The end at Visteon ?

It's no longer news that the former Visteon / Ford workers at Enfield and Basildon have voted to accept an offer that goes most of the way to matching the Ford contracts they had been promised all along (with reservations about pensions and shift allowances). In other words; a victory. Like the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikers they have proved that in spite of the recession, in spite of anti-union laws and in spite of docile union leaderships, victories are possible if you're prepared to fight for them.

Having been involved on the sidelines of many disputes over the years - from the big ones like the miners strike and the Wapping dispute, to the small ones like the Addenbrookes cleaners or JJ Fast Foods - I know that we need victories more than we need noble defeats. So I'm not one of those (and there will inevitably be some on the Left) who will deny ourselves a moment of celebration.But having gone up to visit the pickets on Saturday it came home to me that the celebration is tempered by the sadness that goes with any factory closure.

Sitting outside the gates in Enfield , it is striking that the factory there is surrounded by derelict and empty sites that once were a thriving industrial belt in North London along the A10 corridor. Now it is becoming an industrial graveyard.

Because the Visteon plant was highly unionised, it was also unusual nowadays in maintaining the kinds of pay and conditions that generations of workers in the manufacturing sector once took for granted. And in its sense of community: Many of the workers have spent twenty years or more there, there are families working alongside each other - I even met several retired workers who came back to join the picket line. That has all gone now.

Although the workers will continue their pickets until the redundancy payments have actually been paid, there is also a sense of sadness as the ex-Visteon workers disperse. Inevitably the solidarity and camaraderie that has grown out of the dispute will also disperse with them .

However like in so many other disputes before, one thing that repeatedly comes up when talking with the workers is how much they have changed: In their views of the world , of politics and of activists of all hues who they previously regarded as an alien species. I've also heard the workers say a number of times how shocked they are that people they don't know have gone out of their way to support them. And how in spite of what is said, people aren't just out for themselves but are prepared to stick up for each other.

It's a simple message but a pretty fucking inspiring one - and one that will outlast the closure of the factory.