Lives in a Landscape - Steel Spring

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Steel Spring. In 1990 Alan Dein travelled the length and breadth of Britain to document lives in steel- already an industry in decline. His then employer British Steel is, itself, now history. Decline, closure and layoffs have been the depressingly familiar litany of modern British industry. When they mothballed the blast furnace at Redcar, on the iron coast of Teesside, in 2010 it felt like just another death. "Like killing a creature" one worker says but this Easter Redcar witnessed a remarkable and fiery resurrection. A billion and a half dollars from Thailand brought back steel making and now the new blast furnace belches smoke and fire as the grey waves crash against the sands of Redcar. Alan Dein returns to a landscape he hasn't visited for a quarter of a century to journey from the iron shore where dark grey waves complement the coils of pale smoke beyond before trailing the black path to the steelworks and its fiery heart, the blast furnace. Dein picks his way through the vast metal realm of 'Queen Bess' vomiting sparks, smoke and flame to hear from new and old lives in steel, from those who forever left behind a world of generational toil and from those reborn in the shadow of the fire.

Producer Mark Burman.

Published on Wednesday, 23rd May 2012.

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