English Town Crash-Lands as Plant Shuts : Britain: The economic crisis in the country hits hard in Hatfield as the ax falls on historic aircraft factory. Prospects for the future look bleak.

HATFIELD, England —  The bad news for Hatfield was not unexpected, but that did not make it any easier when it came. The local British Aerospace plant would be closing its doors early next year, shutting the books on 50 years of aircraft manufacturing here and throwing 2,500 mostly local men and women onto the recession-struck job market.

“We can’t deny it,” said David Riddle, chief executive of the local council of Welwyn Hatfield. “It has been a devastating blow, even if it was predictable. Our job now is to try to instill some confidence back into the community.”

It’s not going to be easy. Property values are plummeting, homeowners are stuck with mortgages outstripping current sale prices, office buildings all over town are advertising their vacant spaces, and the big, new, American-style shopping mall, the Galleria, is in receivership.

“We’re in the soup, that’s where we are,” said Ron Howard, 62, who sat in his family-owned store at midday, the lights in the showroom turned off to save electricity.

The ax fell at Hatfield as the conclusive blow in a month that the Daily Telegraph referred to as “Black September” for British business and industry, with more than 15,000 jobs lost in the fields of auto and aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding, banking, computers, retailing and a host of defense-related enterprises.

And it was not the last blow of the ax for Britain’s workers. Early last month, the once-mighty coal industry announced sweeping cutbacks, closing 10 pits and eliminating 7,000 jobs, with more closures and layoffs likely.

Along with British Aerospace, the job cutbacks came at some of the most famous names in British industry, including Rolls-Royce and Ford. Sears announced the impending closure of 350 stores that it deemed “not viable.” Experts also predicted 50,000 job losses in the construction field before the end of the year.

These grim reports have been issued on a virtually daily basis across the United Kingdom as, meanwhile, the pound plummeted against European currencies and the dollar and as the ruling Conservative Party wrangled over issues of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the Maastricht treaty on European economic and political union, revealing a divide within the party that seems to mirror the confusion in the public mind.

Nowhere have these economic blows been felt harder than in Hatfield. With a population of 33,000, Hatfield lies just north of London, and its development has been linked to the aircraft industry since the 1930s, giving it an unrivaled place in the history of British aviation. During World War II, the plant at Hatfield produced the famed Mosquito fighter-bomber, a major contributor to the British war effort.

In postwar years, the De Havilland company took over the works here, producing the De Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet airliner, which went into commercial use in 1952. More recently, it produced the Trident, a three-engine jetliner, an executive jet aircraft and a commuter airliner. As recently as five years ago, the plant at Hatfield employed 7,500 people, and the city felt its future secure.

Now, at best, the city faces an extended “trough,” as one official put it, as the city fathers do their best to attract new industry. About 85% of the British Aerospace workers set to lose their jobs are men, and 80% of them come from Hatfield or the surrounding Hertfordshire area, a region that already has an average unemployment rate of 9%, reaching as high as 17.5% in some areas.

The plant’s closure will also hit dozens of subcontractors in the Hatfield area, with a corresponding fallout throughout the retail business community.

Four county agencies are planning a package of “lifeline” measures to offer some relief for the jobless--a job placement center, a “skills audit” unit, an employment “guidance center” and a “learning center for self-study,” but no one has any illusions that the 1-million-pound ($1.7-million) program is much more than salve for the wound.

“They’re trying, but I don’t think it’s going to do much good,” said a 30-year-old production engineer at the plant. “We would like to stay here, my wife particularly, but I think we’re going to have to leave--that is, if I can find a job anywhere else.

“We’ve got to keep our options open. There’s a possibility of some of us transferring to one of the British Aerospace plants up in the north, but my guess is that jobs are not going to last very long there either. If you want to know, I’m pretty down on these people.”

“It’s going to hit Hatfield very hard when the gates close next year,” said Kenneth Briggs, 48, a woodworker employed in the design area of the plant. “The problem is, there’s just not much else around here in terms of jobs. I’ll try anything I can. Truck driving, maybe.”

David Riddle, the town’s chief executive, said he hopes that the skilled work force of British Aerospace will find some way to stay on in the community, but he acknowledges that recruiting new industry is going to be a slow process.

“We have great assets here,” he said. “We’re close to London, we’re right on the A-1 motorway, we have an educated and highly skilled work force and we have a wonderful environment. We’ve got to go out and sell.”

Right now, he admitted, he has “no prospects” in the ideal fields of electronics, computers or telecommunications, the kind of clean industrial employer that any city official would welcome.

But part of his job, at least these days, is to project hope.

“What has been difficult for people,” he said, “is the finality of it--the idea that there will be no more aircraft industry in Hatfield, which has been the town’s history for 60 years. That’s a big blow. I know it’s going to take five to 10 years to generate the kinds of jobs that have been lost here, and that information isn’t going to interest people very much right now.

“But Hatfield isn’t dead, and it isn’t going to die. We have to keep our eye on the long-term perspective.”