Last week unions accused the UK Government of betrayal after a £1.25 billion order for five new warships appeared set to go to Merseyside.
It emerged that BAE Systems had signed a deal with Cammell Laird to “prime, build and assemble” those five Type 31e vessels at their Birkenhead base, rather than in Scotland as had been expected.
Though the tender process is still open, it seems inconceivable that this bid won’t win the billion pound contract, meaning the vast majority of the work on these smaller ships will go to Merseyside and not the Clyde.
In the days since, Tory ministers have told Scotland and the SNP to cheer up, stop the "doom and gloom" and told shipworkers on the Clyde that they should be happy with what they've got.
Despite this, Tory Defence Minister Michael Fallon denied that any promises had been broken, saying that the UK had "kept faith" with the Clyde shipyards, and claiming they had 20 years of guaranteed work.
Here, though, is a video of Ruth Davidson during the 2016 Holyrood election campaign specifically promising that the "light frigate order" would definitely be going to the Clyde.
"They're coming to the Clyde, as discussed last year, to the same timetable and the same number," she said.
Thanks to www.indyref2.scot for unearthing this one.
Duncan McPhee, a senior shop steward with the Unite union at BAE systems at Scotstoun, said last week: “We are not happy, these are ships we would have expected to be built on the Clyde.
“As far as we are concerned they should have been part of the 13-ship package we were clearly promised.
“We were told then we would have the order for 13 frigates. Now we are down to eight and the five cut-price frigates, which will not be built here.”
He said the pledges had been made when the workforce were urged to accept restructuring at the cost of nearly 2,000 jobs on the Clyde and in Portsmouth in order to equip BAE systems for the future.
McPhee added: “This work should have been concentrated in Glasgow. The government is trying to introduce a failed policy for complex naval ships, which is to have open competition within a country.
“None of our peer countries do that — France, Italy, Spain, Germany, certainly the US. They have what is called a national champion to provide complex naval ships.
“We had this failed policy in the past. If we go back to the 1980s, we had internal competition where shipyards went bust taking on contracts that they couldn’t deliver.”
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