Airbus sale threat to industry
WORKERS, MAY 2006 ISSUE
Soon a brand new Airbus A380 will touch down on its first flight into Heathrow. No doubt there will be celebrations and champagne – after all, the aircraft is worth celebrating. Although constructed through European cooperation, half of the A380 by value is made in Britain. The wings come from Airbus's main UK plant at Broughton, North Wales, and the engines are built by Rolls-Royce at Derby. And every British worker helped to fund its launch through taxation – the government provided a £530 million grant to get it off the ground.
The pride in British craftsmanship generated by seeing the A380 fly will be short-lived. BAE Systems, the company behind Airbus, and Britain's biggest defence and aerospace group, intends to sell off its 20% stake. The buyer is almost certain to be EADS, the Franco-German combine which already owns the other 80%.
The move will signal the end of direct British ownership of the manufacture of civil aircraft – and sever an engineering link that stretches from the A380 back through Concorde to the Comet and fleets of other aircraft that once made Britain top in aerospace.
It also threatens to rob Britain of one of its last large-scale, high-tech manufacturing operations. At its plants at Broughton and Filton, near Bristol, Airbus directly employs 13,000 in Britain, and by its own estimate indirectly supports another 135,000 jobs.
BAE will get about £3 billion from the sale. It plans to use the money to build up its defence industry interests in America. It is only concerned with making profits for shareholders, and thinks the best opportunity to do that is to uproot and shift capital to the USA, capital which only exists because British workers have created it.
Some might have expected Blair to step in and stop the sale. But three years ago Geoff Hoon, the then Defence Secretary, declared that British Aerospace Systems was not really a "British" company and therefore they would get no preference in contracts or treatment from the government. That crass abandonment of a company at the cutting edge of British manufacture, research and skill, set the scene for the current sell-off.
We have come to expect the complicity of this government in undermining and destroying Britain's manufacturing base. The workforce, through Amicus, has been quick to react. Its national aerospace officer, Ian Waddell, said, "The frustration we have is that Britain seems to be unique in not taking a direct interest in the future of such an important industry". He added, "You cannot imagine America allowing the sale of Boeing, but the British government is content to allow market forces to rule." That is a measured response, but only a start. What is needed now is united opposition from all workers, strong enough to prevent this sell-off of our manufacturing and engineering heritage.