Britain should have bought back Jaguar and Land Rover

HIT HARD by cheap labour competition from Asia, US-based motor multinational Ford has sold its former proud British brands of Jaguar and Land Rover for £1 billion to Tata, the Indian conglomerate which manufactures the world’s cheapest car.

The deal will mean that jobs in the West Midlands and at the Halewood plant on Merseyside will be lost as production is moved to India where labour costs are a third of those here. It will mean more British manufacturing shutting down, more British jobs lost, more British lives ruined and more British communities devastated thanks to the ‘global free market’ to which Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats all insist Britain’s economic future is signed up to.

It was the global free market that allowed historic British motor firms like Jaguar and Land Rover to be taken over by multinationals like Ford in the first place. Vast conglomerates who owe no loyalty to Britain and subject to no effective control from our Government. Conglomerates who are then able to treat British firms and their workers as pawns in their global game, regardless of the cost in jobs and the welfare of the workforce.

Ford downgraded the once prestigious and luxury Jaguar marque so it could cut global costs by using parts and designs from elsewhere in its empire. Their so-called X-class Jag was basically a Ford Mondeo with a cat on the bonnet. A fact that was not lost on potential customers, causing sales in the key US export market to drop from 60,000 in 2002 to 20,000 in 2006, and causing Jaguar to nosedive deep into the red with a loss of $550 million last year.

Land Rover is, as it always has been, profitable, and the Halewood plant has been recognised as the most productive in Europe. So these two famous brands have been bundled together to sugar the pill so that Ford could dump Jaguar.

Industry analysts agree that British jobs are now under threat, as is the very future of the plants in Coventry, Birmingham, Warwickshire and Merseyside in which they work. Some of Britain’s most experienced and skilled workers will be dumped on the dole. Those of them aged over 40 will probably never work again, facing only a life of hopelessness and poverty. Whilst, bereft of the money the car workers spent, shops, pubs and small businesses around the plants will also go to the wall. Turning yet more communities into sinks of poverty and despair while Labour and Tory politicians alike turn their backs on them to bow low before the bankers and City sharks who bankroll them and their parties

.A British National Party Government would have bought Jaguar and Land Rover back off Ford, as we would the last remaining carmakers in Britain. British motor manufacturing would be returned to British control with Government and workforce working together to back technological research and development, supported as a national strategic endeavour, and co-ordinated and funded by the State. To safeguard our industry and the jobs it provides, tariff walls would be introduced compensating for the unfair advantage of employing cheap Third World labour, and forcing foreign imports to compete on quality and on a level playing field.

Isn’t it ironic that this Labour Government can throwaway £30 billion to bail out a failing bank but doesn’t think it right to invest £1 billion in buying back Jaguar and Land Rover to secure jobs and a future for British car making in this country.

Isn’t it ironic that our Trade Unions, which should be looking after the interests of British car workers, have welcomed the Tata deal. Presumably the TUC’s anti-British leadership are delighted about all those new cheap labour jobs that will be created in India.

Only the British National Party will set Britain free from this deadly and destructive ‘global market economy’ and safeguard the future of British industry, securing the jobs, communities and lives of the people who depend on it. Use your vote on May 1st to help win back our country.