To the Future?

Abstract

In this volume, we have told a story of what happened to the inhabitants of Steeltown after the closure of the steelworks in 2002. In order to do this, we set the closure in the context of the 200 years of iron and steel production that preceded it. In Chapter 2, we explored what life was like for the inhabitants and the impact of the introduction of political economy and the Poor Law Amendment Act. What we focused on is the way in which the production of working people as ‘labour’ made them moveable objects that could be shunted around according to the demands of capitalist production, which, as we saw in that chapter, varied according to national and international demands for iron and steel. Labour was then further controlled by the introduction of political economy, which attempted to discipline labour by focusing on the production of wealth and the drains on wealth produced by the poor. The introduction of the workhouse meant that the poor were in great fear of entering the workhouse, thus making workers and their families accept any conditions in order to have work. It is in this way, that we introduce the idea that far from this being a 200-year period of stability, it was one of great anxiety and chronic instability. The works closed three times, and there were strikes, lay-offs, death, depression, war, disease and poverty.