WHEN locals in Port Talbot witnessed the closure of their steelworks last Monday, they saw their history quite literally disappearing in a puff of smoke. Tata Steel, the Indian owners of the UK's last plant, had warned onlookers to expect "red plumes of steam" and whooshing sounds from the two blast furnaces ahead of their switch-off. And shortly after 5pm the final puffs soared skywards, taking with them more than a century of steelmaking on the site and the loss of almost 3,000 jobs.
What comes next will be nothing short of monumental for this historic Welsh industrial town near Swansea.
Beyond its immediate employees, the steelworks have formed a focal point of the economy and community for decades. At its peak in the 1960s, the Abbey Works, as it was then known, employed 18,000 workers.
"People are devastated. It's the end of an era, a history and a way of life," says Alasdair McDiarmid, the assistant general secretary of the Community trade union, which is representing many of the workers.
"Every single person in Port Talbot either works there or has a friend or relation employed there.
"Even if not, their jobs are still dependent on the few thousand well-paid jobs at the heart of the community, and the money which is made to keep the pubs, restaurants and hairdressers going."
But this was not the only titan of British industry closing its doors on the same day.
Nearly 200 miles away in the Nottinghamshire village of Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the nation's last coal-fired power station officially stopped generating marking the end of coal-fired electricity in Britain after 142 years.
The historic moment means Britain has become the first G7 country to shut all of its coal power stations - ahead of France, Germany and America.
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