REDUNDANT WALES
Gerda Cohen finds
pockets of revival in the worked-out Valleys
REVIVAL is strong in the Valleys; revival of a sort. Up in Tredegar, Ken John was showing me his orange excavator, which had three steel teeth capable of complete slew, and a two-ton tear capacity. 'It's a miniature excavator,' he pleaded at me over rimless spectacles. 'You can take it through the front hall!' Ken John exhibited its powerful orange feet, straddled for continuous slew, dig and dump. 'It'll go through your front hall,' he told me with insinuating ardour, 'in the backyard it fits.' He swept me along rows of orange excava- tors. 'We had a lot of help, to be honest, there is a lot of help, let's be honest,' his chapel voice rising and falling. The Welsh Development Agency, Blaenau Gwent dis- trict council, the European steel commun- ity fund, in fact almost every conceivable fund can be tapped to revive the Valleys, if you know the ins and outs.
An indefinite sum had helped the four John brothers move from their goods shed by Rhymney railway station to this new factory in Tredegar. Ken used to be a sub-postmaster; Alun, Dave, and Ben were on the engineering side. 'We were on the point of collapse, to be honest,' Ken glinted over his spectacles. 'Now we export `It's Boadicea's place.' all over the show — California, Greece. He slid up the lid of a big wooden crate: here see,' the pointed teeth and orange legs lay tucked in like an Iron Age skeleton, 'going to Greece that is.'
A man phoned up from Wolverhamp- ton. When could they demonstrate? `Tomorrow dinner time.' Fervour rang down the phone. 'It'll go through your front hall.' Many of their fitters had come from Ebbw Vale steelworks, now obliter- ated. When you think, Ben was pondering, there used to be 72,000 steelmen in Wales. Maybe 20,000 left? 'The rest struck down. . . ". . . slew,' said Ken John, 'hY economic edict.' On went their dirge, sweet and obdurate, although the shift had ended and the brothers stayed on for MY benefit, enjoyably arguing which valley had the worst unemployment. `Rhymney i5 terrible." The Rhondda is worse.' 'I would back the vale of Neath.' It was as if theY were comparing male voice choirs. Ben sang tenor. He had to give up choir practice when the excavator business did so well. 'You hear this,' he held me out a record, shyly. 'Go on it's a present,' Ben insisted, 'the Rhymney Silurian male choir, the best choir.' They all stood and waved as a colleague gave me a lift over the mountain in his corroded car. Emrys Evans, engineering designer, commuted each day from Maer- dy. 'Heard about us, did you?' He had 3 stern chin and black thumbs. 'Saw us an television did you?' Well of course, Maer- dy, the last pit in the Rhondda, who hadn't heard of Maerdy? Oxford United Mine- workers Support Group had actually adopted Maerdy, sent them tinned peaches during the miners strike. I told him so.
Emrys Evans smiled in a curious way, a Welsh smile, thin with noble defeat. 'You live in Oxford, is it?' Since the strike, he told me, taking the bends at awful speed, 200 men had been made redundant. What a shame, said I. 'Oh they're queuing to be redundant; there's a long queue to leave the colliery. At other pits too,' Emrys slewed the wheel with dire precision, tak- ing the heights above Tredegar. The air tasted wonderful, like iced spa water. In the whole Welsh coalfield, he went on, 7,000 men had lost their jobs since the strike ended a year ago. But how dreadful, I began, feeling contrite, why didn't any- one protest? He laughed, 'They enjoy a protest, in Oxford.' Apparently the terms for redundant mineworkers were so advan- tageous, anyone with any sense volun- teered to leave. Such high benefits wouldn't go on forever. 'My neighbour,' Emrys said with simple pride, 'bought an electric organ. He got £22,000 in cash and £75 a week till retirement age.' High above the road, immensely drama- tic, a great tump of black shale was being flattened. The black shining edge of it ran straight to vivid green grass. On the far height an earth-mover was at it, slew, dig and dump. The new vivid grass and razed black set my teeth on edge. Emrys was talking about the National Union of Mine- workers. 'Strong as ever,' he declared. We're proud of being loyal, no pickets ever needed at a South Wales pit.' Eleven pits had closed since the strike, leaving 18 profitable collieries, mainly on the western rim of the coalfield. No fuss, no argument. Emrys smiled in defeat. Courteously, he opened the car door for me at Merthyr Tydfil. His stern chin lifted, curious: You related to Maurice Cohen, are you?' I said no. 'Funny, Maurice Cohen is all over the valleys, making ladies' underwear.' Later, in the hotel bar, it transpired that Cohen employed machinists on piece- work. 'It's terrible work,' the barmaid told me and several Japanese gentlemen who were drinking tomato juice. 'Cohen's ling- erie,' she fluttered her dainty eye-lashes. Her dad and two brothers, she said, were out of work. 'But they won't do the washing-up.' Her violet eyes opened to dazzling effect. 'It's a man's world, Wales!' The Japanese gentlemen seemed to approve.
Sekisui Chemical appreciated this state of affairs, and so did Hitachi, up the road at Hirwaun. So how did they like Wales? `They love it!' They love the golf, and they love the docility of the women. 'It's a man's world, Wales,' the bar-maid purled in her soft Merthyr way. 'Your taxi is here, going to the practice are you?' In the indigo dark and the vast ravaged black spoil heaps, the taxi-man drove like maniac, wheedling. 'Going to Dowlais choir is it?' he pleaded. 'Orpheus Tredegar is best,' he tried again, hurtling the car up the wet black curves. 'Orpheus male choir won the mid-Glamorgan,' he turned right round and besought me. 'There's time to repent.' We slewed to a halt outside a primary school lit by orange sodium, dim- ly. `Dowlais have ragged tenors,' came his warning cry as I went in. At least a hundred men sat wedged on baby chairs, singing 'Hosanna, Hosanna,' a most thrill- ing and exultant sound. The school hall hazed with heat; it smelt of haddock. I sat in a corner, the only female except for the pianist, clattering a broken-down upright. `Farewell sinful lust,' they roared exultant, `Farewell sinful lust!'
Afterwards we repaired to the Dowlais social club, which Lady Charlotte Guest had built for the self-improvement of ironworkers, a hundred years before, and I was introduced to some notabilities: Billy lop note', ex-miner, the deputy borough treasurer, chief fireman, 'We've all sorts.' Glyn Llewellyn fetched me an orangeade, `We leave our work behind, coming to choir'. Glyn Llewellyn was head of the local comprehensive. He had a particularly sweet and mournful manner. His whole family were colliers. 'You got educated to get out of the pit,' he looked around at the virile mustachios and oddly gentle eyes. `Now it's different; the school leavers are saying, why work? They go on the dole and marry on the dole.' Glyn replenished the orangeade. Great burly accountants drained their lager. 'Say Labour got in, would it make any difference?' Different style, same content,' the deputy borough treasurer — or was the the Parks depart- ment? — said through a huge moustache. `Kinnock is incapable,' his drift of mous- tache black and trembly. 'Lots of work for women,' someone eyed me over the lager, `Maurice Cohen's lingerie; you related are you?' On the way down to Bridgend I won- dered, how could the Japanese stand the Welsh, their numbing loquacity, their atro- cious food? 'Oh they love us,' hummed the gate man at Sony television. 'See the cherry trees?' A demure row led up to the main entrance. 'Japanese visitors plant them, just important visitors, mind.' The gate man was humming a hymn tune, `Happy souls, their praises flow/Even in this vale of woe.'
Warmth flowed out from Reception; within, it felt warm and adhesive as a chapel, or a well-run ecumenical sports club. A whole wall was lit up, full of golf trophies and chrome tankards won by Sony teams. You could see them chatting away, soundless, managers and typists and tech- nicians, all clad in royal blue like a Methodist choir, separated by glass divid- ers. Otherwise they were One and Indi- visible.
Dawn Jenkins was telling me about their millionth television set, presented to a local good cause. 'Tea or coffee is it?' Dawn Jenkins stunned me with dazzling inquiry, her eyes vivid heliotrope or maybe blue. 'Tea with sugar?' her curved eye- lashes tremulous. I kept wondering, how did the Welsh manage to produce such pretty girls, on their stewed tea and chips. `We employ 650 women at Sony; they're bussed in and out of the valleys, the Maesteg valley and the Ogmore vale.' Dawn's family came from the Maesteg valley. 'It's bad now,' her demure little chin down. 'The pits are closed, the shops are closed.'
Rapidly we did a tour before the lunch break. 'It's half an hour for lunch,' Alun the publicity man swept me along lines of moving circuitry and docile white hands. 'If we took any longer for lunch we couldn't leave at four.' The whole idea hinged on top efficiency through workers' happiness. `We produce 1,000 completed set a day.' Alun whizzed me into the dining hall. `Let's eat before the rush.' In they flew, a beaming onslaught like a youth crusade.
Of course the management are Japanese, who come for a tour of duty, aided by their own personnel officer. Alun introduced him, 'Mr Mazakazu Kawai'. Unexpectedly young and smiling, Mr Kawai belonged to Barry golf club. His English was unexpectedly bad, too. 'In Japan, one day trip to play golf,' Mr Kawai tried urgently to convey the import of this. `Here Saturday morning enjoy Barry golf club.' Moreover, to find a detached house in Tokyo — 'it would cost,' Mr Kawai thought very hard, 'about a million pounds.' Somehow, one had never consi- dered Wales in this light, the mean ter- raced hillsides and packed tight valleys. Dawn Jenkins drove me to the station, small white hands on the steering wheel. Poor mean terraces; that particular mean, pinched, Welsh ugliness. 'Look,' her beautiful eyes opened wide. 'Look, it's stopped raining.' And we both look up at the watery, limpid sky, the subtleties of smoke. `Who?'
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