Singer Sewing Machines | Clydebank Factory |Scotland | TV Eye | 1979
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2018
- What caused the impending closure of the Singer factory in Clydebank and how will this affect the local community in Clydebank. Thames TV's 'TV Eye' Investigates.
First shown: 01/11/1979
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Quote: VT22066
Once employed so many people, they built their own train station. Which still operates as a rather sad reminder of lost industry.
Singer even made computers at one point
I have one of the last good sewing machines to come out of there. A Tan Featherweight 221K. It's beautiful and was my Grandmother's.
The interview at the made me want to 🤮. The Political admits not to be an expert but he's been allowed to voice his biased opinion anyway 😡
Keith Joseph was offering no solutions; merely stating vague platitudes of success and failure as if he were lecturing an under performing school student. I got the immediate impression he was placed in this role to manage the planned decline in industries.
The investment necessary to stay competitive was absent from many UK industries for a long time before this film and thus metrics like productivity - sales divided by costs - were always going to be skewed when comparing with, say, an equivalent German or Japanese manufacturer who were far more likely to be receiving sufficient investment money to maintain competitiveness. (In time they too came under pressure by the forces of global money seeking the highest return possible so you see them losing jobs to cheaper foreign work forces.)
Many industries were simply left to 'wither on the vine' with the management and work force muddling through as best they could but in the end being resigned to the ultimate demise of their factories. Inevitably even the well intentioned management had no option but to run them into the ground knowing that was all that their corporate superiors and bankers wanted of them.
Entry to the EEC in 1972 meant the floodgates were opened for imports, adding further pressure to these manufacturers. The stress was too much for many and led to the industrial action that is often cited as the cause for the strife. The truth is a little different - industrial action was not a cause of the plight of industry, but a symptom of its terminal decline.
Thank you ThamesTV for uploading this video
My dad met Keith Joseph in 1982 when he was an ILR broadcast engineer. A complete arrogant piece of poop apparently; Michael Heseltine however was polite.
Well put. Other RUclips comments suggest the workers were responsible for sourcing, selling, and (really unbelievably!) engineering the products they fabricated. These were sincere, hard workers watching their livelihood crumble in front of them. Must have been miserable and frightening, especially those at the age ready to retire into oblivion.
Brian Gould was right about the decline of British manufacturing.
We JUST found a Singer Pheasant decaled sewing machine at a thrift shop made in the late 1800s, all seized but with its original parts, for
$25.00
Beautiful machine. I'd take a vintage singer any day.....all metal parts and they still keep going!
I'm wondering what vintage machines came out of that particular factory? God bless those workers
Politicians haven't changed have they? Sir Keith Joseph living in cloud cuckoo land. Solve the problem? Nah.....just talk crap. So depressing. The Union guy was spot on. The rot needed to be stopped back then before the collapse of industry became a tsunami of closures but the government was never interested. The government failed to realise that once you lose industry you never get it back. Maybe there was only so much they could do realistically but they aggravated the situation rather than helping.
British Leyland went on strike at the drop of a hat
Ron McCullock Who dropped their hat .?
Interesting.
Interesting how that "unbiased" report turned in to a party political broadcast on behalf of the conservative party.
Singer failed from lack of investment not of money, but of ideas. The world still buys and uses sewing machines. British steel failed for lack of investment, but again, not just of money, but of ideas, of management and government with real world insight. The world still buys and uses steel. Scottish ship building failed for lack of similar investment. The world still buys and uses ships.
Thatcherism was a blind faith religion, where the "worker" was seen as a "problem". If necessary, they had to be beaten in to submission, after all, this had worked throughout the Empire, so why not in those last remaining bits of empire like Scotland.
If moronic adherence to dogma caused the collapse of the industry in question, so be it.
Might is right, and the plebs should know their place.
If we had taken a more pragmatic and reasoned view of the problems we faced, and had invested in the necessary equipment and technology (as the 58 year old worker in the factory suggested), we could have produced world leading designs and world class sewing machines. Instead, we blamed the "lack of productivity" on the unions, and exterminated those unions and with them, our abilities to function as a manufacturing nation.
This was followed by a collective hubristic shrug of the Thatcherite shoulders.
Ho hum, so what if we have fucked up 300 years of engineering and technological lead in the space of one term in office, we don't need any of them real jobs anyway when we can simply go back to gambling on the stock market and worshiping at the alter of the religion of "Laissez-faire, greed is good, screw the environment, our economist gods tell us the universe is really all about economic growth" capitalism.
The blind faith of such fools as self styled Sir blah and self styled Lady blah-blah and their blind faith in such nonsense is a little like Douglas Adam's parody where the Golgafrinchans, who have decided to use leaves as currency, decide to burn down all of the forests in order to control inflation.
hear hear. And that horror of a man at the end was part of the government that intentionally finished of much of British Indusrty.
Your absolutely right, it’s heart breaking to witness the seeds of our own destruction.
Sad thing is we were all in part to blame for this . You had bad management and union problems but really it was down the realities of world trade . Despite what we might say if we can save £50 by buying the same item but made abroad we'll choose that option . The first great industrial revolution started in Britain and ended here too at this time . We're now still successful but just embraced a new type of industry , no more sewing machines .
Does anybody know if was singers marketing strategy early 1900 to buy second hand sewing machines to scrap them to increase sales of their machines, I remember a documentary around this time about the subject. It relates to the right to repair legislation that is being challenged at the moment (you can't replace a battery in a phone or headphones any more, you can't even change the software on some phones/mini computers even though you own the item)
The product wasn't that good, I remember my mother wanting a Swiss Bernina machine at the time and that a Singer machine just did not cut it, neither cheap nor desirable nor feature rich.
Had Singer not rested on their laurels and innovated the product and put the customer first with a decent warranty then they could have built on the legacy they had rather than thrown it away. I blame stubborn American management and their out of touch ways.
Totally agree many UK industries were run by bean counters and overpaid consultants they introduced inferior components and materials thus compromising the brand. By all means deregulate ban unions get rid of health and safety then you can compete with the far east at a great human cost. We are to blame as customers for buying the stuff ignorant of it's TRUE cost and origin. Unfortunately customer is one of these free market dogma terms gone are passenger citizen and soon patients
09:58 there's your answer there.
Truthfully Singer employees put themselves out of jobs , they made so many quality machines in the youth of the company , those same machines are still running perfect today , i own many from 1880s to the 1960s , if they made lower numbers and still made the same quality today they could charge what they want , how many products do you own that outlast your life span and your kids ,,,,name one please ......still waiting .........they could put that on the box ....
We makes the parts of sewing machine...
Ordinary greed in an economy of growth. There was no need to go to Southeast Asia, providing millions of cheap labor with work. There was no need to sell products to those who then began to produce a huge amount of ready-made clothes after what there was no need to buy sewing machines in the household.
Make something no one wants
to buy.....shame :(
People did want the produce. The American management decided it could make more money by running Clydebank down and exploiting workers abroad. At one point workers from other countries were being brought over to be trained by the Clydebank workforce.
Productivity isn't equal numbers build! The good old cop-out...productivity is the number build in relationship to the COST per unit...Socialism doesn't create jobs, who knew..
"Some newspapers of the time used the term "Red Clydeside" to refer, largely derisively, to the groundswell of popular and political radicalism that had erupted in Scotland"
"The Red Clydeside era still impacts upon the politics of the area today. Ever since, Glasgow has been known for political and industrial militancy."
But He! just blame the bad capitalists...lol...so, how many jobs are left in that shithole now?
In a few words, its because of greed. Working in a factory like that is damn hard work. The conditions are brutal. If human rights are not considered, then sure you can milk the work force. Sure , countries who don't value their workforce and can get workers even if people get burnt out and ill will make a profit. Its all about the money in the end.
and there's nothing on Clyde bank to tell the story, The so called museum is pathetic.. just afew machines I have more at home. Not one treadle table no coffin lids no brentwood cases , no long beak shuttles, not one video of the factory or stories from the people shame on you all so much lost all you boast about is the rail stop ????
Wow. How surprising. I fantasized about visiting Clydebank from the United States. I have 8 vintage Singers. Three (3) form my everyday machines.