Co-operation is vital if Grangemouth is to be saved

NOT since the closure of the Ravenscraig steel works in 1992 has Scotland faced as serious a threat to its industrial base as it does today with the potential loss of the Grangemouth petrochemical plant and oil refinery.

Yesterday’s announcement by operator Ineos that the petrochemical arm was to close with the direct loss of 800 jobs was a devastating blow to a totemic part of the country’s infrastructure. The worry now is that the oil refinery side of the business is also vulnerable. If Ineos were to abandon that too, the misery for Central Scotland, and Scottish manufacturing more generally, would be complete.

A blame game now is inevitable, if not particularly productive. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the management approach to this whole dispute has been brutish and reckless. The union has characterised it as akin to blackmail, and there is more than a little truth in that. This is not the 1970s. This is not how we ex- pect responsible management to act in the 21st century. The argument from some observers that Ineos was seeking all along to close Grangemouth is difficult to refute with any great conviction, given the circumstances.

Yet the Unite union, too, has serious questions to answer. Faced with a threat to its members’ working conditions, the union understandably resisted. But it entirely misread the management’s mood and intent. With the writing on the wall, union officials were unable to bring themselves to compromise to save their members’ jobs. So instead of having jobs with a money purchase pension and a pay freeze – conditions familiar to tens of millions of fellow workers across the country for some years now – these workers have no jobs at all. The union, too, has been reckless. It has ill-served its members.

There is already speculation about the possibility of saving Grangemouth by nationalising it. There are, of course precedents: New Labour effectively nation- alised Railtrack and two major banks, and the SNP government recently nationalised Prestwick Airport. But such speculation is premature at best, and may even be counter-productive at this stage. There could come a moment when the pros and cons need to be examined, and a decision made, but this is not that moment.

The priority now should be first to see if there is any scope whatsoever to get Ineos to stay at Grangemouth, if not on the present scale then in a smaller role, perhaps centred on the oil refinery side of the business. If, as insiders seem to indicate, that is a hopeless task, then the emphasis should shift to whether another operator can be found who would be willing to take it on, in full or in part, with taxpayers’ help if necessary.

Despite the high political stakes, co-operation between UK and Scottish governments is crucial. But let us not fool ourselves here. The situation is dire and the prognosis is not good.