The owners of British Steel, a company which has been operating in Scunthorpe for over 150 years, recently announced that its last blast furnaces may be shut down within weeks.
It was revealed today that a decision is to be made within the coming days, with the managers already cancelling orders for raw materials. The writing is on the wall. Urgent action is needed to save the steelworks.
This move will put 2,700 jobs directly at risk – not to mention the jobs threatened in the supply chain and surrounding industries, many of which rely on Scunthorpe-produced steel.
The plan is to replace the blast furnaces with two electric arc furnaces (EAFs). These aren’t capable of producing virgin steel, only recycling scrap – and they need far fewer workers to operate them.
To add insult to industry, workers’ taxes will be used to fund this jobs massacre. Jingye Group, the company’s Chinese owners, are demanding a £1 billion investment from the government for their proposed EAFs – apparently £500 million of state money isn’t enough for them!
In any case, these will take years to build (assuming they even arrive in the first place). What are the thousands of workers employed at the steelworks meant to do in the meantime? The bosses and Starmer’s government are leaving the entire town out on the scrapheap.
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Heart of the town
The town’s pride in its heavy industry is close to the hearts of its population. The town’s motto, “the heavens reflect our labours,” poetically shows this, noting the effect the steelworks’ glow has on the night sky.
As one resident told The Communist, the closure of the last blast furnace and its consequent job losses would “tear the heart out of the town”.
One of the most infuriating parts of this entire fiasco is the barefaced lies peddled by the bosses and the government that this planned closure is a ‘green’ choice.
Any suggestion that this is a ‘stride forward for the environment’ – either by Labour or the Jingye Group – is simply greenwashing a jobs massacre. These rogues are gaslighting us.
In Port Talbot last year, two blast furnaces were closed with the loss of 2,500 jobs, using the same old excuses.
This fake concern didn’t stop steel barons Tata from opening new blast furnaces in places like India, where wages, environmental regulations, and safety standards are lower!
In fact, in Jingye Group’s own words, “the blast furnaces and steelmaking operations are no longer financially sustainable… relating to the production of high-carbon steel.”
There you have it – straight from the horses’ mouth!
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Union leaders’ inaction
Workers in Scunthorpe are well aware of what’s at stake – and they can see the complete lack of urgency from the trade union leaders who are supposed to be defending them.
One worker at the steelworks summed up this frustration when he told us that “the unions are just a middle man for telling us bad news!”
Meanwhile, Labour’s claims of a lack of funding are nothing but a sick joke, especially when Labour continues to shovel billions into rearmament. As one resident lamented, “they can invest in war, but not in the last bit of British manufacturing”.
It’s little wonder that, given Labour’s refusal to act, Reform UK are circling the area like vultures.
The Party’s deputy leader Richard Tice even called for nationalisation! This is of course blatant opportunism on Reform’s part. But with no serious left alternative, the door is open for right-wing populists to make hay.
At long last – after realising the danger they are in if they don’t pull their finger out – the steel union Community is suggesting that if a deal can’t be met with British Steel, then the government should nationalise the steelworks.
But why wait for negotiations, when we all know how they will go? Why dither and delay, when there’s a clear need to start the fightback now?
Any backroom ‘deal’ that might be made between the bosses, the government, and the union leaders will be a deal that the workers are cut out of. This shotgun ‘negotiation’ will be a sham from start to finish.
We say: Not a single penny should go to the leeches at the Jingye Group. If they get their £1 billion now, they’ll only blackmail the government again a few years down the line.
Nor can Labour be trusted to save this town. Starmer and Reeves are cut from the same cloth as the bosses and shareholders. This is a big-business government that has declared war on the working class.
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Occupy the steelworks!
Therefore, it’s up to the workers themselves to organise a militant fightback. No one else will do it for them.
The first step would be to call for a general assembly of all the steelworkers, workers from auxiliary industries, as well as local residents.
A mass meeting like this would allow for a real discussion to take place – not some shady backroom deal between the bosses and union tops – and could elect a strike committee to begin preparing for battle.
To show that they mean business, and to prevent the bosses from asset-stripping the plant, the workers must occupy the steelworks.
Bold action like this would give the whole town something to rally around. And an occupation could form the basis for a movement to fight for nationalisation of the steelworks, placing it under the democratic control of the workers themselves.
When the workers at Lucas Aerospace were faced with 2,000 redundancies back in the ‘70s, they used their collective expertise to produce a 1,000 page plan detailing how the factory could remain commercially viable under workers’ control.
A few years earlier, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders prevented the closure of their shipyard by organising a ‘work-in’ to prevent their shipyard from being asset-stripped.
In fact, this tactic of occupation was used as recently as 2019 by the Harland and Wolff shipyard workers. This sort of ingenuity, innovation, and determination is exactly what’s needed now.
The only solution is for the workers to take action into their own hands, regardless of what the spineless union leaders have to say.
A militant, no-holds-barred campaign to save the steelworks would be a beacon for workers everywhere. A victory against these parasites would light up the sky, just like the glow of the blast furnaces.
Steelworkers of Scunthorpe: Take matters into your own hands! The working class everywhere stands behind you! You can show us the way forward! Occupy the steelworks! Fight for nationalisation under workers’ control!
