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One year ago, Cassius Walker-Hunt was working at Port Talbot’s steel plant.
Now, he’s running his own coffee shop in the town centre, having been made redundant when Tata Steel announced the closure of the plant’s blast furnaces.
The 28-year-old told Sky News the situation the town faced was “completely life-changing”.
“They called it an end of an era, and it was. That type of workforce in Wales now is gone, it wasn’t just a company shutting down, it was generations of knowledge and generations of workers,” he said.
Six months since Port Talbot’s last blast furnace was closed as part of Tata’s green transition, talks are ongoing to save thousands of jobs at British Steel amid plans to close Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces.
Mr Walker-Hunt was the fourth generation of his family to work in Port Talbot’s steel industry, a tradition now at an end.
“It’s something that I will never forget to be honest, being around the boys for the last time and all of us going off doing different things,” he said.
Mr Walker-Hunt said if the UK government did decide to nationalise British Steel, he would be “happy” for the people of Scunthorpe, but that it would come as a “low blow” to Port Talbot.
“Why couldn’t we have it? Why have you left us, our lot, fall apart? Why couldn’t we get that support?”
Port Talbot
‘Groundhog Day’
Tata Steel announced last January that it was cutting 2,800 jobs, with most of those in Port Talbot.
Jack Harper had planned to spend his career working at the steelworks in the town.
He worked as an apprentice there from 2022 until September last year when he was let go.
The 29-year-old said watching the ongoing talks in Scunthorpe was “like Groundhog Day”.
“It’s been the exact same process, if not worse. Because the economic situation and the political…
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