Visteon is the latest victim of Brown’s recession: And the West Belfast workers speak back

Things have gone downhill for Ford since the glory days of the Model T Ford. With the global recession and that which has been made worse in the UK by Gordon Brown, it’s not an easy time for the automotive industry or for those who work for it.

It’s difficult not to feel sympathy – and solidarity – with the workers who have been made redundant from Visteon, a supplier of Ford, at the plants in Enfield, Basildon, and Belfast. The workers in the West Belfast plant have shown that they are not going to take this sitting down and are prepared to stand up to their “masters” at Ford:

the workers at the west Belfast factory are staging a sit-in protest after the US-based parent company announced that Visteon UK Ltd was entering into administration.  

Good on the car workers for daring to speak out. It is tragic to see yet another part of the UK’s automotive industry being destroyed by the “destructive destruction” of the Depression caused by politicians’ regulatory ineptitude [as opposed to the creative destruction where economic renewal is enabled]. Instead, it is economic disaster for communities such as those lived in by the tough West Belfast folk who worked for Visteon for generations.

Politicians like Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, and the former MLA for West Belfast Diane Dodds (a candidate for the European Parliament and the wife of a Stormont Minister, Nigel Dodds) offer a better way forward than the thugs who were out rioting and “burnin'” cars last night.  It is political action that the people of West Belfast need – not a return to the Troubles that shattered many a family in this part of the capital – in order to deal with the chronic unemployment problems there. Good on the workers for highlighting Ford’s sellout.

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