Is this the end of British manufacturing?

Rishi Sunak is at a precipice:appease the owner of TATA steel, or save 3000 jobs.

If he chooses the former, the UK will become the only country in the G20 that does not produce its own steel.

If he chooses the latter, he saves the economy of South Wales.

We went to Port Talbot to speak to employees, past and present, and those who know their town is on the brink of collapse.

Reporter: Ava Santina
Camera: Seán Hickey
Edit: Seán Hickey and Cem Ibrahim

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[anpj]

They are talking about a citizens army to counter the threat of Russia and we can’t even make our own steel. What a joke.

[FlibTron]

This country is a total dump. It’s just broken on every level.

[bboom]

Wales is constantly ignored. The steelworks is Port Talbot and Port Talbot is the steelworks. I left school to the miner's strikes and Thatcher's recession. I've moved back to Wales, and the Tories are still destroying our communities. The utter disdain we're constantly on the receiving end of is the reason that Tories don't get too far in Wales. They're a poison that kills everything they come into contact with.

[zulu]

This all started with Thatcher in the 80s and has progressed to the present day. There’s a tipping point where once you’ve lost industries that make this country tick, there’s no return from a steep decline and inevitable crash of economic stability.

[gavinreid]

This country has not planned for the future since the 1950's. British Leyland died due to complacency and lack of investment, deep coal went with nothing to replace it. Car manufacturing was sold abroad, the energy sector was sold abroad, we were leaders in nuclear but no longer. We were a leader in the energy sector but where are the plans and investment in the UK for after oil? Brexit was not planned for, we have just fallen off the end and we are still trying to find our place. We need steel and cement (another high energy requiring product) - where is that going to come from now?

[tonywilson]

AUSTRALIAN HERE - We've had the same sorts of discussions here for over 30 years as we shut down industry after industry. At the beginning of this the reporters asks - _"Who's to blame? Is it climate hysteria is it Brexit or is it the current conservative Administration?"_
*The answer to that is the same as the answer we have in Australia - NONE OF THEM.*

How could these problems in Wales be linked to the same problems in Australia?

Simple - This is the result of decisions made well over 30 years ago in the 1980s when the Western World flipped its economics from Keynesian economics over to free market Neoliberalism. In Britain you called it Thatcherism. In Australia we called it Economic Rationalism and the Americans called it Reaganomics. Today its call called Neoliberalism.

I'm actually an aerospace engineer who works in industrial control systems, robotics and automation. Back in 2016 I had a small consulting job that highlighted an incredibly serious issue with Australia's energy sector AND NOBODY was doing anything about it. Worse we still aren't. So I started looking into *WHY?*

Other than "Greed is Good"_ a Key part of Milton Friedmans free market doctrine is that the government shall do as little as possible and let the markets react and respond to changes in demand. The stupidity of this is that people like Milton Freidman had no understanding of industrial sectors or logistics. To this day economists still have NO UNDERSATNDING of industry or logistics. I recently found out that they don't even include energy in their economic models. That's absurd because it means they have no idea of the stuff that we use to convert raw materials into finished products or what it takes to move those raw materials and products around so they are where people can buy them. Australian economist Steve Keen has been pointing this out for years only to be dismissed by the Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale types.

Gary Stevenson the young British economist that all you Brits should be listening too, did a great video on _"Why economists are always wrong." What he explains are some inherent failures in both the education of economists, how they formulate economic policies, act on those polices and *HOW THEY FAIL.*

I know Gary is always talking about issues in Britain but there are times when it feels like he's talking about Australia and that's *because we are all running on similar economic ideology.*

[josephhoward]

Governmental incompetence and short term greed. What have they done to my country?

[gautambhaumik]

Regards from India, Yr erstwhile colony, one of the largest current steel manufacturers in the world. Namaste

[SuperJeplin]

I was a third generation Steelworker in Port Talbot until I left 10 years ago.
People around the country need to understand that you will have a large section of South Wales (from past Swansea to almost Cardiff)slipping into further poverty
There is little other industry in this area to accommodate up to 10, 000 unemployed.
Lives will be devastated and the area culturally and financially destroyed as people will have to move away or take low paid work that will not utilise the skills they have earned in one of the most dangerous and technical work places on the planet.

It’s such a shame, I’m devastated for everyone affected by this.

[michaelwells]

What has not been said is this. Tata Steel has just started to use IN INDIA, 2 BRAND NEW furnaces identical to those it is closing in Wales. Britain will be importing the steel from India instead of making it in Wales. So our Indian Prime Minister, Sunak, has given 500 million to Tata in Wales to make 3000 people redundant, wreck a whole local community and yet again badly affected our balance of economy.

[stephenlivesey]

I served my apprenticeship on Horwich railway works, the most efficient railway works that British rail had at the time . Thatcher and her tories closed it one year after I had finished my apprenticeship in 1983 (after I had got married and got a big mortgage) . The town was devastated as were the surrounding towns and villages.
I know what these people are facing because I went through it myself, as a young man .
I can only offer my upmost support and solidarity for these people .
But one thing I will say is that we knew that Thatcher and her cronies didn't care one iota for manufacturing industry then and nothing has changed in the 40 odd years since .
We knew who the enemy was . The situation is rather different now, with this plant, due to the need to decommission the old coke furnaces because of carbon immisisions.
But how on earth can anyone blame Labour for "screwing the steelworks over for 14 years " ?
I may be wrong but I thought that the deciples of Thatcher had been in government for the past 14 years🤔 ?

[anthonyramos-ulwu]

52.9% voted for this . Everyone was warned and most politicians classed that as scaremongering

[jovianr]

Labour should immediately commit to reversing this decision by nationalising all strategic industry and reconstituting those firms as employee managed, socially owned cooperatives.

[carsncakes]

I think it is high time people started to realise that there is no need to pay anything to renationalise any industry. With steel, all that is required is to set a law in motion of national security, take over the steelworks itself and leave the current "owners" - including Rishi's wife's family - fight in court for any money back, add in the bills of our investment to that court case and the delay will be years if not decades before anything is paid out.
It is the same for utility companies, no need to bail them out or buy them out, just set up direct competitors to them without the massive salaries and shareholder profits. Reinvest the excess into public services and infrastructure.
Instead of paying a CEO £10m per year, pay them £200k and pay a further 245 workers £40k per year.
This is simple stuff that gets no logical discussion or traction due to the media manipulation of the working class and their stupidity falling for capitalism is the only way.

[pvajit]

UK is dead. Mourn its passing. TATA group doesn't like to axe jobs. Their business looks out for the small man not profits. If TATA has decided to close down, its due to poor government decisions. 3000 jobs is a lot. Sad.

[mattstraddle]

Whilst this is awful news I can’t help but feel this is an ‘I told you so’ moment. Port Talbot and Neath voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU. It really amazes me that these areas had so little awareness of the amount of EU funding that was pumped in, matched by the Labour government to support the economic development of Wales in the early 2000s. The sums were staggering, 6 billion pounds! Those funds are gone now and the conservative government has no interest in propping up failing economies, so this story is terribly sad, but completely expected.

[B-A-L]

Never in the field of human history has so much been thrown away by so few in such a short time!

[ajaxjaiswal]

It's heartbreaking what's happening to these people. I don't understand why the government would mandate the steel manufacturers to shift to electric furnace. They are entirely to blame for this shit.

[turbokadett]

I've spent most of my working life in manufacturing, I've gone through two manuifacturing industries that are now practically gone in the UK. The two industries are still widely used products but it's all be outsourced to other countries. In both cases, once the UK manufacturing base died out the countries that the work was outsourced to began to ramp up prices.
There is no stategic overview when it comes to businesses and industries that are run by accountants and the demands of shareholders. Disgusting.

[SmartOez]

The present prime minister wouldn't mind more business going to India probably he will have a share in that too. Tories have completely destroyed this country.