Mines Long Gone : Welsh Coal Towns Fight to Survive

It’s been 28 years since the last of the town’s four coal mines closed, yet powerful memories linger of a life where young boys joined their fathers “down the pits” and the community shared its hardships as one.

“There was a love-hate relationship with the mines,” recalled Ted Griffiths, a burly miner’s son, as he sipped his beer at the Tylorstown Workingman’s Club. “Men didn’t want their kids going down, but the camaraderie was so strong, they wouldn’t give it up themselves.”

In their heyday, a Klondike atmosphere gripped the valleys of South Wales, offering work and hope to a struggling underclass and turning the stark hillsides into one of the world’s richest sources of coal.

The human drama of the struggle to survive and the unbending spirit of the tough Welsh mining communities were the stuff of powerful tales captured in such novels and film classics as “How Green Was My Valley,” “The Corn Is Green” and “The Proud Valley.”

Pride in Their Roots

Native sons like actor Richard Burton, pop singer Tom Jones and 1930s’ heavyweight contender Tommy Farr escaped the mines for more glamorous surroundings, but always voiced pride in their roots.

But in many of the Welsh valley towns spawned by the coal boom of the mid-19th Century, life has gradually ebbed.

Britain’s coal now comes mainly from more modern, profitable fields in Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire, and the number of mining jobs in the valleys has slumped from a peak of nearly 300,000 before World War I to 9,000 today. Those too will eventually go.

“Deep coal mining is going to disappear altogether,” said David Waterstone, chief executive of the Welsh Development Agency in Cardiff. “The valleys really have to start again from scratch.”

Evacuation Rejected

As long ago as 1936, a government report suggested that evacuation of the valleys might be the only alternative to their inexorable decay. Residents angrily rejected that idea and in recent years, momentum has gathered to reverse decades of decline and breathe new life into the communities. Programs to revive the battered environment and attract new jobs to the area are under way, but their success is far from guaranteed.

“The valleys’ future is quite finely balanced between success and failure,” Waterstone said. “The strength of community is still there and the desire to survive and have a future is strong, but success will depend on the local leadership.”

At his offices in the Rhondda valley, Mayor Gwynfryn Rees, himself a former miner, is convinced that the valley communities will make it.

With the ceremonial chain of office draped around his neck and samples from the last load of Rhondda coal encased in glass nearby, Rees spoke with the enthusiasm of the converted.

“We’re seeing signs of recovery,” he said. “There’s a pride here.”

About 200 smokeless businesses, producing a range of goods from artificial Christmas trees to automobile seat belts and fire extinguishers, have located in the Rhondda valley in recent years, while more than $90 million of land reclamation work has removed ugly slag heaps, replanted trees and dismantled derelict buildings.

In Tylorstown, small businesses making furniture, metal components and injection molding have moved in. Another valley company exports game machine covers to Las Vegas.

Fish have returned to the Rhondda River, which once ran black with coal dust, and residents in the market center of Pontypridd now talk of turning the town around so that new buildings can look out on the valley floor that a previous generation tried to shut out as an eyesore.

Coal Trains Are Gone

The old, coal-laden trains that once lumbered down the valley, rattling the long rows of tiny worker’s cottages to their foundations, have been replaced by an efficient diesel passenger service. Even the wool coats of the sheep grazing along the valley hillsides have become noticeably whiter, residents claim.

Now, Rhondda civic leaders want to turn their valley into a tourist attraction by building a $28-million heritage park combining leisure activities with a chronicle of the area’s industrial and social history.

While a recent attempt to establish a Wild West park flopped and critics question whether tourism is either compatible with or desirable for the valleys, promoters claim the heritage park could bring half a million tourists annually.

“It would be a catalyst bringing tourists into the entire area,” said Tony Roberts, secretary of the Rhondda Borough Council. “It’s critical that it succeeds.”

Although the project so far has no funding, local officials believe that it may be incorporated in a major regional development initiative for the valley expected to be announced later this spring by the Welsh Development Agency.

High Unemployment

Unemployment remains high at around 25%, and the Rhondda’s population is now older and well under half its peak of 180,000 on the eve of World War I, but these developments have combined to provide hope for the future.

“There’s an air of optimism now,” said Rees. “You’ve got a people here who won’t be subdued.”

Certainly, businessmen who have located in the valleys talk positively of their experiences.

Henry J. Kroch, president of the AB Electronics Group PLC, which now employs 5,500 persons in Abercynon and surrounding areas producing electronic components for IBM and other major companies, cites community stability as an important element in maintaining a loyal, high-quality work force.

Compared to Swiss Industry

“It’s a bit like the Swiss watch industry in the Jura Mountains,” he said. “You have people in small, stable valley communities who offered high standards of continuity, loyalty and craftsmanship. The closeness of the community leads to a stability of employment.”

Anthony Williamson, managing director of the large British home appliance manufacturer, Hoover PLC, agreed with Kroch.

One year after relocating the company’s headquarters from London to Merthyr Tydfil, he described clerical staff members as both of higher quality and more committed than those found in London.

“There aren’t the opportunities here, so if you have an image of a good employer, staff are more likely to stay,” he said.

Collectively, however, all these achievements constitute little more than a tenuous foothold on a brighter future for the valleys. Arterial roads built to open up parts of the valleys operate in both directions, regional planners note, and there is concern that they might suck commercial life out of the valleys into the booming coastal areas.

Fears of Redevelopment

Locals here, for example, fear that plans for a $2-billion redevelopment of the old Cardiff coal port into showcase commercial, light industrial and residential properties, could deflect potential investment and accelerate an exodus that, aside from coal, has made people the valleys’ greatest export.

Inevitably, this exodus and other changes have sapped some of the spirit that sustained the valleys’ communities through their hardest times.

Most of these communities trace their origins to the major coal finds of the mid-19th Century.

The Rhondda Valley, for example, was an agricultural backwater with a population of about 400 when the first mine began work in 1809.

A reward of 500 pounds offered by a local railroad for anyone finding commercial coal seams in the Rhondda triggered major discoveries there in the 1850. Similar finds occurred in other valleys and by 1913, the South Wales coal fields had become one of the world’s largest and richest.

Packed Cottages

The strings of tiny miners’ cottages that still dot the valley landscape were packed, often more than seven to a household. When a child married, the new home was more often than not established in a separate room rather than a separate house.

In the early days, children as young as four worked below ground and boys only slightly older were frequently crushed by coal-laden carts they were unable to control.

Major disasters, and there were many, brought a common grief. In 1913, 439 miners died in an explosion and pit fire at Sengheydd and in 1966 at Aberfan, 144 persons died when a slag heap slid into a community school. Of the dead, 114 were children.

Through it all, the sharp, direct Welsh humor helped make life bearable. One miner recalled to a friend how, when a work horse died in a mine, the miners stuffed a note in its mouth reading, “Boss, I’d rather die than work for you.”

Strong Bonds Formed

The dangers and the tough life underground forged strong bonds among miners who often played rugby together, drank at the same workingmen’s clubs and sang in church choirs.

A powerful nonconformist Protestant church movement in the valleys helped build the rich Welsh singing tradition.

Demand for Welsh coal dipped by World War I as ships switched to petroleum-based fuels, and it has declined ever since, as other, more profitable fields were found in England.

Today, many of the Protestant chapels have been boarded up or converted into community shelters or old-age homes, while miners’ institutes, with their snooker parlors and rich libraries, have in many instances either been taken over by the local governments or converted to other uses.

Rugby clubs, brass bands and the famous men’s choirs--all hallmarks of the Welsh valleys--still exist in many communities, but they are no longer an extension of work and neighborhood friendships. Many who take part have since moved away and must commute several miles from new homes outside the valleys.

Loosened Communities’ Fabric

The change in the quality of jobs in the valleys and the advent of long commutes have also loosened the fabric of communities whose residents at one time only rarely ventured more than a few miles of home.

“There’s a psychological closeness to a relationship when you work underground that translates into the community,” said Edward D. Morgan, a Congregationalist minister in the valley town of Maesteg for more than 20 years before moving to the coast. “In a computer society, this doesn’t happen. In Maesteg today, you can feel the lack of pride and warmth in the street.”

The increasing employment of women has had a special impact in a region where tough, no-nonsense mothers and wives have traditionally been the glue that kept households together and made the Welsh “mam” a feared but loved figure.

“Even when you knew she was wrong, you said you were sorry,” recalled Griffiths, the miner’s son.

Worry About Petty Crime

Townspeople once suspicious of outsiders and who kept a tight rein on their own, now worry about petty crime and vandalism.

“More often than not, it’s now the woman who has the job,” noted Geraint Jenkins, director of the Welsh Folk Museum west of Cardiff and a respected authority of Welsh history. “The fabric of these communities is falling apart.”

But in the valleys, such talk is dismissed by community leaders as unwarranted pessimism. The struggle for survival won’t be easy, they admit, but they are quick to note that in the valleys, it never has.

“The coal-mining communities grew up as accidents of geology,” said Lyn Arnold, director planning and research at the Welsh Development Agency. “They are now living on their wits, not the land, and they haven’t had to do that before.”