Steel working families from the 80's required

[kipper]

Anyone on here working in the declining steel industry during the 80's. I am working on a project that needs a family to be interviewed about your life and struggles. Were you or friend or relative made unemployed and how did it effect you and your family.

 

This is to be made into a BBC documentary.

[fostermartin]

Its not just the 80's that was declining it also here and now just take a look at the poor guys from Corus here in Stocksbrige and Rotherham and well the already closed outo kumpu site up here. I know plenty in this situation but not sure if they would like to be in a documentary...

[Kidorry]

Is this any good for you? Hell! But I’d go back tomorrow

 

This DVD contains a record of the lives of steelworkers of Sheffield and Rotherham , told in their own words to a team of volunteer interviewers between 1999 and 2001. It was made to capture a small part of their histories and of the industry that made Sheffield , before their voices are lost. It is the principal product of a project conceived as a fitting way for Sheffield ’s ‘No.2’ Branch of the Workers’ Educational Association to mark the millennium. By the time the year 2000 came it was almost too late to record these stories and sadly two of our interviewees died before the project was completed. This archive is dedicated to them.

 

How to use the archive

 

The archive consists of recordings from 29 interviews. Each one was broken down into short sections and indexed. This means that the recordings can either be browsed, interview by interview, or you can search for all the references made by interviewees to specific subjects. For example, you can hear Joan Kirby’s entire interview, or you can pick out and listen to the sections in which workers from minority ethnic backgrounds speak about their relationships with white colleagues and managers.

 

Background to the project

 

Other histories of the Don Valley steel industry exist. This project complements these by giving the workers’ side of the story - their stories as real people, inside and outside the works, not just as ‘the labour force’. The interviewees talk about what it was like in the mills and factories – the sense of community, the hazards, the politics, the conflicts – and about the impact of these jobs on their family lives.

 

Some of them worked in the steel mills themselves, while others were employed in the many supporting industries. Here are people from the rolling mills, crane drivers, fettlers and one of the very few surviving pattern makers, who painstakingly built the wooden models from which the engineers worked. Many of these men and women have skills which will disappear with them, since although steel is still produced in the Don Valley ; the workforce is a fraction of its previous size: the technology has changed and steel is made by computer-controlled machines.

 

We also tried, with some success, to talk to those who have largely been left out of other histories, which portray ‘the Don Valley steelworker’ as a white man. Most were, but women worked in the industry as well, both during the Second World War and in peacetime, and there were many steelworkers of Yemeni, Afro-Caribbean and other non-White backgrounds. While they shared much of the same environment, their experiences were often very different, facing racism and discrimination alongside the normal risks and hazards of their workplaces.

 

The project team

 

Jan Caborn, Leah Fleetwood, Peter Byrom, Robin Garside, Steve Connelly and Stuart Crosthwaite.

 

Acknowledgements

 

Our thanks go to the many people who made this project possible. Firstly of course, to our interviewees who contributed so much of their time and put their hearts into making this a living record of a disappearing past. We were given a huge amount of support and advice from people far more experienced in history projects than we are. Thanks in particular to Mike Spick of the Sheffield Library Service, Shirley Miller and Katherine Hamilton at Kelham Island Industrial Museum , Sheffield . We also an enormous debt to Pete Byrom who developed the electronic indexing system – the first of its kind as far as we know! Lastly we thank our funders: Awards for All, the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the Sheffield No. 2 Branch of the Workers’ Educational Association who gave us the idea and an organisational ‘home’ for the project.

 

The Workers’ Educational Association

 

The Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) is the country’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education. Democratic in its structure and its approach to education, it has had close links with the labour movement since it was established in 1903. Its principal aims are to stimulate and respond to the demand for liberal adult education, providing in particular for the needs of working class people and those who are socially, economically or educationally disadvantaged. The Sheffield No. 2 Branch is a proud inheritor of this tradition. Each year its volunteers and paid staff organise a programme of courses which emphasises making liberal education accessible in areas and in subjects neglected by other providers; social and political issues and supporting community organisations.

 

 

 

For more information on the WEA visit http://www.wea.org.uk, or contact

 

Workers’ Educational Association

Yorkshire and Humber Region

Regional Office

6 Woodhouse Square

Leeds

LS3 1AD

 

tel: 0113 245 3304

email: yorkshumber@wea.org.uk

[janie-m]

Anyone on here working in the declining steel industry during the 80's. I am working on a project that needs a family to be interviewed about your life and struggles. Were you or friend or relative made unemployed and how did it effect you and your family.

 

This is to be made into a BBC documentary.

 

My Dad was made redundant in the late 70's from the steel works, my brother and I was only young. I can remember Dad crying because he couldn't get a job, now I'm older I realise he was depressed. Mum increased her hours at work n Dad tried to be a house husband, as much as he tried he wasn't cut out for that job:-) He eventually got a job on the railways in the early 80's.

[tired mummy]

mydad was made redundant from firth browns in the 80,s remember it being a hard time for a lot of people,he retired from sheffield forgemasters in the late 90.s worked in the steel industry all his life,till he left with ill health.