February 2009
Twenty-five years ago next month we will be commemorating the anniversary of the beginning of the year - long miners' strike. There are many reasons we should do so. Even though the experience was a bitter and painful one, it did leave many very positive legacies.
To begin with, miners, their families and their supporters from Skewen to Bryn and throughout the Afan Valley made enormous personal sacrifices to defend strong communities based on local skilled jobs in the mining industry. I well remember working with all these communities which learnt new campaigning and organising skills to fund-raise and feed their families. I remember Coedffranc Community Council voting to provide miners' families in Skewen with funds for food parcels.
I recall meeting women's groups from Glyncorrwg, Gwynfi, Croeserw and Cymmer on demonstrations with their home-made banners and discussing our experiences at politics and history classes.
I believe too that the strong campaigning experiences of 1984-85 helped in other local campaigns, then and afterwards, to re-establish the Gwynfi Co-op, to defend school bus services, postal services, and our community health services, the re-building of Croeserw Workingmen's Club, the growing community environmental movements and most recently the refurbishment of the South Wales Miners' Museum. The Museum is a wonderful community education resource which reminds us all of the debt we owe to previous generations.
For all these reasons and more, I shall be at the Museum on Saturday March 14th to pay tribute to the generation of 1984-85 by reading extracts from my new book "History on my Side: Wales and the Miners' Strike.' The event will be about remembering with pride our past but also looking to the future as talk grows stronger of a new mine at Margam.
That strong sense of community which was so evident in 1984-85 is still with us today as is evident by the awards made by the Big Lottery Fund to Bryn Primary School, the Port Talbot Epilepsy Support Group, the Community Holiday Club, Port Talbot, the Aberavon Friendly Club and the Cwmavon OAP Club. Well done to all concerned!
There has been much in the press recently about my work as chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee in Parliament. My next column will report on its present activities on carers, the Welsh language, digital inclusion and cross-border issues.
For more information on the March 14th event please contact John Slater on 01639 897660.
