‘Closure almost ended my marriage’

It was the moment that would spell months of life on the breadline and threaten to end the marriage of a father-of-two.

But John Laughlan’s story is not a unique one. On February 11, 1981, Mr Laughlan was one of 6,000 employees at Linwood car plant, near Paisley, told their services were no longer required. After

18 years and 450,000 vehicles manufactured, Linwood was no more. The firm which had given the world the Hillman Imp had gone to the wall.

Now aged 69, Mr Laughlan, originally from Johnstone, but now living in Eastwood, near Nottingham, reflects on a time that put unimaginable pressure on his home life and forced him to move to England for work.

He said: “I was 18 months on the dole and ended up having to move down to Nottingham just to get work in the long term. I was married with one child and another on the way. I don’t know how my marriage survived, it was just awful.”

Employed from 1976, Mr Laughlan worked at Linwood under American manufacturers Chrysler, who had taken over ownership of the plant from Rootes a decade earlier, and later Peugeot Talbot

Mr Laughlan says industrial action was commonplace and recalls a strike was sparked by the sacking of six workers who had been caught, quite literally, with their pants down. “If you were on nights and bursting for the toilet – bearing in mind you were on a production line and had had limited time a lot of the guys would go round the back of the building. One night they rounded up half a dozen of these guys and sacked them, knowing that the workforce would strike.”