Just because an area like Port Talbot one supported a particular industry like steel, there’s no reason the state must ensure it always does, says Eliot Wilson When the government announced last month that it would give Tata Steel £500m to modernise its facility in Port Talbot, I noticed a revealing remark. The business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, declared that “Port Talbot has always been and will always be a steelmaking town”. It is hardly surprising that a Labour minister paid tribute to the industrial heritage of the movement’s heartland, but it raises a simple question: why should “has always been” mean “will always be”? This is a strange basis for an economic policy.
To say that an area has previously supported a certain industry and therefore should do so forever is ahistorical and antithetical to the notion of progress. It is as if a merchant said in the 1700s “Glasgow has always been and will always be a tobacco and sugar city”, shunning the economic potential of shipbuilding, railway engineering or steel. This mindset would have prevented the Industrial Revolution ever from happening.
Reynolds was selling a policy, but his words were not an isolated spasm of nostalgia. At both ends of the political spectrum, there are frequent complaints that the United Kingdom is undergoing “deindustrialisation”, sacrificing sectors of the economy for supposedly foolish or shortsighted reasons. If a traditional industry wanes, someone will alway.
