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British Consul-General Peter Abbott visits Springfield’s Union Station

MASSLIVE (February 24, 2022) — Great Britain’s top diplomat to New England introduced himself saying the Springfield Armory — built 245 years ago to resist British military advances — established manufacturing in the Pioneer Valley.

And that expertise paved the way for Springfield to become the only place outside the U.K. where Rolls-Royces were made, said Peter Abbott, British Consul General in Boston. Rolls-Royce made cars here from 1919 to 1931.

“I think Rolls-Royce already blazed the way for British industry here in Springfield. There has been a bit of a gap,” said Abbot on Wednesday during a tour of Springfield Union Station with Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and city economic development officials.

Abbott also plans to meet at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and tour the Berkshires with a visit to Tanglewood on a two-day Western Massachusetts swing.

Because, as Abbott also laid out in an op-ed column that ran in the Sunday Republican on Feb. 20, places like Springfield, Pittsfield and Lynn have a lot in common with industrial cities in the UK. In the north of England, manufacturing left in the middle of the last century and jobs concentrated in London, just as job growth here has concentrated Boston.
“What we are looking to learn here is how the cities, the Gateway cities, in Massachusetts, have dealt with those challenges,” he said. “And whether there is a kind of a secret sauce of prosperity as we call it that we can learn from and take back to the UK.”
Abbot compared the British government’s Leveling Up policy aimed at reducing imbalances between different social groups or regions of the country and the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better plan.

The secret sauce, Abbot said, is a mixture of infrastructure, like Union Station, and trust built up between groups that engenders a willingness to take risks.

“And we have seen that in heaps here in Springfield,” he said.

The sauce also needs a bit of magic, Abbott said. And by magic he means the arts, culture, tourism.
Read more here: MassLive.com
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