The Tragic Fall of Sheffield: How Britain Destroyed the Steel Capital of the World

In 1900, Sheffield produced more steel than France, Germany, Belgium and Sweden combined. Stainless steel was invented here in 1913. The cutlery in the kitchens of every British household carried the city's name. Then it fell. This is the true story of how Sheffield, the steel capital of the world, lost 80% of its industrial workforce in a single generation — from 45,000 steel jobs in 1971 to under 5,000 by 1991. We cover the accidental discovery of stainless steel by Harry Brearley, the Sheffield Blitz of 1940 that specifically targeted the city's forges, the nationalisation of British Steel, the Thatcher government's confrontation with the steel and mining industries, the 1984 Battle of Orgreave, and the cultural autopsy of the city captured in the 1997 film The Full Monty. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Fallen Britain is a long-form documentary channel telling the true stories of Britain's greatest cities — and what happened when the industries that built them disappeared. Every week, a new city. Every city, a tragedy. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Subscribe → @FallenBritain Watch next →    • How Liverpool Lost Half Its People: The Tr...   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #FallenBritain #sheffield #BritishHistory #ukdocumentary #documentary