8:37am Thursday 9th September 2010
By Tony Kearney
GENERATIONS of a community came together yesterday to mark the anniversary of one of their town’s blackest days.
Thirty years after the closure of Consett steelworks, young and old marked the occasion with a service of commemoration in the town’s parish church, only a stone’s throw from where the huge works once stood.
The service was organised by staff and pupils from Consett Junior School as part of a week of events to mark the anniversary, with families and former steelworkers among the 400-strong congregation.
The steelworks, which dominated the town for more than a century, was built in 1840 and grew to be the biggest in Europe, before it closed on September 12, 1980, with the loss of 3,600 jobs.
During an emotional service, the sacrifice of the generations who manned the furnaces was remembered, along with the pride of a town that built the steel used in the girders of Blackpool Tower and the hulls of Britain’s nuclear submarines.
Against a backdrop of photographs from the town’s industrial past, pupils read poems recalling the red dust that hung over the town and turned snow pink, as well as extracts from 19th Century letters from steelworks managers, on subjects including evicting troublesome tenants, setting up soup kitchens and organising fireworks for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. They also sang the praises of their town today, 30 years after widespread predictions it would turn into a ghost town.
The Reverend Val Sheddon said: “We are remembering the steelworks, but what is more important than lumps of metal are people – the people who worked there; the people who lost their lives there; the people who lost their jobs there and the people who, despite the doom and gloom after the closure, are still here.
“They have not been beaten – they are the salt of the earth.”
Teacher David Jackson, whose father and grandfather were steelworkers, said: “It is important that we all learn and remember our roots and our heritage.”
Tomorrow, pupils will dress as steelworkers and housewives, while former steelworkers will visit the school and talk about their experiences.
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