A very British history

Inside the historic Raleigh factory the work continues

Mick Baxter is a worried man.

After 34 years at Nottingham's Raleigh factory he retires on Friday and he's dreading what his workmates have got in store for him.

They are notorious for their practical jokes and Mick, a popular team leader who's worked in every department, fears they're planning something special.

Mick's lived out his working career against a backdrop painted with the decline of British industry.

When he joined Raleigh, 8,500 people worked there.

It was a shopfloor mixture of hard work and high jinks, in which workers who'd completed their job for the day would climb over the security fence to get a few pints in before sneaking back into the factory for the end of the shift.

Mick: "In 1967 we had about 8,000 people; now we are down to 500"

The factory, and its workers, were immortalised in Alan Sillitoe's film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which was set in the factory.

Nervous

But those days are long gone.

There's still hard work, but it's a more sober workforce.

There are only 500 people, all trying to keep the company and their jobs going despite relentless competition from the Far East.

For Mick at least a future in comfortable retirement beckons.

For other workers at Raleigh the future isn't so clear.

The company's American owners have put it up for sale. People are understandably nervous.

The company has sold its site to Nottingham University and is planning to move further out of the city and possibly even take on more workers.

That of course will depend on the outcome of the sale.

There's a management bid to buy the company, but no-one really knows what will happen. A decision is expected in October.

Exceptional

In some ways Raleigh's an exception.

A famous name from Britain's manufacturing heyday that's still trading.

Although the staff have been whittled away, hundreds of people still work closely together on the shopfloor.

Try asking one of Mick's colleagues what they have in store for his retirement and all you get is a wicked chuckle.

It's a reminder of the past, when thousands of pranks would be played in thousands of packed factories up and down the country.

Raleigh's continued survival is a reminder of that past too.