The Steel Industry

[The Stationmaster]

Don't dispute the loss of interesting rail traffic Jim.

 

Just go be clear, the works were not badly situated when built but most went back to the early years of the 20th century. What had been a good location in 1910 was no longer a good location in 1970.

 

I could cite several examples, Consett was built close to local ores, long gone by 1970. Once the local ores had gone, for every ton of steel produced, three tons of raw materials had to be shoved uphill.

 

Irlam was built on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal with the intention of foreign ore carriers mooring up alongside. Fine in 1913, and through to the 50's, when ore was carried in ship less than 12,000 tons (as big as the ship canal allowed), by 1970, to be competitive, ore carriers had reached 100,000 tons.

 

The world, and the industry, had moved on. Even when we built a throughly modern, greenfield works, Llanwern (1960) 'we' spoiled it by not equipping it with an adjacent deep water wharf.

 

Ebbw Vale was just the same - built on a site where coal, iron ore, and limestone were readily available, so a logical place to build an iron and steel industrial complex.  Closed down during the depression, back in work due to wartime demand then 'saved' by sheer force of politics despite every scrap of raw material having to be hauled up an expensive to operate steeply inclined railway, even after it had been reduced to nothing more than (yet another) South Wales tinplate works.  Logic would indicate that it should have been totally closed years before it actually went but instead it suffered an expensive death through massive 1970s investment and changes  to suit it for continuing roles it wasn't properly sited to carry out.  The remarkable things about Ebbw Vales was that it lasted as long as it did and that money was being poured into the site in the 1970s in what was basically an out-of-the-way site.

 

All I will say is that in 1974 the gods of BR smiled on me and gave me the job at Llanwern and not the similar post at Ebbw Vale (which was given to a close colleague).

[Ohmisterporter]

Surely the two positions aren't totally incompatible? You're effectively using the economic downturn to kill off the older less efficient plants, and by the time the economic problems are over the shiny new large modern plant is finished and able to take up the increased demand. 

 

Yes Pete, but I was using the story not as a comment on the wisdom or otherwise of expanding production but the weakness of the managers changing course and agreeing with the big boss, even though they believed him to be wrong. I know of umpteen other examples of this.

[Bernard Lamb]

Just read a report from my friends in the pension industry.

The government will have to fork out in the order of £2 billion to cover the pension deficit.

That is a prediction using an estimate for the current value of the investments. The last reported deficit was some thing like £485 million but that was last April and shares are well down on that valuation. That is before any wheeling and dealing in respect of reduced energy costs.

Ouch.

Bernard

[Bernard Lamb]

Yes Pete, but I was using the story not as a comment on the wisdom or otherwise of expanding production but the weakness of the managers changing course and agreeing with the big boss, even though they believed him to be wrong. I know of umpteen other examples of this.

On the other hand there was Michael Edwards at BL.

He set impossible tasks for the managers.

Then he sacked all the yes men who went along with the ideas and promoted those who told him the ideas were rubbish.

Bernard

[Arthur]

 

 

Indeed Mike, Ebbw Vale was another with locational problems.

 

The other issue Ebbw Vale had was it's narrow valley location with its various departments on 'terraces' on the valley sides. To move hot metal from the blast furnaces, on the valley floor, to the steel plants just a couple of hundred yards away but a deal higher, involved an internal rail movement of 3 miles (IIRC), switch backing up the valley side.

[jjb1970]

Interesting post jjb.

 

I wasn't aware that it was problems with the RB211 that lead to RRs spell of state ownership, interesting story. I had a look at the Wiki entry (yeah, I know) and, on a lighter note, was taken by this;

 

Hugh Conway (managing director RR Gas Turbines), persuaded Stanley Hooker to come out of retirement and return to Rolls Royce.As technical director he led a team of other retirees to fix the remaining problems on the RB211-22. The engine was finally certified on 14 April 1972....

 

Reminded me of those Hollywood films where a bunch of written off, grizzled, veterans are called back to save humanity with their olde worlde skills. Nice one.

The RB211 is also a good lesson not to judge things based on a troubled gestation. The RB211 had all sorts of issues when new yet it has been a superb engine and the current Trent family is still an evolution of the RB211. I don't know about the current Trent engines but I worked with some early Trent engines and the certification documents still identified them as members of the RB211 family and Trent was a marketing name.

[EddieB]

Just read a report from my friends in the pension industry.

The government will have to fork out in the order of £2 billion to cover the pension deficit.

That is a prediction using an estimate for the current value of the investments. The last reported deficit was some thing like £485 million but that was last April and shares are well down on that valuation. That is before any wheeling and dealing in respect of reduced energy costs.

Ouch.

Bernard

And what's the picture across the EU?  Convenient perhaps to have a "migration crisis" that will generate tax revenues and help to fill the pensions shortfall for a further few years.

 

Ouch indeed.

[Neil]

I worry that if we shed well paid jobs, lots of them, and replace them with no work or poorly paid work in the sales and service sector, then we effectively encourage recession. I see no sign of companies champing at the bit to recruit skilled steel workers to well paid jobs in cutting edge industries, unlikely to be undercut by emergent nations with their cheaper labour/energy/environmental costs.

[RANGERS]

I worry that if we shed well paid jobs, lots of them, and replace them with no work or poorly paid work in the sales and service sector, then we effectively encourage recession. I see no sign of companies champing at the bit to recruit skilled steel workers to well paid jobs in cutting edge industries, unlikely to be undercut by emergent nations with their cheaper labour/energy/environmental costs.

Having seen the results of a major closure first hand, the vacuum it leaves is impossible to fill in the short - medium term. Longer term it is possible but the chances of success are very small, take the mining districts as an example, how many of them can be regarded as prosperous even 20 - 30 years after the closures.

 

The issue with the high paid jobs is in those very words, they are highly paid and as such are a major factor in making the whole operation uneconomic. In relative terms, I have to think that steel industry pay has risen in the last 50 years and that steelworkers would be further up the "food chain" than they were in the 60s and 70s but faced with the choice of minimum wage stacking shelves or little more in the harsh environment of a steelworks, what would they rather be doing?

 

The UK has seen massive contraction of the extraction, primary and secondary manufacturing industries since the 1970s, with that has come major loss of "well paid" jobs and whilst the areas affected have suffered terribly, the country as a whole has seen overall growth so the loss of even an entire industry probably wouldn't massively impact on it. What has happened, and a bigger factor in assessing the true state of the country, is our balance of payments has become a basket case as imported materials and goods have become cheaper than our own.

[jjb1970]

The UK problems in many of the heavy industries in many ways go back to the post war era and it is not easy to over turn decades of under investment and political ineptitude which left a legacy of plants which are not exactly leading edge technology. I don't know about steel but I do know that what is left of our ship building is looked upon with derision by Asian yards as almost being like a living museum of how ships were built in the olden days (btw, that is true of most of Europe, it is not just a UK problem). When those plants are technically less than class leading and are also saddled with high labour costs relative to much of the world and in a country with high energy costs then it is a bit of a miracle that we still have any industry.

[Ohmisterporter]

Even though our electricity prices are higher than our competitors our government wants to guarantee nearly double the price per unit to foreigners willing to build nuclear power stations. No doubt there will be legislation to compel us to buy at those prices. Even the French seem to be baulking at the idea now.

[Arthur]

 

The loss of heavy industry has deprived many of those without qualifications or trades of regular, well paid, work. A kind of work, or at least an environment, many of them enjoyed;

 

in the 60s and 70s but faced with the choice of minimum wage stacking shelves or little more in the harsh environment of a steelworks, what would they rather be doing?

 

I did both of those in the 70s, supermarket shelf stacking and working as a labourer in a couple of large steelworks (Irlam and Shotton). The steelworks paid a better rate and, as it was shift work, there were better rates at night, weekends and, if available, there was overtime, an extra half or even a double shift. If you put the hours in you could earn a pretty good wage.

 

But, even at the same rate, I'd still rather have worked at the steelworks. It was a blokey environment, a bit rough, a lot of laughs and camaraderie, the work was physical yet with an end result. You felt you'd done something at the end of the shift. I think it, and similar roles elsewhere, suited a lot of men very well.

 

Those jobs have been automated or gone abroad.

[The Stationmaster]

The loss of heavy industry has deprived many of those without qualifications or trades of regular, well paid, work. A kind of work, or at least an environment, many of them enjoyed;

 

 

I did both of those in the 70s, supermarket shelf stacking and working as a labourer in a couple of large steelworks (Irlam and Shotton). The steelworks paid a better rate and, as it was shift work, there were better rates at night, weekends and, if available, there was overtime, an extra half or even a double shift. If you put the hours in you could earn a pretty good wage.

 

But, even at the same rate, I'd still rather have worked at the steelworks. It was a blokey environment, a bit rough, a lot of laughs and camaraderie, the work was physical yet with an end result. You felt you'd done something at the end of the shift. I think it, and similar roles elsewhere, suited a lot of men very well.

 

Those jobs have been automated or gone abroad.

 

But even back then it was changing quickly.  The first time I went to Llanwern, c.early 1972. there were something like a couple of dozen men working on a cold reduced line with individually monitored/controlled rollers etc.  When I went back there in early 1974 computerised control of rolling thickness and quality had been introduced and there were a couple of men on the ground to deal with snags and three in the overhead control position; the only time extra labour was called in was if the strip being rolled hadn't gone onto the coiler at the end of the line properly (which was very rare, fortunately - berserk rolled strip is not a pleasant sight).  So a big reduction in a short period.

[Sheffield]

If the French do not build the power station presumably in a few years the Uk will be short of power and will have to buy it through the cross Channel link. From the French. And you thought Hinckley Point power was going to be expensive.