Poet Linda Robinson protests at Corus gates

Feb 19 2010 by Dave Robson, Evening Gazette

PROTESTING poet Linda Robinson took her dismay to the gate of Corus.

As reported in yesterday’s Gazette, Billingham mum-of-two Linda has twice written poems about the plight of steelworkers on Teesside.

A third-generation steel family member, Linda performed her first, Steel River, in Trafalgar Square last summer as part of an open air arts project.

Her second, an emotional broadside at Prime Minister Gordon Brown, entitled False Promises, was published in the Gazette yesterday.

And even as yesterday’s newspaper hit the streets, Linda was outside Corus’s main Redcar gates, brandishing several home-made protest placards.

Among the messages her placards carried were “Steelworkers have dignity - Corus/Tata and Brown have shame” and, in a message to the visiting Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, “If you have your chequebook come here. If not, go home to your ivory tower Mr Mandelson.”

Another invited passing car drivers to sound their horns “if your Government betrayed you”.

And the vast majority of them did.