Steel - A Winner Or Loser?

 

Every so often a society decides which of its citizens really matter. Which ones get the star treatment and the big cash handouts – and which get shoved to the bottom of the pile and penalised. These are the big, rough choices that seem to have cropped up a little too regularly over the past 10 years.

 

Just look at the recent ‘austerity’ Budget. Wealthy pensioners: winners. Millionaires see their taxes cut to 45%: winners. Young would-be homeowners: losers. Disability welfare recipients: losers.  

 

And then along comes the issue of steelworkers. It would be easy to tune out of the past few weeks’ headlines about plant closures and job losses as just another story of business disaster. But what’s happening to our steelworkers (and what we do to protect them) goes right to the heart of the debate about which people and places count in Britain’s political positioning.

 

If Westminster lets the UK’s steel industry die (and they have half done that already), it’s in effect declaring that certain regions and the people who live and work in them are surplus to requirements. Just ask Teesside. Mothball the SSI plant in Redcar and it’s not just 2,200 workers that you send to the dole office and whose families you shove on the breadline. An entire local economy goes on life support: the suppliers of parts, the outside engineers who used to do the servicing, the port workers and hauliers, the cafes and shops.

 

The choice is stark. Westminster can sit on its hands, pretend it can’t do anything about the supposedly free market in steel (in which the single biggest player is the Chinese Communist party!) and let tens of thousands of families go to the wall. Or our politicians act as if its job is actually to protect people from market fluctuations and keep the steel industry afloat by extended bridging loans and capital investment in return for public stakes.

 

Imagine what would happen if manufacturing were centred around the capital and its executives had Downing Street on speed dial. Actually, you needn’t imagine it……just simply remember the financial meltdown of 2008. Gordon Brown was so desperate to save the City that the International Monitory Fund estimates he propped it up with £1.2 trillion of public money. That’s the equivalent of nearly £20,000 from every man, woman and child in the country doled out to bankers in direct cash, loans and taxpayer guarantees.

 

Save the steelworkers in a far cheaper and smaller rescue than RBS and HBOS? We shall see……but no breath is being held.