That’s a fab idea, Terry Breverton.

An interesting point. Which may say a lot about the Labour Party. Compared to parties and movements on the continent the Brit Labour Party has always been deferential to, and a pillar of – rather than a threat to – the established order. All the fiery rhetoric was basically piss and wind. One General Strike in 1926 was about the only time that the English establishment feared the Labour Party and its trade unions stooges had forgotten their lines. And talking of peerages, just think Kinnock, George Thomas and all the other slimy self-serving fuckers.

What’s often ignored is that many of the English immigrants were single men. Due to the nature of the local industries, and the fatalities involved, there was a gender imbalance, which resulted in these English immigrants often marrying Welsh women. This aided their integration, meant the children were unquestionably Welsh, all of which aided the cohesiveness of Valley communities. A unity further consolidated by virtually all of them working in the same industry and being of the same class.

Which exposes the bollocks talked by those who defend today’s colonisation of our rural areas by trying to use the industrial south over a hundred years ago as an example of large numbers of English moving in and being assimilated. In our rural areas today most of the immigrants are middle class, and would be insulted if you suggested they should ‘go native’. Furthermore, they are here in such numbers that in many areas it is the Welsh who are being assimilated.

If they are meant to come from English descent then isn’t it strange how the valleys has the highest percentages of those who identify as being Welsh and Welsh/other. Bizarre.

I think the widow/baby statue has been done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhondda#The_decline_of_coal_and_economic_emigration_.281914-1944.29

If memory serves, she was the one with whom Gwrtheyrn became besotted. The bride-price was Kent, the land of Gwyrangon. The only part of England given up to the German invaders without a fight.

so i hope that the abiding thing that will come out of today’s events is that it wil serve as a remnder to people in wales of the enormous sacrifices made by welsh communities in order to meet the greedy demands of the british state…..the history of industrial wales is sadly littered with such avoidable disasters, and this terrible event…and the equally appalling aberfan disaster….serve as probably the worst examples of welsh lives needlessly sacrificed on the bloody altar of british demands (you could of course quite reasonably throw the willful drowning of welsh villages into this odious mix too )

and of course when the british state no longer needed welsh coal, and steel, it had no compunction in condemning tens of thousands to unemployment and entire welsh communities to years of long term decline and poverty……viewed in this stark context its difficult to see how anyone in their right mind could even think that the political ‘union’ that is the british state has been and is a good thing for wales…..so lets hope todays laudible tribute will make people in wales question our nation’s historically exploitative relationship with the british state and fuel demands (if you’ll pardon the pun) among people in wales to take control of their own country and of its natural resources…..as surely its not too much to ask for the welsh people to decide how energy is produced in their own country?