Picture: Courtesy of Shaun Ivory
Free Online at www.coastalviewandmoornews.co.uk The Community Newspaper for the Towns and Villages of East Cleveland, Redcar & North York Moors, telling the real news and views of the people of our region
Issue 64 October - November 2015
Picture: Courtesy of Fred Brunskill
“We changed the shape of the world, but in the end the world didn’t care.” N
By Kay Wilson
ever has the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder been more true than in the case Redcar Steelworks. For many years I drove past and thought what a dirty ugly place it was. How it dominated the Redcar skyline and for what purpose? Then I got a job there. At the time I’d had a serious illness, my confidence was low, I didn’t expect much from the temp job I had been assigned. How wrong I was. At first my work colleagues seemed to be fat, flatulent and fifty plus. However I soon came to realise that they would soon be part of my life in a way I’d never known before. I learnt how Redcar steel had changed the face of the earth. Sydney harbour bridge, Canary Wharf were all built on Teesside steel. I learnt that those fat, 50 plus blokes worked in conditions most would walk out of after an hour, but still smiled. I learnt that their humour was better than anything you would ever read or see on TV. I learnt that no matter what we were all in it together. I learnt how men and women had come from school and learnt a trade when nobody had believed in them. How for some people had found love and started a family. I learnt that in this industrial landscape deer roamed. Starving cats and foxes were fed. Wild
butterflies and flowers were attracted and cultivated. I learnt that as a team we could endure and survive anything. That we could take the mick out of each other and laugh at each other’s frailties but when times were bad we were there for each other. I was the only woman that worked in the workshops but I learnt that I had done that on merit. I learnt that we in Redcar had done something that nobody in the world had ever done. Mothball and relight a blast furnace. That we could produce better quality steel in record breaking quantities. That we could keep it going on a shoestring budget. I learnt that people believed in me more than I ever had myself, That I could be more than I ever believed myself to be. The only thing I didn’t learn is how the area can live without it. The final push of the Redcar Coke Ovens was at 6 am Thursday 15th October. That will mark the end forever of a 170 year history of steelmaking on Teesside. It will never come back. We changed the shape of the world but in the end the world didn’t care. I will leave the politics to wiser people. The support we have received so far from job centre plus and national careers service has been helpful and respectful. I just wish we didn’t have to go through this.
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