.. and her final betrayal
THATCHER decided that “no action is called for” after being warned the Ravenscraig steel plant was threatened with closure and more than 2500 jobs were at risk.
The Tory Prime Minister’s reputation for having callous disregard for the fate of the Scottish steel industry is displayed in her own hand-writing in previously unseen government papers.
A note in the margin of a 1989 Downing Street letter, released this week from the National Archives, bears testimony to Thatcher’s hands-off approach to the looming closure of Europe’s largest hot strip steel mill.
The 1989 letter from then Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind warned about the prospects for British Steel plants at Clydesdale Tube Works, Dalzell plate works and Ravenscraig.
Rifkind told Thatcher how the plan to close the Motherwell plant over Christmas, together with the cancellation of some £10million of investment previously planned, had “exacerbated public concern and reinforced the belief that the company is moving towards the closure of Ravenscraig with the loss of all 2700 jobs”.
Rifkind told the PM: “My purpose in writing is to alert you to this development and the political criticism which we are likely to attract … and to register my concern about the likelihood of very major job losses taking place over a short period and concentrated in a small area where the alternative prospects for employment are limited.”
Rifkind spoke of the need for an allocation of additional resources for the Motherwell area. But scribbled in the margin with words that were underlined, Thatcher wrote: “No action is called for.
“Mr Rifkind is simply putting down another marker for his concerns for the future of steel in Scotland.”
Having privatised British Steel in 1988, Thatcher was in no mood to intervene in the free market.
During the 1980s, British Steel made a “remarkable turnaround” from a loss of more than £1.7billion in 1979 to a profit of £733million by 1990.
But excess capacity and low prices were beginning to ring alarm bells. The forecast for 1992 was for a loss of up to £100million and the prospect of massive job losses loomed.
Papers show how Rifkind met with Sir Robert Scholey, the boss of British Steel, and suggested it “now seems probable decisions which would mean the loss of at least 1000 jobs at the Clydesdale Tube Works in Lanarkshire will be taken in the next few months”.
He also pointed to the closure of the Dalzell plate works at Motherwell by 1995 as the latest with the loss of a further 670 jobs. Scholey told Rifkind there were no plans for investment at Ravenscraig and, given the downturn, production was to be diverted to other plants.
British Steel’s “rationalisation of plant configuration” would likely mean a “steady run-down of the Scottish steel industry between late 1989 and the end of 1994, Scholey said.
In the event, Ravenscraig shut in 1992 with an estimated 6000 job losses, as the plant was the engine of the Lanarkshire economy.
The closure of Ravenscraig was seen a symbol of Scotland’s proud manufacturing tradition coming to an end and the refusal of the Conservative government to intervene was taken as a betrayal by the workforce.
The secret files record a grim litany of warnings and job losses in the Scottish steel industry in the early 1990s.
A month after Rifkind’s letter, Norman Lamont, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, responded.
He said he appreciated his fellow Scot’s concerns but stressed that any job losses were the “result of commercial decisions by a private sector company responding to world market conditions”.
In May 1990, a confidential note said that at 10am on the 16th, British Steel would announce the closure of Ravencraig’s hot strip mill in the first half of 1991 with the loss of 770 jobs – leaving 2600 people working at the plant’s slab mill.
On the same day, Barry Potter, Thatcher’s Private Secretary, penned her a note, saying: “There is no doubt there will be very considerable dismay in Scotland at the closure.
“And this action will be widely seen as spelling the end for Ravenscraig.”
Another note explained the consequential job losses for the closure of Ravenscraig and Clydesdale were put at about 3000 in Lanarkshire, raising the male unemployment rate to over 13 per cent.
It pointed out a total end to steel-making in Scotland would result in some 15,000 job losses.
In another note, Ian Lang observed that the Government’s “worst expectations have been fulfilled”.