Another Bit Falls Off Great Britain

Another lump falls off Britain. Taking 1700 jobs with it. RIP Redcar blast furnace, and another part of the steel industry. Well, I saw it happen in Hull with the fishing industry, saw it happen with Steel in Sheffield and Rotherham, and Coal in Barnsley, now it looks like they are picking off what's left, one by one.

The trouble is that an industry that can mean life or death to a whole community has been allowed to become a tick in a millionaire's ledger.

What was that Nye Bevan said?:

This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

Yet, by tearing down our traditional industries and also by letting the EU trample all over our fishing grounds, we seem to have achieved just that. We used to make stuff. Out of metal. Time we started again. Yes, I am sober (for once) and yes, I am angry.

Industries rise and fall, and time goes on, etc. But I would like to think we have moved on from more primitive times, and we should be able to consider the effect of such seismic changes in industries against the wider sense of the community of which it is inextricably linked. The buzzword phrase these days is “corporate social responsibility” – the recognition that you cannot just operate an industry in isolation from the locality which provides it with a workforce, and which it in turn feeds by pumping money back into the local economy.

The coal mines were closed because the coal was cheaper from abroad. Or gas was cheaper, or Orimulsion was, or something – to be honest, it wasn’t exactly the proverbial level playing field anyway. But sometimes, of course, "cheapest" and "best" can be in opposition, because the effect of the blight caused by generations of unemployment and lack of opportunity never gets costed in anywhere.

I have yet to hear a serious counter argument to the assertion that Thatcher and Heseltine closing down the remaining pits in 1992 during the dash for gas was anything other than an act of political vandalism and spite aimed at the working classes, that actually damaged our country and made us more vulnerable to foreign oligarchs turning off the gas.

People say that the pit towns were kept together by limited horisons and lack of opportunity, but in truth it is much more complicated. They were kept together by a complex web of community, the pillars of which were chapel, music, brass bands, sunday school, the union, the Labour party, nonconformism, self-education the WMC and the Co-op. There's no reason why the same can't be resurrected today, in fact things like Facebook make it easier to have a sense of community. The internet is just a tool like a screwdriver, you can use it to make something useful or you can use it to break a car lock.

And in that phrase "we buy it cheaply from China" has anyone factored into the equation the cost of three generations of unemployment and social deprivation in Grimethorpe for instance - the cost to the benefits system, the cost of medical treatment. Again, it would probably have been cheaper OVERALL if the government had kept the pits open, even if the coal itself was more expensive (in fact they rigged the market so that gas seemed to be cheaper anyway)

In the case of Redcar, I think the way forward here has to be socially useful employment. If the government re-nationalised this steelworks, and paid the people who were running it a bit more than they would get on the dole to carry on making steel, even if we only put it partly or wholly into a "national reserve of steel", against the day when we might need some, it would be socially "better", surely.

And they could specify that the steel has to be used in the structure of any new government or public sector buildings, instead of buying it in from India or China or wherever, with all the attendant carbon footprint issues. And aren't we supposed to be building two new aircraft carriers or something - made of steel, I guess?

Crash barriers on motorways and major roads - all need steel, and the better they are, the more lives are saved and the less pressure on the NHS. I am sure there are lots of uses a source of local, cheaply manufactured UK steel could be put to.

Again, I ask, has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis into the true "cost" - what about the cost of 1700 people now on unemployment benefit, and the knock on cost of them no longer paying PAYE, the cost to the local economy of them no longer doing their weekly shop, etc etc etc. And in any case, it makes it more secure for the UK to have its own supplies of steel. Again, I ask, what happens if we need lots of steel suddenly, say we have to build a lot of ships or something?

I think we really have to start re-thinking what we consider to be the true meaning of words like "cost" and "profit" and get away from the idea that something that makes a loss is automatically damned and worthless. We need a new set of definitions and a new definition of capitalism.

Some would say, of course, that keeping the works open on reduced wages would be less than the minimum wage and that the Unions would never wear it. Well, in that case, it would have to be the minimum wage or slightly more I guess, but it would still probably cost the country less than the effect of having to pay 1700 people Unemployment Benefit for a long while, not to mention the wider knock on effect of the loss of the tax revenue, the collapse of the local economy and so on.

I agree that it's not a perfect situation, far from it.

As to the Unions, I don't doubt it. Someone would have to remind them that the purpose of a trade union is to safeguard the interests of its members and it is more in the interest of their members to keep a job, and keep the works open, albeit on reduced rates, than to have it close down altogether, throwing 1700 of their members on to the dole. And if they don't see the sense in that, then we need a new union, as well as a new government.

Meanwhile, let’s have one last rousing chorus of “Steelos” – with actions!

Dunna let it cobble, it'll tear the place apart!