Life

Jake O'Kane: Saving H&W could play a part in protecting our world and ourselves

With a modicum of political foresight, I envisage one day standing on Cavehill, looking down on to Belfast Lough, to see a small forest of maritime windmills being towed out into the open ocean, where they would supply a clean, carbon neutral power source...

Jake O'Kane

Jake O'Kane

Jake is a comic, columnist and contrarian.

Jake O'Kane at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, which was placed into administration this month. Picture by Bobbie Hanvey
Jake O'Kane at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, which was placed into administration this month. Picture by Bobbie Hanvey Jake O'Kane at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, which was placed into administration this month. Picture by Bobbie Hanvey

IN 1861 Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff met, and Harland and Wolff (H&W) shipbuilders was born. Great success followed, with one notable exception, the Titanic, a disaster explained by Belfast's proud shipbuilders with the simple statement, 'She was all right when she left us'.

In 1961, 100 years after its founding, the last great liner, SS Canberra, slipped from H&W moorings into Belfast Lough and since then the shipyard has experienced an inexorable decline. Once employing 35,00 people, today only around 90 employees stand defiant at its front gates, fighting valiantly to keep their jobs and the historic shipyard afloat.

With domestic shipbuilding reliant on government contracts, H&W has regularly lost out to multinational BAE Systems which, with shipyards in Scotland, recently won yet another massive contract to build naval warships in Glasgow.

Despite such setbacks, the H&W workforce has proved over the years that they have the motivation and innovation to diversify and survive. In the 1980s, with the collapse of commercial shipbuilding due to the boom in budget airlines and impossible competition from abroad, H&W refocused on design and structural engineering. They worked on bridges such as the Foyle Peace Bridge, the James Joyce Bridge in the Republic, and the renovation of Dublin's iconic Halfpenny Bridge.

Although promises from successive governments to build 7,500 offshore wind turbines between 2008 and 2020 came to nothing, in 2008 H&W completed work on 60 Vestas V90-3MW wind turbines for the Robin Rigg Wind Farm. The company also completed the logistics for the Barrow Offshore Wind Farm in 2006 and Ormonde Wind Farm in 2011.

As one of the first shipyards to recognise the potential in maritime renewable energy and the emerging technologies involved, H&W possesses the experience and expertise to position itself at the centre of this emerging sector.

While wind turbines aren't a reliable source of clean energy, tidal energy does offer such a guarantee. Again H&W have experience, constructing in 2008 the world's first commercial tidal stream turbine for Marine Current Turbines. The company followed this innovation in 2010 by securing the contract to produce a prototype tidal energy turbine for Scotrenewables Ltd, which has since been undergoing testing in Orkney.

Why, then, is it beyond the imagination of the Conservative party and its partners in government, the DUP, to recognise the latent potential of H&W in this sector? Nationalisation – a dirty word these days – would allow the company to continue its research and development and open the door to a new modern shipyard. Belfast could develop into a hub of maritime renewable energy, with all the auxiliary sub-contractors such as software companies, architecture and design and electrical engineering which would inevitably follow.

That H&W is even under threat of closure is bewildering to many, considering the influence the DUP wields at Westminster. If the Church of Ireland was unionism at prayer, then H&W shipyard was unionism at work, yet the workforce has had scant support from the party so far.

It seems the DUP's 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Tories operates in one direction, with plenty of confidence but little in the way of supply.

I'm aware that many reading this will ask why, when H&W was such a cold house for nationalists in the past, should they give a damn at its possible demise? While devastating for its workers and their families, I'd argue the closure of H&W would also have severe consequences for our broader society. The H&W that existed in the past is long gone and the union representatives I met with this week would be the first to jump on any form of discrimination, be it religious, racial or otherwise.

A revitalised and reinvigorated H&W, if given the resources needed, could be an example of how a company with a 200-year heritage can reinvent and continue to contribute to our hoped-for new society.

With a modicum of political foresight, I envisage one day standing on Cavehill, looking down on to Belfast Lough, to see a small forest of maritime windmills being towed out into the open ocean, where they would supply a clean, carbon neutral power source. In short, saving H&W could play a small part in protecting both our world and ourselves.

But hold on, I'm naïve: I forgot about our politicians getting involved. The forest of wind turbines will never sail, not because H&W couldn’t build them, but because Sinn Fein would demand all operating manuals be printed in Irish, while the DUP would counter-demand they be painted red, white and blue.