AM DEEPLY SORRY to hear of the grim situation at the MG Rover Group factory in Longbridge and of the consequent threat to the livelihood of thousands who have worked there and work in the supporting industries around the West Midlands. Through the clergy with whom I am in contact, particularly in Birmingham, but also in Wolverhampton and the surrounding areas, I offer the assurance of my prayers at this time.

We join all the Birmingham parishes and parishes throughout the West Midlands by asking for prayers for:

- All who have lost their jobs especially for those who have been with this company all their working lives. That they may find new jobs or appropriate training quickly.
- The Administrators as they make decisions about how this company’s assets are sold off.
- The creditors such as the suppliers and the Dealer Network especially those companies made vulnerable by Rover’s collapse.
- The new Rover Task Force and all those involved in offering help. Finding new jobs, offering training and giving personal pastoral support.
- The Chaplains, the Revds Peter Thomas and Colin Corke for strength wisdom and sensitivity as they enter into the pain, confusion, anger, grief of all those employed at the Longbridge site.
- The gradual transfer of manufacturing and indeed many service industries from the West to the developing world has been a painful - and continues to be a painful - process for those who, thereby, have lost their livelihood. Globalisation, achieved entirely through the market, cuts deeply into the lives of those whose livelihoods are destroyed and is not necessarily a source of real prosperity for some of the cheap labour markets which take on the work. We pray for wisdom for governments and economists as they wrestle with the human issues and plan for economic regeneration in newly deprived areas.

Though our thoughts are very much with Longbridge at this time, we remember too the other difficulties in the area, and in particular the substantial loss of jobs in the car industry in Coventry - Peugeot and Jaguar - and the uncertainty created in other plants.

My prayers at this time.

+ Andrew Ebbsfleet
April 15th AD2005

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