GOING TO TAKE THIS LYING

NOT The following article is rep from WORKERS PRESS, February 1973.

In the crisp dawn • of October 30, 1937 'A' furnace at Ebbw Vale steelworks, South Wales, was blown in for the first time since 1929.

Earlier, in January 1936, lorries, excavators, dumpers, cranes and bulldozers tore down the obsolete 19th century furnaces to make way for what was to be the most modern strip mill in Europe.

When it opened on September 30, 1938, as the first shift went to work, the bells at Christ Church tolled and retolled in endless peals as a token of the community's thankfulness that work had once again returned to the valley economic collapse of 1929.

mid-1930s Ebbw Vale's owners had learned the lesson of their high-cost location and Sir John Beynon showed little enthusiasm for reopening the works which was now the lone survivor of South Wales's famous top-town iron works.

Anticipating that the slump would end sometime and with Hitler and Mussolini already on the rampage in Europe, the looking for a cheap s site, close Welsh tinplate makers were to ore supplies, for a new integrated works.

Sir William Firth, chairman of the Richard Thomas Company, the largest of the Welsh tinplate makers, announced he would build such a works -not in Wales but at Redchosen the current expansion.

Against all market logic, Firth gave in to the Welsh tinplate lobby and political campaign led by Aneurin Bevan to site his new works at the bitterly distressed Ebbw Vale.

Thirty-four years later the very same factors which led the owners of 1911 and 1929 to question the future of steel. making at Ebbw Vale have once again emerged to ring its death knell.

For ove 100 years the almost wh olly working-class community of Ebbw Vale has the Labour begun by Tom Harry Evans' remark: 'The counci have they'd do government really of mass box.' almost symbolizes the inevitfrom it has ever