Film and faith for the Lenten season
18 December 2006
Ron Noon has been awarded £50,000 to develop an archive on the workers' struggle against the closure of the Tate and Lyle refinery
The new Love Lane Refinery Lives film project explores the legacy of a turbulent period in Liverpool's recent past, the closure of the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery in 1981. Ron Noon (School of Social Science, and pictured opposite) has been awarded £50,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop this archive of film and oral biographies of the former Tate and Lyle workers.
Henry Tate’s sugar dynasty was established 65 years after the abolition of the slave trade, and today the multinational operates in over 50 countries and across five continents. Noon’s “near obsession” with sugar began while researching the refinery workers eight year fight to prevent the closure of Tate’s mother plant, which first opened in 1872. The workers’ battle was precipitated by Britain’s entry to the EEC and subsequent commitment to its Common Agricultural Policy which included the heavy subsidisation of sugar beet at the expense of the traditional sugar cane supplies refined in Liverpool.
“Tate and Lyle once proudly held the reputation as being an exemplary family firm, which encouraged a friendly company spirit,” says Noon. “Generations of former employees viewed it as a 'good firm to work for'. That's why the rationalisation and eventual closure of the Liverpool plant came as such a shock.”
The stark consequences of the closure, which devastated the close knit community who had served the company for generations, were laid bare in the closing sequence of Alan Bleasdale's 1982 award-winning drama series, 'Boys From The Blackstuff', which showed bulldozers smashing the plant into oblivion.
The plight of its former employees, some of whom never worked again, seemed destined to remain a sad footnote of Britain’s industrial relations history. That was until Tate announced in 2000 that they were cancelling the biennial Christmas party traditionally staged for the Love Lane pensioners. The pensioners’ renewed sense of disappointment was summed up by Bob Bannister, who asked “would it spoil some vast eternal plan if these Christmas get-togethers were to continue every two years, after all in 10 to 15 years most of us will have left for greener pastures?”
The announcement gave a topical edge to Noon's research, which rapidly translated into a 'Bring Back Christmas' campaign. Guided by Tony McGann, Chairman of the award-winning Eldonian Housing Cooperative, which is located on the former refinery site, the campaign garnered widespread support, including the backing of prominent figures, such as Tony Benn, Jack Jones, Alan Bleasdale and Jimmy McGovern.
“The sad thing is that a lot of the former Tate employees are no longer with us but thanks to the Heritage Lottery funding we can record the memories of those who struggled against a major multinational to protect not just their own livelihoods but a whole community," says Noon. “This project has lots of historical curiosity value but it has wider ramifications for ongoing debates on the politics of food and globalisation.
"The former Prime Minister of Trinidad, Dr Eric Williams said 'Strange that an article so sweet and necessary for human existence should have occasioned such crimes and bloodshed'. For most people the only thing that matters about the white stuff is sweetness, but that's the last thing you could say about the refining industry that produces it.”
The Love Lane Refinery Lives film project will be officially launched in December 2006 with an event at the Eldonian Village, an internationally recognised model of community-led sustainable urban regeneration that received the accolade of a World Habitat Award in 2003. Symbolically it is also home to many of Tate’s former employees who will ensure that Love Lane Refinery Lives really do live on.
