Beg, borrow or steel
The New Statesman | UK politics and culture
The New Statesman
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Last year Scunthorpe’s two blast furnaces Queen Anne and Queen Bess became the last remaining primary steelmaking facility in the UK. However there were reports that those facilities were soon to be mothballed - 2,500 jobs lost before Christmas.
Despite those reports, smoke is still rising from the Scunthorpe Steelworks and talks about its future are continuing between Jingye - the Chinese company which owns the plant - and the government.
But what is the government's plan for the future of British steel? How reliant are we on offshore production? And how did Scunthorpe come to own the latest poltical football?
Kate Lamble is joined by Megan Kenyon and Sam Alvis, as well as Ben Houchen, Nic Dakin, Tony Gosling, Andrea Jenkyns and Martin Foster.
Read: The cost of net zero in the town that steel built
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Transcript
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| 0:57.5 | The New Statesman. |
| 1:02.2 | Well, I'm fourth or fifth generation steel a worker. My great-grandfather, grandfather, father, |
| 1:08.6 | all worked in the industry. When I was a young boy, I had a north facing bedroom. |
| 1:13.6 | And at that point we had three steelworks in Scunthorpe. |
| 1:16.6 | One was Normby Park, one was Redburn Steelworks and the other was Appleby, Froddingham. |
| 1:21.6 | And when Normandy Park Steelworks at night would tip its slag, it would like my bedroom up with all oranges, reds, yellows, you name it. |
| 1:29.3 | So I went to bed every night with the steel industry there in my front bedroom, if you like. |
| 1:36.1 | Tony Gosling joined the Scunthorpe steelworks straight out of school as an apprentice. |
| 1:41.1 | And apart from a brief stint in the army, he stayed there, |
| 1:45.9 | keeping the furnaces burning as an engineer for the past three decades. The steelworks still dominate Scunthorpe. |
| 1:52.6 | Walking along the main road from one end of the site to the other can take almost an hour. |
| 1:57.8 | It remains the major independent employer in the area. |
| 2:01.7 | I mean, I'm just trying to think where I live three doors up, there's Jamie works in the |
... |
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