Why was British Steel sold off in first place?

IT stands to reason that all essential production should be considered as part of public services, socially organised. Private businesses do not operate according to social need, but only for short-term private profit.

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The fact that British Steel plc was privatised by Margaret Thatcher in 1988 and fleeced for shareholder profits ever since is a case in point.

Steel is an essential social resource.

If the Steel industry was publicly owned and controlled, the steel would be produced at cost, environmental concerns regulated and climate damage addressed, jobs valued, and the products from building construction to railway lines - locally supplied.

British Steel has been robbed and degraded by private investors for decades. The current crisis of the Scunthorpe steel plant is only the latest example. The Dutch Corus Group bought BS in 1999, sold to Indian-registered company Tata Steel in 2010 who sold it in 2016 to the predatory Greybull Capital LLP for £1 in 2016, which sucked-out its cash equity before going into insolvency in 2019.

The Chinese capitalist conglomerate Jingye bought British Steel from Greybull in 2020. Successive UK Governments spent £3.2billion to support the UK's steel industry, with a further £1billion to come.