| From Unity, 27 October 2006 |
Shuttles flying fast at the Red MillOne hardly reads bad news about job losses and factory closures in what’s left of the textile industry, because there are so many. The total work force in the North has dropped to less than eight thousand, and predictions are for more disasters to come. At the same time one small mill outside Dungiven is working overtime. A German visitor, Horst Paulukat, who writes for the Communist weekly Unsere Zeit, was trying to interview the owner and chief weaver, Marion Baur, during his recent visit. He had to wit until well after 10 p.m. and got a short interview from a very tired Marion. “I saw you going into the mill shortly after eight this morning. How do you manage to be so busy while the textile mills are breaking down all around you?” “I’ve said this on numerous occasions: they don’t close down because there is no work. The endless greed of the textile capitalists drives them right across the globe in search of extra profits. The market is so competitive now that the only way to increase the margin is to use cheaper and cheaper labour. That’s why they are all running: Herdsman’s in South Africa, Clark’s in Morocco, Desmond in Bangladesh, Baird McNutt in Poland—I could continue this list. They are not out of business but filling their pockets faster than ever by exploiting workers on poverty wages and with no rights. That goes for the big ones; the little ones are left behind, just like the workers, who are learning the hard way what all the phrases about loyalty and ‘social partnership’ were worth.” “Is it not an advantage for you that there are fewer and fewer textile manufacturers here? Doesn’t that mean less competition?” “Of course not. The infrastructure is getting worse all the time. There are hardly any spinners left, so where do you get your yarn—providing you want to keep your promise and make Irish linen and not stuff from thread made by kids somewhere else? “If there are no bleachers and dyers, how do you get your fabric white or coloured? “Add to this what I’ve said about cheap labour and the cheap products coming back in here and you see why no sensible local textile manufacturer can possibly be interested in the running away.” “Is there such a thing as a sensible capitalist?” “There are some who are starting to wonder whether the so-called globalisation is in their interest. I went to visit a weaver in County Armagh recently. He runs one of the very old mills here, has seen his work force reduced to just a few, finds it hard to understand why ‘cheap Chinese stuff,’ as he calls it, is coming in to do him harm. He put a photograph up in his office, taken at a demonstration—lots of flags with hammer and sickle on them. I asked him about it and found that though he doesn’t really understand the deeper meaning, he does feel there needs to be changes, which is what the flags he saw in Greece stand for. This man—like many others of the small manufacturers—is learning the sore lesson of the wolf mentality of this system. These people have a lot of common interests with the working class, whether they see that or not.” “All that doesn’t really explain why your particular place is so busy.” “We try to give real value for money. We don’t use any raw materials which had child labour involved, take locally made yarn wherever we can get it; we don’t sell linen from China as Irish linen. The customers can see that the work of my hands has really gone into the products. There are people who appreciate that—not enough yet, but their number is growing. With the product range in the big shops getting more uniform and less traceable all the time, the people who are looking for real things are forced to look for different suppliers, and we are one of them. My customers are political, in the wider sense of the word.” “Why do they call this place the Red Mill around here?” “It’s got little to do with our range of products—though at this very moment I am making a hundred red flags for the communist youth movement in Germany. “People know that my colour of politics is red. I guess there are more people in this area who have seen me outside factories protesting than inside my own. When Courtauld’s in Limavady were putting the axe to the town’s last sizeable factory, we picketed and got the television to the place. They preferred to film us and took no notice of the lord mayor, who had no time for protesting against job losses. She had to rant about some flag she didn’t want to see flying. People remember these things: they know we stood outside Desmond’s when they shut shop in Derry, they remember who leafleted Sion Mills when Herdsman’s forgot their good and just principles of Quaker education and swiftly globalised Europe’s most modern linen spinning mill away to South Africa. “The bourgeois politicians remember these things as well. When they call this place the Red Mill they don’t mean well. When ordinary people do it, it is a privilege to us.” |
| Home page > Publications > Unity > 2006 > Shuttles flying fast at the Red Mill |
| Baile > Foilseacháin > Unity > 2006 > Shuttles flying fast at the Red Mill |