A generation after The Company closed, Tony Kearney finds sympathy for Redcar among the steelmen of Consett

ON the day Consett steelworks closed, graffiti was daubed on one of the great blast furnaces which read: “Teesside cuts off your arm: September 12th, 1980”.

As 3,600 men walked out of the gates for the last time and into an uncertain future, there was much bitterness towards Teesside and a widespread belief, rightly or wrongly, that investment which could have saved inland Consett had been diverted to coastal steelworks.

A generation later and the resentment has mellowed. The overwhelming sentiment in Consett is sympathy for the Redcar steelworkers, pity for what they will endure over the coming years and encouragement that, however bleak it may seem and however long it may last, they will emerge at the other end.

Now aged 80, Lily Hodgson’s father and brother-in-law worked at Consett Steelworks.

“It was heart-breaking,” she said. “There were so many men out of work and I think we can understand what Redcar is going through because we went through it.”

What Consett went through during the 1980s was an economic catastrophe unprecedented in modern times. When Margaret Thatcher died, Channel Four news broadcast live from a boisterous Steel Club in the town because, all these years later Consett remains a potent national symbol of 1980s industrial decline.

Consett ironworks opened in 1840 on a remote hillside on the edge of the North Pennines. By the 1970s ore and coal arrived by road and rail, the finished steel left the same way. A skilled workforce kept Consett in profit, but with over-capacity in the British steel industry, the decision was taken to close plant.

It is hard to overstate how devastating the closure of the steelworks was for a remote town entirely dependent on it. British Steel had trimmed the workforce down from a high of 6,000 people, in a town of just 36,000 people, so unemployment was already running high. The closure put another 3,600 people on the dole overnight. So great was the focus on the steelworks that the closure of the town’s last deep mine the same year was barely mentioned.

Unemployment in Consett reached 35 per cent, more than 60 per cent on some estates. Cllr Alex Watson, who had just won a seat on Derwentside District Council and went on to lead the authority, remembers: “I don’t think anyone appreciated the impact it would have on people and I don’t think people really appreciated the knock-on effects.

“There was some euphoria because people got redundancy money and there were different training schemes which were funded for a year, but we were decimated. There was depression, debt, suicide wasn’t uncommon, people left the area.”

Another piece on graffiti scrawled on the steelworks famously said: “Will the last person to leave Consett please turn out the lights.” Over the next 10 years, it appeared to be prophetic as families left the town in their droves. Derwentside district, home to 110,000 people at the end of the 1970s, saw its population fall by an incredible 26,000 in 10 years, reaching a low of 84,000 in 1990.

But it has since bounced back. It took 25 years, but by 2005 Consett’s population had returned to its level before the closure and it now stands at 39,000, fuelled in part by a boom in commuter housing and partly by an influx of families from Europe, with the town now home to the region’s highest concentration of Polish immigrants outside the Tyneside conurbation. The number of people on out-of-work benefits has fallen to just 6.3 per cent, about half the County Durham average, although there are plenty who say the figures mask the true picture of a town in which 18.8 per cent of people are classed according to Government figures as living in a deprived area.

Kath Welford was expecting her first child when her husband was made redundant. She said: “There was sheer panic when the steelworks closed. Some of our friends never got a proper job with proper wages again.”

Billy Robson now runs the town’s YMCA offering help to the latest generation of unemployed youngsters. He said: “When I looked at the money I actually got in redundancy I thought ‘that’s not going to last long’.

“I would say to the steelworkers of Redcar to keep their heads up. When Consett closed everyone panicked, but we had to adapt to change and keep our heads above the water. At the end of the day, we’re survivors and you have to survive.”

Tomorrow – Crisps and commuters: how Consett coped with catastrophe