THE WRITING looked to be on the wall for Blackburn's once-mighty Royal Ordnance factory today.

And what a sad and tragic blow it will be for the town if one option facing the works this afternoon becomes reality - that of moving what is left of the ROF and its jobs way down south.

For, it is not simply a case of the last chapter being reached for a works that once employed thousands making munitions.

It is also one of immense amounts of skill and dedication being lost in East Lancashire - much of it needlessly.

For while the factory has inevitably suffered from the end of the Cold War and past recessions and privatisation have also taken their toll, it was also scandalously cheated out of orders and hundreds of jobs through corruption. That was exposed five years ago when crooked Ministry of Defence civil servant Gordon Foxley was jailed for taking huge bribes from foreign firms for diverting contracts away from Blackburn and placing them abroad instead.

Coming on top of the hardships it had already suffered, it was a crippling blow for the ROF.

But despite being reduced to a shrunken site and a workforce of some 200, the factory has fought back - boosting its sales and creating new jobs.

What sort of reward will it be for this kind of expertise and resilience to be shipped off lock stock and barrel to Ilford?

It would not only be unfortunate and cruel, it would be greatly unfair.

For this factory was literally robbed of much of its lifeblood by Foxley's crimes at the Ministry of Defence.

What the Blackburn works is owed is compensation - in the form a government support and orders - and not the sort of sudden-death end it was evidently facing this afternoon.

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