Flying the flag

IN the shadow of the Eston Hills, a flag flutters in the wind, the SOS slogan on it encapsulating the mood in an area ravaged by one of the most devastating economic blows in recent memory.

George Dunning is sick of the sight of it.

For the Save Our Steel plea hoisted high above Eston Town Hall each day serves as a grim reminder of the darkest of times for a man who proudly maintained a family way of life by entering the Teesside steel industry during its booming heyday.

December 4, last year, will live long in the memory for the worst reasons; the day Corus revealed its Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant at Redcar would be mothballed in the new year.

For Mr Dunning, it was not just the end of an era, but the painful loss of a rich tradition that he, and his father and grandfather before him, had been a part of.

There was also the realisation that, as the leader of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, he must now head the drive to focus national attention on the needs of communities decimated by the 1,700 direct job losses and the ruinous knock-on effects.

He said: “I remember the word I kept using over and over again on that day – heartbreaking.

“I am not a soft guy, but I was really emotional.

It was genuinely heartbreaking when I thought of my father and grandfather and how hard they worked over the years. It suddenly hit home that we would not be making steel anymore in an area absolutely renowned throughout the world for it.”

His career was inspired by his father, John Leonard Dunning, who worked for 44 years at Middlesbrough’s Cargo Fleet Iron Works.

Leaving Ayresome Secondary School in 1964, however, Teesside’s heavy industry was not George Dunning’s first port of call.

He said: “I got a job at Northern Dairies as a wagon loader to start with, mainly because it paid more than the local industry or going into an apprenticeship. I’d had to do something because it had been two weeks since I had left school and my parents were getting worried that I hadn’t found a job.

“For most people, though, there were two choices – steel or chemicals. There were plenty of jobs around. I didn’t have any mates who went on to university or anything like that.

Those opportunities didn’t exist.”

Ultimately, Mr Dunning’s father would secure him a job at Cargo Fleet, thus beginning a career that took in several roles in production and logistics.

From Cargo Fleet and Cleveland Iron Works, he went to ICI Wilton and the continuous casting plant at Lackenby, where he spent 12 years as an overhead crane driver.

It was at Lackenby that his strong trade union roots were forged, becoming deputy branch secretary for the former Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, now the Community Union, in 1984. He said: “Throughout that time, it was simply a giant of an industry. The economic climate then, compared to now, was so dramatically different.

“The environmental regulations, the health and safety laws – everything was different.

Things have changed for the better in those respects, but they were still great times.

“When I was at the Teesside Bridge foundry, I would be up at 7am to go to work. I’d often cycle, because that was free, but if I was feeling flush I would get the bus in, and we’d knock off to go for a drink in The Navigation pub.

“Thinking about it, we probably were a few months underage, but the landlord wasn’t going to ask for your birth certificate when you turned up covered in smoke and dust.”

HIS time in the industry came to a close with spells at Corus’ 84-inch pipe mill at Portrack, Stockton, a plant predominantly making products for the energy market, and the 20in mill at Hartlepool, which he left in 2001 to concentrate on local politics.

Elected as a Labour candidate to the Overfields seat of the defunct Langbaurgh Borough Council in 1989, he became deputy leader of what is now Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council ten years later. The move to the top job followed the 2007 local elections. Little could Mr Dunning have known how swiftly his old working and new political lives would collide.

The cracks began to show in April last year when a consortium of four international steel companies – Marcegaglia, Dongkuk, Duferco and Alvory – withdrew from a ten-year deal to buy all of TCP’s output after only four years.

As the recession hammered global demand and prices plunged, the cost of buying steel from TCP was deemed too high.

December’s announcement confirmed the region’s worst fears, and the tears flowed freely this February as Teesside’s furnaces went cold for the first time in 160 years.

Either directly or indirectly, up to 8,000 jobs were predicted to be lost as a result. Millions of pounds were to be lost from the Tees Valley economy, although the securing of £60m in Government aid to protect existing jobs and create new ones provided a welcome shot in the arm.

The fallout has sparked all manner of heated debate, allegation and counter-allegation.

This week there has been anger at reports that chief executive of the European division of Tata Steel Europe, Kirby Adams, due to return to Australia after 18 months at the helm, was paid more than £2m a year as he led the costcutting reorganisation.

Reporting a £328m profit in May – radically turning around the £521m loss of 2008-9 – was offset by TCP’s mothballing, job losses, a perceived failure to engage with the workforce and an all-round PR disaster.

His replacement will be chief operating officer Dr Karl-Ulrich Kohler. Mr Dunning already has him in his sights. “A letter has gone to him, asking for a meeting as soon as he is in post.

There was no hanging about there.

“I passionately believe that what Teesside has to offer is a world-class piece of steel-making kit. Any buyer or equity partner should realise that there is tremendous potential to continue producing top-quality steel here.”

Having collared Prince Charles during an official engagement in Redcar in May and implored him to help Teesside’s men of steel, Corus’ top brass should be in no doubt they face a formidable campaigner.

Mr Dunning said: “It is something we have to fight to keep in the public eye. I get stopped all the time by people in the street, by people I worked with and their families, all asking what’s going to happen.

“We owe it to them to fight to save our steel.

And when that happens, I will be delighted to be there on the day we take that flag down.”