Mark Casci: If ever there was a Northern Powerhouse it is Teesside, and it must be saved

One of the most frequently-uttered buzz terms from Whitehall in recent memory is that of the Northern Powerhouse, a grand vision for a unified northern half of the country that combines high-skilled manufacturing and technology sectors to become worldwide force.
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It’s a noble aspiration, but for anyone from Teesside we know that if you want to talk about a Northern Powerhouse then you really have to look no further than the area around that surrounds Middlesbrough.

For centuries it set the template for innovation and excellence worldwide.

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A ship-building epicentre in the 15th century, the discovery of iron ore saw a booming manufacturing industry established in the region.

The need to move coal from the ports to the factories saw the region gave the world its first railway in 1822 with George Stephenson’s Stockton to Darlington Railway.

Eventually iron-making gave way to steel and for just under century the vast and imposing area near Redcar produced thousands of tonnes of steel that formed the skeleton of some of the world’s most-celebrated structures.

From the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the new World Trade Centre One site in New York City, thousands of structures were forged on Teesside.

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But as well as giving the world these landmark buildings and vistas, it also provided an umbrella of commerce and employment for the Teesside region.

In its prime the steel plant employed more than 40,000 people and to this day, at Middlesbrough FC’s Riverside Stadium, banners are displayed proclaiming “We built the world”.

I know this better than many. I spent the first 18 years of my life living there. The steel works and nearby chemical industries were everything to my hometown. At school your father either worked at ICI or British Steel.

These were industries that did more than provide employment. The annual Steel Gala was a focal point for the whole town. It was the sun and Redcar and its neighbouring towns were the planets. Without it we would die.

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ICI sold off much of its Teesside based concerns over the course of the 1990s and British Steel eventually sold itself to Corus before various companies jockeyed for secured ownership, eventually ending up in the hands of Thai-company SSI in 2011.

A combination of bad management, supply chain issues and a massive surplus of steel from China has made for difficult conditions in recent weeks and this week SSI announced it was to mothball the site entirely, bringing to an inglorious end generations of steel-making on Teesside.

Estimates at the weekend suggested SSI accounted for the jobs of around 6,000 people in Redcar, either directly or via knock-on industries.

The scale of the challenge this poses the town is dizzying.

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Redcar is one of the more economically-deprived in the North, with higher-than-average unemployment and has six food banks in a place home to just 35,000 people.

Without the steel industry, still a profitable business, the region loses jobs but, far more importantly, its sense of identity and soul.

With all this in mind let me pose a question; would Angela Merkel or Barrack Obama stand idly by while a crucial and vibrant industry crumbled into dust?

If we are serious about revitalising and enhancing the north’s economy then why are ministers not falling over themselves to provide assistance and support to Teesside.

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Teesside is no stereotypical north-eastern backwater that would elect a frog wearing a red rosette. The 2010 election saw the Lib Dems sweep the seat with an unprecedented swing (it returned to Labour in May this year). James Wharton, a Conservative and the Northern Powerhouse minister - is the MP for Stockton South.

When the banks hit the wall due to bad luck and bad management in 2008 we were told they must be bailed out as they were “too big to fail”.

If ever there was a localised exemplar of ‘too big to fail’ it is Teesside’s steel industry.

As a nation we are going to need tens of thousands of new homes in the coming decades if we are going to give our children somewhere to live. Alongside this we will need new schools, hospitals, churches, shopping centres and car parks. We are pressing ahead with the most ambitious rail programme in generations with HS2. If any of this is going to happen we are going to need steel, and lots of it.

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It would be lunacy to look abroad for it when we have, on our doorstep, such a productive epicentre home to so many highly-skilled workers.

The neo-liberal philosophy of allowing imperilled industries to falter in the name of the greater good belongs in the 1980s. Capitalism has moved on, and so have we as citizens. We have so much at stake in terms of the impact on the lives of men, women and children who just want to continue in the proud footsteps of their mothers, fathers and grandparents who worked there.

Redcar has struggled for years. A lot of the people I grew up with have either left the town entirely or commute long-distances to work elsewhere in Yorkshire or the North East.

But this latest bodyblow has the potential to be catastrophic for the region, in the same mould as the closures of the pits in 1980s.

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It cannot be left to fall to rack-and-ruin and the case for Government intervention is unequivocal.

The Northern Powerhouse cannot just be a slogan or sound bite if it is to have any credibility. It has to be backed up by action.