The Government cannot allow our once proud steel industry to wither away - Jayne Dowle

I grew up with steel, and it’s true to say that my political convictions were forged during the strikes and industrial unrest of the early 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher drove the de-nationalisation of the industry.

Most of my friends’ fathers worked down the pit. My dad - his own father, a miner, refused to allow his lads to follow him – went to Stocksbridge every day instead, to keep the furnaces blasting.

Dad’s industry got it in the neck from Margaret Thatcher and her henchman, Ian MacGregor, appointed British Steel chairman in 1980, before they went for the miners. Three years later, MacGregor went on to head the National Coal Board (NCB).

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British Steel had been formed in 1967 – the year I was born - when Harold Wilson’s Labour government nationalised more than a dozen private companies to create one of the biggest steel producers in the world.

Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales pictured in 2023. PIC: Ben Birchall/PA WireTata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales pictured in 2023. PIC: Ben Birchall/PA Wire
Tata Steel's Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales pictured in 2023. PIC: Ben Birchall/PA Wire

Thatcher decided British Steel had become unwieldy, heavily-unionised and unprofitable and took an axe to the industry. And now we are living with the legacy; a fragmented sector of what should be a crucial 21st century industry vital for national security, hived off into various incarnations of (mostly) overseas ownership.

If you didn’t grow up with steel, you might consider it to be irrelevant, a dirty, heavy industry that belongs in the past.

It is anything but, and that is why this government must fight to keep it alive.

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There is talk that to rescue steel from the vagaries of global markets, and to protect our own interests, it should be renationalised. It’s reported that business secretary Jonathan Reynolds is constantly ‘locked in talks’ to secure its future – but will this Labour government be brave enough to do the right thing, and go for it?

In our region, steel – and iron - has contributed to the economy for hundreds of years, provided millions of jobs and garnered wealth for old-style ‘steel barons’ who then invested in property and businesses throughout Yorkshire.

But steel has never been an industry to rest on its laurels, to indulge in nostalgia. Since those post-nationalisation days, Sheffield has turned itself into a world-class player in the global steel industry; its universities provide the best engineers and metallurgists (all those STEM subjects governments are so keen on), a South Yorkshire-wide workforce produces some of the highest-quality steel available anywhere in the world, and the industry keeps Sheffield very much at the forefront of industrial innovation.

Never has this been more crucial. Over the last few decades, privatised British steel plants have lurched from one owner to another. Stocksbridge is currently owned by Liberty Steel, a subsidiary of the GFG Alliance, an international group of businesses associated with Indian-born British businessman Sanjeev Gupta.

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Other Northern plants, including Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, the only place left in the UK making steel from iron ore, after the Indian company Tata closed its blast furnaces at Port Talbot in South Wales, are owned by the ‘new’ British Steel, part of the Chinese Jingye group.

This puzzles the old-timers and worries the workers wondering if they will still have jobs next year. My dad worked as a weigh-fitter, mending and maintaining the plant’s weighing machines. He was on strike for three months in 1980, hard times.

I remember dad’s friend Derek – ‘a big union man’ in both reputation and stature - calling round to take him to the picket lines on freezing cold winter nights, and the free school meals and the kindness of my English teacher, Mr Reed, who supported the steelworkers, and paid for me - out of his own pocket - to go on a theatre trip to Manchester.

He’s never been an especially political man himself, my dad, but he fought for his job, and he still fights for the industry which employed him all his working life, more than 40 years from the age of 15, when he left school. Stocksbridge was still owned by the founding company Samuel Fox back then; the shopping centre which replaced a redundant part of the works is named ‘Fox Valley’ in tribute.

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The parlous state of the British steel industry today angers and perplexes dad.

Once furnaces stop, they stop. Of course, renationalisation would come at a substantial cost, but it would be a price worth paying to know steel was safe, and in our own hands. The Prime Minister and his Chancellor are fond of reminding us that hard decisions must be made, and we must all bear the brunt of past mistakes. They cannot say this and at the same time, allow the steel industry to wither away on their watch.

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