WHEN I was growing up on Teesside virtually my entire family depended on the local steel industry.

My father, maternal grandfather and an uncle worked at a brickyard that produced heat resistant bricks that line furnaces. Another uncle designed furnaces, at first with an established firm, later with a successful rival he founded. A third uncle rose through the office ranks at the mighty Cargo Fleet Ironworks, which provided much of Britain’s railway track, to become its sales director. Perfect for the role, he was an affable man, at ease in any company. He kept the cigarettes that prematurely killed him in a silver case, whose contents he always offered round.

Today the brickyard has gone, its site now a country park. Cargo Fleet Ironworks has disappeared too, replaced with a go-kart track. And probably no one on Teesside now designs furnaces, though my uncle’s firm won contracts for India’s then fledgling steel industry.

In common with everyone on Teesside, he and my other steel-dependent relatives would have found it unbelievable that an Indian company, Tata Steel, would one day control a diminished Teesside steel industry. The further passing on of local steelmaking, like a parcel too hot to handle, to a Thailand company, would have had Teessiders at that time, the 1950s, not merely turning in their graves but sitting bolt upright - were it not simply too preposterous to be true.

As the Redcar steelworks, the last bastion of steelmaking on Teesside, teeters on the brink of extinction, with the entire death of British steelmaking anticipated in some quarters, you can’t help wondering if the foreign ownership isn’t part of the problem.

As one analyst has observed of loss-making operations: “There usually comes a time, especially if you’re a foreign company with bigger interests to protect, when the burden becomes too great.”

With production records at Redcar safely in the bag, the plant’s difficulties are not of its own making. Domestic ownership would surely persevere more to overcome them. Yet other major steel plants – Scunthorpe, Port Talbot – are also foreign-owned.

Meanwhile, it’s notable that the cry for help for Redcar has focussed largely on the devastating local impact of closure – the 3,000 jobs lost at the plant and in contracting, plus more through the community knock-on. Right and proper. And yet the closure of Redcar, especially if it triggers the end of steelmaking in Britain, would be a national catastrophe.

Throughout this summer there have been commemorations of the Battle of Britain – the Spitfire to the fore. How would the Spitfires, and the tanks and other armaments we required to win the war, have been produced without our steelworks? You might even say that the Spitfire is a flying frying pan - or kettle. For, as some of you will remember, a famous wartime appeal went out for unwanted pans, teapots etc to feed the furnaces.

The response was huge. But history has revealed the campaign to have been a propaganda exercise, designed to maintain the national effort, with everyone feeling they were doing their bit. It was impractical to sort out the metal, much of which was unusable.

Still, the furnaces were ready – and produced the goods anyway. Where will we turn next time there is need, but the furnaces are cold or vanished?