Coalfield Communities

Wayne David Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Of course I agree with that. It would benefit the House if Members understood that the process of becoming a modern economy, which was a difficult process, could have been achieved far better through partnership than through adversarial means. Indeed, that spirit of partnership is what we have now and it is starting to work.

It is a great pity that the motion focuses so heavily on reliving the battles of the past. It is a demonstration of the Labour party at its worst—totally uninterested in the future. I want to talk about the future.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Hancock]

I will give way in a second and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will say whether he supports what I am about to say.

Orgreave, which was the site of one of the biggest confrontations between miners and the police, is now home to Sheffield university’s advanced manufacturing research centre. I have been there. That partnership between businesses, universities and, no doubt, trade unions shows the sort of approach that this country could easily have taken to the difficult transition 30-odd years ago, but that was turned down through the political antics of Arthur Scargill and his friends.

[Wayne David]

To deal with the present, is the Minister pleased that wage levels are plummeting in former coal mining areas?

[Matthew Hancock]

We are doing everything we can to turn the economy around. The shadow Chancellor himself admitted that, after an economic calamity of the scale we saw, it is inevitable that people will be affected. Of course they will be. Of course, when national income falls—as happened in the great recession—that impacts on people; national income is only the sum of the incomes of people in that nation. Until the Labour party understands that our economic fortunes as a nation are tied to our economic policy, and that the calamity of Labour’s economic policy led to a calamity for family incomes, it will never be trusted with the economy again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I am happy to contribute to a comradely discussion, Mr Speaker.

South Wales has a long and proud history of coal mining. It reached its peak just before the first world war, when the industry employed nearly a quarter of a million men. After the first world war, it began a slow but steady decline until its demise today. It went from the 1926 miners’ strike, that summer of soups and speeches, as the Rhymney valley poet Idris Davies wrote, to the struggles of the 1930s and the closures of the 1960s and ’70s, although it has to be said that attempts were made by Labour Governments at that time to find an alternative source of employment in the area.

Then, of course, we saw the miners’ strike of ’84 and ’85. I remember the strike, when I was a young man—a very young man—because I was involved in my local miners support group. We met in the local Conservative club, which nobody thought was strange because the whole community supported the miners in my village. We were absolutely clear that the fight was about defending jobs and communities. We were under no misapprehension at that time—it has been proven since: as far as the Conservative Government of the day were concerned, it was a political strike. They were out to break the trade union movement, and the vanguard of the movement was the National Union of Mineworkers. Let us make no mistake about it, because that was proven beyond doubt. After the strike was over—yes, the miners were defeated—the full vengeance of the Government was displayed in the number of pit closures that occurred.

The Government said that they acted on economic grounds, but that lie was shown up very clearly in the case of Tower colliery in Cynon Valley. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) led the miners of the colliery in a sit-down protest. Eventually, although the Government wanted to close it, a miners’ co-operative was formed and it maintained its profitability for 13 years after the strike. That showed, above all, that the Conservative Government were concerned not about the economics of the coal industry but about the politics of this country. That is why it was correct to have that dispute, even though the miners lost. I am proud to say that the south Wales miners remained largely united and, with dignity, led the other miners back to work.

During that whole period of adversity and decline, one of the hallmarks of communities in south Wales was the amazing sense of community solidarity that existed then, which I believe still exists today. That was shown clearly in 1926 and in the 1930s, but it was shown very recently as well. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) said, last year, in the village of Senghenydd in my constituency, we had an enormously successful community initiative to raise money to build a national mining memorial. That was important in itself, but also because it showed the community coming together to pay tribute to past sacrifices and say, “We are united today and we are looking forward to the future.”

We still face huge problems in south Wales, which are partly a legacy of what happened with the Tories and the coal industry. We are still seeing acute levels of unemployment, poverty and low pay, with economic inactivity continuing. In the aftermath of ’84 and ’85, the Conservatives deliberately encouraged miners to go “on the sick” so that they did not show up in the unemployment figures. We are still living with that deliberate act of Government policy.

Today it is high time that, once again, we all join in a comradely way to make sure that the needs of the south Wales coalfield are addressed. I hope—indeed, I am confident—that when we see a Labour Government elected in a few months’ time, they will work in partnership with the Labour-led Assembly to make sure that we have, once again, dynamic policies for the south Wales valleys that will bring prosperity to the people we represent.