The local newspapers carry articles almost every day. All the Teesside MPs and other layabouts make sure they say something every week about Teesside getting the new works. The general feeling is that it will solve the unemployment situation on Teesside "at a stroke".

The estimates of the number of jobs that the new works would provide have dropped somewhat since the original rush of blood to the head. The figure being quoted now is around 7,000. We have lost 6,000 jobs in the steel industry on Teesside in the last year.

A British Steel Corporation spokesman claims that nearly half of these men who lost their jobs were redeployed elsewhere within the industry.

You do not have to be a great mathematician or cynic to realise that if the Redcar works is built, by the time it gets into production it will employ well under half the number of men made redundant in the previous year or two.

If the new works at Redcar follows the pattern set at Lackenby, it will probably destroy more jobs than it provides. The new BOS plant at Lackenby employs under 1,000 men. Its construction has already resulted in the closure of three of the four open hearth furnaces and the fourth is soon due to close. In all, 2,700 redundancies will be created as a result of the new plant.