browseShipbuilding on the Tyne
Bruce Rae (Photographer)
Original exhibition text by Paul Rutishauser, 1983:
I’ll have to join the back of the queue with the other 32 million. It seems that they’re trying to save something, but it’s rather like closing the door after the horse has bolted. The resources we could have had from the Common Market and the North Sea Oil seem to be dwindling away - being wasted so that people can stand on the dole queue. It’s getting to the stage now where people are resigned to going on the dole. Once upon a time there used to be a bit of a fight in people... But now they are resigned to the fact that the powers that be deem this to happen and there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s amazing, but I think they’ve knocked all the fight out of everybody in this area. Shipyard worker
In the early nineteenth century the Tyne was described as a cursed horse pond - so badly silted up had the river become that it was possible to wade across even at the estuary. Yet in the space of a few years human ingenuity and human labour transformed the river. Tyneside was turned into one of the principal sites of heavy engineering in the world. The newly-dredged river and the proximity of coal and iron ore made the area particularly ideal for the construction of iron and steel ships. A century later Tyneside remains the centre of shipbuilding activities in this country - a country dependent on shipping to carry 98% of its imports and exports. Yet the industry is struggling to survive - the victim of global conditions that have hit shipyards everywhere.
When oil prices rose in 1973 there was an almost immediate downturn in sea-borne trade. Initially this was in the tanker sector but as unwanted tankers converted to carry other bulk cargoes the surplus of ships spread through every merchant sector. As the oil crisis developed into a general recession the decline in trade worsened. By the end of 1982, 84 million tons of shipping were laid up - a staggering 12% of the total world fleet. In this situation there is little demand for new shipping. Yards all over the world are competing for a demand in new ships that is less than a third of their combined shipbuilding capacity. In a healthy market survival of the British shipbuilding industry was proving difficult enough. With the market almost non-existent the future is highly precarious.
Nationalisation was an attempt, late in the day, to reorganise an ageing industry. British Shipbuilders, formed on 1 July 1977, was to plan and finance the necessary modernisation. On Tyneside the capital investment since nationalisation has totalled £13 million. But this assistance has been at a price - with the aid has gone the insistence that the workforce be reduced - in the same period 7,750 jobs have been lost in what management refers to as ‘slimming down’. However if the yards are to have any future financial aid must continue if not increase. As other governments have clearly recognised they face a simple choice over their shipyards. They can either subsidise them through what they hope will be only a temporary trough or they can stand back and watch yards close and shipbuilding capability disappear with all the social repercussions at a local level and the strategic implications at a national level.
Most governments are opting to support their native industry realising that if they can keep the yards intact they should be able to profit in a future, healthier market from which competitors have disappeared. Sadly it could be that British yards are amongst some of the first such disappearances. Shipyard workers here have watched in disbelief as even government contracts for new ships have been allowed to go overseas. The government has set impossibly harsh limits of support to British Shipbuilders whilst its announced intention of handing the profitable warship divisions to private owners suggests it has little commitment to the future of the corporation. The yards are fast running out of work – 84% of those ships on order are due for completion by the end of 1983. Without policies and subsidies to attract more orders it could be that this country will soon have no merchant shipbuilding industry.