Vast New Project In Wales to Aid Britain’s Recovery

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26916, 30 October 1948, Page 8

Vast New Project In Wales to Aid Britain’s Recovery

Importance of Steel

This is the first of three articles dealing: with the British steel industry in South Wales, and in particular with the great new project at Port Talbot, and with views within the industry on the question of nationalisation.

For the Daily Times, By Harvey Blanks

LONDON, Oct. 5,

Among the desolate wind-swept sand dunes of the South Wales (toast, on the shores of that great land arc that lies between Cardiff and Swansea Bay, are rising the mills, furnaces and smoke-stacks of a vast new steel enterprise—a £60,000,000 project destined, as the largest plant of its type in Europe, to be a major weapon in Britain’s great fight for industrial recovery.

Begun in April, 1947, this new Port Talbot and Margam works will be completed in 1951, although production in some sections will be under way a year earlier. The four most important companies in this part of Britain have united in the Steel Company of Wales to build this new project on virgin ground, and when completed, the works will produce steel ingots, pig-iron, tinplate and related products at a tempo and cost which will be rivalled only by the very latest plants in the United States.

The only plant comparable with the ' South Wales project is that at Geneva, in America, built during the war on waste ground, but the British project in its final form will be slightly larger 'hnd more comprehensive. The British "product, according to the men respon- ' sible for the Port Talbot conception, will be able to compete more than favourably with the most modern United States products, because in America the plants are inland, necessitating the addition of freight costs to the price of steel, whereas in Wales a whole new port has been constructed, to allow immediate shipment to every part of the world. • ,v Former Depressed Area

that shook with the clangour of monstrous engines and echoed with the incessant roar of towering blast furnaces—inevitably recalled the most terrifying scenes of Dante’s Inferno, crossed with something by H. G. Wells. The workers appeared not as men but as half-naked demi-gods performing a never-ending sacrifice in a vain attempt to satisfy the appetite of an insatiable monster.

In time 7000 men will be employed at Port Talbot, thus giving a guarantee of employment in an area of Britain which in the past has suffered from depression and unemployment more than most. In the meantime, thousands of workers are toiling day and night shifting 4,500,000 cubic yards of soil, driving 33,000 concrete piles (so far 19,000 have been driven), pouring 450,000 cubic yards of concrete, shifting bodily a whole lake, constructing a vast reservoir, and laying over 100 miles of railway track in sidings and feeder services.

It was a devastating anti-climax to be told by one of the men that he had transferred to the foundry from a quieter and less chaotic section of the works “ because here it was so nice and warm in winter.” Work on Continuous Basis

In spite of the threat of nationalisation which lies over the steel industry as a %vhole, all the capital for this inspiring project is being advanced privately, without Government financial aid.

The sum of £10,000,000 is being provided by the four parent companies (Guest Keen and Baldwin, Richard Thomas and Baldwin, Llanelly Associated Tinplate Companies, and the •firm of John Lysaghts). Another £ 15,000,000 is being taken up in shares by the general public, and the remaining £35,000,000 is being supplied by the Finance Corporation of Industry. The whole forms part of the £200,000,000 development and modernisation plan for the industry drawn up by the British Iron and Steel Federation. The old works in the same area, some of which are being dismantled and incorporated in the new structure, had a productive capacity of 8000 tons, v The new works will supply 19,000 tons of pig iron and 29,000 tons of steel, of which 20,000 tons will be in' strip and plate. , „ Last week between 50 and 60 foreign correspondents, representing the major newspapers and agencies from every country in the world—including Russia and the iron curtain “ democracies - were taken on an extensive tour of South Wales organised by the Ministry of Supply. Criticism has beenheard from time to time that Britain has not been forward enough in making known to the world the tremendous efforts she is making tp increase' production and close the gap between imports and exports. This tour was designed to meet part of that criticism.

Symbol of British Recovery Welcoming correspondents—whom he described as the most important party of men ever to visit Wales, representing, as they did, the eyes and ears of all the civilised world—the Minister of Supply, Mr G. R. Strauss, said that the steel industry in Soutn Wales was a symbol of the recovery of British industry and of British life. “It is particularly appropriate” he stated, “that you should see this m South Wales, where, in the bad time between the wars, there was so mucli : desolation and despair. There was more unemployment per head m South Wales at that time than anywhere else in our country, perhaps in the world. Some of you from your 'own knowledge will be able to compare the conditions then with wha. .you will see now, and you will be able to appreciate the change in men s lives and hopes, as well as the advance of the industry.” This reference to the human side o* the industry was by no means exaggerated. During the course. of the tour I had many opportunities •to speak with the workers and question them upon their jobs, their wages and conditions, their attitude toward their employers and their views of nationalisation. Without exception, they declared themselves happy and satisfied, -and displayed a real pride in their work and in the achievements of tne ■industry as a whole. Their views on nationalisation, however, were so complex and opposed that I intend io''write of them in a separate article, v-. In considering the value of the vast new plan for steel, it is necessary to have some understanding of the industry's present scope and output, and the limiting factors which will prevent its reaching, in spite of its re-cord-breaking efforts, the goals at which its management is aiming. High Taj-get Set

It is just over a year since the Prime Minister set the industry a target of 14,000,000 tons of ingots and castings—a target which at that timeseemed extremely ambitious. In no previous year had output ever exceeded 131 million tons, while the fuel crisis of made it appear likely that it would not even reach 12J million tons. . , -Yet, by May, 1948, the situation had been ’ completely transformed. The level of the output had been consistently maintained at so high a rate over -the previous six months, owing to a great effort by both management and labour, that the original target was raised to 14J million tons. So magnificent was the response to this new challenge that output in the first half of 1948 equalled an annual rate of 15.1 million tons, a new record having been established in each successive month except Mnv. when the wellearned Whitsun holidays intervened. The extent to which these records were due to the personal effort of every man in the industry was manifest during our tour. In the sheet metal works we saw at Ebbw Vale, workers were handling and stacking metal sheets so fast that they seemed to be shuffling giant packs of gleaming cards. ' Glownig red-hot strips of steel raced and roared down rollered troughs, snaking and writhing like luminescent Loch Ness monsters, - to be whipped on to fantastic spindles and rolled into gargantuan coils like so much mercery ribbon.

In a foundry at Cardiff, darkgoggled, sweating men fed roaring blast-furnaces, drilled fire-clay plugs and released molten metal in eyesearing streams that seethed down open channels and flung themselves in fiery arcs down into the dark bays where giant ladies waited to receive the metal and trundle it off to the ingot moulds. The scene, lit by clouds of pure flame that rythmically belched and dissolved over our heads and by symmetrical cascades of exploding white sparks—-set in vast girdered sheds

Since April, 1947, the men had voluntarily been working the great furnaces of Britain’s steel foundries on a continuous basis. It was no easy matter, said Mr J. H. Jones, Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, to ask the men to work not merely during the week, but on Saturday mornings, afternoons and evenings, and Sundav mornings, afternoons and evenings, so that the works never paused, so that the flow of steel never ceased, so that the trucks and the trains and the ships ran in a constant stream every day of every month all through the year, to supply the markets of the world and never let up in the attack on Britain’s trade deficit. But the men responded. Some of them have worked every Christmas Day, every New Year’s Day, every Bank Holiday, every Good Friday, for 10 years and more. To that magnificent record of sacrifice and effort they now added the week-ends. Before such an achievement one can only feel very humble. What a lesson is here for New Zealand dockside labourers!