Difficult battle – but plenty ready to fight

Steelworkers have continued their fight to save the industry, as a Unite delegation from steel communities across the UK travelled to London last night (February 29) to attend an opposition day debate about the steel crisis.

 
Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle led the debate, and hammered the government for its continued inaction in the face of a steel crisis that may see the industry completely collapse.

 
“Britain’s steel industry is in crisis, and despite the warning signs flashing red, the Tories have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to come up with any kind of response,” Eagle said.

 
‘Shameful complacency’

“More than 5,000 UK steel jobs have been lost over the past 12 months,” she added. “Redcar has been abandoned, the blast furnace and the coke ovens destroyed by this government’s shameful complacency and inaction. Tata Steel has announced the loss of 1,050 jobs this year alone, and there are worrying signs that the entire industry in the UK is hanging by a thread.”

 
Eagle argued that the steel industry is worth nearly £10bn and constitutes the lifeblood of many communities throughout the UK. She noted also steel’s central strategic importance in areas such as defence.

 
She and other Labour MPs railed against the government’s opposition to scrapping the “lesser duty rule”, which would enable the EU to significantly hike tariffs on cheap steel imports flooding the market.

 
The Labour MPs also challenged the government’s contention that granting market economy status to China would not harm UK steel.

 
While the Labour motion, which called for action on tariffs and the publication of a strategy for the industry, was defeated by 288 to 239, Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke said the debate exposed the Tories’ weakness and bolstered Labour’s arguments.

 
“The reps who attended the debate were very impressed by the Labour team, led by Angela Eagle,” he said. “They demolished all of business secretary Sajid Javid’s arguments and he was noticeably put on the back foot.”

 
“None of the Tory contributions were strong and it was obvious from the debate that the government side was wanting,” he added.

 
UNITElive spoke to the delegation of reps who’d come from Port Talbot, Rotherham, and Shotton among other steel towns to support Labour in its call for immediate government action.

 
Jason Wyatt, an electrician at the Port Talbot steelworks told UNITElive that the entire Port Talbot community would be decimated if the government doesn’t step in soon.

 
Biggest employer

“Lot of people are worried and downbeat,” he said. “That’s because the whole Port Talbot community relies on steel in one way or another. It’s the biggest employer in the area, and besides there are a lot of jobs outside the steelworks that rely on steelworks still – like the local cafes and chip shops.”

 
Frustrated about the government’s continued inaction, Wyatt criticised the empty promises they’ve made thus far.

 
“They’ve been saying they’re going to look into it, but you can look at a glass of milk that’s poured on the floor and unless you mop it up, no amount of looking into it is going to make any difference,” he argued. “That’s why we attended the debate – to try to lobby them again and get some sort of response, some sort of positive output from it.

 
“Other European governments have gone above and beyond for their own steel industries, so it shows that something can be done – that it’s in their power to do it,” he noted.

 
Andy Thomson, a Tata Steel worker from Rotherham, came to represent his community where more than 700 jobs are set to go by the end of the month.

 
He echoed Wyatt’s frustration with the government which has been slow to respond while other governments in Europe have stepped in.

 
“It winds me up that other European governments are taking action and ours isn’t,” he said. “I’ve heard a few people say, ‘Well you bailed out the banks so why don’t you bail out steel?’ But I don’t think we need bailing out; we need a level playing field so we can compete with global steel manufacturers.”

 
Rock bottom

Barry Hayman of Newport, South Wales, is employed at the Llanwern steelworks, and said that in his community, morale has hit rock-bottom.

 
“It makes me angry that the government has not taken action yet,” he said. “I’ve worked in the steelworks ever since I left school. Although there’s been a lot of decline, we are very efficient now but we can’t compete against countries where they’re being subsidised by the state such as China or Russia. It wouldn’t matter how good we were; we will always be undercut.”

 
While the business secretary Sajid Javid speaks about cheap Chinese steel imports in the abstract, Hamon knows exactly what it feels like to see tonnes of foreign steel flooding the market.

 
“The place where I live near Newport docks is actually one of the places where they bring a lot of this cheap foreign steel in,” he said. “So we get to see it first hand – which is doubly irritating. At one point, we were literally struggling to export because the docks were so full of foreign imports coming in. Witnessing this, to me it felt very bizarre.”

 
“How far can you walk without touching something that has steel in it?” Hayman added. “You only have to look around this room or the building sites outside to realise the scale of the problem — if we make none of our own steel, all of the steel that goes into everything you see will have to be imported. And it’s at that point that they can charge us what they want.”

 
Mark Turner, a Port Talbot steelworker and rep, slammed the government for its continued “warm words” and no action following last night’s debate.

 
Disappointing

“It was very disappointing to see hardly any Tory MPs turn up to the actual debate, but at the end they turn out in droves to vote against the motion,” he said. “They’re not even making the time to come listen to us.

 
“We very much appreciated the support of Labour – they spoke eloquently in support of our case and all they were saying was correct,” Turner added. “The galling thing is that all other parties, and even some Tory MPs do want to help us, but it’s this government that’s standing in the way and leading us to the slaughter.”

 
Unite Shotton works branch chair Anthony Simpson agreed.

 
“Perhaps if the Conservatives put as much time into positive intervention as they did obstruction we could move forward and deal with all our issues and give the lifeline to the UK foundation industry which is in severe crisis,” he said.

 
Simpson added that all reps who attended were sincerely thankful for the supporting MPs “continued hard word to help the steel industry.”

 
Tony Burke emphasised that the fight must go on. “We must continue putting on the pressure – last night showed that while we’re there’s a difficult battle ahead, there are plenty of people who are joining together to fight our corner.”