WHEN they were building the Ravenscraig iron and steel plant, back in the 1950s, no fewer than four million cubic yards of earth were excavated, transported and filled elsewhere on the site. Four million. The place was huge.

“It was a big, big place, you have to remember”, says Jim Fraser, who turns 69 in a couple of weeks’ time. “When I started there it had its own shops and everything, its own transport. It had two medical centres and at least two canteens, maybe three. It was buzzing all the time, night and day”.

Jim started at the ‘Craig as an apprentice in 1969 and worked there as a maintenance engineer until 1992, when it closed, 30 years ago.

It’s easy to forget now the plant’s death by a thousand cuts, the intense anger from workers and politicians.

It’s easy to forget that this place was once a symbol, in the words of Arnold Kemp, a former Herald editor, of Scotland’s traditional industrial virility.

In the post-war years, arguments had raged as to whether a new Scottish iron and steel plant should be located down-river on the Clyde or near the developing coalfields in the east of Scotland. The decision in 1954 by Colville’s, Scotland’s leading iron and steel group, to locate a £22m project on a greenfield site in Motherwell, rather ended the debate.

The vast Ravenscraig complex opened on time (if £2m over budget) in August 1958.

“Stocks of raw materials having been accumulated”, the Glasgow Herald said on August 2, “a running-in process was initiated a week or two ago; after a period of preliminary heating-up the blast furnace will start operation today. The steel melting shop will go into operation in the middle of this month, and the build-up to full production will take place in the ensuing three or four weeks”.

New ore-discharging facilities had been built at General Terminus Quay in Glasgow. And a further capital programme of some £32m had already been earmarked for Ravenscraig in anticipation of increased demand for steel from the shipbuilding and engineering industries.

Ravenscraig would be at the heart of steelmaking technology for many years; in its 35 years it produced no fewer than 43m tonnes of steel.

Britain’s major steelmaking companies had been nationalised by Labour in 1951, a process reversed by the Conservatives once they came to power.

In 1967, however, Harold Wilson’s Labour government devised the Iron and Steel Act, the effect of which was to renationalise the industry. Now, under the umbrella of the newly-created British Steel Corporation were gathered 14 major private companies, representing 90% of UK production, with a combined workforce of 268,500.

The Labour minister, Richard Marsh, moving the Iron and Steel Bill, spoke of steel facing difficult problems, and said the Bill aimed to create a strong industry able to compete with the US and Japan.

A free-enterprise group, Aims of Industry, issued a black-edged leaflet warning that renationalisation was nothing but “political and doctrinaire prejudice” and would cost taxpayers £600m.

Ravenscraig had continued to benefit from the introduction of a slabbing mill and a hot strip mill in 1964, and from the launch of continuous casting facilities in the 1970s.

The year 1980 opened with the first national steel-workers’ strike in

54 years – the first serious challenge by the union movement to the Thatcher government’s industrial philosophy.

The strike, over pay and the threat of closures, came as Cabinet ministers argued that the steel industry was bankrupt. It also occurred against a backdrop of over-capacity in the industry, steeply rising energy prices and a recession.

The strike lasted 14 weeks. Then, in May 1980, Ian MacGregor was appointed chairman of BSC, warning that the company might have to retrench further than planned beyond the 52,000 job cuts that had already been scheduled for that year. Consett and Corby steelworks had been shuttered within months.

In November 1982, MacGregor said that closure of the ‘Craig was one option that he had put to the government. Michael Ancram, then the Scottish Tory chairman, was cheered at an STUC conference in Motherwell when he declared: “The closure of the Ravenscraig steel works, Motherwell, is not acceptable. Closure … means the end of the steel industry in Scotland.”

The ‘Craig’s hot strip mill was closed in 1990, with the loss of 770 jobs, and one of its two blast furnaces was axed the following year, putting another 1,100 people on the dole. The thousands of workers knew they were living on borrowed time. And in May 1984 Ravenscraig witnessed ugly scenes as striking miners picketed the premises, trying to block its supplies of coking coal.

The eminent historian Professor Sir Tom Devine has put it thus: “During the 1980s, Ravenscraig was starved of investment, steadily reduced in capacity (including the closure of the nearby Gartcosh rolling mill), and threatened with a complete shut-down on two occasions”.

A package of productivity reforms meant that the ‘Craig was soon outperforming the rival works at Llanwern, in Wales. Nevertheless, adds Devine, “when privatisation of the British Steel Corporation eventually took place, Ravenscraig’s days were numbered”.

At the dawn of 1992 came confirmation that the plant would be closing for good. Four years after that, in July 1996, the landmark gasometers and cooling towers were demolished. “People are generally fascinated by big demolitions, but it was terrible to see this one”, the journalist Deborah Orr, born and raised in Motherwell, lamented a few days later.

A formidable amount of work has since gone into creating a fresh future for the old site: investment in excess of £250m had led to new-build homes, a college, a hotel and a pub and restaurant, with more to follow.

Jim Fraser belongs to a group of former Ravenscraig workers who meet each year, sharing memories of times good and bad. Yesterday, they gathered for a 30th anniversary reunion at Motherwell Heritage Centre, followed by drinks at the Wee Alpha Bar 100 Club nearby.

“I made some great friends at the ‘Craig. I still see some of them. It was a great place to work”, said Jim, who was just 38 when the axe fell in 1992.

“But ‘death by a thousand cuts’ is right. There were only 1000 people left in 1992, but when I started my apprenticeship there were something like 13,500 there – and that wasn’t counting contractors. It was twice the size of Monaco, apparently.

“Motherwell is still like a ghost town, compared to what it used to be like. I’m a Wishaw man, originally. From six in the morning ‘til midnight Wishaw was absolutely buzzing, because people were starting their day-shifts at the ‘Craig at six and people were going to their back-shift or night-shift.”

Jim said he had been looking at some of his memorabilia from his time at the ‘Craig. “I haven’t even read some of it yet. I knew I had my time-served papers and the big medal in a box that was given to all the last men standing.

“But other things I found were unbelievable. I found a letter from Ian MacGregor in 1980. He was the man Thatcher brought in to shut the place, basically. It’s a three-page letter and I’ll maybe have a look at it. I also found my wee ID badge with my picture on it. I didn’t even know I had them”.

Jim has only walked round the old site twice in 30 years. “It’s quite depressing, really”, he says, speaking for thousands of other workers, “when you see it now”.