Jane from Mountain Ash blogs here with a story on the proposed opencast plans for Mountain Ash…
We had a knock at the door last night from a nice man called Ian. It was -3*C and he was going door to door with a petition. Ian was collecting residents signatures for his petition to raise awareness of one anonymous landowners intent to dig for coal on a small plot of land behind the graveyard in Caegarw, Mountain Ash.
We had been wondering about the sounds of heavy machinery and the Apex Drilling vans seen on our street over the past few weeks.
It appears that the plot of land was sold by Lord Aberdare in the ’60’s to this man and he has twice been denied permission to excavate the coal from a 100 year old tip.
We understand that the land has a preservation order on it due to its environmental value following the tree planting which has occured on it. It is close to a hospital and two
schools, not to mention hundreds of houses.
We wonder why this is being attempted again, when the council and Welsh Assembly Government have spent over £20 million on cleaning up the Cynon Valley, when there are plans for a new community hospital less than half a mile from the site and when there are concerned residents, the authorities have done nothing.
Has planning permission again been sought? If so, wouldn’t the residents who live within 500 metres of the plot have been told? Where is our voice in all this? We understand that the land is an old tip. We don’t want a return to dust and smoke – we value our environment and hope that the council and WAG do to. Anyone know anything about this???
The residents of Caegarw are a vociferous bunch and we welcome any information that can help us get to the bottom of the drilling, digging and the looming threat of coal dust again…
Taking a short break from Welsh Nonconformist Chapels… we’ve
added Photos of some of the Anglican Churches from Cynon Valley, including :
In his book
Chapels of the Cynon Valley (Gomer, Llandysul, 2004 Alan Vernon Jones presents an accountant-like view of the Chapels of this Valley.
He presents a ‘Chapel Balance Sheet’ thus :
Chapels of the Cynon Valley as at Autumn 2004 (the publication date of his book)
Active Chapels = 63 35%
Vacant Chapels = 11 6%
Converted Chapels = 50 28%
Demolished = 56 31%
Total chapels built = 180
So in summary, a third of Cynon Valley’s Chapels no longer exist after being demolished. The highest rate of demolition took placed during the period 1960-2000 when 45 Cynon Valley Chapels were demolished.
Then around another third have been converted (and those conversions have not always been sympathetic to the architectural integrity of the original chapel design).
The other third are still active as places of worship and continue to contribute to the cultural and spiritual life of the Valley. A photographic record of the majority of the remaining Chapels (and Churches) of the Cynon Valley are available in the Gallery.
In the Photograph : Bethania Chapel, Wind Street, Aberdare. Hiding behind the Black Lion Hotel. This Chapel is no longer active, the building is now derelict. It closed in the 1990s.
Photos are now in the
Gallery of of Bethel (Wesleyan Methodist) Chapel, Mount Road, Cefn Rhigos, near Hirwaun.
Built in 1839 in the northernmost reaches of the Cynon Valley, in the quiet rural village of Rhigos.
There is seating for 120.
The design is plain and simple. Surely that is the hallmark of good design and a recipe for Chapel longevity ?
How many of the Chapels of Cynon Valley, and indeed, Wales, have closed due to the huge costs of maintaining complex building structure ?
At Prime Minister’s Question Time last week, Ann Clwyd the MP for Aberdare and Cynon Valley, invited Gordon Brown to congratulate the miners of Tower Colliery on their successful management of a coalmine … “despite the efforts of the Conservatives to shut them down” (
Source: Hansard via TheyWorkForYou).
Prime Minister Brown replied in kind … “I want to thank them for their efforts, proving that working people can get together and make a success of a project that other parties said would never work”.
The lack of leadership and statesmanship in the Labour Party in its present configuration remind one of Nye Bevan’s words given in speech to the Labour Party conference on October 4, 1957. Bevan warned of the perils of sending a “British Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber”.
And his subsequent question “Do you call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.”
The ‘emotional spasm’ in the UK Parliament last week came from a Prime Minister who has not been elected to lead his own Party. Moreover, Gordon Brown was unwilling to call a General Election after succeeding Tony Blair in 2007, as he did not want to become known as the shortest-serving Prime Minister since George Canning, who lasted a measly 119 days in 1827.
A fortnight prior to this spasmodic exchange in the House of Commons, the Labour Government renewed their committment to Nuclear Energy. This island is made of coal and thus, to borrow from Bevan again, it takes an organising genius to ensure a future energy crisis. Prime Minister’s Question Time last week should have been used to punctuate the history of Cynon Valley with something serious and statesmanlike, but instead, we got the Labour Party emotional spasm that Bevan warned about fifty years ago.
Rev. Bernard Jones became the new Aberdare Rural Dean this week.
Rev. Bernard is currently (Church in Wales) Vicar for the Parish of Hirwaun responsible for two Churches within the Parish : St Lleurwg’s Church (Hirwaun) and the sister church at Penywaun, St Winifred.
The role of Aberdare Rural Dean involves extra responsibilities and duties within other Parishes in the Deanery of Cynon Valley. A key role for the Rural Dean is to support parishes during vacancies. The previous Rural Dean was Rev. Robert Davies of Aberdare Parish.
Congratulations to Rev. Bernard and we wish him well in this new role.
Heed the whispered warnings of ghosts, listen to their advice and co-operate with them. They tell us about the past and foretell our future.
In the photograph there is a misty view across the Cynon Valley, from Cwmbach looking down the hill near St Margaret’s Church, towards Aberaman and Aberdare. The photographer has failed to capture a ghost, so instead offers to sketch some notes.
In Cwmbach the first Co-Operative Society in Wales was formed in 1860. On this little Welsh hill there was a magnificent Co-Operative store that lay at the heart of a vibrant Welsh community ‘growing-up’ in the era of industrialisation.
Borrow a Welsh Mam today
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Madonna makes a rare visit to Aberdare for a concert at Rock Grounds…
Imagine Cynon Valley as an orange being squeezed …
The latest pips to squeak are from Abernant
Residents in Abernant are infuriated by a proposal to build on the local village green.
People from across Cynon Valley can sympathise with their plight because building overdevelopment is a key feature of the Cynon Valley economy today. It is spurred on by a planning system which favours the developer-capitalists and the mammoth planning bureaucracy of the local County Borough Council who have a vested interest in continued overdevelopment.
Individuals and communities who dare to argue “no, enough is enough… where is this development leading?” are simply trodden on like unwelcome cockroaches in their own communities.
Yesteryear we might have argued the case ‘for’ or ‘against’ in the local newspaper, but in 2006, Aberdare has no free press where such a discussion could take place. Freedom of speech in Aberdare is a luxury for a political and commercial elite. It has been completely marginalised and shunted to the sidelines into online forums, websites, blogs and the occasional meeting in a local Chapel organised by annoyed citizens.
The media are, as Noam Chomsky argues, adjuncts of the powerful. The media exist to ensure we consent to what the elite have decided is in their best interest. To question economic overdevelopment, whether it is the overdevelopment of houses, roads, or any form of overdevelopment, would be to question the very basis on which the Cynon Valley economy rests : capitalism.
Corporate media do not reflect any anti-capitalist sentiment today because it is, again to quote Noam Chomsky, beyond the “bounds of the expressible“. The media only permit a spectacle or charade of free and open discussion. Thus we can read about opposition to wind turbines in the Cynon Valley in the local newspaper – wind turbines do not, after all, generate much advertising revenue – but we are unable to read about the mass opposition to overdevelopment or to the duelling of the Heads of the Valley road near Hirwaun, a Welsh Assembly Government project. That is beyond the bounds of the expressible. It might upset the capitalist apple-cart and people might get the wrong idea and start engaging in a real democratic debate.
In Abernant, if we look back thirty years, we might find lessons there. Thirty years ago, services at Aberdare were being downgraded and moved to Prince Charles hospital. Thousands took part in rallies and marches. Such expressions of solidarity are nowadays rare. We can but marvel at these mass movement in history books.
Today bourgeois capitalism reigns triumphant and the very last thing the rich and powerful and their newspapers would admit is that there are pips squeaking in every corner of the Cynon Valley. That might give working people a sense that they had something in common . The last thing the bourgeosie want is a conscious working class… it would be bad for business.
Aberdare remembers those killed in wars at the Remembrance Service.
Chilling winds and freezing temperatures today in the Valleys and nowhere seemed colder than the Lossity.
The Lossity or Lost City of Perthcelyn is nestled high upon the mountainside.
It rests above Penrhiwceiber and near the town of Mountain Ash.
The air is fresh and clean and the sights are wonderful to behold.
But please remember to wear your woolly hat and gloves.
Today as Tony Blair signals his new-found enthusiasm for more nuclear power stations being built across the UK, one wonders why Cynon Valley’s MP does not speak-up in favour of our local coal industry ?
In the 1990s Ann Clwyd MP was happy to take part in an underground protest and latch-on to the miner’s campaign. I interviewed the late Glyn Roberts in the mid nineties… he was one of the people who joined Ann Clwyd MP in her underground protest. His son and grandson who both bear the same name still work at Tower Colliery.
Although Glyn Roberts was familiar with the deep-rooted corruption in the local Labour Party – he had long left the Party – I am sure he would be very disappointed by Clwyd’s current lack of public support for coal.
Perhaps it is time Ann Clwyd found her old miner’s lamp, visited her constituents and gave them some moral support when it matters.
For those with no understanding of the history surrounding Tower Colliery, here is a fair account of the Miner’s Strike of 1984 and subsequent events, from a book called Cynon Coal – History of a Mining Valley published by Cynon Valley History Society (Published 2001, Gomer Press, ISBN 0 95310 760 4) :
“In March 1984 there began the strike in the nation’s coal industry which was probably the most costly in British industrial history. One estimate of the cost came to £3.25 billion and this did not include the estimated loss to each miner of £9,000 and the loss arising from the 38 working faces out of a total of 490 which did not reopen. The leader of the NUM, Arthur Scargill, called on all members of the union to withhold their labour. In the resulting pit-head ballots only ten of the twenty-eight mines in South Wales voted to comply with the request. Nevertheless the strike went ahead. Many weary and impoverished months later the men marched back to their mine, defeated but not dismayed. But in the eighteen months since the strike ended twelve of the pits of the South Wales coalfield had closed including Maerdy, and, as Dr John Davies has remarked, at the end of the 1980s there were more Welshmen working in banks than in pits. The strike was stated above to have been the most expensive in British industrial history. Certainly it was one of the most important if only because the number of pit closures which occurred after the strike caused a decrease in the number of employed in mines which permanently diminished the status and power of the union.
In 1992 the last round of pit closures began and by April 1994 Tower Colliery was conspicuous for beign the last deep mine in South Wales and, though allegedly profitable, the necessary steps were being taken to close it down.
A public campaign began for the purpose of reversing the decision to close the pit, which succeeded in its purpose. However, British Coal hung on to their intention and the pit finally closed on the 23rd April 1994.
The actions which then followed to prepare and put into being a workers’ buy-out caught the attention and, indeed, the approval of people of all political persuasions up and down the country. Apart from valuable support from the Local Authority and the Wales Co-Operative Centre, enormous public backing was received from all those who had benefitted from Tower’s solidarity in the pasdt. But most significantly, £2 million was raised by the 239 miners who had pledged £8,000 each from their redundancy payments. On the 23rd December 1994 ownership of the colliery passed into the hands of Goitre Tower Anthracite Ltd. On the 2nd of January 1995 the Tower miners marched back into their pit and took possession of it.
The mine is owned by the above-mentioned company the shares of which are owned by the company’s employees equally. There are no other shareholders. The workforce are all highly trained and experienced in their duties, and most of them are doing the jobs they were doing previously under British Coal. The present working coalface is 600 meterse below ground and 3 miles from pit bottom and from this the colliery produces 500,000 tons of Anthracite a year, 75% of which is sold to Aberthaw Power Station. Two new faces are in preparation for mining reserves when the need arises. 290 persons are directly employed and a further 85 are employed by contractors underground and on the surface”.
A ‘Coal not Dole’ badge from the Miner’s Strike in the eighties. The sentiment still rings true today.
Cynon Valley Freecycle celebrates the 100th new member joined today… exactly eleven months after the group was founded.
Many thanks to all who have helped make Cynon Valley Freecycle such a great success, but in particular thanks to Sally Pointer of Mountain Ash for helping administer the group email list.
