It’s not possible to visit Port Talbot and ignore the steelworks.
This is a town built on steel, growing alongside the plant as it hit its heyday in the 60s. Now, after Tata Steel announced its plans to sell all its British operations, Port Talbot’s steel works, and others across the UK, are at risk.
As coal once was, steel is part of the fabric of South Wales. Around 4,000 jobs exist at the plant itself, but thousands more jobs are thought to be at risk across Wales and the UK, through the impact on the plant’s supply chain and contractors.
And, again as with coal mining, it’s not unusual to find families who have generations of steelworkers among them. The plant was, after all, one of Wales’ single biggest employers.
We wanted to know how the people from Port Talbot and surrounding areas, including Neath and Swansea, feel about the current crisis in British Steel. From steelworkers worried about their jobs, to local people who grew up with the plant on the horizon, here’s what they had to say:
Steel is Port Talbot, and Port Talbot is steel
I am a British steel baby, son of a steelworker, brought up on Sandfields Estate, Port Talbot, which was built for steelworkers in the 1950s.
My father worked in the Abbey works for 30 years. My mother worked as a secretary there before having her children. On the street where I grew up, virtually everyone worked there. I worked there myself over summer holidays.
I have lived and worked in many places. But I have always been hugely proud to hail from our town of stars and steel.
Steel is Port Talbot, and Port Talbot is steel.
At its height, the works employed almost 20,000 people, in a town of around 50,000. Even now, with a much smaller workforce, it is the heart, soul and pride of the town.
If the plant closed, Port Talbot would never recover.
No town can come back from a blow like that: we’ve seen what happened in mining communities near us when the mines went.
All of South Wales would feel the effects of this. It would affect me far less than most. But I would be heartbroken to see my town - a warm, proud, lively and enriching place - fall to pieces.
For our country too, losing its steel industry would be catastrophic. Are we going to rely entirely on imported steel? For Trident? HS2? Crossrail? It would be madness.
The UK government found £1.1 trillion to rescue banks from the mess they had got themselves into. Will they now stand up for steel? They must now give the steel industry the support it needs to get through tough economic times, by nationalising it if necessary. Steel is too important to our country to be allowed to die.
Kevin Sullivan, public relations officer, living in Swansea
Nearly every family has someone working or connected to the steelworks
I’ve lived in Port Talbot all my life. I’ve worked at the steelworks for all my working life. Steel is the heartbeat that pumps the blood around the town to keep it alive. Nearly every family has someone working or connected to the steelworks either employed direct or working for a contractor connected to the site. It means living a life for thousands of people.
If it were to close, it would be absolutely devastating for an area already suffering from social deprivation. What job prospects will there be for the 12,000 people affected? There is nothing in South Wales as it is without all these people being unemployed at the same time. People would have no money to spend in the town which has a knock on effect for other local businesses. For myself personally it would mean loss of employment which is all I have known since I was a teenager and as the sole earner in my household it is a frightening prospect. The future looks very bleak.
Anonymous, steel worker
The steel works is the very fabric of South Wales
This goes beyond Port Talbot, the steelworks is the very fabric of South Wales. My grandparents worked at the Steel Company of Wales. They lived in the Sandfields estate built to accommodate steel workers and their families.
Whenever I travel home to Swansea, the steel works is always a welcome sight. It tells me I am indeed home.
The metallurgical industry synonymous with Wales has slowly been choked to death. How fickle the rest of the country is to forget its history at the expense of cheaper foreign imports. ‘Economics’ is the logic placed behind the motivation. However it’s generations of families that closure will destroy.
This is another stab in the back to the many communities who have seen the demise of the coal industry and the closure of BP’s nearby Llandarcy refinery and petrochemical plant in Baglan Bay. Yes, the government can look at alternative employment schemes – just like Thatcher’s government offered “enterprise zones”. But closure cuts deeper than that. It takes away the pride and the heart of the region.
Gareth Evans, works in Packaging and lives in Llandarcy
I watched my father go through the same thing with the mining industry
I am originally from the Rhondda and was in the army for twelve years, as the mining industry was depleted. When I left the army, I settled in Port Talbot and started working at the steelworks. I am still working there.
Port Talbot, Wales and the UK need this plant, and all the others throughout the UK. It is vital to our economy and our community. Once it’s gone, everything else will go too. As an ex-serviceman, and one of many other ex-servicemen working here, I am disappointed we do not use our own steel. Where is our government who say things like: “We are all in this together”. I have yet to see any hard evidence of what they are actually doing for steel in the UK. Where is the EU? There’s no good voting to stay with them if there is no help there either.
It’s the same as what I saw happen to my dad when he was a miner. The industry went, and now it’s happening to this hard-working, reliable community.
Anonymous, steelworker
My message to the government would be to take a look at what they have created
I’ve lived in Port Talbot all my life. The steel works employs not only so many of my friends, but also my family. It means everything to not only Port Talbot, but West Glamorgan, Mid Glamorgan and beyond. I know lads who travel from Ebbw Vale, Newport, Swansea, Neath and even Haverfordwest. This industry is everything to South Wales.
Without it, the town would crumble. It’s the smaller things people don’t realise will be affected. Like paper shops, supermarkets, small businesses that rely on trade from workers from the plant. Without jobs to provide money for bills and mortgages, the workers would have to rely on the council for accommodation and benefits, which is already very high in this part of Wales.
My message to the government would be to take a look at what they have created by not lowering business rates and allowing the Chinese to dump massive amounts of steel without having to pay a great deal of tax. If they aren’t careful, they will have a economic crisis on they’re hands and they have only themselves to blame.
Tata’s Indian owners cannot be blamed – they pumped a huge amount of money into the works and for what they were asking for in help seemed a small penny compared to what it’s going to cost the government in the long run.
Kristian Watts, worker at Tata Steel’s energy department
There is nothing else to keep families in Port Talbot
I grew up in Port Talbot. All of my family still lives there, and some still work at the plant.
Port Talbot revolves around the steelworks. It is the main source of the economy which if it were to go would be the end of Port Talbot. There is nothing else to keep the families there – they would leave to be able to find work. It is scary to think that some of my family and friends may be out of work and the effect it would have on the community would be devastating. The steelworks is iconic and for it to go would be a travesty on the shaping of South Wales.
Natasha Oldham, insurance executive now living in London
I am scared for our children, and what sort of economic environment they will be growing up in
It may be cliche, but it is the heart of the town. So many families are tied to it.
For every steelworker, there are approximately another three jobs in the supply chain, or in support work. There will be thousands not directly employed by Tata, or contractual workers, adversely affected. It will push many families below the poverty line, with housing issues becoming apparent. And this is not just in Port Talbot, but in the whole surrounding area.
I am terrified by the lack of employment options into which my skill set may be transferred successfully. Several very close members of my family are all currently employed by Tata also. It would decimate us emotionally and financially. I am scared for our children, and what sort of economic environment they will be growing up in. What will the future hold for them?
I have lost all faith in our Government’s ability to support the steel industry, and am very concerned at the loss of an intrinsic part of the UK’s core structure. How can we defend our country with no capability of making our own steel? God help us if the Government commit our brave forces to another conflict.
Anonymous, engineer at the steelworks
The end of steelmaking will be the end of the town
Up until last year I lived all my life in Port Talbot. Five generations of my family worked in the steel plant My great grandfather was part of the team that opened the first works there.
The steel industry defines the town. It is part of its DNA. In the 60s and 70s we had a hugely prosperous town with almost full employment. The positive effect was profound: businesses were thriving, there was a significat sense of community cohesion and togetherness, fostered by a council house building plan that ensured the industry was serviced and its workers had decent standards of housing.
All that was trashed in the early 80s when the Tories privatised and decimated the plant. 70% of people lost their jobs – including my father. The effect on the town was horrific, coupled by the capping of rates, meaning that outsourcing became the norm. Soon we had large-scale unemployment, the erosion of civic amenities and fragmentation of community.
While long-time residents would attest to how much the town has necrotised over the decades in direct proportion to the loss of jobs in the steel company; there is still a semblance of beating heart and community defiance. The people of the town are proud, fierce, tough and humorous. The end of steelmaking will – and let us be under no delusions about this – be the end of the town.
If the Tories make no attempt to save the steel industry here, it will be another example of the callous disregard they have for working class industrial heritage in Wales. Mining communities are now wastelands of hope, inhabited by ghosts. The fear is that Cameron and Osborne have already doomed us to the same fate.
Antony Thomas, health and safety consultant living in Monmouthshire
