The mood among Tata Steel employees on Wednesday was one of incredulity that ministers are refusing to follow the example of the 2008 banking bailout and commit to the state-funded rescue of a key industry.

Workers at the Port Talbot steel plant, digesting the news that the site is up for sale with little hope of finding a buyer, urged the government to rescue the site and save 4,000 jobs.

In the Gossip Cafe in the south Wales town there was only one topic of conversation among customers – how to save Britain’s largest steel plant.

Paul, who has worked at the steelworks for more than 30 years, argued that ministers could have done more to help. “If they can put billions in to save the banks, why can’t they help our steelworks? They pulled the banks out of the shit,” he said.



Nationalisation, he added, would at least force the government to address the issue that according to workers is at the heart of Port Talbot’s problem: ruinous competition from cheap Chinese steel imports. “I think the government has got to have [the plant] back,” said Paul, who asked to have his full name withheld. “They would soon stop importing Chinese steel, because that’s what’s killing us.”

Paul’s view was echoed elsewhere in Port Talbot. Tomos Price, 27, a contractor at the site, said: “The government managed to find the money to bail out the banks that caused the recession. Now they should do the same to save the British steel industry after we’ve battled through the years.

“They should do whatever is necessary – can you imagine Great Britain without steel? It is part of our heritage and must be part of our future, too.”

Port Talbot’s steelworks accounts for about one-third of the country’s total annual production. Every Heinz food tin sold in the UK, every roof for the Nissan Juke car and every new 1p and 2p coin – plated in copper – is made from Port Talbot steel.

Pete Walker, owner of the Gossip Cafe, said closure would decimate the town and would put huge pressure on his own business, which relies on custom from the families of steel workers to stay afloat.

“I can’t see how the town can survive without it,” he said. “There’s no industry around here any more. What are house prices going to be like without jobs in the area?”

Former site employee Michael Evans, 71, expressed hope that a saviour can be found for the plant, but said he feared the worst. “It’s a real body blow,” he said. “How the hell can you sleep at night thinking ‘am I going to have a job in the morning?’.”

Evans said closing the plant would destroy the economy of Port Talbot and the surrounding area. “Nothing can fill that gap,” he said. “That’s the only thing that’s left. It’s going to lead to second-rate jobs and there are already no quality jobs in the area. We are fast becoming a service country to other people’s industries.”

Like many in the town, Evans spent more than 30 years at the works, and recalls the plant’s better days in the 1960s, when more than 20,000 worked there. Port Talbot was a town with virtually full employment when the plant was operating at its peak, but the effect of its decline is evident in a town centre that has a significant number of charity shops and payday loan stores offering ‘cash for gold’.

It is not just Port Talbot that will suffer if Tata fails to find a buyer for its UK arm. The Welsh economy is particularly reliant on the business. A study by Cardiff University’s Welsh economy research unit found that Tata Steel supports more than 18,000 jobs in Wales and estimates it is worth around £3.2bn to the Welsh economy.

At another Tata site in Rotherham, government support will come too late for hundreds of workers who will now lose their jobs. Tata is cutting 720 jobs across the whole of South Yorkshire, including 500 in Rotherham at its Aldwarke plant.

Stuart Sansome, senior trade union official at the plant, was made redundant after almost 40 years at the site. The 57-year-old, who is also a local councillor, said: “When I started in the steel industry I had a job for life. I was very fortunate, but kids who started in this business from the 2000s onwards, they have no idea if it is for five years or five months. They have been dropped from the greatest height.”

Thomas Armstrong, 25, one of the people who lost his job on Wednesday morning, started working at the Rotherham plant when he was 19, following in the footsteps of his uncle and grandfather. He said workers were angry and in shock.

“The most difficult thing was saying goodbye. I started working here when I was just 19 and I have grown up with these people – my uncle and my grandfather worked here – and now it has all gone. The government needs to do something to help us all.”