Rover reaction

That was when the news that the Phoenix Consortium had bought Rover for a tenner and intended transferring production of the Rover 75 from Cowley to the West Midlands began to seep through.

Outside the giant plant's front gates, one employee was reported to have been spotted celebrating in an exuberant fashion, swigging champagne from a pint pot.

In Cowley, mugs of industrial-strength tea are more the order of the day, although there is not a Rover employee in sight in Johnson's cafe until around the stroke of midday.

For years, the caff has been a sort of Vatican of Greasy Spoons everywhere for the workers across the road. It's a place where they go to eat and talk although not always to the media. The news of the latest development swept round the plant shortly after 9am and it is understood the main aim of the management is to maintain an air of calm after this latest announcement in the long history of Cowley's false dawns.

Naturally, this precludes the possibility of any journalistic access to the factory.

"We don't want production disrupted," explains the PR woman. "Not that you'd be a disruption," she adds hastily.

So the shop-floor is a no-go area, then. As usual, as we have so many times before, we gather outside the fence in Watlington Road, hoping for quick quotes and swift words.

Martin Shirley duly obliges. He works in Parts Quality and summarises what most of his workmates appear to be feeling but aren't actually saying. "Well, it's good and we're pleased for Longbridge but it leaves us here at Cowley a bit exposed in the short term," he says from inside the fence.

"It's not the best of deals, but it's not the worst, either," he adds with a shrug.

Compared to some of his workmates, Mr Shirley could win prizes for his oratory skills. At 12 noon exactly, a stream of them begin moving through the factory gates, determinedly ignoring the asembled media. "I'm off to lunch," is the oft-heard cry, "and I've only got half an hour."

Which is fair enough. As is the usual intervention of the security guard, who comes to the gate to tell us to clear off politely. "Please move away from the gate. This is Rover property," he says. Business as usual (except now it's BMW-land). In truth, no-one seems to be much in the mood for either talking or even being on the telly.

One strangely angry young man actually makes a hostile gesture to the assembled Press as he makes his way to lunch.

Rod Murray stops and says: "It sounds good news, but we don't know what's going to happen until the end of the year."

Just after he tells us this, a youth speeds by in a car (no, it isn't a Rover) and yells: "Close the whole place down!"

Up the road and round the corner at the Bullnose Morris, there is a nice touch of irony as the official Lord Mayor of Oxford's Rover 75 glides past. Good old Val Smith, you want to say.

If Johnson's has long been the Cowley workers' Vatican, then the Bullnose is their spiritual haven. How many fears and worries have been calmed here? How many rumours laid to rest? Noreen Skinner is delighted at the day's news. "I think it's great," she says. "It's time something was done for the Cowley workers they've been treated disgracefully in the past."

Her husband Wally adds a note of sad inevitablity: "Mind you," he says, "you've only got half the workforce here now."

Their friends, Hazel Preedy and her partner Ivor Bridgewater are both former Cowley workers. "I worked there for eight and a half years in total," says Hazel. "This is good news. And I want one of those new Minis. Can you buy me one?" she laughs.

I tell her I'll see if I can get it on expenses.

Ivor is more philosophical. "It's just great, because that plant has always been here and I didn't want to see it go anywhere else," he says simply. No-one is swigging champagne in Cowley. But at least the rise of Phoenix has meant the people can wash the taste of the ashes of despair from their mouths.