Bewick:
Carl Williams:
In Spennymoor during the war there was a large munitions factory which obviously closed at the end of the war. Fortunately a company called Smart & Brown Engineering Ltd took over a large part of the site and soon the company was bought by Jules Thorn (Thorn Electrical Injuries) He started making Light fittings and Fluorescence tubes selling under Atlas lighting & Echo lighting brands. Soon Thorn ventured into electric cookers selling under the Tricity brand then along came radiograms under Ferguson & HMV brand names until eventually in 1959 Fridges again Tricity brand The factory as it was known settles a split between lighting and domestic appliances with Spennymoor as the largest Fridge factory in Europe. and altogether employing 7500 peoplenext large factory to be built was for Perkins Engines Peterborough, however Spennymoor workers managed to go on strike just as this newly built factory was about to open so Perkins didn’t bother leaving a massive new building empty which was eventually to become Black & Decker making drills and other products incuding lawn mowers. Black and Decker wisely forbid trade union membership and so traded fairly sucessfully employing about 2,000
Then in 1969 along came Courtaulds building a huge factory meauring in length about 1/3 mile along A167 Courtaulds employed 2,500 and decided and built an identical plant next door with the intention of doubling production and workforse However 170 blue collar workers decided to strike but were unsuccesful at bringing the rest of the workforse out in support or stop our vans and drivers delivering their products or taking in the raw materials. They infact were picketing for almost a year as the factory continued without them, but there was a very bad atmousphere and the company decided not to open the now completed second factory which stood empty
Eventually Rothmans took over the second Courtaulds factory making cigarettes employing about 1200.
First to go was Courtaulds. They had a very large British market for their yarn to hundreds of clothing manufacturers many making clothing for Marks & Spencer who bragged that all their clothes were UK made, until policy changed and that changed. Another problem was Courtaulds major exports were to Russia. However as we joined the Common Market (EEC EU or whatever they chose to call it) They demanded Courtaulds added tarriffs to Russian sales and that market was no longer viable So Courtaulds closed .
Next was Thorn. As I explained largest Fridge factory in Europe however they were having severe competition as EU started to eat their sales It came that Zanussi in Italy was able to sell fridges cheaper than they could make them at Spennymoor. They couldn’t understand why until they found EU were giving grants to zanussi and when they applied for similar grants from EU they were refused so they closed refrigeration and sold what was left to Electrolux who kept cookers going until they could asset strip and pull out of Spennymoor. Thorn Lighting which has now no connection with the orriginal Thorn business remains but in a much smaller way and as a result almost 7,000 jobs lost
Fina casualty was Black & Decker so in total about 12,000 jobs gone I cannot understand where people work today as these manufacturing jobs gone for good and never been replaced and thats just spennymoor Wthin 10 miles radius we have Bishop Auckland Crook & Durham and manufacturing disappeared there as well
Very well explained Carl and really interesting thanks ! It makes you want to cry it really does and we look like the UK is descending into strike anarchy again but this time it is not industrial unrest apart from the Rail disputes it is the Civil government side of the job but The Brothers are doing their best to turn it into a Political action but what they believe Starmer and his Labour cohorts will be able to do differently I can’t for the life of me imagine but I suppose the Union Barons will have to find out the hard way when we do eventually get a change of Government !
The quicker there is a large does of reality the better I say ! Cheers Dennis.
Like you say Dennis it does make you cry as the job losses didn’t end with the losses in the factories Service industries jobs went too We for instance made 250 redundancies local shops closed etc etc and to crown it they are building houses on the land where all the factories stood. Future generations will be economic cannibals with jobs like Dog walkers and of course thousands of jobs ‘working’ for local government etc