Coronavirus diary, Saturday 11 July

Cardiff's steel heritage

The struggle to save jobs in the coronavirus crisis reminds me of similar problem facing the country in the 1970s.

Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath was having a torrid time with industries in turmoil, unions and workers rampant.

East Moors in its heyday

Cardiff was in the centre of a storm. The East Moors steelworks in Splott was threatened with closure and the loss of 2,000 jobs. The city was fighting to save it.

The government-owned British Steel Corporation said its open hearth furnace system had been made obsolete by new steel making techniques. Cardiff -  the workers, the council and the public disagreed.  

The works had been one of the city's main industries, providing skilled, highly paid jobs and had survived good and bad years. Opened by Lord Bute in 1891 it started production four years later. 

It was an unmissable city landmark, visible and audible for miles, day and night. Every time slag was released into the waters of the Bristol Channel there was a resounding boom and when the furnaces opened the sky blazed red, reflected by the clouds.

Familiar, reassuring, but dangerous in war-time, a tempting  target for the Luftwaffe. It bore a charmed life, only once being hit and slightly damaged in a raid in 1944.

To save the plant and the jobs, the city council launched a campaign, Steel Must Stay in Cardiff. Linking with the union and workers it was my job to run it. 

There were rallies, protest marches and a petition. A City double decker displaying the slogan Steel Must Stay in Cardiff was in regular service throughout the city. When prime minister Heath visited he was met by a huge crowd. Television cameras caught one protester carrying a seven foot high effigy of the prime minister with shoulders that moved, mimicking his famous laugh with -  No laughing matter, Mr Heath.

The climax of our campaign was a trip to London on our battle bus to lobby MPs. We set off at 5am with 30 men but we had not left the city when it broke down. After hasty repairs we carried on but had to stop at the Severn Bridge services when it failed again. A City mechanic fixed it and we drove off, but only at a top speed of 30mph.

It was going to be touch and go whether we reached London in time for our scheduled meeting. It took three nerve wracking hours. Sitting on the upper deck tying to sleep, I feared the worst. 

Jim Callaghan MP and the battle bus

But we made it, just, driving up to the House of Commons with minutes to spare. Jim Callaghan and other Welsh MPs were waiting on the pavement in the rain to greet us. After a meeting in the Common, a coffee and sandwich we set off back to Cardiff.

The delegation and MPs, including Labour leader Harold Wilson

It was dark when we dropped the weary workers at East Moors. We had done our best to save the works, and their jobs. And we succeeded: the Heath government scrapped the closure plans. 

Cardiff MPs George Thomas (left) and Jim Callaghan (right) with Harold Wilson

But it was a stay of execution. East Moors closed in 1978, ironically under a Labour government led by that local MP Jim Callaghan. 

The site is now a flourishing industrial estate but Cardiff still has a steelworks, Celsa Manufacturing in Eastmoors Road, not producing steel but fabricating reinforcing bars and wire.

I'm left with memories of a successful campaign almost 50 years ago - and this souvenir.