The launch

David Torrance, draughtsman, who worked for Fairfield 's shipbuilders in Govan and James Cloughley retired shipyard worker interviewed in 2004.

James Cloughley in front of BAE Systems, once Fairfield's

"It's a very exciting thing because this big piece of metal that people had been working on, for a year say, suddenly becomes a living thing. And sometimes the sadness is a fact, because when it's launched sometimes the guys that built it, that was their jobs gone as well, and the finishing trades took over to finish the ship. The actual launch was a very exciting thing."

"But there was this contradiction that at the end of a ship, when the ship was sailing away – towards the end of it, there was mass redundancies. And this led to, of course, a certain degree of fear and led to the situations where men fought for their jobs and guarded their skills and their crafts jealously, because these were the skills and the trades that ensured that their family didn't go to the wall."

David Torrance in front of BAE Systems, once Fairfield's