It was a gloomy start for families in 1980 when in January that year many well known Blantyre companies announced redundancies. As a new decade started, several Blantyre firms consolidated their troubles.
On 7th January, an astonishing 170 jobs were lost at Blantyre Engineering. Receivers were to be called in and it was expected that all the remaining workforce would also soon lose their jobs, although hope remained at that time that the factory could be sold or saved.
That same week Reyrolle Belmos the electrical equipment manufacturers announced that 10%, around 70 of their 700 employees were to be made redundant. A spokesperson for the company commented at the time that it was due to a downturn in manufacturing.
Also that week, Executex Clothing Ltd laid off 26 workers from the 180 strong workforce but were quick to add they weren’t in trouble and were going to stay in Blantyre. Simplicity Patterns had laid off 70 people just a few weeks earlier.
In the space of a month, 346 jobs in Blantyre had vanished, creating a notable rise in unemployment and spike in those attending the job centre. It is little wonder there was such a strong appetite for ASDA to be built as quickly as possible with the job opportunities this brought, the foundations of which were already in by that Spring.
From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka
On Social Media, the following comments were received on Facebook about this article:
Isabel Cooper When did hector pows close?
James Barrie That was the year I came to Canada. I was on strike at the bolt work in burnbank at the time.
Caroline Johnstone My dad William Johnstone worked at the Belmos as a semi skilled sheet metal worker.
John Queen the Thatcher years of get on your bike to try to find non existent jobs while Scotland’s industrial heartland was decimated.
Andrew Little Blantyre Engineering regrouped for a spell as Strathclyde Process Engineering out of a facility at Cadzow Bridge- not sure how long they survived but were there in 1988.
John Queen I remember well when I lived in the Timber houses back then, every morning there would be streams of people walking to their jobs in the industrial est and the same at 4:30 when they clocked off within a year the stream became a trickle.