Editorial: If any Northern Ireland organisation is deserving of government support it is Harland and Wolff

Harland and Wolff has been almost a symbol of Northern Ireland ​and its history.

​The great shipyard was at its peak when the Titanic was built, prior to the advent of passenger flight, before the Great War and NI’s creation.

Its might reflected how the northern part of the pre-partitioned Ireland was the industrial part, like those shipbuilding northern British cities of Glasgow, Newcastle and Liverpool. By the 1970s, H&W was in decline, as were those parallel ports in Great Britain.

The remarkable David and Goliath cranes, and the Titanic history (she was a fine ship, even if reckless stewardship led to her tragic demise in an ice field), are a source of fascination to visitors to Belfast today.

Latterly Harland and Wolff seemed to have carved out a niche as a yard that carried out ship re-fitting and repairs, but once again its future is in doubt. Now its chief executive is gone.

There is a symmetry to the fact that H & W has had Royal Navy contracts of late. Both it, and the factories in the area that later came to be a base for Shorts planes, were targeted in the Nazi blitz for their contribution to the allied war effort. Some thinkers, such as the Westminster think tank Policy Exchange, suggest that NI should be a centre of military expertise at a time when Ireland is under pressure for its foreign policy approach of neutrality, as it was in the 1940s.

Yet now there reports that the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been warned against bailing out the shipyard, in part due to complications from post Brexit rules. It is another reflection on the Irish Sea border if support for H&W will fall foul of EU state aid rules.

When there is a push to get hundreds of millions spent on a GAA stadium, H&W is as deserving a recipient of government support as it is possible to think of in NI, as a centre of excellence with apprenticeship opportunities in a deprived area.