Town

The City of Steel

In the 1950s, the Steel Company of Wales unveiled a new advertising campaign. Bearing an image of their new flagship steelworks at Port Talbot, the advert’s caption read, ‘The City of Steel’. The construction of Port Talbot’s Abbey Steelworks began in 1947, and it transformed Port Talbot into a largely monoindustrial economy.

After the Second World War, the steelworks experienced an unprecedented expansion. The demand should have decreased after contracts during the War ended, however, the number of employees rose to 18,000 in 1961 from 4,000 in 1948. This was commented on being ‘the greatest single success story of the postwar Welsh economy’. Local newspaper headlines described it as ‘the most important day in Port Talbot’s history’. The Abbey Works became an icon of Wales and renewed prosperity amongst the communities surrounding it and Port Talbot became a ‘boom town’ as workers from beyond moved to the area for jobs available at the plant.

_{Aerial views of the Steelworks under construction}

With a new economy comes new workers and the need for housing. Between 1939 and 1961, the town’s population increased by 10,000 and, alas, at the steelworks’ command, the council planned to build 1,000 new homes. Most of these new houses were built on Sandfields Estate, an archetypal post-war housing development that grew to be one of the largest in Wales. Before construction, the area consisted of vast sand dunes but by 1960, almost 4,000 steelworks employees moved in. It became a symbol of the way in which the steel industry was transforming the town.

The Iron Woman

Even in its Victorian heyday, the industry in the UK was stuck with obsolescent technology and was overtaken by that of the US. Fast forward to 1945, the Labour Party came to power, and in 1946 it put the first steel development plan into practice with the aim of increasing capacity. It passed the Iron and Steel Act 1949 which meant nationalisation of the industry and creation of the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain.

American aid in 1948–50 reinforced modernisation efforts and provided funding for them, but before the steel industry could be saved, the nationalisation was reversed by the Conservative government in 1952. The industry was again nationalised in 1967 under Labour, becoming British Steel Corporation (BSC). However, years of political manipulation had left companies such as British Steel with serious problems: complacency with equipment, plants operating with low efficiency and outdated technology.

By the 1970’s the Labour government’s main goal for the declining industry was to keep employment high. But then came Thatcher’s government in 1979 which reprivatised the industry with a focus on capital investment and restructuring.

_{Pamphlets from the early 1970s}

Steel declined during Thatcher’s reign, as the industry proved unable to compete with other countries in these areas. A major strike took place in the industry in 1980 over the issues of pay and proposed plant closures. The strike lasted for nearly 14 weeks and a return to work was eventually agreed with an enhanced pay offer. Further restructuring and plant closures took place in subsequent years and in 1988 the Thatcher government fully privatised British Steel.