South Wales at risk of "Thatcher-scale' hit from closure of blast furnaces

South Wales is heading for an economic shock on the same scale as Thatcher-era deindustrialisation as Tata prepares to close the blast furnaces at its Port Talbot steelworks, a shadow cabinet minister has warned.

- Kiran Stacey 

Jo Stevens, the shadow Welsh secretary, said the fallout from the company's decision to close the blast furnaces would be felt for decades, as she pushed ministers to do more to help workers facing redundancy.

Tata announced in January that it planned to close both blast furnaces while it built a new, less polluting electric furnace - a decision that will cost up to 2,800 jobs directly.

Labour has urged the company to delay a final decision on redundancies, promising the company a share of its £3bn clean steel scheme if it wins the next general election.

Speaking to the Guardian at the steelworks, Stevens said: "If these jobs are lost, Port Talbot probably loses its identity. There's a very proud history of steelmaking here... and the danger is that there is nothing here to replace it."

Stevens grew up close to Shotton in north Wales, where 6,500 people lost their jobs overnight after British Steel closed the steelmaking plant there in 1980, in the biggest single redundancy on a single day in western Europe.

"I saw what happened in my community," she said. "I was 14 years old at the time, and it took us decades to recover from it.