Cammell Laird Workers Imprisoned in 1984

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Andrew Western

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas]

I very much agree with that point; I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the case that others and I will make.

In the latter part of 1984, across Britain’s industrial heartlands at the time, huge numbers of jobs in nationalised industries, including steel and coal, were axed by Margaret Thatcher’s Government, with a casual disregard for what would come next for those made redundant and their devastated communities. In shipbuilding alone, a hugely important source of jobs across the UK at the time, British Shipbuilders went from employing 62,000 workers in 1982 to just 5,000 five years later.

It is clear, from papers released by the National Archives and from Margaret Thatcher’s private papers, that Ministers were determined to privatise the building of warships, reduce the number of shipbuilding yards and sell off the remainder of the yards. Those records confirm a central belief of the 37 when they went on strike, that Ministers wanted to close Cammell Laird. They confirm that Norman Tebbit, then Secretary of State, and Norman Lamont, then Minister of State in the Department for Trade and Industry, wanted to close Cammell Laird, potentially as early as the end of the year, when the two ships then being built were expected to be completed.

We know that, because what emerges from these relatively recently declassified records of the time, is how Cammell Laird’s future became the centrepiece of a fierce Whitehall battle between the majority of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, hellbent on privatisation at any cost, and a far smaller group worried about the future of Merseyside if Cammell Laird closed. At the time, Cammell Laird was one of Britain’s most important shipyards. In existence for more than 150 years, it was a byword for engineering and shipbuilding skill of the highest order.

Warships built at Cammell Laird, such as Ark Royal, helped to protect our shores during two world wars, while other ships built there delivered huge wealth from across the globe to Britain’s shores. The 37 had helped build ships crucial to our efforts to win back the Falklands and later to take on Saddam Hussein. Short of active military service, there surely are not many more patriotic things one can do for one’s country than help build the means to defend it.

Word began to leak out in the spring and early summer of 1984 that Cammell Laird might be at risk of closure. Ministers at the time in the House of Commons denied that any major shipyard closures were being contemplated.

“I know of no such proposal.”—[Official Report, 27 June 1984; Vol. 62, c. 1095.]

So said Norman Lamont, then Minister of State at the Department for Trade and Industry. That was not quite the full picture. The Ministry of Defence had tendered for contracts to build two Type 42 destroyers in late 1983. Cammell Laird’s bid had met the quality threshold and apparently offered the best price. Over the course of nine months, from April 1984 to January 1985, Norman Tebbit successfully persuaded Margaret Thatcher and the rest of her Cabinet to delay Cammell Laird being awarded a contract to build at least one of the planned new Royal Navy destroyers.

The then Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine, recognising the profound economic and social consequences for Merseyside if Cammell Laird were to close, wanted to place orders for one, possibly two, Royal Navy Type 22 frigates with Cammell Laird, which would have secured the yard’s immediate future, and prevented even more job losses. The records released by the National Archives and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation detail how Norman Tebbit and the Department for Trade and Industry strongly objected, arguing, according to papers at the time now in the National Archives:

“If Cammell Laird did remain open, overcapacity would remain in shipbuilding with gratuitous risk to the successful privatisation.”

Commitments had been made that Cammell Laird would be able to bid and would have “a strong case” for building Type 22 frigates, as far as back as December 1982, by the then Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, in this House. In April 1984, Michael Heseltine, then Secretary of State for Defence, underlined the significance of that commitment, and the impact on Merseyside if that commitment were not honoured and Cammell Laird closed. He particularly underlined the fact that Cammell Laird had won the MOD’s tendering process.

When British Shipbuilders published accounts in July 1984 for the previous year, it noted that Cammell Laird’s warship-building operations were still profitable, making some £3.22 million in surplus. None the less, Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher and a series of Cabinet allies eventually forced the re-tender of the contracts to build these warships, delaying for almost a year the award of a warship-building contract to Cammell Laird. The papers also reveal how Norman Tebbit wanted to spin the decision, to put the blame and responsibility for the closure of Cammell Laird first on the British Shipbuilders Board and crucially, too, on the workforce, whose growing concern about their future they comment on—although they describe that as union militancy and worsening industrial relations.

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and congratulate him on securing this important debate. He is making an important contribution around the thrust of Government direction in policy terms in relation to shipyards at this point of time. Does he agree with me that the systematic reduction of the workforce at Cammell Laird from 5,500 in 1977 down to 3,300 in October 1983 and a reduction of another 1,000 in the 12 months thereafter—taking into account the period following the dispute—points to that attempt to undermine British shipbuilding? Is that not why we need this inquiry? Given the fact that, sadly, several of those who were arrested have passed away in the years in between, does that not add to the urgency of the inquiry at this stage?

[Gareth Thomas]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that there is an urgency to this case. I welcome his support for the points that I am trying to make.