TO FORTHSIDE
Scotland with a “man in a van” service operating from Yorkshire but Babcock insisted the work carried out at Stirling would be done at bases at Arbroath, Kinloss and Leuchars, and will continue in Edinburgh.
Both Stirling MP Stephen Kerr and MSP Bruce Crawford voiced their anger at the closure but Babcock pressed on with the plans and the Stirling site formally shut on Thursday with the loss of 56 jobs.
Seven of those employed there have moved to other sites while the rest of the staff have taken redundancy.
Alongside the Babcock DSG site is Meadowforth Barracks, headquarters of 51st Highland Brigade, 154 Medical Squadron, part of 225 Scottish Medical Regiment, and A Company, 7 Scots.
It was announced in November 2016, that the barracks would close in 2022 with the loss of 90 military posts and 150 civilian jobs. And when it follows Babcock DSG in Stirling and shuts in four years time, it will bring to an end what Bruce Crawford termed the city’s long, proud and direct historic connection with the military.
Stirling has had a base for the repair and maintenance of military vehicles and equipment since World War Two.
For much of that time the work at Stirling – or 26 Command Workshop as it was known – was carried out under the auspices of the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers.
It was one of a number of workshops, around the country, used by the military and over the years has regularly faced the threat of job cuts or `rationalisation’ as successive governments tried to control defence spending.
In 1958, for example, it was announced in Parliament that Stirling would need to shed 100 staff but the Government still intended to keep the REME operation in the city as the main workshop in Scotland.
By 1976 the workshop in Stirling had 230 staff and 17 working in Edinburgh and after surviving the defence cuts of 1981 provided invaluable support to the military during the Falklands War of the following year.
The Stirling workshop downsized in the 1990s when the national operation, of which it was a part, was re-structured under the new title of the `Army Base Repair Organisation’ with a new headquarters at Andover, a contract repair branch and a network of base and district workshops. ABRO employed over 3500 civilian and 200 military staff.
In 2007, in another moneysaving move, ABRO was merged with the Defence Aviation Repair Agency into the newly created Defence Support Group which was sold by David Cameron’s Conservative Government to Babcock for £140 million in 2014.
Politicians and unions feared the privatisation of the DSG would lead jobs losses and closures and in the case of the Stirling workshop they have been proved correct.