No Flags for Rover

Longbridge, Birmingham, June 7th

Working in Longbridge, as I currently do, you can’t help but be acutely aware of Rover. The factory, which dominated the area for decades, finally closed last year leaving 5000 people without jobs. Presumably having learned lessons from the Thatcher era the government set up a £150 million package for the Rover workers to get them retrained and back into work as quickly as possible. This has, by some accounts, led to accusations of preferential treatment, whereby someone from Longbridge who finds themselves unemployed but is not “ex-Rover” is put to the back of the queue, but from a community point of view the alternative is much worse.

These 5000 people, often in middle age, have mostly worked for one company all their lives, are specialists at whatever section of the track they worked on and were comparatively well paid for doing so. So you’ve got a large number of institutionalized people with a very narrow skill set who make up the main breadwinners for the local area trying to navigate an employment marketplace which has radically changed since they left school. For Longbridge (and Northfield) to survive economically these people need to get back into work as quickly as possible.

A year on many of them have, though rarely at the same level of pay as before. Many of the temp jobs I did had ex-Rover guys there, traveling across town and working for a little over minimum wage. A recent Radio 4 documentary I caught had some some success stories where people had, as they say, made lemonade, but there are still a significant number still out of work. I overheard a conversation between three of them today and it was as if the factory had only just closed down. There were, essentially, still in shock, trying to come to terms with their situation. They spoke quite candidly about the inertia of not having anything to get out of bed for, the need to avoid the pub like the plague and went over and over their final cash settlement and how it affected their benefits. Their mood was not desperate but had the sense of a support group, sharing woes but also advice and information. But overall I got the impression the reality still hadn’t sunk in.

Today I turned right on the Bristol Road and went to the factory. Unlike the other closed and abandoned buildings I like to photograph this one was really odd. It’s a huge complex, at least a mile square, and completely silent. Some sections have been demolished but the bulk remains complete with signage. Having cycled right around the perimeter I was struck by the lack of vandalism and graffiti, as if it were a sacred tomb.

A few photos are here. More may follow.