Fighting for Survival: The 1980s Campaign to Save Ravenscraig Steelworks

Abstract

The story of the former Ravenscraig steelworks in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, interweaves economics, politics, trade unionism and, above all, the life of a community. From its inception in the 1950s, Ravenscraig took on symbolic status in Scotland, encapsulating hopes for industrial renewal, whilst demonstrating the British state’s commitment to depressed regions. During the economic restructuring and dislocation of the Thatcher years between 1979 and 1990,Ravenscraig’s rundown characterised the Conservatives’ abandonment of this strategy. The plant’s eventual closure in 1992 signalled the death of Scottish heavy industry, sparking widespread anger and bitterness, and touching a raw nerve that still precludes academic analysis of this traumatic period. Of historians who have considered the subject, Peter Payne has tended to focus on the industrial history of Scottish steel-making, whilst Robert Duncan has charted the steel industry’s impact on Motherwell. Keith Aitken’s history of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) contains the only detailed coverage of Ravenscraig’s fortunes during Thatcher’s premiership. 2 This paper aims to redress the balance by charting the 1980s campaign to save Ravenscraig, placing it within the context of steel nationalisation, the ‘post-war consensus’ in British politics and the privatisation programme. It disentangles the mythology surrounding Ravenscraig by highlighting the role played by the Conservatives in bringing the strip mill to Motherwell, and pointing to Scottish Conservative collusion in prolonging the steelworks’ existence throughout the 1980s.The paper also outlines the changing nature of Conservatism between the 1950s and 1980s, and the impact of this on attitudes to regional development. Finally, consideration is given to the role played by the European Economic Community in the rundown of the Scottish steel industry, a little known aspect of the Ravenscraig story.