The Steelworker//

There had been a long tradition of steelmaking in the West Midlands dating right back to the furnaces in Coalbrookdale where the world’s first iron bridge was manufactured. These photographs are a record of the men who worked in the last steelworks in the West Midlands in Bilston, and the last hand rolling mill in Birchley. Within four years the Thatcher government’s industrial policy decimated the steelworks, the foundries, and thousands of smaller metal working industries in the West Midlands.