Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Costly Perceptions of the North's UnrestAuthor(s): John ComptonSource: Fortnight, No. 236 (Mar. 24 - Apr. 20, 1986), pp. 15-16Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25550801 .

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Business and Finance

COSTLY PERCEPTIONS

OF THE NORTH'S UNREST John Compton

IN THE aftermath of the strike called to

protest against the Anglo-Irish Agree ment, the lists of statistics have been

paraded across the pages of the local, na

tional and indeed international news

papers. In a stream of numbers, the so

called facts of the stoppage were reported in a manner which probably sold a lot of

newspapers but explained very little. We

read that 47 policemen were injured, 35 shots were fired, the police received 237

complaints of intimidation, 329 reports were made of damage to property and 670

road blocks were erected, of which 30 per cent were not removed by the security forces. One English tabloid reported on the plight of three cats in Portadown,

while a rival addressed the fate of a lorry load of pigs stranded in Ballymoney.

____________ ^^^B^^^B ;:^i_ii''i'^: jk _j I |sllfl_j

Scene of devastation outside the burned warehouse at the Saracen textile factory in Lurgan.

Counting of costs of the strike in both economic and investment terms has been

less evident. The Industrial Development Board conducted a mini poll of manufac

turing companies, seeking an estimate of

those businesses that opened and the rate

of absenteeism among employees. Ac

cording to the findings, up to one third of the total workforce in the province was

working normally on the day of the strike.

This figure must be treated with some cau

tion as the survey was limited to a selection of unnamed companies that reported ex

treme rates of absenteeism varying from

10 to almost HX) per cent. Another com

plicating factor was the number of com

panies that began the day by working normally but sent their employees home

later in the day. And several companies

allowed their employees to take part in the

dispute without loss of pay but arranged to

make up the lost production with a special

Sunday shift.

Faced with such a limited amount of

basic information it is impossible to quan

tify the actual costs of the closure in eco

nomic terms but, assuming that two thirds

of the industrial workforce did not work

normally, the loss of sales revenues and

added value during the day of action were

modest in the context of the annual output of the manufacturing industry. And most

observers are agreed that the local manu

facturers would be capable of making up the lost production reasonably fast. Even

if the loss of manufacturing output was

?2.5 million and the production was never

made up, this is still only 0.2% of the

estimated Public Expenditure Subvention to Northern Ireland for 1984/85 and, as

usual, everyone expects the British gov ernment to foot the bill.

In the aftermath of the strike, one inci

dent which was worthy of more attention

than it got was the estimated ?2 million worth of fire damage to the Saracen

clothing plant in Lurgan, Co. Armagh. The company's 420 workers have been

told not to turn up for work until the fac

tory is operational again and the incident could come back to haunt us.

Saracen is part of a larger group that has made a major commitment to Northern

Ireland over the years in terms of money and jobs. But it is not just any old garment

manufacturer. It is part of that exclusive club of Marks and Spencer's suppliers.

M&S, is a good company to supply and it encourages its vendors to invest in tech

nology and management and generally re

pays this loyalty with the opportunity to make a reasonable level of profit. One

interesting aspect of the garment manufac

turing industry is that each factory which

supplies clothes to companies like M&S, C&A, British Home Stores and Little woods are exactly the type of labour-in

tensive company the IDB dreams of luring to the North.

The members of this exclusive, but in

formal manufacturers club tend to keep in

touch with each other and the incident at

Lurgan must have sent shivers down the

spines of many M&S suppliers in the UK who will now be viewing potential invest ment in Ulster and its generally well-per ceived textile industry in a new and not too

favourable light. Industrial development is a business in

its own right, and the primary objective is to get potential inward investors on a

plane so they can see first hand, the oppor tunities which the host country is offering, this involves show and tell?show them an

efficient production plant and tell them

they could have one too. Show them good industrial relations and high productivity

and tell them they could enjoy the same.

Unfortunately it cuts the other way too.

Show recurring scenes of political and in

dustrial unrest on Japanese, American or

European television and then try and say it

is all terriby exaggerated. In this respect industrialists' perceptions of a country are

more important than reality. When the IDB and the Republic's In

dustrial Development Authority are

chasing the jobs, perception is everything. We know the reality of the situation here

and we have trouble understanding why

foreigners don't accept what we tell them.

In the same way we all know that the

Spanish are lazy, their industry is in chaos and the word Manana (which means to

morrow) conveys a sense of urgency un

known in the average Spanish factory. Well, if you believe that you'd be dead wrong. Spain, since it entered the com

mon market has entertained a queue of

potential investors, headed by the big Jap anese companies, including Sanyo and

Fujitsu. Already Hewlett-Packard and Olivetti

are in Spain making computers, Sperry is

developing artificial intelligence for computers while Siemens is developing electronic project designs. Seat, the Span ish carmaker is making 70,000 Volks

wagen cars a year for the home market and a further 50,000 VW Polos annually for export to the rest of Edrope. The reason

for this is that the quality of the Spanish built Golf or Polo is at least equal to that of the German made model and the labour

continued overleaf

Fortnight 24th March 15

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Business and Finance continued from Page 15 cost is 30% less. Early estimates for 1985 are that Spain exported 800,000 cars to the rest of Europe and this is expected to increase.

Foreign investment in Spain is currently running at $2 billion annually and despite the free access to the Spanish markets af

forded to other EEC members, the tarriff

protection afforded to the domestic in

dustry will remain, at least for a while. The timetable for the abolition of all customs duties means they must be halved by 1989 and scrapped totally by 1993. In the mean time the domestic and foreign manufac

turers can consolidate their position as an

integral part of the European community. The Spanish economy might not be in

the best of shape but it is attracting the big names and the big money because it is well located geographically, offers a ready pool

of low cost labour and is in the EEC. Des

pite this, the country only recently emerged from the economic and political isolation of the Franco era and still suffers from its share of terrorism and internal

political violence. Apart from the central

European location, not a dissimilar profile to that of Northern Ireland. It is however, perceived differently by the investors and, when push comes to shove, that's what

counts.

There is a certain amount of external

interest in the Ulster scene which is

making some people think again about some of our own local companies. It has

been traditional for the IDB to travel the world and invite selected companies to

forgo the delights of expansion at home and come to Northern Ireland instead.

Now the boot is on the other foot and other countries are looking at some of our

best locally owned companies with a view to attracting them overseas. At least one

group of American representatives have

been to Northern Ireland to persuade local

companies to relocate or expand in the

States. And there are fears in some circles that it could be very easy to convince some local industrialists to pack up their tech

nology, their know-how and their families and head stateside. At least that's the per

ception. For that reason the cost of the strike

cannot be measured in the meaningful terms needed to assess the costs to the job creation agencies. Equally difficult to

measure is the perception in other coun

tries that the average Ulster businessman

has had enough and could be persuaded to

go and take his business elsewhere.

The

Honest Ulsterman

?1 in shops, ?1.25 by post, 4 issues

?5 ($12 in North America) to:

Honest Ulsterman, 70 Eglantine Avenue,

Belfast BT96DY. ii

I NEW IRELAND I GROUP

I believes that the only way out of the I

I Irish nightmare is for Northern I

I Protestants to break out of the unionist I

I mould and rediscover their radical I

I dissenting tradition, and for Southern | I Catholics to commit themselves to a I

I truly pluralist society. I

I Details of membership and meetings from: I

NIG, Fountain Centre, College Street,

Belfast, BT1 6ET. (Tel: 225337)

-~~~~~~

PR

Im '

TREAD SOFTLY.. . I Paintings and Drawings by I

Psychiatric Patients from the I Gransha Therapy Unit I

TUES-SAT 1 pm-9 pm I

16 Fortnight 24th March

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