If you drive along
Armoury Road in the Post Code district B11 you will pass a derelict
building and some desolate remnants of an industrial past that used to
be the once mighty Birmingham Small Arms Company ( BSA ). A
closer look reveals that the shattered building houses a garage
workshop and a crumbling infrastructure. It looks positively unsafe.
You can be forgiven for wondering what this is. However, the clue lies
a little further up the road. The
building proudly sporting the BSA sign, shown here in our photo below,
is all that remains of what was once one of Birmingham's proudest champions of industry. 
Founded
in 1861 by a group of gunsmiths, the company was formed to supply
ammunition and arms for the Crimean War. It later became the
manufacturer for one of Britain's best known motorcycle firms and even
build cars, having purchased the British Daimler Company in 1910. BSA
supplied the government during World War I and built the Lewis gun and
rifles for the British Army. They also supplied vehicles and shells and
other military equipment. During
the Second World War the company had a manufacturing base spread
amongst sixty seven factories. It was an extremely important government
supplier of armaments and a major contributor to the war effort. Many
people are unaware that Triumph motorcycles was for a time owned by
BSA. Combined with their own brand they were the largest suppliers of
motorcycle in the world for a number of years. During
the mid 1960's severe competition from Japan and Germany was eating
into BSA's traditional customer base. Just a decade later it was a
former shadow of its peak production years. The
Japanese imports of the 1970's put paid to the British Motorcycle
Industry. BSA, Norton and Triumph all failed and a company called NVT
Motorcycles ( Norton Villiers Triumph ) struggled on until its purchase
by management when it was renamed the BSA Company. In
1991, in further developments, the company merged with Andover Norton
International Ltd to produce spare parts for motorcycles. In 1994 it
was acquired by the BSA Regal Group in Southampton which has a large
spares business. It
seems clear that whilst the BSA name continues in Birmingham with the
production of air rifles and hunting rifles at one of the old sites of
BSA, the real brand rights, as shown on their website, belong to the
BSA Regal Group. Today
no memorial exists for the 53 BSA workers that were killed in the raid
on the old BSA factory ( illustrated above ) in November 1940. There
are campaigners on another website, the links of which appear below,
that are lobbying for this to be rectified. We wholeheartedly support
them in that effort. Relevant Links www.madeinbirmingham.orgwww.bsa-regal.co.uk/history www.bsaguns.co.uk
See also National Motorcycle Museum
|
