The men of Merthyr
Gerda Cohen
Wales so mild and vulnerable, meeting us out of the Severn Tunnel with flooded terraces, meek crushed chimney pots and, for Saint David's Day, daffodils, a big flaunting daffodil pinned on everyone, so bold and yellow they could be plastic. 'You mean artificial?' the clerk at Cardiff station frowned reproving, 'that wouldn't be .. . proper.' She had a large Welsh nose and stunningly pretty mar- zipan eyes, 'There you can tell mine is real enough, it's half-dead.' She sat under a notice like a lament, `Gwybodaeth am Deitho,' which meant travel information. `Going to Merthyr, are you, well there's a train in two hours, 'she calmed my dismay, ' you only missed it by a minute, they've been trying to close the line for years. Go and see our new shopping centre, Saint David's, Dewi Sant. Better than what you have in England.'
Her marzipan gaze dispelled unbelief. To judge by swagger Dewi Sant, the princi- pality is awash in cash. Exuberant trailing greenery drapes Mothercare and Boots. Is it plastic or real? `No one really knows, to be honest,' an elderly shopkeeper told me, 'they keep on rearranging it as plants die in the artificial atmosphere. I think the ivy is real, it's too high to know for sure.' He smiled in apology, 'My principal problem is a shortage of customers.' But there seemed far too many, lounging under the rubber trees and wheeling their shiny peram- bulators around the shiny fountains. 'Oh you can't tell by those people,' he chuckled 'There's one from Camden Council, with a rates bill for the Soviet Trade Mission.' at my naivety, 'today is signing on for Davies, you see, it goes by alphabetical order, and as there's a lot of Davies, they sign dole over two days. After they've been to the dole office, they have a little outing to the shops.' And what did they buy, the real customers? 'Oh no doubt about that. Electric organs. I only wish I were in electric organs instead of grocery. You can buy a nice little organ, a Japanese effort, for a thousand quid easy. The miners bring in their redundancy pay, have a little splash. They've earned it, heaven knows; my father died of dust on the lung, two uncles killed down the pit...' We stood and stared at the rampant shiny greenery. What did he think of the miners' strike, I wondered? `Peripheral,' said he, accenting each syllable slowly, 'peripheral... shut 'em down I say, it's a clapped-out coalfield. Wales should be making what people want — electric organs.'
'Pity,' commiserated the clerk at Cardiff station, 'train to Merthyr went exactly ten seconds ago,' She checked her dainty wrist watch: 'By road is quicker, nice scenery.' Up the Taff vale, gentle weepy cloud gathering over hills stewed brown like Welsh tea, bracken wet and seared, here and there, by the sinister black gash of old spoil. At Nantgarw, cars were parked out- side the office block of Smokeless Fuel, and a thin grimy smudge rose from the pit head. Not a soul was about, except a short, cautious man in a boiler suit. 'I'm on Safe- ty, the rest are on strike, and them cars belong to Smokeless Fuel.' A colossal miner could be glimpsed far away, all silver from his helmet down to his huge boots. 'Oh he belongs to the Exhibition. Sorry, it's not open till Easter.' The safety man drew nearer to give us consolation: 'If you come back tomorrow, the boys are due by here for an Occupation, 'a nice friendly Occupa- tion. You could take a snap or two,' he said hopefully.
Three miners were fishing for trout upstream by the doleful blue and grime of Abercynon winding gear. A thousand men work here and at Lady Windsor, both old collieries linked underground. 'We voted to strike, definitely, us two and Byron here.' Appealed to, Byron looked sulky. He wore a neat tweed angler's hat and steel-rim spec- tacles. 'Byron here, he's on strike for the trout.' Pallid and serious, Byron ignored them. 'They'll close our pit anyway,' said he, 'consistently under-productive, that's the official verdict.' He seemed to be crying behind his steel-rim spectacles. 'She's not the easiest pit. It's a long way from the face to where the bond comes down."Bond, he explained, is what they call a cage in the South Wales coalfield. 'You go down from the surface in a bond, unnerving at first. It's a long way down. I'm not complaining, mind. A job is a job.' His lugubrious voice sank towards the beer-coloured mud. 'Be- ing on dole, now that is death. Year I was signing dole, it creased me. It killed me.' Everyone shifted in embarrassment. 'Come on there, Byron, don't be so bloody dramatic...'
Up the Taff vale to a new painted land- scape, brave Merthyr Tydfil, terraced in luminous orange and fire-engine red, the new conifers painted in pyramids over the mountainous slag, the raw green of rugby pitches laid on flattened spoil. 'We're try- ing, we're trying,' hummed my escort , 'it may not be a gourmet paradise, but we have the finest male choir, and we make the best washing machines.' Most of his friends worked at Hoover, whose silent sheds splayed across the valley. 'Seen the new
Electron de luxe? Saves energy, economic with washing powder. Keeps us in work, too. Hoover think highly of Merthyr. Remember that,' he implored me, and hur- ried off to dress for the concert, a gala con- cert of Saint David's Day, completely sold out.
'Oh we'll manage you a place,' mur- mured one of the choir, a shy, sweet- mannered baritone, who admitted to being local arts officer and chief librarian. 'I don't read the Spectator, to be honest,' he sounded terribly apologetic; 'we get the New Statesman in the library. Free, in a manner of speaking.' He is so bashful everything recedes: his chin, his gentle fair hair. He appears to be walking backwards. 'We haven't a lot of miners in Dowlais male choir. Miners are diminishing; and there's fear. People are becoming afraid, you know,' he smiled with a kind of reticent grief. In silence, we drove to the gala con- The Spectator 19 March 1983 cert. It's in Rhydycar Leisure Centre, a vast echoing sportsdrome like something in Bulgaria. Solarium, squash court, sauna — the people of Merthyr have paid for everY hard, resonant inch, 'and we're damn proud of it; write that down.' Dowlais male choir are gathering in the practice room, 92 men wearing identical pale blue ruffled shirts. How do they contrive to be so perfectly ruffled? 'Oh, they're detachable,' a tenor assured me, 'underneath is plate Marks and Spencer.'
Rhydycar was filling up, with dazzling sudsy perms, lounge suits of a poshness never seen in London, pretty girls in Welsh steeple hats and red flannel, offering pro- grammes. Inside the programme was a per- sonal message from the president of Hoover Worldwide. 'Our operation began here 35 years ago today... since then, Merthyr Tydfil had produced 16 million washing machines, an astonishing number which rf placed side by side would form a line 6,500 miles long. Signed, Merle R. Rawson.' Somewhere out in the sportsdrome, on those painful plastic chairs, Mr and Mrs Rawson awaited the Dowlais male choir and the Salvation Army band. 'I do hope they enjoy it,' hissed the lady next to me, `the acoustics are deplorable.' The Salva- tion Army band flung out a welcome fan- fare, we all rose and the lights went out, plunging the entire assembly into a darkness so total I could not see the lady next to me, who whispered, 'Don't worry it's just the Welsh area board.' In the heavy dark, Po- tent with hair-spray, no doubt the president of Hoover was getting a word of cheer. 'Re- ly on the Mayor,' said my neighbour, tes never lost for a word.' The Dowlais choir had composed a hymn for Hoover entitled: 'The Whole World is a Cleaner Place, which must have appeased the visitors. 'Ea- joy that, did you?' people ask me after every item, 'enjoy that?' Their eyes sparkle with kindliness. Ardently, all sang out the final anthem, `Gwlad! Gwlad! Pleidoil wYf I'm Gwlad...' yet it sounded sad, rather than glad. 'We don't know Welsh, sorry , the girls in steeple hats could not elucidate, ,° 'we're only ushering.' Maybe the en librarian could help. Pink and sweet- mannered, mannered, he came shyly along, `thyla means my motherland, Wales is never fatherland. I've found some miners for you, back in the choir.' Gareth worked at Merthyr Vale colliery: Stern in glasses, he had an underground, complexion and pale moustache. 'We voted 80 per cent against a strike. It's useless, he spoke louder and louder; 'it's mad: We stand on coal and import Jap motorbikes. His pale blue ruffle wilted, hydrangea blue. `They're out to break us, break South Wales in little bits,' Gareth went paler Yet' His wife said, 'He works one week days' one week nights,' and tugged his elbow, `Come on Gareth, we've got baby-sitters to pay.' `Damfool strike,' said Dai, a safety over- man at Deep Navigation, 'I been 44 years down the pit, and I'm glad to be out of the
. NUM.' Dai belonged to the charge-hands'
union. 'You been led from behind,' he cried, 'I got nothing against Marxists, Mind, but your lot at Ponty go by the book. bogmatic, they are.' No one appeared in favour of militancy. Well, suggested the librarian, ever helpful, there's the Mayor of Merthyr, 'he's on strike.' In fact the Mayor was not often at his real job, in the Coal Board workshops at Tredegar.
In Merthyr town hall (scraped clean of soot down to the original lurid orange), all Is confidence, banked daffodils, brass, dimpled hatches to keep the ratepayers at bay, and rolling, swaggering in tough brown tweed, Mr Mayor — his big hand ex- tended warm, 'I've got time, as long as you mention Merthyr.' Not even Isaiah Berlin talks faster than Mr Mayor. 'We've the finest coal in the world, finest mountains in the world — Brecon right here by my house; where I live in Pant, I can walk, ride — Welsh cobs, finest horse in the world. I'm a terrier man, smooth fox terriers.' The librarian tried in vain to steer him towards the subject of coal. 'You should spend a week here, 'the Mayor exhorted me, his frizzy beard snapping like a wire fence in a gale, 'you don't know Merthyr yet, scenery, coal fires' — the librarian blushed with relief — 'we have 60 per cent coal heating, council policy, put that down! We have the finest house coal in the world, but This Woman —' he paused for adequate words, 'This Woman is out to crush the South Wales people, and will she?' He flings an orator's finger at the librarian. Both laugh in scorn. To my surprise the librarian has gone a revolutionary scarlet. 'If she thinks...' he began timidly, and Mr Mayor roared out a bluster of mirth: 'She's begun to creak, Tory collapse — sooner we creak her right out, the better.'
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