Courage is to feel the daily daggers of relentless steel and keep on living. Douglas Malloch
Concrete has been used as a building material for over four thousand years ... It can be moulded in almost any shape ... Steel is unbelievably strong under tension. Everyday Miracles: The Genius of of Sofas, Stockings and Scanners I, BBC 2015
Plywood is another everyday miracle ... The glue bonds with the woods fibres and sets hard ... Strength, flexibility and mouldability ... The Mosquito was the fastest aircraft in the world, and the secret to its success was that it was made almost entirely of plywood ... All because of the remarkable properties of plywood. ibid.
For Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher the steel strike epitomized all that was bad about the British economy. Thatcher: The Downing Street Years I: Woman at War, BBC 1993
The British Steel Corporation brings together the UK’s fourteen main steel-producing companies. Huw Edwards, The Story of Wales VI: Wales and Britain, BBC 2012
In 1980 there was a massive strike in the steel industry; inflation was high and workers wanted a pay rise to match it … The strike went on for three months. Tory! Tory! Tory! II: Path to Power, BBC 2006
British steel was far better and cheaper than American steel a century ago but high tariff barriers made it possible for Andrew Carnegie to set up the world’s first billion-dollar corporation. Noam Chomsky, lecture Yale University 25th February 1997, ‘Neoliberalism and the Global Order’, Youtube 1.09.54
One in eleven steelworkers died while on the job, often from a lack of sleep. Plutocracy: Political Repression in the USA I: Divide and Rule, 2015
In the 1990s strange things began to happen in the small town of Corby. Mothers began to give birth to children with severe deformities. As the number of cases grew, the mothers demanded to know why this had happened to their children. This is the unknown story of the worst child poisoning case since Thalidomide. A case that changed our understanding of the dangers of air pollution. Horizon: Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings, BBC 2020
‘Mothers all from the same small area all of whom had given to birth to children with very similar deformities.’ ibid. Stephen Bevan, Sunday Time journalist
The waste sites were located on land where the town’s steel works once stood. Corby started life as a village but in the 1930s one of the largest steel plants in Europe was built. But in 1980, faced with huge government cuts, the steel work shut down, leaving 11,000 people unemployed. Corby Council devised a plan to regenerate the town (1983). This tiny council took on the biggest land reclamation project in Europe with a ten-year regeneration programme to help bring Corby back to life. But demolishing a steel work is a complex process: steel making generates toxic waste that must be carefully disposed of. ibid.
As this story spread, more and more mothers started coming forward. ibid.
‘It was such a cover up.’ ibid.
With the Council claiming no evidence of a cluster, the mother’s fight for answers seemed to be over … ‘My reading the article in the Sunday Times was complete happenstance … I had back in the day worked in the steel works.’ ibid. Des Collins, solicitor
‘It isn’t normal for secret documents to turn up; it’s like something out of a John Grisham novel.’ ibid.
The advice included that the contractors cover their lorries and make sure no dust is created particularly on public roads … ‘Lorries weren’t covered with sludge raining out of the back of these dump trucks. All the roads in this area are judged covered in this silt. And that’s where things went pear-shaped … A tremendous amount of pollution over the whole of the district. That is basically a toxic soup of dust hanging over a town … over many many years.’ ibid. Environmental health officer
18 families were now involved in the fight for compensation, and they were finally ready to go to trial … A case that had never been proven before: 10 years after their battle began, all 18 mothers made their way to court … The judge visited the reclamation site … The issue of how far the dust could travel … [Corby Council] was hit with a legal bill of almost £15 million. It was the first case in the world to rule that air pollution could harm babies in the womb. ibid.
Steel: the strong reliable metal the Victorian engineers needed to fulfil their ambitions. Mark Miodownik, Metal: How It Works I, BBC 2017
Steel: He could make tons of the stuff in this – his Bessemer converter. ibid.