Thatcherism saved Ryton but globalisation killed it — and striking won’t help

The demise of Peugeot’s Ryton factory came and went as a news story

The demise of Peugeot’s Ryton factory came and went as a news story in little more than 48 hours, mutating swiftly from ‘shock closure’ to more measured explanations of inevitability. Though Peugeot is accused of welshing on promises that the plant would keep working until 2010, its French bosses never suggested that it would make a new model after the Peugeot 206, and the fact that cars can now be built cheaper in Slovakia than in Coventry comes as no news at all. The logic of today’s globalised motor industry is that, in high-wage countries, only those plants with the highest ratios of capital investment to manpower can survive: Nissan at Sunderland, Toyota at Burnaston and BMW at Cowley come into that category, but Ryton did not.

In a decade’s time, Slovakia will probably be a high-wage country and production will shift to Turkey or India or inevitably China, but that is no consolation to the skilled and in recent years strike-free Ryton labour force. They are now considering strike action to ‘fight’ the closure — and even clinging to the forlorn hope of fraternal support from Peugeot workers in France. But as was evident when public-sector workers took a day off in March to protest at being made to work until 65, strikes now garner no public sympathy in Britain at all, merely stirring hostile memories of the 1970s and 1980s.

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