Motor giant Henry Ford's crucial role in the history of Cork city

To gain an insight into the impact of Henry Ford’s momentous decision to locate a factory in Cork in 1917, you don’t have to look far at all, writes John Dolan.

Try the very page in the Cork Examiner where the news of Ford’s new Irish venture was reported.

The main story that April day 100 years ago was a report on a damning dossier that had been carried out by the Irish Parliamentary Party on Ireland’s economic woes.

It railed against “the lack of employment, the want of industries and the neglect generally of Irish resources that have retarded Irish development and progress”.

Throw in a catastrophic world war, then in its third year, an island left unstable by a rebellion 12 months earlier, widespread poverty and slums, along with large-scale emigration, and the word ‘depression’ doesn’t do it justice.

If Cork were a patient, then it was on life support in 1917. And Henry Ford, with a swipe of his pen, provided a miracle cure — a shot in the arm from which we are still feeling the rippling effects today.

His decision to pay homage to his ancestral roots and open a factory on the Marina did nothing less than change the course of Cork city’s history.

Read more: From holiday homes to garden sheds Ford shipping crates remain part of Irish landscape

It provided steady employment and a decent wage to tens of thousands of local people for most of the 20th century.

But equally as important was the way it helped to change the mentality of Corkonians. Until then, work had been low-paid, uncertain, unrewarding, a hard grind — and all too often, it was somewhere else, away from Cork.

The Ford factory altered the mindset. It became a beacon of hope, a symbol of confidence to the outside world. Henry was one of ours, and this factory was ours too.

Fordson tractors awaiting shipment to Europe after being manufactured in Cork

As usual, the great man himself summed it up best: “What difference does it make to suffering humanity if a man in Cork who used to wear a kerchief about his neck is now wearing a collar? It is only a symbol. But it is an important symbol.”

Even now, 33 years after the Marina plant closed, the goodwill towards the company and its products is as near to universal as you will find in a city where outspokenness is classed as a virtue!

Among the former employees, the sense of being a member of the Ford family remains strong.

Even those who never worked there have driven Fords all their lives, out of loyalty, gratitude and... well, because the company has been mass producing excellent vehicles for a long, long time!

As one customer was told by a Ford dealer when he pondered changing the habit of a lifetime and switching brands. “Sure, you wouldn’t go changing your religion now!”

It is fitting that we mark this centenary year of Ford in Ireland and reflect on a century during which Cork and Ireland changed so much.