Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Meeting of the Parliament 20 November 2013

20 Nov 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Defence Industry

Lamont, Johann Lab Glasgow Pollok Watch on SPTV

Ian Davidson stands second to none in championing the interests of shipyard workers. He has fought to secure jobs in the face of the threat that the commitment of Gil Paterson and his party to separate Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom poses for those workers. Perhaps Gil Paterson and his party should be a little more honest about what their prospectus is.

Those black and white pictures of armies of working-class men flooding in and out of the shipyard gates, bending steel and metal against a backdrop of cranes and docks, and building floating marvels, are iconic images that are integral to the history of Glasgow and Scotland.

Jimmy Reid famously said:

“We don’t only build ships, we build men.”

We only have to listen to two of those great men—Sir Alex Ferguson and Billy Connolly—to get a sense of the pride that was felt about those workplaces and the special people who made up the workforce. The fact that we in Scotland possess those amazing skills and expertise, which were once the envy of the world, is a source of great pride to all of us.

Sadly, our competitors in other countries did not just sit back and admire what we did in Scotland and across the UK; they, too, learned how to build such amazing ships. They invested in their industries and found any competitive edge that they could to take us on at that game.

At one point in the early 1900s, the Clyde built one fifth of the world’s ships and, at its peak, shipbuilding in Scotland employed 100,000 people. Scotland still has a proud shipbuilding industry, but it is not what it once was—we know that. The days of thousands of young men leaving school and walking into an apprenticeship in the shipyards the very next day have gone, yet the industry is still a key one for Scotland. It provides not just thousands of jobs but, with them, good wages and high skills to boot.

The decision to go ahead with the aircraft carriers, ordered by a Labour Prime Minister from Fife, may have been viewed as controversial in some quarters, but it was not viewed as such by the thousands of men and women who set about that mammoth project in the knowledge that it would provide for their families in the coming years. It was a lifeline for those workers, but it was a project that had a clear end date and, sadly, that end date is close. There will no longer be enough work on the Clyde to sustain the workforce at its present capacity. The fact that the 800 workers affected knew that this day would come makes it no less of a blow to them and to our shipbuilding industry.

In responding to the news from the Secretary of State for Defence earlier this month, the Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said much that I agree with. Yes, we are all saddened for the proud shipbuilders in Portsmouth, and we remember the solidarity that exists across the workforce, wherever it is based. It is beyond argument that there has been a steady decline in our shipbuilding industry over a long number of years, which should worry us all. I, too, am concerned about our reliance on naval contracts and the uncertainty that comes from the gaps in those order books.

Search Hansard contributions

Meeting of the Parliament 20 November 2013

In the same item of business