ABSTRACT
Industrial linkages are often on the front page. December 28th, 1983 saw the collapse of the multi-million pound deal to sell cold slab steel from the British Steel Corporation’s loss-making Ravenscraig plant, outside Motherwell, to the United States Steel Corporation’s equally loss-making Fairless works in Pennsylvania for further processing. Then in early January 1984, the riots following Peugeot’s decision to close its Talbot plant outside Paris threatened supply lines to the company’s Ruyton (Coventry) works of French-made body panels, gearboxes and other parts for assembly of the Horizon, Alpine and Solara models in Britain. About a week later the focus switched to Ford’s car plant at Dagenham where the management decided to close the foundry that supplied engine blocks for the plant, preferring to import engine blocks from the European mainland. Union officials argued Fords were making Dagenham little more than an assembly factory for Ford parts made elsewhere. Finally, and again from the car industry, on February 1st, MPs were told of the much-leaked agreement by Nissan with the Department of Industry to build a Datsun manufacturing plant somewhere in Britain. Initially the cars would be built from kits imported from the Japanese parent company but the hope is to build up the ‘local’ (i.e. British and EEC) content of the finished product to 80 per cent of ex works price in 1991.
