeared to agree with us that more freight should go by rail instead of road. We were very impressed by his sympathetic attitude' said Mr Priestly."

rdf:langString Shildon railway works opened in 1833 in the town of Shildon in County Durham, England. Originally built to serve the Stockton and Darlington Railway the works grew to cover 40 acres (16 ha) (11 acres or 4.5 ha roofed), employing 2750 staff.