STEEL

'Everything I have came from steel, Shotton action committee vice chairman Mr Geoff Hett told me at his home. 'We won't let them take it away from us?

On December 28, 1972, the Tory government irrevocably rung down the curtain on a steelworks which has been the pride of the industry. The 13,500-strong plant has made a profit every year since it was first opened by John Summers 1908, and even last year it was £500,000 in black.

During the worst period of the inter-war depression, when other works like East Moors, Cardiff, and Ebbw Vale were shut down for years on end, Shotton stayed open.

Its men were on short time and there was work-sharing, but all through the slump the demand for Shotton's special soft steels carried the steelmen through the blackest days.

By 1926 John Summers' integrated steel plant was the largest producer of steel plates Three years later, furnaces 100 miles south were being blown out as the export market collapsed, the expansion of the car industry kept Shotton in business.

As the German panzer divisions rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1939 firing the opening shots in World War II, in addition to its steel-making Shotton became the most modern rolling mill in Europe.

Since the war £60m has been spent modernizing the 1,000acre plant on the banks of the River Dee, £20m of it in the last decade and £7m of that in the last three years on new coke ovens and production lines for aluminium coated In 1962 all previous and subsequent profit levels were smashed with a weeklv output LA M ... of 33,000 tonsa level of production only exceeded the week after the British Steel Corporation announced the closure.

By the mid-1960s the 8,750strong town, which sprang up at the turn of the century almost overnight in green fields on the banks of the Dee, became known as one of the most prosperous in Britain.

Nacnite ito curreccac due successes, mainly to two periods of reconstruction after wars which hamstrung competitors, the Summers project was doomed from the start.

It opened in 1908 in a highcost area remote trom the cheap ore fields of South Wales • north east England and away trom deep-water berths for ore imports.

Had Summers opted to follow Dorman Long in setting up the new plant in Lincolnshire-now along with Port Talbot one of the key areas where steel production is to be concentrated - things might have been different.

But they did not. When the time came for John Summers to move from Stalybridge to a new site where it could stead for Shotton-close to the big markets of Liverpool, Manchester and the Midlands.

In 1972 with both export and home markets in contraction the transport costs which make Shotton a dearer proposition than Port Talbot or Lincolnshire have turned out to be its kiss of death.

Shotton is an open-hearth steel plant. Massive investment (about £50m) to install the vastly more effective and larger basic oxygen converters could have heen nured in LAYL PVUILU But for the crucial fact that the competitiveness of British steel in a period of world excess capacity means viciously driving down costs, including transport charges.

Althougn they woula rainer A lAl ... - 1. AL - --11 not believe it, many steelmen sense that this is the logic guiding the Melchett axe. At Shotton and Ebbw Vale the burning question is not when will steel-making end, but when will the axe slice into the finished products divisions as well.

The same arguments apply at both works. If it is too expensive to cart ore from the Geoff itt, north east to Shotton or from Shotto work

ce/works Steelworks THE STREL TRADE CANLON THE RIGHT noTt TO WORK SHOTTON Steelworks SHOTTON WE SUPPORT STEEL *ANLON IOT ANESE

Friday February the coast to Ebbw Vale, how Flintshire was granted interlong before the cost of freight- mediate status as a depressed ing steel to the finishing plants area in 1972 there have been will also look ripe for pruning? only 28 applications from in338: Equally important, the hot- dustrialists with a potential of mill machinery is immediately providing a mere 1,000 jobspost war and compares most 800 for women. unfavourably with the labour The failure of new factories savings to be had from BSC's to appear in Shotton has not new mechanized and automated been lost on the steelmen. mills. Almost from the moment The Shotton men claim they the Tories came to power on have no intention of letting June 18, 1970, waving the dethings go that far. nationalization plan above Said Mr Hett: 'We will go all their heads, Flintshire formed out to maximize production to a committee to fight any proshow the BSC our worth. posals to shut the steel works. 'But we are going to have MPs, local councillors, pronone of this slow amputation fessional people and traders sat to the point where you can't on the committee and three work' months ago, as the storm The decision of John Sum- clouds gathered over Shotton, mers, the Stalybridge clog- the 13,500 steelmen set up maker, to build his new works their own works' committee. at Shotton threw up a thin On Wednesday January 10 ribbon development of shops Lord Melchett went to Shotton "KN and houses all along the coast to explain to both committees ORT road from Chester to Flint. that his hands were tied. He Whatever living standards had no power to stop the workers have they owe to steel. closure.

IOT And it was the boom years of The immediate response ON the early 1960s which gave from the steelmen of the comShotton and Connahs Quay munity was, 'we'll fight it all their new public buildings, in- the way. cluding a college, Library, Initially the men intend to baths and municipal offices. pull out all the stops to in-