I worked on Scuthorpe steelworks in the late seventies and early eightes, which, now that I look back on it, is not so very long after the period covered by the book. The book predominantly covers the years 1956 and 1964, but it does also momentarily flash forward to the 21st century.
In 2010, two former adversaries, now friends converse in a hospital ward, bewailing the state of their health, the state of the steel industry and that of the town. In a rare and uncharacheristic moment of candour, Ted Barnes, previously the boorish loudmouth of the blast furnaces crew, asks Tio Mourillon:
'What's the point of a strong man without his strength?'
Gone is much of Ted's bluster, gone are some of his more strident opinions and the physical prowess with which he impressed them upon his contemporaries, but still present is his parochial world view. Tio doesn't answer Ted's question. The question is, of course, rhetorical. Had Tio answered, he would perhaps like to have imagined himself counselling that though a person's strength may wain, it is sometimes compensated for in other respects, that with the demise of physical strength may come a corresponding increase in wisdom, but he knows he is talking to Ted, a man for whom wisdom is hardly the word that springs to mind. Moreover, Tio hesitates to speak because, for this once, Ted's words resonate.
The two men, once defined by their physical prowess like many of that era, no longer possess it. For them, it seems, the very basis of their existence comes into question.
He who was once sure-footed, no longer is, his confidence either evaporated or changed beyond recognition. Swaggering steps have given way to faltering ones, the ravages of illness have rendered them barely able to walk at all.
The men and women who eked out their livelihood on Scunthorpe steelworks in the fifties and sixties, then later in my era in the seventies and early eighties, and even now, were and are characterised by a type of strength and a macho culture that in many ways seem out of step in today's Britain, both culturally and economically. The heavy industries of that era are rapidly becomng a thing of the past, overtaken by service based industries, in which the end product is far less tangible, making the steel industry appear like an anachronism, like a strong man no longer posessing his strength, if you like.
I was born in a house that is within sight of the steelworks. I, like many people in the town, felt the industry's demise very keenly. Filthy, dangerous and sometimes toxic as it was as a working environment, it still pulls on the heart strings to see some of the old rolling mills or the coke ovens closed. That was the strategy of government of the time, to 'rationalise' an industry it regarded econmically unviable. Fortunately, the story of the steelworks, of heavy industry in the Scunthorpe area is not over. Having stared into the precipice of losing the last remnant of heavy industry and perhaps recognising that it may not be quite such a good idea after all, today's government is minded to take a different strategy.
In 2010, Ted Barnes bemoans the passing of a bygone era. Tio Mourillon is by no means convinced that he's right; for him, some things have very much improved, given that he is now woven into the town's and indeed the nation's fabric. So, for the two men, although they may not understand it as such, debate what to retain and what to discard from the past. Is it 'off with old and on with the new' or are those who take such an approach 'throwing the baby out with the bath water'?
Hopefully, there is life in the ailing strongman yet.