Every year Wales remembers the horrific 1966 tragedy at Aberfan, where 144 people – including 116 children – lost their lives when an unstable coal tip poured down over the town. The nation is still blighted by hundreds of such colliery spoil tips, and recent heavy rains have shown they present an ongoing danger to Welsh lives and property.
In a world of climate chaos, with ever more frequent heavy rainfall, it is time to stop paying profits from our green energy production to a billionaire monarch and to Westminster. We must instead use them to make safe the communities still living in the dark shadows of our coal mining past.
The dangerous legacy of coal tips
The effects of Storm Bert wreaked havoc in communities across Cymru, with flooding in many areas. In Cwmtillery, people were evacuated following a landslide at a category 4 coal tip. Thankfully nobody was physically injured in that event. But this isn’t the first time we’ve seen such a landslide after a storm in recent years, with a similar event happening in Tylorstown in 2020. There are more than 2000 disused coal tips across Wales, of which hundreds are classified as category C or D, the most dangerous kinds.
Our coal tips are the legacy of a hyper-capitalist industry that extracted without consequence. Those who made their money have long gone, leaving behind the dangerous tips – and, all too often, communities experiencing high rates of inequality and deprivation, in a nation with one of the highest rates of child poverty in western Europe. Indeed, Blaenau Gwent – where Cwmtillery is located – has the highest percentage in Wales. There is no rational reason that this abject inequality between different areas of the UK should exist.
I’ve found the response from many Labour MPs to the flooding in Wales disgraceful and farcical. Some have taken to promoting GoFundMe pages for those affected. Have they forgotten they’re in government and have the power to change things for the better? Labour runs most local councils in Wales and controls the Senedd and Westminster. It’s time that it took responsibility for once and provided the necessary resources. Communities across Wales deserve better, instead of being taken for granted and constantly underfunded, generation after generation.
I find a passage of the poem Gwalia Deserta by my fellow Gwentian, the former miner Idris Davies, both anger-inducing and poignant. It still rings true despite having been written before the second world war.
In the places of my boyhood
The pit-wheels turn no more
Nor any furnace lightens
The midnight as of yore.
The slopes of slag and cinder
Are sulking on the rain
And in derelict valley
The hope of youth is slain.
The Crown Estate: centuries of exploitation
I’m proudly Republican, as is my party, the Wales Green Party. I don’t believe anyone is born with ‘magic blood’, or better than anyone else. This is fundamental to why I chose to join the Greens, as I could never support a party that continues to back the interests of outdated billionaire monarchs over those living in poverty.
The English, and later UK, monarchy has in my view exploited the people, land, and natural resources of Cymru for its own gain for too many centuries. This continues today via the Crown Estate in Wales which, among many other things, controls the Welsh seabed out to 12 nautical miles.
We’re fortunate to have huge green energy potential, especially in offshore wind. Gwynt y Môr off the North Wales coast is one of the most promising sites globally; there’s vast potential in further sites and thus profits in many areas of Wales. Crown Estate revenues more than doubled to a record high of £1.1bn last year. But vast profits made in Wales aren’t coming back to Welsh communities. They’re funnelled to Westminster and, even more ridiculously, 12% goes to the billionaire monarchy via the Sovereign Grant.
The asset value of the Crown Estate in Wales alone is over £853mn. While I personally would favour us not having a monarchy, surely at a bare minimum the Estate should be devolved to Cymru as it is to Scotland. This would allow its vast profits to go to the people of Wales, not the billionaire monarch and Westminster.
Both the public, and many councils in Wales who have passed such motions, seem to agree. The UK Government, however, has so far joined the previous Tory regime in directing this wealth stream away from the people of Wales.
Green energy and safer communities
With storms and flooding becoming ever more common, surely now is the time to use ever-growing green energy profits to help protect our communities. Maintaining coal tips is a devolved issue in Wales, despite the fact that these dangerous areas are a result of decisions taken decades ago by the UK Government via the National Coal Board, with little consideration for those in the communities directly in their paths.
It’s thought that making all the coal tips safe for the next 10–15 years alone would cost the Welsh Government £600mn. Yet, in its most recent budget, the UK Government allocated the pathetic sum of an additional £25mn to Wales for this legacy issue. That’s not even 5% of what is really required.
Every 21 October we rightly lower our heads and think of those killed or affected by the avoidable Aberfan disaster. Yet when it comes to ensuring our communities never face something similar again, instead of immediately providing the funds necessary, many in Westminster (who’ve likely never even heard of places like Cwmtillery or Tylorstown) shrug and turn away.
If spent coal tips loomed over wealthy parts of England, the money would already be spent. But from Westminster’s viewpoint, it’s just little old Wales, right? I imagine those in England living with lethal cladding in poorer areas post-Grenfell can relate.
It’s time for Cymru to take control of its own natural assets and cast away the legacy of exploitation by the monarchy and Westminster. It’s time we used the revenues from green energy production to make our communities safe and prosperous, instead of waiting for those who don’t care – yet use us to meet their ‘net zero’ targets – to turn and notice us, cap in hand. Why must we beg for what’s already ours?
