CAMMELL LAIRD shiprepairers and conversion company has called in the receivers with the loss of the jobs of hundreds of shipyard workers on Merseyside and in the North East. The decision follows financial difficulty relating to a contract with the US company Luxus to build two cruise liners and uncertainty over other deals.

Details of redundancies were given on Wednesday, April 18, at a meeting between the receivers and union officials. The company announced that 320 jobs are to be cut from three yards within a week, a decision taken before the receivers were called in. The yard is to be mothballed, with essential maintenance works carried out by a staff of 50. The yard at Teesside closed on Friday with the loss of 110 jobs, while 60 workers will go at Hebburn on Tyneside and a further 150 workers will be made redundant at Birkenhead.

The Birkenhead yard is currently completing a £10m contract to repair the Royal Fleet Auxiliary helicopter support ship Argus, and carrying out small-scale repair work on five other vessels for other clients. Workers at the Hebburn yard on Tyneside are completing a £5m contract to build a ferry for a Norwegian transport company, and a £10m deal to convert the offshore vessel CSO Constructor into a sub-sea pipe layer. There is also a contract to convert a Danish passenger ferry into a hospital and aid ship, the Africa Mercy.

The government’s loan guarantee arrangement operated by the financiers 3I Group plc was not acceptable to Cammell Laird. Cammell Laird would have had to have repaid £104 million – almost twice its assets – if the US company had defaulted on the deal. This followed the collapse last November of a previous contract worth £50 million to fit the middle section for an Italian cruise liner at a time when the ship was travelling to the yard and the company had already constructed the ship’s mid section. Since that time the shares in Cammell Laird have fallen by 90%, in contrast with the late 1990s when the company’s shares were one of the best performing.

This confirms once again that such a vital industry to the national economy, as with every other aspect of the economy, is put in the service of making the biggest returns for the financial monopolies. No consideration is given to the consequences of such vital industries running into difficulties as the direct result of this motive of production. The government may wring its hands and express its greatest concern, but that such devastation continues to occur only underlines that the government is not representing the interests of society as a whole or of the workers themselves, who remain marginalised from dealing with such vital questions.

For shipyard workers fighting for their interests, it is not just about fighting to save their industry but opposing the whole situation that marginalises them from controlling what is produced and how it is funded. Worker politicians must come forward from the ranks of the shipyard workers, as from other sections of society, to fight for the interests of the workers.