Jonathan James is in full flow, reminiscing about his family’s history at the Port Talbot steelworks, when his composure suddenly breaks.
“Everyone worked in the steelworks from a young age,” the 42-year-old says, as his voice starts to crack with emotion. “I remember my father coming home from work on his Honda Link moped and rocking up in the smell with the smell of coke ovens on his clothes. It’s been a massive part of my life – growing up, as well as when I finally started working there.”
James is one of thousands of employees who face redundancy as Tata Steel plans to close its two blast furnaces by the end of the year and replace them with a more modern, less polluting electric furnace.
The closure of the Port Talbot plant in south Wales will send economic shockwaves through the region. Up to 2,800 people could lose their jobs as a direct result. Many others in the wider supply chain and community will be affected.
Speaking to the Guardian from the steelworks, the shadow Wales secretary, Jo Stevens, says the fallout could be on a par with what happened here in the 1980s.
“We were badly affected by that,” says Stevens, who grew up in north Wales. “It’s left an economic legacy, but also a health legacy – we’ve got an older, sicker population than many areas in the rest of the United Kingdom.
“Nothing came in its place for a very, very long time. And then what did come didn’t compensate for what had gone, and it didn’t deliver jobs at the kind of scale and the wages that we needed.”
After a period during which a series of Labour frontbenchers have gone out of their way to praise Margaret Thatcher, Stevens has a slightly different take on the former Conservative prime minister who oversaw the closure of much of the British steel industry.
“She pulled the rug from under our feet, and then put nothing back in its place,” Stevens says.
Tata says it has been forced to take drastic action because of the scale of its losses at Port Talbot, where the Indian-owned company says it is losing £1m a day.
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