At 6am this morning the final batch of coal was fed into Redcar coke ovens signalling the end of almost 170 years of iron and steelmaking. But the Echo's Jo Morris says Teesside will prevail.

THEY can turn off the furnace but they’ll never extinguish the fire that burns under our steel river.

We are Teesside and we will prevail, despite it all. We will rally and we will rail and we will never, we must never give up.

We are the steelworkers on the beach, we are the children on their shoulders and we live in the speeches and the placards ignored by Parliament.

We are Teesside and we are the worst place to live and the best place to grow, we are walks up Roseberry Topping, purple heather and wind-burned cheeks.

We are scampi and chips at the Gare, 2p machines and a lemon-top on Redcar beach.

We are the Saturday night fights sprawled along Linthorpe Road and the ten minute love affair between the Europa parmo and the taxi queue.

We are the highs and lows that come with shouting UTB from the terraces and we are Sunday league heroes, Monday morning workers.

We say thank you to bus drivers and we look after our own, we are Benefits Street and the hearts hidden behind every door.

We are the only starched net curtains on a street of green steel shutters, we are abandoned Gresham and forgotten Grangetown.

We are bingo and worky men’s clubs and a cup of tea for every tragedy, we are loveable rogues who love their mam.

We are the red scrawl of the street artist and we are Linthorpe Pottery, mima and the stoic lions at Dorman Museum.

We are the queues at the job centre, we are call centre workers, business owners and zero-hour slaves.

We are ever shrinking budgets and we are angry councillors who could never do enough to plug the gap.

We are immigrants, we are workers, we are drug addicts, we are prostitutes, we are proud, proud people.

We are the foodbank volunteers, the caring cops who know their enemy isn’t on the street, the charity workers, those who give where others take.

We are Captain Cook, we carry our town with us wherever we go and we make sure they can find Teesside on a map.

We are Teesside and we are the infant Hercules, we are young and we are the art students, the moshers at the town hall and the kids on bikes outside Acklam shops.

We are the parents and the grandparents watching what we’ve seen before, we are the lost generations and we will fight to pull our children from the latest sink hole.

We are at our best with fire in our bellies and steel in our eyes and we will fight as we have always fought.

And the bastards cannot win so long as that spark lives on in the brothers and sisters forged under steel clouds.