Durham E-Theses The Trajectories of Industrial Change: Disrupting, Managing and Assembling Futures in Teesside BEER, SIMON,HANLON How to cite: BEER, SIMON,HANLON (2016) The Trajectories of Industrial Change: Disrupting, Managing and Assembling Futures in Teesside, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11425/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Simon Beer ‘The Trajectories of Industrial Change: Disrupting, Managing and Assembling Futures in Teesside’ Ph.D. Thesis Abstract In 2010 the steelworks in Teesside were ‘mothballed’ meaning that the works were shut down yet kept in a state that they could potentially be restarted in the foreseeable future. This had a number of implications for a variety of different orientations towards the future across Teesside. For the steelworkers of Teesside this mothballing rendered many futures of a pension entitlement and continued employment uncertain. The management of the steelworks sought to hold a future of continued steelmaking in Teesside together through retaining skills and the steelmaking workforce. Furthermore, in the wake of the mothballing, local economic governance sought to enact a new orientation towards the future for the local economy of Teesside which was less reliant upon heavy industry. Futures are therefore a key aspect of how industrial change comes to be enacted and lived. Yet, whilst there have been numerous engagements with industrial change, living through such change and an emerging academic engagement with futures, there remains little in the way of attention towards how orientations towards the future can be theorised and researched. This is the goal of this thesis; to develop and establish a conceptual framework for engaging with orientations towards the future within research that can attend to the multiplicity, complexity, inherent change and mobile boundaries of these orientations. To do this the thesis has developed the concept of ‘trajectories.’ A trajectory is means of conceptualising an orientation towards the future as a homeomorphic assemblage, whereby change is inherent to the assemblage but must remain within certain mobile boundaries or ‘thresholds’ otherwise the assemblage loses its homeomorphism and undergoes a ‘transition’ to a different object. This thesis uses this conceptual framework to explore the trajectories enacted through the mothballing of the steelworks in Teesside as a means to explore the futures of industrial change. The Trajectories of Industrial Change: Disrupting, Managing and Assembling Futures in Teesside Simon Beer Ph.D. Thesis Department of Geography Durham University 2015 Contents List of Illustrations and Figures iii List of Abbreviations iv Statement of copyright v Acknowledgements vi 1. Turning to Futures 1 2. “We were referred to as the Jewel in the Crown at one point”: A History of Teesside’s Steel Industry 15 2.1. Iron Origins and the Rise of Steel 16 2.2. Forging British Steel 24 2.3. From Deindustrialisation to Flexibility 30 2.4. The Fall of Teesside Cast Products 46 2.5. The Rebirth of Steel in Teesside 52 2.6. From Cleveland Iron to Thai Coil 58 3. Futures in Geography: Lived experience, Haunting, Precarity and Futurity 60 3.1. The Lived Experience of Industrial Change 62 3.1.1. Haunting 65 3.1.2. Precarity 67 3.2. Futurity within Geography 73 3.3. Towards a Theory of Futures 85 4. Homeomorphic Assemblages 87 4.1. Assembling Futures 88 4.2. Trajectories 97 4.3. The Trajectories of Industrial Change 102 5. Researching Trajectories 104 5.1. Research Implications 104 5.2. Researching trajectories in Teesside 107 5.2.1. Stage 1. Steelworkers: Trajectories lived and disrupted 113 5.2.2. Stage 2. Management: Trajectories held together 118 5.2.3. Stage 3. Regeneration governance: New trajectories assembled 121 5.3. Trajectories in practice 125 6. “When it was all silent and all finished”: Disrupted Trajectories 127 6.1. Making a Future of Closure Present 128 i 6.2. The Cruel Optimism of Pension Entitlement 140 6.3. Lost Futures and Lost Identities 149 6.4. Trajectories disrupted 160 7. Holding the future together: Homeomorphism and transition in the management of the steelworks 163 7.1. Assembling management 164 7.2. Holding a trajectory together 178 7.2.1. Cross-Matching 184 7.2.2. Skills retention 188 7.3. Trajectories managed 198 8. Assembling new trajectories: Economic regeneration planning in Teesside 200 8.1. Assembling a trajectory 204 8.2. Diagramming a trajectory 213 8.2.1. “We work in the public sector we don't have that same flexibility”: Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council 221 8.2.2. “We're much more of a kind of facilitator for getting the environment right, and then it’s up to the industry and the bodies to deliver, to deliver that on the ground”: Tees Valley Unlimited 229 8.3. Trajectories assembled 234 9. Futures research: A conclusion 236 9.1. Disruption, Management, Assembly 238 9.2. Uncertainty, Change/Stasis, Assembly 243 9.3. Alternative Trajectories 248 9.4. Future Research 253 9.5. The Trajectories of Industrial Change: Disrupting, Managing and Assembling Futures in Teesside 258 References 261 ii List of illustrations Image 1: Photograph showing the Acklam Ironworks, owned by Dorman Long, in 1924 19 Image 2: The ruins of a former ironstone mine in the Cleveland Hills 22 Image 3: The Clay Lane furnaces. Unknown date 25 Image 4: The Redcar Blast Furnace, pictured after 2012 29 Image 5: The ‘Save out Steel’ march through Redcar in 2009. The blast furnace is visible in the background 49 Figure 1: A representation of the concept of Trajectories 101 iii List of abbreviations AVC - Additional Voluntary Contributions BOS - Basic Oxygen Route of Steelmaking BSC - British Steel Corporation CONCAST - Continuous Casting CURS - Changing Urban and Regional Systems ICI - Imperial Chemicals Industries MOU - Memorandum of Understanding ONE - One North East PCI - Pulverised Coal Injection RCBC - Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council RM - Regeneration Masterplan SOA - Statement of Ambition SSI - Sahaviriya Steel Industries TCP - Teesside Cast Products TDC - Teesside Development Corporation TUPE - Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) TVU - Tees Valley Unlimited iv Statement of copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. v Acknowledgements Sitting here, in front of a finished thesis, it’s difficult to find a point to begin in thanking everyone that has helped me along this journey. I’m just going to dive right in. Firstly I would like to thank my family for all of the support across these last four years (yes, even you Hannah). My Mum has always been on hand to proof read and insert commas into various drafts of chapters and my Dad has always been there to offer unwavering support and advice. Special thanks also has to go to Andy Gibbin and Neil Waterfield, without both of whom the research conducted in this project would have been impossible. Thanks also need to go to all the postgrads in the Department who have shared tea and coffee breaks with me across these last years. If I tried to list you all then it would take the rest of this page and I would inevitably still forget someone. This paltry thank you does not nearly suffice for the debt that I owe you all. A special acknowledgement needs to go to those in room 301 (which as everyone knows is far superior to Skylab). Andres spent two years sat next to me while I ate peanut butter sandwiches and pretended not to be procrastinating, before passing that baton to Johanne. Ankit, Adam, Raihana and Boris have always been on hand for me to distract from their work and when I needed to take a break – thanks guys. Furthermore, as anyone who has ever undertaken a PhD will tell you, good supervisors are everything. I have been extremely fortunate to have been supervised not only by two of the most insightful and intelligent academics I know, but also by two people that I now call friends. Thank you Ben and Gordon, for everything you have done for me. Finally, I’d like to thank Hannah for all of her support and encouragement throughout this project. This in no way does justice to your part in this journey but you’re already getting the dedication so don’t get too greedy. vi For Hannah. We did it together. vii 1. Turning to Futures ● “Steel production at the Corus plant on Teesside will cease within a week, workers have been told. The mothballing of the Teesside Cast Products (TCP) blast furnace at Redcar, where about 1,600 jobs are due to be lost, will begin on Friday.” (BBC 2010a) ● Under overcast skies at 4pm on the 19th February 2010 the last raw materials were poured into the Redcar blast furnace, marking the beginning of the mothballing of Teesside Cast Products (TCP), the last iron and steelmaking company in Teesside.