IN THE roller-coaster history of car building at Cowley, job cuts are nothing new.

During the last national recession — technically defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — the Rover Group, then owned by British Aerospace, called for 1,600 redundancies out of its workforce of about 8,500.

That was in 1990.

The following year more redundancies were called for, to bring the headcount right down to 5,000.

This time around, as we again enter recession, German-owned BMW has axed the jobs of 430 agency staff (a type of worker unknown at the plant in the early 1990s) out of a total headcount at Cowley of just 4,500.

But even in the last recession the scale of operations at the plant was a mere shadow of its former self.

In the troubled 1970s, when strikes were commonplace and so-called Trotskyites used the plant as a battlefield to fight the “establishment”, as many as 25,000 were working at the two sites: North and South.

Paradoxically, that huge build-up of industrial might had its roots back in the Great Depression — in the 1930s, when the Morris works under the leadership of William Morris, later Viscount Nuffield, managed to weather the economic storm — and actually advertised for workers all over the country.

Among those responding to the advertisements was Cecil McDowell, grandfather of Chris McDowell — who also worked at the Cowley plant during the recession of the 1990s.

Mr McDowell, 37, from Botley, said: “He came over from Armagh in Northern Ireland looking for work. He saw one of the advertisements in Sheffield, got on his bike and cycled down to Oxford where, sure enough he immediately got a job at Morris Motors.”

He added: “When I worked at the plant in 1990, before going to college, industrial relations were not good.

“People would walk out over small things like the flex of the kettle being slightly frayed at tea break. That was a health and safety issue.

“It was like something out of I’m All Right Jack, the 1959 film in which Peter Sellers acted a shop steward.”

And even in the 1950s, men skilled in declining trades found work with the car builders.

For instance, a blacksmith in Burford bicycled into Oxford every day to work at Oxford Radiators in Woodstock Road, then owned by Morris Motors, to help people make cars for people better off than himself.

The 1990s recession occurred amid fears the whole Cowley car building business could close at any minute with the possible loss of 12,500 Oxfordshire jobs, including those at components suppliers throughout the county.

In those days brain had not yet replaced replaced brawn at the Cowley site of the doomed South and North Works — where a Tesco’s store and the Oxford Business Park stand now — which were not finally demolished until 1993.

The present BMW works stand on the site of the old Pressed Steel plant, which was an integral part of the car building enterprise in Cowley.

In order to deal with its redundancy programme in 1990 and 1991, then owners of the site, Rover Group (itself largely owned by BAe), set up Job Shops at strategic sites throughout the works to explain terms and to advise workers about job-seeking in difficult times.

And as production wound down on such models as the Montego, workers found themselves detailed into various jobs that had nothing to do with car production — such as stripping out buildings that had once been used for car production.

Roy Perks from Cowley who joined Morris Motors back in 1968 — and stayed until 2000 — was on the Montego production line in the early 1990s.

He said: “People would come into work and find themselves detailed to go and do such jobs as clear the carpentry shop. Or they would suddenly be driven off to Swindon to work on the Honda line.”

Rover had forged links with Honda back in 1980.

The Japanese car giant had then bought a 360-acre site at South Marston, near Swindon — a move which sparked the fears that the 76-years of car production in Oxford might really be ending.

Mr Perks added: “There was a feeling that things had to change at Cowley. “People would find ways of getting out of work and going off to play cards.”

And change came in the shape of the ‘New Deal’ hammered out with Honda.

In 1991, Rover produced just 11 cars per worker.

Two years later that figure had increased to 30.6 cars per worker.

The hugely increased productivity came about thanks to the introduction of Japanese work practices — which went a long way to get rid of old fashioned ‘them and us’ attitudes between management and workforce.

The New Deal allowed flexible team working for the first time, making clocking in and out things of the past.

It put the works into a state of being ripe for takeover by BMW in 1993, a deal welcomed in a ballot by the 5000 workers left at the site.

Mr Perks is wryly amused by heart searching about Government bail-outs for BMW.

After all, for much of the time he worked at Cowley the plant was Government-owned — the state having been forced to buy it in 1975 to save jobs.

• 1946 Morris Motors goes back to producing the Morris Eight that it had been building before the Second World War • 1948 Introduction of the Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis • 1952 Morris Motors merged with Austin of Longbridge to form the British Motor Corporation • 1959 The Mini, designed by Issigonis, appeared in both Austin and Morris versions produced in both Longbridge and Cowley • 1960 The Issigonis designed 1100 appeared. It dominated Cowley production throughout the 1960s and early 1970s • 1966 BMC merged with Jaguar and Pressed Steel to form British Motor Holdings • 1968 BMH merged with Leyland Motor Corporation, which included Standard-Triumph and Rover, to form the British Leyland Motor Corporation • 1969 Launch of the issigonis designed Maxi, built at Cowley despite its Austin badge • 1971 Launch of the Morris Marina • 1975 The Labour Government bought a majority shareholding in BL following the Ryder Report about its future • 1980 Joint venture between BL and Honda announced • 1981 Triumph Acclaim produced at Cowley • 1984 Montego production introduced at Cowley • 1986 Rover 800 production began at Cowley • 1988 BL renamed Rover Group and sold to British Aerospace • 1990-91 New Deal with Honda spells redundancies and headcount drops to 5000 from 8,500 • 1993 North and South Works demolished. Production then concentrated on the former Pressed steel Works • 1994 Rover is bought by BMW • 1998 Launch of the Cowley-built Rover 75 • 2000 BMW sells Longbridge plant along with Rover 75 • 2001 The first new Mini rolled off the production line • 2007 BMW sold it’s millionth new Mini