'Ghost town' fears haunt threatened UK steel community

James Pheby, Agence France-Presse

“This is the best three weeks I’ve ever had,” steelworker Kian Hopkins said of his new job at a Scunthorpe plant, even though locals fear its potential closure would turn their home into a “ghost town”. Smeared in soot, 18-year-old Hopkins said after his shift at the British Steel plant: “I shovel and all that lot, it’s amazing. It’s hard work but it makes your day go faster... when you get your paycheck.”

However, he added that it was “quite a dramatic time to start working here, I’m having people message me going ‘the job might be getting taken off you’.” The plant in northeast England is the last in the UK to produce virgin steel used in construction and rail transport. Its future was thrown into jeopardy in March when Chinese owner Jingye said the plant was losing £700,000 ($923,000) a day and was “no longer financially sustainable”.

It rejected a bailout deal with the UK government, which this weekend secured emergency legislation giving it control over the site in order to keep the blast furnaces burning. A long-term solution has yet to be agreed, leaving the plant’s 2,700 workers in limbo. Steel has dominated the Lincolnshire town since the 19th century, with the plant’s chimneys towering over low-rise houses.

“Physically, you can see it, the town’s surrounded by the works,” explained 52-year-old dog walker Chris Cell.

The plant also dominates the local economy. “That steel works is our lifeline. If you cut the artery, things run out, you end up with nothing,” former steelworker Jim Kirk, 66, told AFP outside a shop on Scunthorpe’s high street.

“If that steel works closes, that’ll be the end of Scunthorpe. Nobody’s going to want to live here. It just comes to a sad end ... And it shouldn’t be like that,” added Kirk, who worked in the industry for 35 years, from the age of 16, until a bout of meningitis left him blind. “Everyone in Scunthorpe knows somebody that’s affiliated to the steel works,” said consultant radiographer Nick Barlow, 36. “It’s how the town was formed, everything revolves around it and everyone’s worried,” he added.

The plant’s closure would deal a devastating blow to an already struggling town centre, warned card shop worker Joanne Cooper, 57. “The mood in town, morale is very low. People seem to have no hope. More shops are closing, and if British Steel goes, it’ll be even worse for the town, it’s pretty dead already. “There won’t be a high street. I think it’ll just become a ghost town. It means everything to the town for British Steel to stay open,” she added.

A poster reading “Save our Steel” covers the front door of her shop, but only for a few more days as the business is due to close down next week, crippled by rising rents.

Cooper is the daughter of a steelworker and remembers how the town “was booming in those days, while I was growing up. “It was a good career. My dad, he was 16, and he left school and then went into British Steel and got an apprenticeship straight away.

“It paid our mortgage and it set us up for life. There was a lot more pride in the town, people felt comfortable that they had a job and it was certain and it was safe.”

There was general agreement that the government was right to intervene at the weekend, and that British Steel should eventually be renationalised.

“It is giving people hope in the town,” said Cooper.

“You need to ... renationalise it as soon as possible,” said Kirk, adding no private company will take on the loss-making plant. “We can’t just keep buying cheap steel from China or wherever, they’re just flooding the stuff. And it’s not right,” he said.

He accused the plant’s Chinese owners of trying to “run it down... so that they can import their cheap steel over here”. The UK government said on Tuesday that it had secured the raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running, easing immediate concerns. But new bosses appointed by the government are still locked in negotiations to secure the longer-term future for the plant.

“I hope they’re going in the right direction,” said Hopkins, who grew up 10 minutes from the plant. “I just hope I keep a job. That’s all I care about.”