How Do the UK's Steel Towns Cope When the Steel Is Gone?

It's 10AM at a recreational centre on the coast of Redcar and a fleet of well-dressed officials from the Department of Work and Pensions and the local council are skirting around, chatty and positive. Many of them are from outside of town but have been drafted in to man a job fair for the 700 local people who have been without work for half a year since the town's steel plant, SSI, shuttered.

Unlike the government staff, the 80-odd job seekers who have turned up are predominately male, working class and not wearing suits, some opting for fluorescent jackets instead. Paul Thomas, 55, is eating a scone in the café and looking over some job adverts he's been given, around him men are laughing loudly as old friends catch-up.

"They talk about transferrable skills, I have none. I worked hard at SSI for 38 years, I only know steel." Thomas says he has been to a few of the job fairs so far, but nothing has come of it.

"These events are more like advertising for the council," he says.

When it closed last November, over 3,000 people from SSI and connected businesses lost their incomes – in many cases husband and wife, or father and son, lost both their livelihoods overnight after decades working at the plant. Losing £70 million's worth of wages a year has been a big hit to the local economy and shaken the spirit of community.

Here, six months later, and there is a growing despondency that those who can find good work again already have. Thomas says there were some jobs nearby with train manufacturer Hitachi. "Some of the younger lads who applied got jobs and I didn't even get an email. I was on £17 an hour and now I am looking at stacking shelves for £7 – and if you don't apply you get your benefits sanctioned," he says. "It's hard to keep motivated."

Sue Soroczan from the council tells me that they have made great progress in getting the redundant back to work and an impressive 1,400 people have already moved off Job Seekers Allowance. The council's "Taskforce" was handed a sizeable £50 million from central government to deal with the crisis, which has been spent on financial support, training and helping the men to "self-market" themselves, she says.

"The council have been doing their best and really deserve credit, but the figures are misleading – if you undertake training for more than 16 hours a week, you're classed as coming off benefits," says Paul Warren, who worked 26 years at the plant and chaired the unions there.

"I worry we will have high unemployment for a long time when the money stops, especially with the over-45s who worked there decades."

A mile along the shore, the rusty skeleton of the steelworks is within sight of the recreational centre. Its hulking silhouette juts out on to the beach, flame extinguished; a monument to the product, prosperity and pride it generated for the town.

While the north east was struggling enough before the 2008 economic crash, the Conservative-led government's project of hacking off various limbs of public services has disproportionately affected the region, Liverpool University's Due North report found in 2014. It has only exacerbated deprivation as well as physical and mental ill-health.

Now, the north east comes top in a lot of the leagues that places don't want to be in: it has the highest unemployment rate, lowest disposable incomes, highest disability rate, as well as double the rate of deaths from drugs and suicide as London.

Veronica Harnett, executive of the local branch of the charity Mind, is all too aware of the figures. She's seen how the closure of the steel plant has hit the community's mental health hard.

"Our referrals went up by 91 percent last year, and that was before the SSI even shuttered," she says. Despite having her funding from the council slashed by over a half, Veronica's staff made contact with every former SSI worker and have helped dozens deal with depression, relationship breakdowns and the fear of losing their home, she says.

"We had one case of suicide connected to the SSI, but you have to remember the situation was already bad in the area," Harnett adds, pointing out that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK. "Another guy early in October was in total despair. We worked with him and thankfully he became one of the fortunate ones who found solid work. He sent us a lovely card recently basically saying, 'Had it not been for you, I would have taken my own life.'"

Back on the town's parade of chip shops, pawnbrokers and e-cig emporiums, I meet another of Redcar's good samaritans. If there is an embodiment of Cameron's early-era PR exercise in the "Big Society" – where the good-hearted take on the government's duty of caring for the vulnerable – Ruth Fox is it. Fox runs numerous social projects across Redcar, including seven food banks manned by volunteers throughout the week. And since setting them up in 2013 Fox has fed 13,000 different people, many of whom are children. She says those numbers are growing.

"We've seen a significant number of SSI families come to the food banks, and those are just the ones who tell us; many people are embarrassed to be here and don't say much," says Fox, framed by techni-coloured shelves of donated foods.

"We did anonymous feedback recently and people said they would starve or steal if we weren't here."

At the back of the office is Ruth's newest project, the "Men's Shed": a wood workshop that gives men somewhere to meet up, play with tools, and tackle social isolation in the town. "Women moan face to face, but men often need to be shoulder to shoulder to connect," she says.

There I meet Lenny, Nobby and Mick, three cheery 60 years-plus blokes who seem to be more in to their banter than sanding pine and are convinced I am taking pictures for a top-shelf magazine. Nobby (Norman) was made redundant from SSI in the first wave in 2010.

"I was there for 37 years. You become institutionalised – it was who I was. You leave and unless you find something to do, you sit on the couch and die within a couple of years of bad health."

"It's shocking, look at how they are fighting to save Port Talbot and Redcar doesn't even get a mention. It's like we've been erased from history: thank you very much," says Nobby.

It's a conclusion union-man Paul Thomas shares and suggests that privately the government probably recognise they made a mistake with Redcar.

"It was dirty, grimy work and we broke our back but we got rewarded well. What we need now is big investment, not sticky plaster work here and there but jobs in the thousands."

@EmirNader

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