Former Redcar MP Anna Turley was one of the most vocal in the fight to stop the SSI steelworks closing in 2015. Writing exclusively for The Northern Echo, she reflects on the anger and emotion of the fight, and her hopes for the future.

A flock of birds rippled up out of the vast rusty skeleton into the milky winter sky, as metallic clangs echoed around the remains of the Redcar blast furnace.

A couple of diggers were working on the base of the structure and had disturbed the nestling birds, as I walked past it along the South Gare last week. I stopped to take photos of its ghostly frame.

The Northern Echo:

The photos were poor. Unable to capture either the former magnificence of this industrial Hercules that had sat a fiery vigil astride the mouth of the mighty Tees for decades, nor the poignant symbolism of its hollow frame now being stripped and denuded – a final indignity.

I thought instead of the people who had made it a living breathing beast – the grandfathers, uncles and fathers who had built it. The men who fed and powered it over the years. The years of skill and effort which forged the steel which in turn built the world. The families, the friendships, the brotherhood.

I thought of my first visit there in 2012 at the time of a wave of optimism after its restart, feeling small and hot in an oversized protective suit and hard hat, overwhelmed by the heat and struggling to get a sense of how anyone could work in those temperatures. Awed by the scale and the power of the furnace.

The Northern Echo:

But mostly I thought of those days at the end. Of both the quiet, simmering anger and the loud, raging fury. Of the determination to fight closure with every breath. Of the horror and disbelief that help never came from the top. That they turned their backs.

And I thought of the overwhelming community solidarity – from the rally on the beach at Majuba, to the phone torches shining at the Boro game and the trumpet playing the last post up Eston Nab. I remember the resilience and generosity of Teessiders – the warehouses suddenly filled with toys for children facing an uncertain Christmas. I thought of nine-year old Ben raising money for a party for the children of steelworkers. I thought of the moving photos shared of the final shifts and of Dale’s boots and helmet left outside the gates as an emotional tribute.

The Northern Echo:

There was practicality too, though, and determination. A desire to look forward and to pick up tools and build again. To retrain, to work hard, to provide. In the way that Teesside always has. Not looking to the past. Not ‘we once were’ but Erimus – ‘we shall be’.

And that is where we find ourselves now. Hopeful of a new industrial renaissance on the site. To lead the world in the development of new green technologies and industries, just as we led the world in the last two centuries of change. To create jobs and to rise again.

To those who are the current custodians of the site I simply say this – it does not belong to you and it is not yours to exploit. It belongs to those of the past whose hands built the mighty blast furnace and forged the steel. It belongs to everyone today who wants a safe, clean, environmentally-friendly and purposeful regeneration.

And it belongs to those young men and women of the future who deserve the chance to take their place as Teessiders building the new, green, modern industrial Hercules once more aside the River Tees.