First Four Years (1951) | BFI National Archive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ธ.ค. 2017
- This majestic documentary tells the story of ambitious modernisation in the Welsh steel and tinplate industry. This involved upgrading the Margam works near Port Talbot and building both the Abbey hot strip mill next door and a new cold rolling mill and tinplate works at Trostre near Llanelli. Film cameras were frequently on hand: thanks to them, an integrated mega-complex takes shape before our eyes.
The film was produced by cooperative production company DATA, whose dynamic leader Donald Alexander secured rolling contracts with both the National Coal Board (for the Mining Review series for which DATA is best known) and the Steel Company of Wales for ongoing coverage of the developments summarised here. No doubt DATA's filmmakers, based in London, frequently combined steel with coal filmmaking trips to Wales. Clocking in at over 40 minutes, this compilation of DATA's footage is an exhaustive progress report on four years' worth of large-scale and complex work. Taken a sequence at a time, it's engrossing industrial history. Taken as a whole it's a cinematic monument, colossal in scale but intricate in detail, to the magnitude of a major project - and the sheer ambitious optimism of the postwar re-investment in British industry that lay behind it.
This video is part of the Orphan Works collection. When the rights-holder for a film cannot be found, that film is classified as an Orphan Work. Find out more about Orphan Works: ec.europa.eu/internal_market/c.... This is in line with the EU Orphan Works Directive of 2012. The results of our search for the rights holder of this film can be found in the EU Orphan Works Database: euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en...
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I visited Cardiff Bay for work this week. I had a walk in the morning before my meeting. I looked out at the old harbour and imagined the ships there 100 years ago. I read an information board saying it was the biggest industrial harbour in the world, now sadly all gone. Then I think back to our great industrial heritage. If you could imagine 100s of Amazon warehouses stacked full of industry of all kinds, the ingenuity, the skills, knowledge and wealth. Now there is one of those warehouses with a small pile of pennies in the corner, that's what left. How the politicians and the establishment have destroyed this country, it makes me very sad and angry. The next general election will only replace the current bunch of idiots with the new ones. Beam me up, Scoty.
Sorry boyo NKD. The Klingons have drained our crystals.
Regrettably the only thing that'll change post election is the colour of the flag atop the pole, such is the state of British politics today.
My father was born at Tiger Bay, in 42, so you walked in his footprints, as a merchant sailor he seen the world and brought his family to Australia in 68
The voters voted for the politicians.
There is no separate species of people called politicians.
People get what they vote for.
Vote for mainstream CON/Lab/Lib politicians, and you'll have the land we have today.
Vote for any party that should put the nation first, and you'll have a different land. Even if the land isn't t a successful one, it shouldn't be a voluntarily destroyed one.
People shall blame anyone but themselves.
Has anyone watching this ever dug out wet clay with a shovel I have and by god it’s hard work men where men back then and had to do hard graft like this
They built our country ❤
I did when waiting to start my apprenticeship in 1970 aged 16
Me to in a oil refinery for Mcalpines in the 70s, a grafter made it just bearable, hard work though
I have yes. On a similar thing. We had 40 tons of gravel delivered at my uncle's - hes a farmer - about 65 years old at the time. I said i would give him a hand moving it - I thought it would take 2 or 3 days. I was about 2 or 3 hours late. HE HAD SHIFTED THE LOT...!!!
Him 1 wheelbarrow, a shovel and 3 hours of hard graft he moves 40 toms of gravel from the road to the back of the farm buildings.
Very correct
I hated school and in my Biological fathers Leyland Octopus As a little lad smuggled under blankets in to Trostre Velindre etc...(Kids wait in the security hut) not Me.!!!!!I peeked out watching the crane loading the steel/tinplate...Wonderful childhood and still cab happy UK Europe at 81....Lovely memories....
In my opinion, the guys who built this infrastructure are heroes of the first order. Although some of the film may be 'staged' for the cameras, there's little doubt that these workers took their lives in their hands to get the job done. We owe them a debt of gratitude.
Well said!, your words echo my opinion also!.
@@richardrowlands9113 They want us to believe Britain was built by blacks and brown people, showing documentary films like this will be forbidden soon because they don't show how diverse enough we were, they should be shown and studied in every school in the country to show what made this country great and what has been lost.
No it was not staged it was all done by the Ministry of Works of the Atlee Government on site with the men and Management.
When Britain was GREAT and British .
Dad was a storeman in Ebbw Vale, he issued anything fron a clock spring to a half tonne bronze bearing. The store was 1/2 mile long, so they had a bike with basket. The site was 3.5 miles long. I was there when they opened a new Electolytic Tinning Line 1971/2, I was in IT dept. There were 9,800 on the payroll. Hardly a trace left today, just the original brick built main office.
the days we got on with the job, lets just get the job done, not like the last 40yrs,construction, donkey jackets and wellies freezing in the winter wet in the rain, a remember those days, to think a wind proof quilted viz jacket to day, they wouldn't last a week, men of steel those days, tough as boot leather,
What's the point of that? I bet it put many of them in an early grave, poor buggers.
You got that wrong mate. They were a tough as OLD boot leather! Two working generations later, all bloody gone! What a waste
Worked on 1/2/3 furnaces in the early 70s. All gone now.
Used to watch them tap the furnace on a quiet night shift. Amazing stuff.
Those fellows, hard at work, on hard jobs. I jolly well admire them to the extreme. I worked forty years in canning, using the tinplate from these mills. Peace and goodwill.
Horses, Canals, Steelworks, Railways, Coalmines... All gone, but not forgotten.
I could watch shows like this all day. 👍
It is now 2024 some 73 years since this film was made and now all those steel works have since gone and no longer exist.
it always amazes me the scale of capital required for something like this would be considered worth investing, of course in these years with a destroyed europe there would have been a great demand for product.
Should have a lot more views.
The working conditions are frightening. But they got the job done.
Wonderful stuff. My grandfather worked in the tinplate works in Gowerton. Fantastic to get an idea of how they worked.
Only when things started to get easier here did people from other countries start setting their eyes on coming to the UK to stay 🇬🇧
See the guys rolling the white-hot steel ingots (@ 37:32) wearing their 'Sunday best' three piece suits and trilby hats! Obviously, dressing scruffily is bad form whilst making steel.
Dressing scruffily is bad when the wife learns you’re going to be filmed!
That was the norm, and clean-shaven collar and tie wasn't just for office workers!
Roller man. Best job in the woks. Used to watch that too.
Amazing from marsh land to producing steel, in 4 years. I'm amazed that the men working around the molten metal are so calm.
a tip: watch movies on KaldroStream. I've been using them for watching all kinds of movies lately.
@George Rhys definitely, I've been watching on kaldrostream for years myself =)
@George Rhys definitely, I have been watching on KaldroStream for since december myself :D
Being British, they knew that the most important thing when working in an industrial setting like this with tons of powerful machinery is to wear a necktie. That way. You maximize the chance for your tie Getting caught in the machinery which would crush you within seconds. At least you had a sharp tie on. They had a brilliant sense of style.
So labour intensive great video 💪💪
Absolutely brilliant footage!
The guys controlling the rolling mill were top men, hence the Truby Hat and not flat caps as a symbol of their skill and standing, with all those knobs, gauges and levers, must have felt like they were controlling the starship Enterprise 😊
More the responsibility, rolling mills when they go wrong is terrifying
If they had these MEN on the HS2 it would be finished
Wonderful to see these old films.
Magnificent what self-belief can do.
Amazing !
Back when the UK made things.
Made in Great Britain, what do we make now!
Foreigners
Made in Great Britain 🇬🇧 and what do we make now ?? Answer Shit Politicians and a Government that doesn't give a stuff about anyone else but there greedy selves and there corrupt friends and family.
😭😭😭
Question marks!
Welfare for blacks
Not a lot 😂
Built by giants destroyed by politicians
...voted for, and still being voted for, by the " Giants ".
Interesting thing the diesel locomotive pushing the flatbed of ingots is an american built switcher made by Alco.
AFAIK, the works used 5 Alco’s (#801-805) along side Brush / Rolls Royce locos, which replaced the older steam locos
Wonderful workers and great plans, but many sad comments... not much else to say. Huge ambitions, all derelict or just memories and museums!
the pulpit controllers' jobs 35:00 must have been transformed with the advent of CCTV
Modern day young Welshman: sorry pal, i dont work, see. I'm going to top up my tan, see, at the salon. Then i need to buy some more beard oil. Then i'm going to the parlour for some more tattoo, see.
Worked in Etna Iron steel Works as hand Roller in the Strip mill , most antiquated, mill is Scotland 1965 All gone
"Sand(in this case) is available in unlimited quantities". How often have we heard something similar to that said. And 50 years later or less, it's all gone.
I was expecting more diversity, given recent claims in the media of who actually built Britain. Hard working men, who probably wouldn’t recognise any aspect of regressive modern life.
According to the BBC it was the "Windrush Generation" that built everything postwar.🙄
How the Hello you go about designing a factory like this awesome
😮😢😊 etter slike natur inngrep håper jeg fabrikken fortsatt er i bruk og att folk ser verdien i stål
No, all is gone :-(
If the furnace is hot enough to melt iron, what does the furnace itself not melt?
The Furnace is lined with kiln bricks (a skilled job) then the Tuyeres that feed the blast air into the furnace are cooled by water jackets so they don't melt.
What's the piece of music from 28:40 to 31:00. I recall Emerson Lake & Palmer performed it. I can't find it on any of the listings in the desrciption.
Aaron Copland “Hoedown”
th-cam.com/video/dYdDYSTEuWo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=6h8dWbp7SxJmyL9l
Could it be "Pictures at an exhibition " by Mussorgsky? ELP had an album and a film with this title.
No, not pictures at ..... It's actually Aaron Copland 'Rodeo' YT it.. enjoy.
And not a single mobile phone 📲 in sight 🥹🥲
So how long did the steel plant last is still there
Yes.its still there. I work there
Still there and still going strong - built for The Steel Company of Wales (SCOW), from 1948 along side the older Margam works. SCOW later became British Steel Corpoation, then British Steel, then Corus, and now currently owned by Tata
@@chezpostmanpata saying attributed to an Gent " when the Indians can make their own railway track,I'll eat a pound of it . ( Tata )
The environmental issues here are utterly eye watering!
How did they make your pink knickers? 😂
Fascinating - back when we had the optimism to build things. It's all a wasteland now.
6:10 ex military carrier?
What a nasty scar on the landscape. Port Talbot itself on a windy, wet winters day - if feeling suicidal, visiting that place will 'clinch' it ! i used to have to deliver to the place - what a depressing hole, i could never understand why anyone would want to live there.
You may be right, but we all owe the people who work (and live) there, a huge debt of gratitude
@@davidvivian596And the guys in the pits. Eternal respect to the people of South Wales whose communities were destroyed by Thatcher and her ilk.
Chap in the thumbnail: Mark Selby?
Old times.
When Britain had ` HEAVY INDUSTRY ` &
` McAlpines Fusileers `
All this going on and before diversity. Perhaps it may have been built faster, if we had. How did GB manage without it.🤣🤣
Interesting map with the name Hibernian almost totally erased from the country
No sign of PPE or health and safety regs in operation!
This is Pakistan now?
Not ‘ have visited’ but ‘ visited’ - poor grammar lurks everywhere.
We now in the age of the biggest landfill that's progress regaurd to Amazon u can Inheret all my chipboard and plastic
Health and safety wasn’t much back then,now you can’t go to the toilet on a construction site without permission..
Try and find men like this now!
Nowadays the heaviest industry is some spotty oik prancing in front of a camera for views. Christ how the world has changed in just 50 yeas.
Funny 🤣
Can you get radiation sickness working in a furness ,thy must have sufferd lots of burns
Where today at the top of our government system is the ability to visualise instigate and fund and deliver such projects, sadly gone I fear. DEI, transgender forces and too much immigration is all on the priorities of our "betters". To build new and something useful [not like HS2] that we could all admire, would not that be what they should be spending our money on?
Hideous. Knock it all down. Restore the lake. Rebuild the Abbey. All workers to become monks.
They were girls! Not woman😂
noticed.
Don’t you mean women
@@charlesreid3482 their a little young