The Dennis Plant Closure

Scottish Workers Are Being Ripped Off Again By Edinburgh and London

Every politician in the imperialist countries is now pretending to be very concerned about de-industrialisation. Britain, being the oldest imperialist country in the world, has suffered from this particular affliction for well over 150 years. The observations first made by J. A Hobson and then expanded upon by Lenin, dating from the early part of the 20th century, detailed how parts of southern England had been de-industrialised by the beginning of World War One, leading to areas like Kent becoming nothing more than leisure parks for the rich. Now in 2025, we have had over 150 years of Britain as an imperialist country and all of the devastating effects this has had on working class life have now become much clearer. 

So that which was first written about by Lenin in 1916, has eventuated, and so drastic is it in terms of its effects, that it can no longer be denied even by bourgeois politicians. In the case of Scotland this is particularly acute given that the Scottish working class was forged in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a working class defined by coal mining, the steel industry, shipbuilding, engineering, and other forms of highly skilled manufacturing. De-industrialisation over the past 60 years in particular has hit Scotland very hard losing the mining and shipbuilding industries and the various engineering plants with no apparent plan by either the politicians in Westminster or Edinburgh to reverse this trend. Recently we saw the scandal of hundreds of jobs being lost at the Grangemouth oil refinery, with minimal resistance from either the politicians in the Edinburgh government, headed by the SNP, or the London government headed by the Labour Party. Even more inexcusable is the apparent inaction of the Unite union, which represents these workers. They failed to rally in defence of the jobs that were to be lost at Grangemouth. And now we see a further example of deliberate inertia on the part of the union, the Labour Party and the SNP when it comes to the fate of the Alexander Dennis bus manufacturing concern in Falkirk. Recently, it was announced that the bus manufacturing company Alexander Dennis, is planning to close its Falkirk and Larbert plants and to consolidate its operations at a site in Scarborough. This is threatening the loss of up to 400 jobs. The employers are citing increased competition from Chinese electric buses and the need for what they describe as greater efficiency, meaning they want to do a larger amount of work with fewer workers. Now we are at the beginning of a 45-day consultation period. But the potential for the closure of this plant has been known for at least six months. In fact the SNP government in Edinburgh gave Alexander Dennis £88 million over the last ten years to keep the plant open but as always happens with these corporate bailouts, the company takes the money and then comes back saying they’re going to make the job cuts anyway. 

The SNP is in complete accord with the Labour Party on this, in that they always walk into these traps willingly. They throw money at employers who threaten job losses, and then the job losses happen anyway. This is the logic of de-industrialisation, where the company is telling the truth to a degree in that they cannot compete with the high quality and cheaper electric buses made in China. In fact, the Scottish Government has started purchasing such buses. So what could be done then to keep the Dennis plants open in Falkirk and Larbert? What would a government that was actually dedicated to protecting manufacturing jobs in Scotland do? One solution could be to actually protect the industry. Protect bus construction from vanishing out of Scotland by nationalising the Falkirk and Larbert plants. The SNP has already thrown £88 million down the drain in a vain attempt to keep the plant open. If the private owners won’t actually do that and threaten it with closure then they should have these factories taken off them with zero compensation. Such a measure would be very popular but it is something the SNP would never do. The likes of First Minister John Swinney will throw his hands in the air and cry that this kind of protectionism is terrible and it is against trade rules and all kinds of pro capitalist shibboleths. But if they as a government were actually concerned with preserving manufacturing jobs, they would go to the mat to defend them. They would fight legal challenges. They would mobilise the population in defence of Scottish manufacturing. But none of these things are done: not over Grangemouth, not over the Dennis plant and not over anything else. The truth is that to fight the logic of de-industrialisation would actually take much more than any government in this country, be it Labour or SNP, is prepared to do. You would have to go against the fundamental interests of the British ruling class, which always takes it in the direction of closing down manufacturing concerns inside the country and exporting capital outside, of buying commodities from where they are most cheaply produced and bringing them back into the country rather than developing a sustainable manufacturing base here. 

The only way we are going to develop and sustain manufacturing, of buses or any other commodity, is by doing away with the profit motive entirely, by doing away with capitalism. The truth is that though a capitalist government can if it chooses throw up barriers to defend domestic manufacturing, the inexorable logic of capitalism, always seeking the cheapest possible place to manufacture, and always, in the case of imperialist countries, seeking to export capital for maximum advantage and de-industrialise the home country, means that it can only be fought with socialist measures. It would take a government that was determined to protect a particular industry and fundamentally change the way in which its economy was structured. 

The grim fate that the British ruling class has in store for the workers of Scotland, England and Wales alike is one of ever-growing poverty, insecure employment (employers call it flexibility) and ever-lengthening hours. The only way the capitalist class will invest anything now is if any investment is underpinned by the state and they can subject workers to a greater rate of exploitation. This is why we have seen the growth of ‘special economic zones’ across Britain where normal regulations are waived. The ruling class is preparing the ground for the imposition of a regime of terror against the working class. The wretched collection of political eunuchs in Edinburgh are just as keen on this idea as their bosses in London because they are dedicated servants of the British ruling class just as much as Starmer is.
The closure of the Dennis plant is a warning to all workers across Britain that no one will be spared the destruction of manufacturing. No political regime run by bourgeois politicians will prevent this, no matter what flag it wraps itself in. The truth is that workers across Britain now face a choice: we can either fight for socialism and a planned economy or accept the grim future of hyper exploitation that the ruling class has in mind for us.