A stellar group of very talented people come from or have lived in Port Talbot. Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Sheen, Geoffrey Howe and Rob Brydon, to name but a few. But I know Port Talbot for only one thing: steel.
I have never set foot in Port Talbot. Not because I don’t like it, but because it was only ever on the way to somewhere else I was going to. To the left, the steelworks sat among the terraced streets, belching thick smoke and steam, sending clouds far beyond the town. It was not an inviting sight, but then very few industrial towns ever are. In fact, my normal emotion on seeing the town was a shake of the head, with pursed lips. There was nothing for me in Port Talbot.
But then, what would a steelworks employing highly skilled, high value workers want with me, someone with minimal motor talents and zero knowledge about steel? They probably didn’t want me either. But there was something highly attractive about the town in a way I find hard to explain. The terraced streets, like groups of Coronation Streets, speak loudly of community. I have spent my life where community was an afterthought. People got on, of course, and helped each other out, but mainly they lived their own lives. By the time I was old enough to understand what community really meant, Margaret Thatcher had come along and destroyed it, almost everywhere across the land, dismantling industries, tearing apart our manufacturing base; never to recover. Now we make very little and import a great deal.
So today’s announcement of job losses at various steelworks, but particularly the 750 jobs to go at Port Talbot, and my heart aches. 750 of 3000 is a lot of jobs, do the maths. For every job in the steelworks, three depend on it in other industries. There is no doubt that the town is heavily dependent on steel. Without it, the town would be devastated. Today is a sad stale of devastation for 750 people plus their families.
These days Britain provides services as an alternative to making things. We import much of our coal, our oil and now our steel. Take a trip to the valleys of South Wales and see the grassed over slag heaps and closed off pits. And then see the proud men who once made things competing for minimum wage jobs in the new DIY superstore selling largely foreign goods that employs half a dozen people.
I find that it always rains when I drive past Port Talbot. Perhaps, I have imagined this, but the thick drizzle and grey skies always seem to visit the town when I am near. Perhaps, also, this is false view, gained by the pre-conceptions of others which have influenced my thinking. It can’t be a nice place: there’s a big steelworks in the middle of town.
But when I was young, I lived near a massive jam factory where many local people worked, others worked at a massive chocolate factory not far away, the Co-op trouser factory or Bristol Commercial Vehicles, which made, somewhat unsurprisingly, vehicles. They’re all gone too, long gone in fact and the replacement employers are the same DIY stores that you find in the Welsh valleys. And it did rain a lot in Brislington, where I lived, and steam and smoke from the factories belched into the air. Port Talbot was not a lot different to what I grew up with at all.
When the news leaked last night – why do these things leak out, so the very people whose lives are about to be shattered hear second hand, through the media, instead of through face-to-face meetings? – my thoughts were with the workers. It will be awful for all of them, wondering if the scrapheap will include them or their friends. Young or old, their lives may never be the same again. It’s so sad.
The government, we are told, is “monitoring the situation”, so that’s all right then. They’re keeping a close eye on things and soon the prime minister will declare that “we are doing everything we can” which is code for we are doing nothing because this is the free market for you, albeit a free market where Chinese state-owned steel plants can undercut our own steel and our own workers. The very right wing Business Secretary Sajid Javid, who despite coming from a working class family in which his dad was a bus driver, will utter platitudes but ultimately will say, “Sorry, but there’s nothing we can do.” And like with every factory closure, we will forget about it in a few weeks, as the queues of skilled men wait in the Jobcentre to find that the only jobs available, if there are any, will probably involve saying, “Would you like fries with that?”
Government policy on manufacturing, from Thatcher onwards, has not been a policy at all. Our industries have either been systemically taken apart as a result of ideology or left to perish in the distorted markets of the world.
The plight of the steelworkers in Port talbot, as they face a bleak future, is shocking to behold. Solutions will not be easy and those of us who demand solutions will need better ones that saying ‘something must be done’, but what is the point of government if during every crisis they stand aside and say, “Nothing to do with me, guv: can’t interfere in the free market.” Because that is the reality of the thirty odd years since Thatcher came to power.
“It’s a worrying time for the workforce” was the best Cameron could come up with today. Very worrying, Dave, but even more worrying is that you are doing nothing about it. How about having a word with your drinking pal, the Chinese PM, and get him to stop dumping cheap steel on us. That might make a start. But he won’t, will he?
