Wow, Evans the Prof is head of the department of “Political Violence & Aesthetics.” I didn’t know it was a Thing.
But, Herr Professor, ich habe ein paar Fragen.
Are labor unions a good idea?
Is the welfare state a good idea?
Is nationalization of coal-mining a good idea?
Is nationalization of anything a good idea?
Is a university department of Political Violence & Aesthetics a good idea?
And whatabout the workers?
Good point.
He’s certainly got an “angle”:
“Today, our own most baleful metonym is probably “Grenfell”, immediately evoking corruption, betrayal and the dereliction of state duty”.
That’s a bit of a stretch in rewriting history isn’t it ?
I thought that the cladding issue was primarily a failure of building regulations. That’s fairly low-level government and the sort of thing that can sadly happen. The bigger the state, the greater the probability (since no one ever seems to get fired from a state job for incompetence).
But no, we’re wrong. The answer to state failure is always “more state” …
Yes, unions are a good idea. They’re often the only protection some workers have against poor pay and working conditions, although they need reining in occasionally when they overstep the mark.
Yes the welfare state is a good idea. Helping the sick and needy is what any decent society should be doing, even if some people do exploit it.
Norways publicly oil and gas industries have given the country a $1 trillion dollar rainy day fund, and the privatisation of Britains utilities has led to underinvestment and sewage being regularly dumped into the sea. Nationalisation works for areas where natural monopolies occur such as utilities and public transport, but it’s obviously not a good idea through the wider economy.
The workers have done incredibly badly through 40 years of neoliberalism, with the ratio of wages paid to company profits reducing massively and home ownership rates falling to new lows.
The University Department sounds rather too niche to be a proper course
MD
Muiris de Bhulbh
3 months ago
I worked as a junior doctor in’Prince Charles Hospital’ in Merthyr Tydfil in 1988. My psychiatric colleagues were still dealing with fallout from the Aberfan disaster.
JA
Jonathan Andrews
3 months ago
I grew up south of the valleys, near Bridgend. And much of this picture is familiar, especially Bridgend which is a grim shadow of its former self.
There are lots of stories that describe this fall, the legacy of Thatcherism, the inability of Welsh politicians to find solutions rather than grievances.
I have lived away for so long (40 years) that I can’t suggest anything but Professor Evans paints a reliable picture.
At some point it will improve, perhaps even within the next five or ten years but the renewal of the fortunes of South Wales will be nothing to do with the Left who have had power for decades and achieved nothing.
CW
Caradog Wiliams
3 months ago
Anyone who reads the history of South Wales will know that the 19th century was a boom time. Britain led the world and South Wales donated a lot of the power, in the form of coal, to facilitate the extension of British power.
The history of the Labour Party comes from the history of the unfair treatment of the miners and that cannot be denied. But it should be remembered that before the coal there were few people living in the Valleys. The coal boom brought an influx of thousands and they stayed. Even as recently as the 1960s miners were still coming in from struggling mines in the NE of England. The miners moved to the work.
So, after the boom came the bust – whoever you blame. But the ex-miners did not move to work elsewhere because they had formed communities and these communities had become home. They (we) expected the government to step in and do something but here is the problem. South Wales is a Labour area and Labour does not like business. Deals with business leaders are taboo. So, Labour stands for the ex-miners who vote in the same way every time but they don’t actually do anything to attract alternatives to the area. To make things worse there are no other feasible votes because all of the other parties don’t really stand for anything at all. In the next election Labour will win again but then they won’t actually do anything – except blame England, of course.
But the ex-miners did not move to work elsewhere because they had formed communities and these communities had become home.
When you take all the emotion out of it, this is Wales’s underlying problem: Too much of its population live in areas where there is no longer sufficient demand for their labour.
Now of course I accept what you say about communities having formed and I in no way want to denigrate the understandable attachment people have to place. But that doesn’t stop it being a longstanding problem which has essentially been managed by the state and third sector by throwing money at support services.
Organic demographic change is taking a long time. Older people die, young people who can move away and don’t come back. Cardiff, Swansea and Newport are sucking in population while at the same time spreading north and slowly turning the lower valleys into commuter towns. There is some time to go yet before the valleys leave their post-industrial period and a very real risk that many towns and communities will be effectively left to rot as islands of deprivation hidden away in what is, now the landscape is recovering from mining, some of the most beautiful natural areas in the UK.
Yes, you are correct. But here is my problem. You live in a beautiful area but you don’t want anyone else to see it – you don’t build facilities to encourage tourism. So poverty follows.
My neighbour and I were talking about this one day and he (jokingly) said that Mid-Wales was just an empty space. He suggested building the biggest casino in the world right in the middle of Wales, surrounding it by hotels, an airport and with multi-lane highways leading to it. People would move there like they moved to the coalmines. Hidden in this is a point – if you don’t at least try to do something you get poverty.
The same narrative applies to much of Northern England and Scotland.
How many Northern cities have suffered almost terminal stagnation and decline while still continuing to return Labour MPs.
You could almost suspect it was deliberate, just in case the populations prospered and stopped voting Labour.
I used to live in an engineering town in northern England – Labour through and through. The engineering stopped and the town now looks as if it has been carpet bombed. Still Labour through and through.
Six miles away was a smaller town which had no engineering but plenty of small businesses – one man bands if you like. Tory through and through. Today that town looks great, local businesses have been encouraged – still Tory through and through.
Labour breeds dependence on handouts and positively discourages business. QED.
I am from Stoke-on-Tent but moved away many years ago.
About 3 months ago I took my sons for a walk round my home town of Longton. They were really shocked, almost angry, at the level of degradation
That’s an overly simplistic analysis that I think. Towns with heavy industry also had stronger union movements, which meant most of the population tended to vote Labour as they tended to be more sympathetic to their interests. Likewise towns with no heavy industry had no unions to speak of, and tended to lean more towards the Tories as a result.
The changing economic landscape obviously hit the towns reliant on factories and mining much harder than it did those that never had it in the first place, but this has happened regardless of whichever the parties enjoyed more support in the area. If all those old northern industrial towns turned Tory and the others flipped to Labour, both would still be facing the same economic challenges they did before, switching parties they’ve historically backed would make no difference to their day to day lives.
Erm, I’m not a fan of the modern Labour Party, but we have had Conservative government for two thirds of the time since WW2!. England (and prior to devolution, Great Britain as a whole) is a very centralised country, with few real powers and independent tax base at lower levels of government.
Is it actually true that the Labour Assembly and local authorities “does not like business”? The real problem with ex-industrial areas based on the geography of minerals that there is no particular reason for modern businesses to go there, and rather a lot of negative factors. For example, how many office workers would actually welcome bring displace from Bristol or Cardiff to the Rhondda?
2
2 plus 2 equals 4
3 months ago
This year I will have lived in Wales for exactly half my life. In that time I’ve worked for or with almost every major public sector institution from Ynys Mon Council in the farthest north-west to Gwent Police in the south-east. I’ve spent professional time in pretty much every major deprived community in the country.
The one thing that has always struck me is how badly the political and activist classes, especially at national level, understand the people they claim to speak for. Or perhaps they do understand them but are so invested in a particular vision of them (and themselves) that they can’t acknowledge what they see.
This is why the Brexit vote in Wales came as such a body-blow to the political and activist classes. It forced them confront their own cognitive dissonance.
Looking from outside Wales, I have the distinct impression that the political and activist classes have *not* confronted their cognitive dissonance. They continue to gloss over the fact that Wales – albeit narrowly – voted to leave the EU in 2016. I suggest they are still in denial. Which is another reason little will change.
Just wondering out loud – I have too little knowledge here – could it be that Wales is just less entrepreneurial than some parts of England ? Expecting the state to step in and sort it isn’t always the answer – or always the best answer.
could it be that Wales is just less entrepreneurial than some parts of England ?
Its true that Wales is more reliant on public sector employment and, because it has an older, poorer and sicker population, state intervention.
But I guess it depends which bits you are comparing. Cardiff is pretty similar to other comparable cities I’ve lived or worked in. Deprived areas of the Valleys are essentially the same as any other post-industrial areas, e.g. parts of the North-East.
One thing which I think unquestionably hurts Wales is accessibility. The A470 is the main north-south route but is barely a legitimate B road for much of its length. The 3 biggest urban areas (plus the Valleys) are all located along the M4 corridor behind the permanent traffic jam which is the Brynglas Tunnel at Newport. In fact, I read once that if the M4 in Wales were to be built today it would not be classified as a motorway at all because there are various points which don’t meet the criteria.
“Expecting the state to step in” for your benefit is NEVER the best answer, because it assumes that taxpayers from another part of the state will have to pay for your state-delivered benefits and social programs.
No, it is not. The workforce in much of the Valleys comprises of SMEs and a lot of one-man bands. Get on the A470 at half 6 in the morning and you’ll see them heading to work.
Thanks. Glad to hear that. I’d be thrilled to hear about more small/medium tech type businesses setting up there. Actually, I had dealt with one SME in the area who do safety clothing – PK Safety – and they are really excellent. And their customer service people are all local – such a welcome change from most of England.
I spent 7 years in the ’90s living in Bridgend, post-industrial Bridgend, but when I return even I can see the picture Jonathan Andrews’ painted so well.
It’s sad, but the decline of the valleys was to a degree inevitable once King Coal left Wales. It didn’t have to be so very absolute though and I do agree with Caradog Williams. Labour dislikes business (not that the Tories seem to like it very much at the moment) and has no plan and frankly no interest in South Wales. The Welsh were vote-fodder and George Thomas sums up the disregard Labour felt and feels for the Welsh. If Plaid Cymru cares about Wales and doesn’t see it simply as a test tube for woke social experiments, then all power to it.
Agreed. I am a member of Plaid but they don’t actually do anything at all. Like a Rodney to the Dell-boy of Labour. Better a crafty sidekick like Ryan Davies than a Rodney.
It is mathematical impossible to take control of the Senedd without winning in the Valleys (no doubt Labour knew that when they designed the devolved settlement). Plaid was doing good work in the generational task of winning voters over when it decided to commit electoral suicide by deposing the leader and installing in her place man who did nothing but talk a good fight.
Look up Gwlad – a very different sort of nationalist party which is much more pro-business and focused on economic growth. Still in its early stages, but an antidote to the managed decline that is all Labour and Plaid Cymru have to offer.
Yes the death of King Coal could only bring bad times to the Valleys. What was not inevitable was the rank wholesale betrayal of these working men and women by the Labour Party. First via accession to the EU Empire and the destruction of the national Labour market Now the alien eco and identitarian zealotry. They are not just ignored. As white Somewhere industrial men, they are held in contempt by the multicultural metro urban progressive bigots who now run both the souless Labour Party and have a permanent death grip on our broken State. We are all going down the valleys now.
Wonderful phrase...held in contempt by the multicultural metro urban progressive bigots who now run both the souless Labour Party and have a permanent death grip on our broken State. We are all going down the valleys now.
DM
Doug Mccaully
3 months ago
If you mention the ‘Thatcher transformation of Britain’ or even, God help us ‘,the post industrial neoliberal revolution’ in the valleys, there’s a good chance people will laugh in your face. The valleys still haven’t recovered from the last neoliberal revolution, the closing of the pits. We’re about to lose the last of our UK steel industry, based in south Wales, meaning that we will no longer be able to make steel from iron ore. People know who caused the dereliction and its not the Labour party.
These things would have happened regardless of the party in charge. In fact, they did.
I’m sure you’re aware that the Wilson government closed more coal mines than Thatcher’s. Eventually you run out of money to subsidise uncompetitive industries.
Labour are even more anti-coal than the Conservatives. That means closing coal-powered blast furnaces.
Note also that up to 2017, there was a clear correlation between ex-mining areas in England and Labour MPs. That only changed in 2019 when many of the “Red Wall” seats [temporarily] flipped Conservative (which some of them were many decades earlier pre-WWII). It’s just a question of time and a younger generation growing up.
None of this is to deny that the South Wales valleys really do need help.
I appreciate your concern for the valleys but a few things I disagree with. The closing of the pits would have happened anyway but did it have to be so quick and brutal, especially given the almost total dependence of some of the valleys on coal. Did we really have to ship coal in from Australia while throwing our own miners out of work? Even if we see the problem as a purely economic one, what is the financial cost of the pauperisation of large parts of the UK? Its interesting to speculate why the switch from Labour to Conservatives in the ex mining areas of England, but I think that was more to do with brexit than anything else, and I predict they will revert to Labour this year. As regards blast furnaces, we need to invest in modern non coal technology just as most of western Europe has.
Or to put it another way, planning a horrific ending doesn’t necessarily produce an ending, the horror can go on, so why inflict it on communities in the first place?
We’re not really disagreeing.
Yes, the change wasn’t well managed. And there’s very little left to keep young people in those areas now.
Yes, those Red Wall seats won’t stay Conservative this time.
“The valleys still haven’t recovered from the last neoliberal revolution, the closing of the pits.”
Harold Wilson closed more pits than Thatcher. A fact so frequently forgotten in the rush to blame everything on Thatcher.
Coal had been subsidised for most of the 20th century. Which made some strategic sense back in the day but by the 1960s was increasingly a case of throwing good money after bad.
That’s why both Labour and Conservative governments tried to break the power of the NUM. It was necessary because the union wouldn’t compromise on a single tonne of coal.
All pits have a lifespan and all pits inevitably closed. What Thatcher did was kill off UK deep mined coal, and import coal from the other side of the world. The tragedy for the NUM is that it was led by the incendiary Scargill, who walked into the trap set up for him in broad daylight. The oil industry is subsidised now, should we stop using oil and go green?
Thatcher closed all the mines [bar a couple of small ones, I think], they didn’t all run out of coal at the same time. Then she imported coal that would have provided employment at home for Australian coal. In the context of the times, keeping some of the pits open would have been a sensible energy subsidy.
JW
James Wyburd
3 months ago
The inevitable truth of life is missing from this article, which is that individually and collectively we have to sort ourselves out. We can’t rely on a sense of grievance and expect others to do it for us. A righteous farmer cannot stand on the edge of a field and order his crops to grow.
The essence of Thatcherism was to recognise unavoidable realities and to give people the tools to overcome adversity and make a success of their lives. Instead Wales chose self pity, resentment and inward looking delusion. Even now, all these years later, driving from Chester into North Wales feels like going back into the 1950s.
This is a nonsense stereotype. Wales is full of tiny businesses that work long hours and don’t give a stuff about the Senedd and politics. Get yourself here early in the morning and you’ll get a sense of what long hours many people work.
What tools did Thatcher give to those towns decimated by the closure of the pits and demise of manufacturing to help the transition away from those industries? If there had been jobs to replace them the closures wouldn’t have been an issue but there wasn’t, and in a lot of cases still isn’t
Absolutely spot on. What people in the Valleys are doing, every day, is what Norman Tebbit told them to do. They get in their vans and head down the A470, to jobs in Cardiff, Bristol and further afield. I have mates who work away all week.
Worth adding that the Welsh Government has done little to improve life in the Valleys, with the money mostly spent on supplementing public sector salaries. That will happen when you don’t focus on outcomes.
AR
Andrew R
3 months ago
In Bridgend County, the independents are slowly gaining ground and holding Welsh Labour to account.
DU
Dougie Undersub
3 months ago
It seems to me that, notwithstanding the likely outcome of our next election, Labour has a fixed mindset that it is a party of opposition. Hence it suits the party to keep its natural supporters in a state of semi-poverty, blaming the (customarily) incumbent “wicked Tories” and, hence, voting Labour.
SG
Shrunken Genepool
3 months ago
The last thing the working class people of Wales, or northern England or Scotland for that matter, need is the bl**dy Labour Party. We need Christianity and a libertarianism for households and families rather than individuals. Deregulated garden-gate family and cooperative capitalism; greater fiscal/regulatory costs for big corporations. Less state, less global markets, more family enterprise. And that goes for schools also
PL
Peter Lee
3 months ago
The more one observes, the more one realises that becoming part of an ‘aggrieved group’ is a road to unhappiness and disaster for the group. Reparations are not the answer; It may be easy to say but the only way out is to leave.
JO
Jon Owens
3 months ago
Strange article entirely at odds with reality. Labour controls councils in Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerffili, RCT and Torfaen (and also Cardiff, Swansea and Newport). It holds every valley constituency at Westminster and in the Senedd. If this is what losing looks like I’d hate to see them win!
IJ
ian Jeffcott
3 months ago
The valley dwellers will unthinkingly still vote for Starmer and for Drakeford’s successor. Sometimes you do get the politicians you deserve
AH
Alan Hawkes
3 months ago
When the coal was gone, or no longer wanted, what was the purpose in staying in the area?
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Wow, Evans the Prof is head of the department of “Political Violence & Aesthetics.” I didn’t know it was a Thing.
But, Herr Professor, ich habe ein paar Fragen.
Are labor unions a good idea?
Is the welfare state a good idea?
Is nationalization of coal-mining a good idea?
Is nationalization of anything a good idea?
Is a university department of Political Violence & Aesthetics a good idea?
And whatabout the workers?
Good point.
He’s certainly got an “angle”:
“Today, our own most baleful metonym is probably “Grenfell”, immediately evoking corruption, betrayal and the dereliction of state duty”.
That’s a bit of a stretch in rewriting history isn’t it ?
I thought that the cladding issue was primarily a failure of building regulations. That’s fairly low-level government and the sort of thing that can sadly happen. The bigger the state, the greater the probability (since no one ever seems to get fired from a state job for incompetence).
But no, we’re wrong. The answer to state failure is always “more state” …
“Evans the Prof is head of the department of “Political Violence & Aesthetics.” I didn’t know it was a Thing”.
That just shows you how debased our academia has become! Hundreds of ridiculous courses staffed by utterly parasitic academics.
There must be a cull of so called ‘humanities’ nonsense asap, we simply can no longer afford such arrant nonsense.
Yes, unions are a good idea. They’re often the only protection some workers have against poor pay and working conditions, although they need reining in occasionally when they overstep the mark.
Yes the welfare state is a good idea. Helping the sick and needy is what any decent society should be doing, even if some people do exploit it.
Norways publicly oil and gas industries have given the country a $1 trillion dollar rainy day fund, and the privatisation of Britains utilities has led to underinvestment and sewage being regularly dumped into the sea. Nationalisation works for areas where natural monopolies occur such as utilities and public transport, but it’s obviously not a good idea through the wider economy.
The workers have done incredibly badly through 40 years of neoliberalism, with the ratio of wages paid to company profits reducing massively and home ownership rates falling to new lows.
The University Department sounds rather too niche to be a proper course
I worked as a junior doctor in’Prince Charles Hospital’ in Merthyr Tydfil in 1988. My psychiatric colleagues were still dealing with fallout from the Aberfan disaster.
I grew up south of the valleys, near Bridgend. And much of this picture is familiar, especially Bridgend which is a grim shadow of its former self.
There are lots of stories that describe this fall, the legacy of Thatcherism, the inability of Welsh politicians to find solutions rather than grievances.
I have lived away for so long (40 years) that I can’t suggest anything but Professor Evans paints a reliable picture.
At some point it will improve, perhaps even within the next five or ten years but the renewal of the fortunes of South Wales will be nothing to do with the Left who have had power for decades and achieved nothing.
Anyone who reads the history of South Wales will know that the 19th century was a boom time. Britain led the world and South Wales donated a lot of the power, in the form of coal, to facilitate the extension of British power.
The history of the Labour Party comes from the history of the unfair treatment of the miners and that cannot be denied. But it should be remembered that before the coal there were few people living in the Valleys. The coal boom brought an influx of thousands and they stayed. Even as recently as the 1960s miners were still coming in from struggling mines in the NE of England. The miners moved to the work.
So, after the boom came the bust – whoever you blame. But the ex-miners did not move to work elsewhere because they had formed communities and these communities had become home. They (we) expected the government to step in and do something but here is the problem. South Wales is a Labour area and Labour does not like business. Deals with business leaders are taboo. So, Labour stands for the ex-miners who vote in the same way every time but they don’t actually do anything to attract alternatives to the area. To make things worse there are no other feasible votes because all of the other parties don’t really stand for anything at all. In the next election Labour will win again but then they won’t actually do anything – except blame England, of course.
When you take all the emotion out of it, this is Wales’s underlying problem: Too much of its population live in areas where there is no longer sufficient demand for their labour.
Now of course I accept what you say about communities having formed and I in no way want to denigrate the understandable attachment people have to place. But that doesn’t stop it being a longstanding problem which has essentially been managed by the state and third sector by throwing money at support services.
Organic demographic change is taking a long time. Older people die, young people who can move away and don’t come back. Cardiff, Swansea and Newport are sucking in population while at the same time spreading north and slowly turning the lower valleys into commuter towns. There is some time to go yet before the valleys leave their post-industrial period and a very real risk that many towns and communities will be effectively left to rot as islands of deprivation hidden away in what is, now the landscape is recovering from mining, some of the most beautiful natural areas in the UK.
Yes, you are correct. But here is my problem. You live in a beautiful area but you don’t want anyone else to see it – you don’t build facilities to encourage tourism. So poverty follows.
My neighbour and I were talking about this one day and he (jokingly) said that Mid-Wales was just an empty space. He suggested building the biggest casino in the world right in the middle of Wales, surrounding it by hotels, an airport and with multi-lane highways leading to it. People would move there like they moved to the coalmines. Hidden in this is a point – if you don’t at least try to do something you get poverty.
The same narrative applies to much of Northern England and Scotland.
How many Northern cities have suffered almost terminal stagnation and decline while still continuing to return Labour MPs.
You could almost suspect it was deliberate, just in case the populations prospered and stopped voting Labour.
I used to live in an engineering town in northern England – Labour through and through. The engineering stopped and the town now looks as if it has been carpet bombed. Still Labour through and through.
Six miles away was a smaller town which had no engineering but plenty of small businesses – one man bands if you like. Tory through and through. Today that town looks great, local businesses have been encouraged – still Tory through and through.
Labour breeds dependence on handouts and positively discourages business. QED.
I am from Stoke-on-Tent but moved away many years ago.
About 3 months ago I took my sons for a walk round my home town of Longton. They were really shocked, almost angry, at the level of degradation
That’s an overly simplistic analysis that I think. Towns with heavy industry also had stronger union movements, which meant most of the population tended to vote Labour as they tended to be more sympathetic to their interests. Likewise towns with no heavy industry had no unions to speak of, and tended to lean more towards the Tories as a result.
The changing economic landscape obviously hit the towns reliant on factories and mining much harder than it did those that never had it in the first place, but this has happened regardless of whichever the parties enjoyed more support in the area. If all those old northern industrial towns turned Tory and the others flipped to Labour, both would still be facing the same economic challenges they did before, switching parties they’ve historically backed would make no difference to their day to day lives.
Erm, I’m not a fan of the modern Labour Party, but we have had Conservative government for two thirds of the time since WW2!. England (and prior to devolution, Great Britain as a whole) is a very centralised country, with few real powers and independent tax base at lower levels of government.
Is it actually true that the Labour Assembly and local authorities “does not like business”? The real problem with ex-industrial areas based on the geography of minerals that there is no particular reason for modern businesses to go there, and rather a lot of negative factors. For example, how many office workers would actually welcome bring displace from Bristol or Cardiff to the Rhondda?
This year I will have lived in Wales for exactly half my life. In that time I’ve worked for or with almost every major public sector institution from Ynys Mon Council in the farthest north-west to Gwent Police in the south-east. I’ve spent professional time in pretty much every major deprived community in the country.
The one thing that has always struck me is how badly the political and activist classes, especially at national level, understand the people they claim to speak for. Or perhaps they do understand them but are so invested in a particular vision of them (and themselves) that they can’t acknowledge what they see.
This is why the Brexit vote in Wales came as such a body-blow to the political and activist classes. It forced them confront their own cognitive dissonance.
Looking from outside Wales, I have the distinct impression that the political and activist classes have *not* confronted their cognitive dissonance. They continue to gloss over the fact that Wales – albeit narrowly – voted to leave the EU in 2016. I suggest they are still in denial. Which is another reason little will change.
Just wondering out loud – I have too little knowledge here – could it be that Wales is just less entrepreneurial than some parts of England ? Expecting the state to step in and sort it isn’t always the answer – or always the best answer.
Its true that Wales is more reliant on public sector employment and, because it has an older, poorer and sicker population, state intervention.
But I guess it depends which bits you are comparing. Cardiff is pretty similar to other comparable cities I’ve lived or worked in. Deprived areas of the Valleys are essentially the same as any other post-industrial areas, e.g. parts of the North-East.
One thing which I think unquestionably hurts Wales is accessibility. The A470 is the main north-south route but is barely a legitimate B road for much of its length. The 3 biggest urban areas (plus the Valleys) are all located along the M4 corridor behind the permanent traffic jam which is the Brynglas Tunnel at Newport. In fact, I read once that if the M4 in Wales were to be built today it would not be classified as a motorway at all because there are various points which don’t meet the criteria.
“Expecting the state to step in” for your benefit is NEVER the best answer, because it assumes that taxpayers from another part of the state will have to pay for your state-delivered benefits and social programs.
No, it is not. The workforce in much of the Valleys comprises of SMEs and a lot of one-man bands. Get on the A470 at half 6 in the morning and you’ll see them heading to work.
Great comment
Thanks. Glad to hear that. I’d be thrilled to hear about more small/medium tech type businesses setting up there. Actually, I had dealt with one SME in the area who do safety clothing – PK Safety – and they are really excellent. And their customer service people are all local – such a welcome change from most of England.
It is seldom if ever the answer.
Great comment
I spent 7 years in the ’90s living in Bridgend, post-industrial Bridgend, but when I return even I can see the picture Jonathan Andrews’ painted so well.
It’s sad, but the decline of the valleys was to a degree inevitable once King Coal left Wales. It didn’t have to be so very absolute though and I do agree with Caradog Williams. Labour dislikes business (not that the Tories seem to like it very much at the moment) and has no plan and frankly no interest in South Wales. The Welsh were vote-fodder and George Thomas sums up the disregard Labour felt and feels for the Welsh. If Plaid Cymru cares about Wales and doesn’t see it simply as a test tube for woke social experiments, then all power to it.
Agreed. I am a member of Plaid but they don’t actually do anything at all. Like a Rodney to the Dell-boy of Labour. Better a crafty sidekick like Ryan Davies than a Rodney.
It is mathematical impossible to take control of the Senedd without winning in the Valleys (no doubt Labour knew that when they designed the devolved settlement). Plaid was doing good work in the generational task of winning voters over when it decided to commit electoral suicide by deposing the leader and installing in her place man who did nothing but talk a good fight.
Look up Gwlad – a very different sort of nationalist party which is much more pro-business and focused on economic growth. Still in its early stages, but an antidote to the managed decline that is all Labour and Plaid Cymru have to offer.
Yes the death of King Coal could only bring bad times to the Valleys. What was not inevitable was the rank wholesale betrayal of these working men and women by the Labour Party. First via accession to the EU Empire and the destruction of the national Labour market Now the alien eco and identitarian zealotry. They are not just ignored. As white Somewhere industrial men, they are held in contempt by the multicultural metro urban progressive bigots who now run both the souless Labour Party and have a permanent death grip on our broken State. We are all going down the valleys now.
Wonderful phrase...held in contempt by the multicultural metro urban progressive bigots who now run both the souless Labour Party and have a permanent death grip on our broken State. We are all going down the valleys now.
If you mention the ‘Thatcher transformation of Britain’ or even, God help us ‘,the post industrial neoliberal revolution’ in the valleys, there’s a good chance people will laugh in your face. The valleys still haven’t recovered from the last neoliberal revolution, the closing of the pits. We’re about to lose the last of our UK steel industry, based in south Wales, meaning that we will no longer be able to make steel from iron ore. People know who caused the dereliction and its not the Labour party.
These things would have happened regardless of the party in charge. In fact, they did.
I’m sure you’re aware that the Wilson government closed more coal mines than Thatcher’s. Eventually you run out of money to subsidise uncompetitive industries.
Labour are even more anti-coal than the Conservatives. That means closing coal-powered blast furnaces.
Note also that up to 2017, there was a clear correlation between ex-mining areas in England and Labour MPs. That only changed in 2019 when many of the “Red Wall” seats [temporarily] flipped Conservative (which some of them were many decades earlier pre-WWII). It’s just a question of time and a younger generation growing up.
None of this is to deny that the South Wales valleys really do need help.
I appreciate your concern for the valleys but a few things I disagree with. The closing of the pits would have happened anyway but did it have to be so quick and brutal, especially given the almost total dependence of some of the valleys on coal. Did we really have to ship coal in from Australia while throwing our own miners out of work? Even if we see the problem as a purely economic one, what is the financial cost of the pauperisation of large parts of the UK? Its interesting to speculate why the switch from Labour to Conservatives in the ex mining areas of England, but I think that was more to do with brexit than anything else, and I predict they will revert to Labour this year. As regards blast furnaces, we need to invest in modern non coal technology just as most of western Europe has.
“but did it have to be so quick and brutal, ”
There is a German proverb. Better an end with horror than a horror without out end. Unfortunately, on South Wales there seems to be both.
Or to put it another way, planning a horrific ending doesn’t necessarily produce an ending, the horror can go on, so why inflict it on communities in the first place?
We’re not really disagreeing.
Yes, the change wasn’t well managed. And there’s very little left to keep young people in those areas now.
Yes, those Red Wall seats won’t stay Conservative this time.
Nicely put. A gracious reply
“The valleys still haven’t recovered from the last neoliberal revolution, the closing of the pits.”
Harold Wilson closed more pits than Thatcher. A fact so frequently forgotten in the rush to blame everything on Thatcher.
Coal had been subsidised for most of the 20th century. Which made some strategic sense back in the day but by the 1960s was increasingly a case of throwing good money after bad.
That’s why both Labour and Conservative governments tried to break the power of the NUM. It was necessary because the union wouldn’t compromise on a single tonne of coal.
All pits have a lifespan and all pits inevitably closed. What Thatcher did was kill off UK deep mined coal, and import coal from the other side of the world. The tragedy for the NUM is that it was led by the incendiary Scargill, who walked into the trap set up for him in broad daylight. The oil industry is subsidised now, should we stop using oil and go green?
Ah of course. When Labour did it those were the good mine closures. When Thatcher did it those were the bad mine closures.
Such a shame the NUM weren’t so clear on the difference back in the 1970s. We could have avoided a couple of strikes.
Energy almost always needs subsidising. Like trains and roads. I have no particular problem with it in principle.
But maintaining an expensive industry like coal mining in aspic because its workforce demand it isn’t the same thing.
Thatcher closed all the mines [bar a couple of small ones, I think], they didn’t all run out of coal at the same time. Then she imported coal that would have provided employment at home for Australian coal. In the context of the times, keeping some of the pits open would have been a sensible energy subsidy.
The inevitable truth of life is missing from this article, which is that individually and collectively we have to sort ourselves out. We can’t rely on a sense of grievance and expect others to do it for us. A righteous farmer cannot stand on the edge of a field and order his crops to grow.
The essence of Thatcherism was to recognise unavoidable realities and to give people the tools to overcome adversity and make a success of their lives. Instead Wales chose self pity, resentment and inward looking delusion. Even now, all these years later, driving from Chester into North Wales feels like going back into the 1950s.
This is a nonsense stereotype. Wales is full of tiny businesses that work long hours and don’t give a stuff about the Senedd and politics. Get yourself here early in the morning and you’ll get a sense of what long hours many people work.
What tools did Thatcher give to those towns decimated by the closure of the pits and demise of manufacturing to help the transition away from those industries? If there had been jobs to replace them the closures wouldn’t have been an issue but there wasn’t, and in a lot of cases still isn’t
Absolutely spot on. What people in the Valleys are doing, every day, is what Norman Tebbit told them to do. They get in their vans and head down the A470, to jobs in Cardiff, Bristol and further afield. I have mates who work away all week.
Worth adding that the Welsh Government has done little to improve life in the Valleys, with the money mostly spent on supplementing public sector salaries. That will happen when you don’t focus on outcomes.
In Bridgend County, the independents are slowly gaining ground and holding Welsh Labour to account.
It seems to me that, notwithstanding the likely outcome of our next election, Labour has a fixed mindset that it is a party of opposition. Hence it suits the party to keep its natural supporters in a state of semi-poverty, blaming the (customarily) incumbent “wicked Tories” and, hence, voting Labour.
The last thing the working class people of Wales, or northern England or Scotland for that matter, need is the bl**dy Labour Party. We need Christianity and a libertarianism for households and families rather than individuals. Deregulated garden-gate family and cooperative capitalism; greater fiscal/regulatory costs for big corporations. Less state, less global markets, more family enterprise. And that goes for schools also
The more one observes, the more one realises that becoming part of an ‘aggrieved group’ is a road to unhappiness and disaster for the group. Reparations are not the answer; It may be easy to say but the only way out is to leave.
Strange article entirely at odds with reality. Labour controls councils in Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerffili, RCT and Torfaen (and also Cardiff, Swansea and Newport). It holds every valley constituency at Westminster and in the Senedd. If this is what losing looks like I’d hate to see them win!
The valley dwellers will unthinkingly still vote for Starmer and for Drakeford’s successor. Sometimes you do get the politicians you deserve
When the coal was gone, or no longer wanted, what was the purpose in staying in the area?