Closure of Cadburys Somerdale site

It is over two years since Cadburys told the workforce on its Somerdale site in Keynsham that their chocolate factory was going to close, with the loss of 500+ jobs. The news that this longstanding operation, dating all the way back to the 1930s, was for the chop at once triggered a community-wide wave of anger and dismay. Workers on the site initiated a campaign to save their jobs, and it seemed for a while that everyone agreed with them. Hundreds of Keep Cadburys Keynsham T-shirts were manufactured, Dan Norris (the local Labour MP) and sundry councillors associated themselves with the campaign, and Bristol Evening Post gave it lots of coverage, with plenty of rose-tinted articles about the “good old days” of Quaker paternalism which today’s hardnosed Cadbury management was betraying. It seemed for a time as if the bandwagon was so stuffed with the “great and the good” that its forward progress could not be resisted.

Two years on, the picture looks very different. The combative spirit of the workforce was allowed slowly to waste away whilst everyone held their breath for Norris and his chums to pull some compromise deal out of the bag. The workforce were encouraged to be “realistic” in their demands. This soon turned out to mean that they should resign themselves to the likely loss of their jobs and concentrate more on petitioning Cadburys to give guarantees that the attached social club and playing fields would be preserved for community use. Then, just as most people were getting resigned to eventual redundancy, US food giant Kraft began its campaign to take over Cadburys. In its effort to win public opinion over to its bid, Kraft dropped heavy hints that the Somerdale site would be retained, to the surprise and gratification of the workforce. No sooner was the deal done, however, than Kraft confirmed that Cadbury’s original plan remained in place: Somerdale is to close and its operation transferred to Poland.

Right on cue, Norris called a local meeting to let people say how “cross” they were about this double betrayal and to decide “how best to move on”, yet again offering himself as an intermediary in further negotiations with Kraft, the local authorities etc. His biggest concern seemed to be that Kraft had come along and stirred things up again just when everyone had been more or less persuaded to give up! Challenged by workers enraged at their treatment at the hands of big business, he offered the opinion: “Well, that’s capitalism”. However, when asked why the government, which had no hesitation in nationalising vast amounts of bank debt, could not also nationalise Cadburys operations and put the workforce to work producing whatever is required to satisfy the needs of society, not the profit-hunger of big business, he ducked the question.

Yes, “that’s capitalism” all right, and Labour imperialists like Dan Norris are its most slavish servants, however plentifully flow the crocodile tears. Workers in Keynsham are dead right to be enraged at the shabby treatment they have had at the hands of first Cadburys and now Kraft, unceremoniously dumping them and relocating the operation to the low-wage economy of Poland. But we need to understand that this vandalism is not something accidental, but is driven by the growing crisis that is central to all modern capitalist development. What we are witnessing in industry after industry is a global battle for markets being fought out between rival bands of capitalists, for whom losing the competitive edge spells not a modest decline in profit share but corporate extinction. Behind the greed lies desperation, and beneath both seethes the overproduction crisis of capitalism.