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Rover RIP.Families protest outside Downing St. Last week.

Bolshie Photos | 16.04.2005 19:01 | Globalisation | Indymedia | Social Struggles | London | World

Where is the missing £400million of the workers money?

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Bolshie Photos
- e-mail: bolshiephotos@yahoo.co.uk

Comments

Hide the following 15 comments

Good ridance

16.04.2005 19:21

One planet poisoning, people killing, capitalist car maker gone - hundreds to go.

Good Ridance. As for those who worked for Rover, well they were just part of the problem and deserved what they got.

Planet

Planet you are a complete tosser!

16.04.2005 22:14

I hope you fancy your chances with the people who lost
their lively hoods scumbag because you deserve to die!

RIP MG Rover!

Death Knell!

cars for the affluent

16.04.2005 23:37

I can't GRIN more just to know that those elite shits won't be able to buy expensive rover cars anymore. Ha F*cking Ha.
As for the workers ... more unemployment more resentment ... Wake the fuck up!!!
Does capitalism really work in your favour??

Sod 'em all

.....

17.04.2005 10:52

Planet I hope you die in agony from an easily curable hernia while being rushed to hospital at 11 miles an hour in a horse drawn cart.

Guido

agree with planet

17.04.2005 13:34

Pile of shit Rovers being propped up for years. Solidairty. plenty of people worse off than them pal. If you want to think your hard enough fuckwit. Diversion tactics, yes. Worker solidarity with the fucking reformist bought off unions. ( diddn't see them coming out for the rag trade workers and as for catering etc....)Plenty of people voted for this SHITE. I would have loved the chances at your wages. Don't give me this shit about 'families and jobs' - snetimental bollocks for an ignorant overfed greedy nation. Yes it's a shame people havew lost their jobs LIKE THE FUCKING REST OF US. What needs top happen is to be given DECENT employment - sustainable and rewarding - NOT flogging a dead horse like FUCKING CAPITALISM.

1 solution...

shutting the car plant

17.04.2005 14:06

closing car plants is what happens in a free market economy. most of the adults in the pictures above will have voted for parties in government which support this economic model. they must have hoped it was going to happen to somebody else - just like the uk workers in arms trade companies who put bubblewrap round cartons of anti personnel mines confident in the knowledge it won't be their feet which get blown off.

it's right that to combat free market globalisation localities (countries or regions) should try very hard to create local economies with far less imports and far more homemade stuff. this might mean uk car production for uk car buyers or uk vegetables for uk tables. but on it's own flag waving nationalism aimed at getting support for uk industry is not enough. this is exactly the kind of shopfloor nationalism which allowed a labour government to bomb iraq. we need a global movement not hampered by nationalisms but with strong local economies. shipping apples from new zealand to the uk while there are no uk apples to be found has to be a thing of the past.

- -

I'm afraid this is what happens if your cars arent reliable enough to compete

17.04.2005 16:44

Rover went down because the ordinary british public bought other makes of car.

If you assert these workers right to go on making cars, you have to explain how you will handle other peoples right not to buy cars they don't want..

If the government somehow forced people to buy these cars against their will, where would it end? Firstly, the workers would feel so safe, they would stop caring about quality at all, and Rover's reliability would get even worse.
Secondly, every other inadequate manufacturer and supplier would demand the same. Thirdly we would live in a total police state.

When I bought a car last year, I did think about buying Rover out of pity and sympathy, but when I looked at the figures (cost and reliability) the potential sacrifice of my own money and time was just to huge. I bought a Toyota, and it has been perfect.

It's sad, but without all the rest of us losing our freedoms, bad manufacturers just have to die.

What sort of cars did communist Soviet Union come up with? Ask yourself !

sad but wise

Occupy or die

18.04.2005 11:09

While no supporter of Rover cars as they exist (?) today, I wish to express my sympathy to all the workers at Longbridge: it seems you have been properly stitched up, by the government, devious bosses, and corrupt union officials.

It is however crucial that you seize back the initiative right now, or it will be gone forever. Working people can only achieve self respect by taking control of their own destiny. Go to the Indymedia Argentina website, and see what workers are doing there in a very similar situation to your own. Be inspired. Link up to swap ideas. Find out how to occupy and run your own business. Take your own company decisions, collectively. Listen to capitalism's excluded voices, and people will come to you to help out with specialist skills. Change the company name to something you decide between yourselves. Push for more environmentally friendly designs, and build up a new customer base through solidarity. Find out how to run things yourselves, without bosses or government's big brother. If it can be done in Argentina, it can be done anywhere.

First things first... occupy, and the rest will follow as a natural course!

Durutti

Occupy what ?

18.04.2005 14:08

Why would occupation help. This plant manufactured cars that peole didn't want to buy. Indeed people havn't wanted to buy Rover Cars for ages. For the past few years they have been propped up by BMW money and then before that by BAE Systems money.

Face it - Rover is dead.

Car Buyer

disappointed with comments, lack of interest

18.04.2005 14:34

Sorry to say this but the apparent lack of interest in the Rover closure on IndyMedia (no feature, very few posts) along with these dismissive, arrogant comments, really does disappoint me, and worries me to boot.

People, we're talking about thousands of badly-paid workers and their families and communities here. If we show them no sympathy or solidarity because we're too pure in our anti-car ideology or whatever, then why on earth should they listen to us about anything ever?

Rover could be renationalised and refitted to make more useful products. Livelihoods and communities could be saved. The alternative is ripping the heart out of the West Midlands just like closing the mines did to Yorkshire and Wales. We should demand the government put people before profit.

At least Socialist Worker seem to be on the case.

type

Where's the £400 million gone

18.04.2005 14:39

Most of it will have gone into the paypackets of Rover workers over the past few years. Let's face it, they've not made much money making and selling cars have they?

sid

The Better Option

18.04.2005 16:25

As someone who has had the chance to "invest" in (buy from) the solidarity economy of Latin America, I would be more than happy to buy a car from an occupied plant, so long as it was reasonably fuel efficient. Instead, I must either not buy any car (as now) or (possibly in future) buy a car which has been produced by slaves. Go take your pick!

Resist, Occupy, Live!
Rebel W

Rebel W

What do you expect?

18.04.2005 16:33

I agree with 'type' and am very disappointed with the views expressed above. If Anarchism means parroting the neo-liberal bullshit of the tories and new labour, then it is no wonder that it has only ever been of marginal influence in the British labour movement. After all, who wants to listen to a bunch of unwashed, workshy, spotty little accountants-to-be, who are pissing away daddies trust fund at university whilst telling us how rebellious they are.

trade unionist

let me try to get this clear

18.04.2005 21:27

What you're saying is, guys

If workers demand the right to keep making inferior products people don't want, we'll have to stop people buying better stuff from elsewhere, and force them.

Presumably by becoming "little-englanders" and closing the border to stuff made by non-british workers.

Sort of - "if british people can only make crap cars, then british people only deserve to buy crap cars"

So now we do this for everything. Close the borders, turn our face away from workers everywhere else. Buy british by law and by force, and set up a huge heavy handed police state to stamp out smuggling of non-british goods.

Of course, all the other countries retaliate. So we are isolated. We only buy what we can make. We only make what we ourselves can buy. And even if we make it through, all our brothers in Africa are left to rot.

What problem have we solved? The layoffs and loss of jobs would be gigantic - half the damn workforce at least.
Everybody making exports. And we'd have to redirect and retrain and re-equipp millions to make the stuff we used to import.

I really do wish people would think things through.

Or maybe their politics are such that their target could only be reached by passing through 20 years of starvation and death, with the collapse of all our institutions like hospitals and old peoples homes. With no certainty of arriving safely anywhere else but in war-lord territory.

If that is what they want then why not say so clearly, so we all understand what the sacrifice, what the goal, and what the danger.

You know, when my Dad was a committed left-winger years ago, the whole damn movement took pride in reading, learning, and rational debate and self improvement. Lots of whats on indymedia is babyish, uninformed emotion. He would be appalled.

sad but wise

they need jobs and our solidarity

19.04.2005 15:39

Sorry if my earlier comment seemed harsh, and while it's nice to get support from 'trade unionist' (hey, I'm one too!) I can't endorse her/his unecessary sniping at IMC readers.

But just to re-iterate: Rover could be re-nationalised and re-fitted to make useful products - jobs, livelihoods and communities could be saved at the same time as addressing environmental and social concerns. And yes, not just Rover, this could and should happen across the board, an economy that puts people before profit.

And the road from here to there has to start with showing solidarity for people in desparate situations like this.

type