THE fight to save Terry's has moved up a gear. Already thousands of York people have signed our petition calling on parent company Kraft to rethink its closure plan; today the campaign smashed through the city walls to expand nationwide.

Delegates at the GMB union's national conference have returned home from their Scarborough conference bearing dozens of petition forms. They are to take the Terry's crusade across Britain.

Speeches by factory shop stewards, and our own chief reporter Mike Laycock, were met with warm support by GMB members. They share York's anger that a centuries-old company could be deleted with such apparent nonchalance by bosses thousands of miles away.

Turning the Save Terry's campaign national makes sense. True, Terry's fate impinges only on York directly. But it symbolises so much more. As Mike put it, "too much of our manufacturing heritage is at stake to give up without a fight". The decision to axe Terry's embodies the worst excesses of global corporate power. It treats the factory and its employees as nothing more than a bunch of statistics.

With brazen hypocrisy, Kraft intends to continue trading on the Terry's brand, created by generations of city workers, while sacking the workforce and sending production abroad.

The message is inescapable. If it can happen to Terry's of York, it can happen to any manufacturer anywhere.

To underline his contempt for Kraft's remote York outpost, chief executive Roger Deromedi will not even deign to reply to the Evening Press's open letter to him. His excuse: Kraft prefers to discuss its strategy face-to-face. But this was his one opportunity to address the people of York about the decision.

Mr Deromedi's failure to undertake this basic courtesy speaks volumes about Kraft's mercenary philosophy.

Updated: 10:51 Tuesday, May 18, 2004