WALES WITH NO MINERS

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31560, 23 December 1967, Page 5

WALES WITH NO MINERS

(From ADRIAN McGREGOR in London) In South Wales, a little over 50 years ago, there were 1000 coalmining pits and in Ebbw Vale and Merthyr Tyfil, and down the Rhondda and Taff Valleys, the sight of the huge spinningwheel gantries over the pitheads summoned up all that was Welsh.

Today, confident predictions are that by 1980 there will be only 10 pits left.

Where will Wales be without the miner?

The question has been raised by tae British Government’s new fuel policy, announced recently, which broadly favours natural gas and nuclear energy at the expense of coal. The policy prompted Lord Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board, to predict that by 1980 the British coal-mining workforce would be only a sixth of the present figure. The coal-mining industry, all over the world, from Cessnock to the Ruhr, has long been in decline, overcome by competition, first from oil and lately from gas and nuclear energy. But nobody could have predicted the demise that now faces the coalminers of South Wales.

Mines 400 Years Ago There were coalmines in Wales 400 years ago, but it was not until the last 50 years of the nineteenth century that it became a dominant force within the Welsh economy. In those years pit after pit was sunk in the valleys, transforming simple little rural backwaters into industrial honeycombs, and the huge mounds of waste, whose legacy was Aberfan, grew around them. If the names of the villages, . bertillery, Caerphilly and Pontypridd, were poetical, villages were not. Grim, uncolourful little places, they were built on the sides of the mountains and every street led to the mine. Tinyroomed houses, built by the mine-owners, stood in serried rows with only differentcoloured paint on the door to distinguish one from its neighbour.

Here emerged the legend of the Welsh miners. He was physically and mentally tough from the conditions and danger of his labour. His face, blackened with coal dust after a shift, became associated in the public mind with basic human virtues like courage and endurance. And as any visiting Rugby team could testify, the Welsh teams had these qualities. In 1855, the coal output of South Wales was 8,500.000 tons, but by 1890 this had trebled and in 1913 the historic figure of 56,830,000 tons was recorded. Historic because it marked the peak of production. Output has never looked like being as high again. In 1920 when the miners returned from World War I, the work force was at its highest, 271,000, but already the output had begun its long decline.

Aided by the great strike of 1927 and the world depression of 1932, the numbers dropped to 145,000, and in 1947, when the National Coal Board took over the mines, amid great jubilation of the miners, there were 200 pits and 107,000 miners. Short-lived Joy The joys of nationalisation were short-lived, however, and from 1957, when there were 101,000 miners producing 23,000,000 tons of coal annually, the work force dropped to 53,000 men and the output to 16,000,000 tons today. The National Coal Board has invested millions of pounds into redeveloping and modernising the coal industry but its plans were outdated from conception. In retrospect it appears as an example of history, egged on by man’s own peculiar ingenuity for outdating himself, bringing an industry once thought as permanent as the coal itself to its knees in a mere 50 years. The reason for all this of course has long been known —competition from cheaper fuel. But it has been the discovery of natural gas and the advance of nuclear energy which have really been killing the coal industry. The miners had argued that it was folly for Britain to rely on a fuel (oil, the first to challenge coal) that had to be imported and whose supply could be cut off in times of emergency (the Middle East crisis). The argument proved invalid in the face of gas from the North Sea exploration finds and sophisticated advances in harnessing nuclear energy, both of which are as indigenous to Britain as coal itself. Impact Of Policy The Government’s decision on fuel policy was a necessary one. Protection for the coal industry in Britain has cost s2som a year. Coal under the new policy will subside to the level where it can compete with other fuels. This rundown of the industry can be expected to have a profound impact on Welshmen, to whom coalmining has been almost hereditary. The miner has been a symbol for Welsh people for 100 years, and even those who detest the idea of a pit life see the picture of miners, trooping home in the evening dusk from the pithead, their voices raised in some Welsh lament, as a common heritage. Signs Of Change But the signs of change are there. More than 40 per cent of miners are over 50 years of age, and as they retire to a pension their sons are looking to the industrial estates, established by the Government. which are now spreading their clean silver roofs along the valley roadsides.

Fast four-lane motorways connect the valley villages as secondary industries begin to produce goods on sites where once coal was the basic commodity. i Even in the hills the vast waste heaps are beginning to be overgrown by grass. It has to be, of course. There is nothing that can or should be done to prevent it. But as one miner in a Neath pub put it, “Now, man, whoever heard of a Rugby team of vacuumcleaner fitters.” Copyright, 1967. Associated Newspapers Feature Services.