Harland and Wolff to go into administration today…

It looks like the end of an era today as Harland and Wolff is due to go into administration. The company that once employed 35,000 people is now a mere shadow of its former self, employing just 130 currently.

With so few jobs the economic loss is not that great, people with light engineering skills are in high demand and I imagine most workers should have no issue getting reemployed. It’s more what the shipyard represents in terms of our social and cultural history. As well as creating some of the most famous ships of the age the yard was also the scene of some very nasty sectarian intimidation especially during the pogroms of the 1920s. In the 1970s hundreds of Catholics were also intimated out of their jobs in the yard.

Harland and Wolff has been a fixture of the city since 1861, the shipyards along with the linen mills helped to grow Belfast. The linen mills are long gone and it seems shipbuilding has now also been consigned to the history books. Indeed this century Harland and Wolff have mainly been in the renewable energy business, assembling wind farm turbines.

I am no expert on this sector but you would have thought with renewable energy booming there would be enough work to keep the yard going? Indeed you would think you would need sites with the capacity to be able to handle large scale engineering projects. Maybe someone will buy up the yard cheap from the administrators?

As for the famous cranes, they are not listed but I imagine they will survive in some shape or form as they are an essential part of the Belfast skyline. In 10 years time look forward to the Harland and Wolff luxury apartment complex, with a fine dining restaurant in Samson and a bungee jump for the tourists in Goliath.

Brian O'Neill

I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.