A WAR OF CHOICE

Richard N Haas, President, Council on Foreign Relations offered the following distinction between a “war of necessity” and a “war of choice.” The former are unavoidable, involve critical national interests, there are no alternatives to the use of main force, and a certain and considerable price would be paid as a consequence of inaction. The Second World War is the prime example. The War of Choice, on the other hand, tends to involve less vital interests and viable alternative policies are available, be they diplomacy, inaction, or other sanctions.

Haas acknowledged that subjectivity was unavoidable in such characterizations. However, the key point is that his distinction is not one between wars that are judged to have been 'good' and wars that are judged to have been 'bad' or between those seen as 'successes' and those seen as 'failures'. In short the retrospective assessment as to whether a war was worth fighting or well fought has no bearing on what kind of war it was. Our verdict of policies is inevitably shaped retrospectively on the outcomes and the balance between results and costs. However, hindsight should not be required to understand what was done and why. This does not of course matter when it comes to wars of necessity as, by definition, such wars must be fought. Wars of Choice, on the other hand, place full responsibility on decision-makers due to the considerable human, military, and economic costs associated with armed conflict. Such decisions should be made in the light of a rigorous public assessment of the likely costs and benefits of action and the possibility that other policies might be implemented. Wars of Choice are not then eliminated but it should be better understood that they must be the exception, not the rule, to ensure that there is adequate will and ability to fight Wars of Necessity when they materialize.

In a retrospective assessment of the Falklands conflict of 1982 it was noted by The Spectator (31 March 2012) that it coloured domestic politics in changing attitudes to foreign policy and war itself. Much debate has concerned its contribution to the re-election of Thatcher and her Conservative government in 1993. A more general point to be considered is the opportunity the Falklands ‘victory’ afforded her successors. That was in signalling the apparent reversal of Britain's steady international decline since the Suez debacle of 1956. Through the 1970's, Europe aside, Britain's politicians were primarily preoccupied with the domestic challenges of industrial decline and unrest; economic recession and an IMF bail-out. And, lest we forget, the war on domestic terrorism emanating from Ulster which is still euphemistically referred to as ‘The Troubles’. The Falklands reinstated foreign affairs as a measure of successful leadership and that has remained the case ever since.

 “Everywhere I went after the war,” Thatcher wrote in her memoirs, “Britain's name meant something more than it had.”. 

Whereas America's costly defeat in Vietnam had made war seem messy and unpredictable. Thatcher's apparent victory in the Falklands reinstated the notion that war could achieve political ends quickly and efficiently. The fatalistic anti-militarism that had prevailed in Westminster was replaced with the refrain that Britain's noble and professional armed forces were the “best in the world”.

From its contribution to the static defence of Europe from the Soviet Union through the Cold War Britain's appetite for active conflict was reinstated. Consciously or otherwise, Thatcher’s triumphalism informed Britain’s subsequent engagement in a series of military interventions. From the short, sharp excursions of the first Gulf war, Kosovo, Sierra Leone etc. the ‘successful’ run of expeditionary wars ended in Afghanistan and Iraq. The constantly changing rationales offered for fighting indeterminate and elusive enemies yielded inevitably disappointingly political results. In consequence the Falklands war- a swift victory over another nation state for a simple cause —is now regarded with almost as much pride and nostalgia in Britain as the 1966 World Cup.

Opinion polls suggest that the British public remain firmly opposed to any concession on the governance of the islands and that any compromise with Argentina would be impossible while the war is a living memory. Leaving aside the direct cost of that ‘victory’ the British Government’s commitment to the Falkland islanders' right of self-determination, including the garrison and air and sea links to Britain, is currently estimated at £200m a year. That it be viewed retrospectively as a War of Necessity and its ongoing defence generally accepted and supported as a matter of  choice by the wider public can be attributed, in part, to that  war's lasting emotional impact.

For the current generation of Britain's leaders, who mostly reached (what passes for) political consciousness in the early 1980s, that conflict left its mark. The Tory party (and it would appear many Labour politicians) revere Thatcher. This week’s vote in favour of military intervention in Syria was resoundingly presented by its supporters as a matter of necessity. It has ever been thus. However, by virtue of the level of public opposition and open debate, it may be more correctly seen to be one of choice. The disparity between the Parliamentary vote and public opinion suggests the, albeit cynical, conclusion that the engagement is all about retaining some of Thatcher’s swagger in the international community. 

In making that commitment those that voted favour should be reminded that they are not buying Britain a place at the big table- we are merely renting a chair indefinitely.

In that respect British foreign policy merely clings to the tatters of its former imperial glory. A lot of innocent people get killed to allow a few third rate people to travel first class.

TAN 99 - Consultation on possible revision of urban planning guidance in Wales

It has been announced that public consultation will be undertaken on the revision and updating of Technical Advice Note 99. Although first published in 2011 the advice provided appears to remain applicable and the provincial government feels that only minor amendment and addition may be necessary.  However, the Minister for Built Up Areas needs to urgently address a potential underspend on his departmental budget in this financial year. It would therefore be helpful if some suggestions could be made which might involve fact finding missions to some warmer and sunnier places this winter. You are reminded that it is 'Blues at Home' in the forthcoming Six Nations Tournament and he already has a freebie to Dublin so a meeting of minds between this and other Third World Countries would be preferred.

The original TAN 99 of 2011 is reproduced below for your convenience.

HOTEL DU NERD

Last week I stayed at the CitizenM hotel in New York which was, pound for pound, one of the worst hotels I’ve ever stayed in. Imagine if you can an achingly pretentious multi storey version of those Formula1 hotels in France. In place of porters, concierges, bellboys and all the traditional personnel one might associate with a hotel you are ‘greeted’ by a couple of IT assistants in i T- shirts lounging at touch screens. Once a swipe card has been dispensed by The Machine you are pretty much on your own.

Thrice rejected as the venue for the North American Free Style Cat Swinging Contest it offers the smallest hotel rooms I think I’ve ever seen. A large bed is flanked by two walls and a window with possibly the most mediocre view in the city. If you had difficulty checking in and are not adept at using an i-pad you are in some difficulty as one is provided on a bedside shelf and operates pretty much everything in the room. I would assume that many computer illiterate guests have been found frozen to death having fallen asleep in an air conditioned gale.

There is no bathroom as such but a translucent oval pod small enough to simultaneously have a shit, shave and shampoo. The pod did, however, have adjustable mood lighting so if your idea of a big night in New York is lying on an oversized bed changing the colour of your toilet with an i- pad this could be the place for you.

Bizarrely this failed edifice of hipsterdom is located within what must be the most uncool ten blocks of New York – the trashy flashy canyons of ‘Theatreland’ north of Times Square. It might be less incongruous if it were in Tribeca, SoHo or wherever in New York knobheads consider groovy in any given week. As it is it seems hard to reconcile its style pretensions with its location on 50^th off Broadway. Mid-town looks sound on a map but unless you want to go to the theatre twice a day (which would be going some at around a hundred bucks a pop) it isn’t really convenient.

That said the CitizenM is convenient for three subways- two with trains and one which sells those smelly sandwiches just beyond the adjacent adult shop and 'gentleman’s club' . Walking from the hotel involves thrusting your way through crowds and the general ambience after dark is Bladerunner with Burgers. That general vibe can be vicariously enjoyed from what the hotel boasts as its 21^st floor rooftop bar. That would be great if it were not completely surrounded by buildings on not less than 60 floors. What view there is gives a fleeting glimpse of Blackpool down through mediocre high rise buildings. A notable feature of the rooftop bar is the only surly bar staff left in New York. All the good ones are working elsewhere for the mandatory 20% tip expected for simply filling a glass and advising you to have a good day.

I chose this hotel because it had the best rating on Booking.Com. Mea Culpa. Having skipped the small print as usual I got stuffed on arrival for taxes on top of the figure advertised by Booking.Com and, as is frequently the case, the general impression is that any discount offered by Booking.Com pretty much ensures you’ll get one of the worst rooms available in the place. The high rating of the hotel on Booking.Com can only be explained by the sort of nerds who think that a swipe card and a bedside i-pad are the last word in hospitality.

The next time I travel I shall revert to the services of Messrs Thomas Cook and ensure that the establishment favoured with my patronage has a full complement of native bearers to carry my steamer trunks to the suite.

WHEN HITLER DROVE PAST MY HOUSE

75 years ago to this month Adolf Hitler made his one and only visit to Paris. Given that every facet of Adolf and the Third Reich appear to have been exhaustively examined by authors and late night cable television programmers the exact date of his day trip to France remains, bizarrely, a matter of dispute among historians. A date consistently given for the visit is 23^rd June 1940, which was the day after the French formally conceded defeat at Compiegne. An alternative date favoured by others is Friday June 28^th 1940. Albert Speer, Hitlers architect who accompanied him on the jolly states that it was ‘three days after the beginning of the armistice’ which would make it the 28^th as the surrender of France took full effect on the 25^th. Speer should know as he was there but then, as the Nuremburg Trials were to show, he did have probably one of the most selective memories in judicial history. [1]

That said a dawn visit on Sunday 23rd, a day after France had ignominiously surrendered, looks entirely plausible from the fragmentary film of the event and accounts of it. There is a grainy clip of Hitler’s entourage crossing the Place de Concorde en-route to the Champs Elysees and passing only two startled gendarmes and a priest crossing the road. Nowhere is it suggested that the streets have been cleared and a general curfew imposed to afford Hitler a private view of his latest acquisition. It is simply an eerily empty, stunned and silent city.

Nowadays it would probably take longer to get from Le Bourget to the Eiffel Tower and back than Hitler spent in Paris that morning. By Speer’s reckoning and other accounts they were in and out from the airport in 3 hours – 6am until 9am- which was the only time Hitler spent in Paris. The route that he and his entourage took around the city was pretty much the bog standard whistle stop ‘greatest hits’ that day visitors still take.  That morning it went from le Bourget airport to Opera Garnier, Madeleine, Place de Concorde, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Trocadera (group pose for picture with Eiffel Tower) Invalides, Boulevard St Germain, Odeon, Luxembourg, Pantheon, Ile d Cite, The Marais, Montmartre (pause for view of Paris) then back to the airport at le Bourget.

The tour has been well documented as regards the visits to the major sites and much of that commentary relates to Hitlers fascination with the monumental structures and vistas, his personal knowledge of the kitschier bits – Garniers Opera House, Napoleons Tomb and Sacre Coeur- and his disinterest in the Sainte Chapelle, Notre Dame and the Place des Vosges. The part that has only recently come to my attention was that later detour through The Marais which I found curiously shocking. The images of Hitler posing at the Trocadero or driving up the Champs Elysees have become part of the familiar iconography of WWII, the victor viewing the spoils. C’est la guerre etc. Finding out that he drove down the rue des Francs Bourgeois past the flat I once called home is a violation of space that seems strangely altogether more personal. It is an act of trespass as offensive as his driving down the Old Road hill in Skewen or around Penylan, Cardiff. The Marais has now been completely gentrified but for nearly ten years I had some of the best days and nights of my life around there.

Down the rue des Francs-Bourgeois he went, amusingly interpreted by Hemingway in ‘A Moveable Feast’ as ‘the street of the opinionated middle classes’ which was, to some extent, what it eventually became.  However, in 1940 it must have been well gloomy and the antithesis of Hitlers preferred urban typology being pretty much end to end with ancient monuments and mediaeval in scale and form. It was not, by several accounts, the best part of his little outing and he didn't brighten up until they got back around to the Napoleonic colonnades of the rue Rivoli.

Even stranger is that The Marais was as close as Paris got to having a Jewish ghetto in the area known as The Pletzl and an immediate point to ponder on was how different things would have been if someone had got out of bed earlier that day in 1940 and shot the twat on his way to the Place des Vosges. That was just one of the places Hitler passed which had a major synagogue. The other was the rue Pavee and its 1913 synagogue was by perhaps THE architect of Parisian art nouveau, Hector Guimard. That was dynamited by French fascists the following year along with other Paris synagogues. Less than two years later in March 1942 deportations of Jews commenced from Drancy and Bobigny to ‘unknown destinations’ in Germany and Poland. Most of the occupants of the Marais sleeping that morning would be rounded up by the French police to be corralled in the Velodrome de Hiver in the Grand Rafle of July 1942 before being deported to concentration camps. The Vel D’Hiver was finally torn down in 1959 only after the French authorities had shown how even handed they were. It had been used as a detention centre for anti-colonialist Algerians in 1958.

The high street of The Pletzl, the rue des Rosiers, runs parallel with Francs Bourgeois and was in its day a dominantly Jewish thoroughfare. It was still having more than its share of anti-semitic aggravation many years after Hitlers fleeting visit and the attention of his Vichy chums. On 9 August 1982 two assailants threw a grenade and fired machine guns into Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant. They killed six people and injured 22 others. Several Jewish premises suffered less lethal attacks subsequently. In my time there many Jews were leaving Paris for Israel where they felt a lot safer. I bought my flat from an Israeli architect who was going ‘home’ and the trend seemed to increase after 9/11. Jo Goldenbergs closed in 2006. It probably had more to do with the relentless gentrification of the area rather than a falling demand for kosher cooking. Property values at that end of the Marais were rising swiftly on a tide of Pink Pounds – sorry – Euros- in the Noughties. The last time I minced up the rue de Rosiers it had been hard landscaped to an inch of its life and the Hammam St Paul, The Sept Lezards jazz club , the falafel and kosher pizza shops all been boutiqued. There was a traditional baker still in operation and I wonder what Hitler would have thought of the window display.

He only had the one apparently...................

A short film of Hitlers tour of Paris is at;

https://youtu.be/003iC7VZmYc

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[1]  Inside the Third Reich  Albert Speer 1970 Weidenfield & Nicholson pps 247-249

also

When Paris Went Dark    Ronald Rossbottom 2014 John Murray  pps 72-90

50/50 VISION of a HALF AND HALF CAPITAL

The Towns of Wales by Harold Carter, 1965, University of Wales Press
Cardiff: Half and Half a Capital by Rhodri Morgan. 1994, Gwasg Gomer

In 1965 Harold Carter made some prescient observations on the role of Cardiff as the capital of Wales in the final pages of The Towns of Wales.  It was then only ten years since Cardiff had been so designated and Carter suggested that there were two major sources from which a national capital should derive its importance;

·        Its primary practical function as the centre of government and administration and

·        Its symbolic function of creating and maintaining national unity as the focus of national sentiment

In the fifty years since Harold Carter made that observation Cardiff has consolidated its position as the largest urban and commercial centre in Wales and withstood challenges as to its legitimacy as a regional capital on both counts.

In the transition from the colonial governance of the Welsh Office to the form of devolution narrowly secured in the referendum of 1997 this was of course a close run thing. The failure to reach agreement on the use of Cardiff City Hall as home for the National Assembly re-opened the debate as to whether it should be the centre of government. The arguments for and against this were rehearsed by Carter in 1965 who concluded that the designation of a capital city in a modern state would inevitably generate conflict between the effectiveness as centre of government and as a symbol of nationhood. He noted that another problem particular to Wales was the nature of its urban culture or, more correctly, the absence of it. 

The first proposition that he put to support this was that Wales, as a nation, had not grown from a single nuclear area which was widely recognised as a capital. The desire for a ‘capital’ was then (in the 1950’s) largely a practical or administrative consideration with some recognition or concession that if Wales was a ‘nation’ it should have a capital.

Carter’s second proposition concerned what was then a lack of independent political existence and, to some extent, remains valid. The question is to what extent political power must be devolved for Wales to be considered an independent sovereign state. As matters stand, the designation of Cardiff as a ‘capital’ in the political sense appears to remain one of administrative convenience, albeit one which now has its own civil service. It is the centre of a regional tier of government within the sovereign state of Britain. Carter’s conclusion that any real claim to be the political capital was questionable can then only be contested as to the degree of autonomy currently enjoyed.

The third proposition put by Carter raises deeper rooted questions in suggesting that the indigenous culture of Wales was essentially non-urban and that towns have tended to be the centres of English speech and attitudes. There is then an inherent problem that urban centres cannot be symbolic of a non-urban culture. There is that strain of nationalist sentiment that romanticises an often imagined past and commends virtues associated with a society and way of living of which there is little left outside heritage compounds. Carter notes that this volkisch sentiment may coalesce with the residue of C19th nonconformity and be represented as ‘a Welsh way of life’ and “However real and valuable this may be, it certainly is not epitomised by modern urban society (p355)”.

On the matter of nonconformity and its influence on Welsh life a point may be noted in passing on the development of Cardiff from the mid C19th. The 2nd Marquess of Bute was an autocratic high church Tory but his tolerance of other religions was evidenced by mosques, synagogues, catholic churches and other places of worship that were built on his lands in and around Cardiff. What are very hard to find on any of the former Bute estates in Cardiff are nonconformist chapels. This probably reflected the establishment view of the 2^nd Marquess and his ilk that chapels were where radical politics were fermented and disseminated.

The relevance of this passing point is that the nonconformist chapel can be said to be one of the defining features of the Welsh cultural landscape. That is to say that chapel buildings define both the urban and rural view elsewhere but, due to Bute estate policy, did not and do not define the urban landscape of Cardiff. Those chapels that do exist appear in the main to have been built on areas of land not controlled by Bute. Over the larger area the dominant religious buildings were churches aplenty – Anglican/ Church in Wales or Methodist but most distinctly churches not chapels. In this respect Cardiff did not LOOK like other Victorian settlements in Wales.

Returning to Carter’s propositions he stated in conclusion that, in terms of national pride, the title of capital must inevitably be awarded to a settlement of some size which might reasonably fulfil the functions which it inherits. In the 1950’s the conflicting and irreconcilable desires thus gathered around the determination to give the nation a capital. Cardiff – the head of the economic hierarchy- was the obvious answer, yet it meant accepting an urban symbol of non-urban culture, an anglicised capital of the Welsh nation. It also housed several national institutions including the National Museum and the University of Wales giving it some more general cultural legitimacy. Perhaps, however, the most obvious symbol of national sentiment was Cardiff Arms Park at that time. To most people this is now a given but should be noted that in 1955 even that had not been the ‘national’ stadium.

“The year before capital status was granted, resentment of the city had grown amongst rugby supporters in the west after the Welsh Rugby Union decided to hold all future international matches in Cardiff because the facilities and profits were better there. This may not have been universally popular but it did at least give Cardiff some relevance in the wider Welsh community. In the absence of the traditional apparatus of a nation state, sport played an integral role in developing and sustaining a popular sense of Welsh national identity.”(Johnes,M.  Making of Cardiff, 2012)

This was reiterated by Rhodri Morgan in his 1994 book, Cardiff: Half-and-half a Capital (p17). 

Cardiff Arms Park’s position as the ‘national’ rugby stadium was consolidated through further works ahead of the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games which brought the overall capacity of the stadium to 60,000. The rebuilding of Cardiff Arms Park into a modern National Stadium in the 1970s coupled with the success of the national rugby team gradually made the city a more genuine focus for Wales and Welsh pride. That was a factor, albeit coupled with the economic rationale that underpinned the City Council’s support for its reconstruction as the Millennium Stadium when the Welsh Rugby Union considered building a new stadium at Island Farm in Bridgend ahead of its bid to host the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

Antipathy to the city has, however, persisted and remains an underlying factor fifty years after Carter made his observations. It informs the discussions relating to the recognition of the city region which is, again, largely a matter of political distinction. In the social, cultural and economic landscape city regions have been a given throughout history as is the centrepital force exerted by major settlements referred to in earlier blogs. What Carter highlighted in his 1965 work was that the two periods of significant urbanisation in Wales were;

·        Imposed during the Norman/ Angevin occupation and,

·        Exploitative in the course of industrialisation.

Given that Cardiff is also centred on the pre-urban nuclei of Roman fortification and the Victorian port was built by the Irish for a Scot some consideration might be given to that theory that it must inevitably be viewed as an alien settlement in Wales. It was, and remains, one of the least Welsh place in Wales.  On the other hand Carter's notion that an antipathy to urbanism is embedded in the DNA of the Welsh may be considered fanciful. It may well be in there somewhere and, indeed, have much to do with the terrain of Wales, the inherent challenges that this presented to communication historically and the concomitant parochialism of its scattered communities. In recent years the capital has been the object of envy and resentment not pride among many in its hinterland. This may have much more to do with recent political relationships and perceptions of economic disparity between the city and other parts of Wales.  

It is worth then revisiting Rhodri Morgan's 1994 piece which raised many supplementary questions almost thirty years after Carter's observations. It closes with comment on forms of political autonomy for Wales which preceded the devolution referendum by some 3 years and Rhodri's ascent to the status of First Minster of Wales by three more. The questions it raises appear to remain relevant even now, not least the question raised above as to the degree of 'indpendence' that has been achieved to date and whether that has consolidated or supplemented the status of Cardiff as a 'capital'. As Rhodri Morgan notes in the closing page;

"Perhaps it is easier to assert the right to a share of political control if you do not feel in the beggars can't be choosers position" (p82)

It might be said that Wales remains, over fifteen years after devolution, the beggar at the back door of a bankrupt kingdom. Economically it is not independent but is in fact saturated with a dependency culture. 

Furthermore the devolution process itself emphasised or even exaggerated the 'half-and-half' aspect of the country, let alone Cardiff's status as its capital;

 “…….an unfortunate fault line between the city and the National Assembly- a relationship whose dysfunctional side has been symbolic of Cardiff’s relationship with Wales itself. You can, according to taste, blame this dysfunctionality on inescapable institutional rivalry or on personalities, on Assembly Ministers or on the adversarial approach of the city’s leader, Russell Goodway, in the Assembly’s early years. That the relationship has been a little fractious should not surprise anyone as there is always tension between city governments and the tier above.” (Talfan- Davies, At Arms Length, 2008, p285)

Harold Carter’s 1965 study was a hugely important contribution to understanding the spatial structure and character of human settlement in Wales through a detailed examination of the patterns of its component parts and the process of its development. However, in revisiting his observations on Cardiff one must also consider the sources and instruments of power deployed in the subsequent re-shaping of the south of the city Cardiff and its evolution as a ‘capital’. Revisiting Carter’s work is a reminder that urban morphology must necessarily be supplemented by consideration of institutional structures and how settlements have, historically, been shaped by those who command the necessary resources. The 50th anniversary of its publication should be officially marked and more widely celebrated by the architecture  and planning professions in Wales 

????

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1973 - The year it all went to shit

Two years ago there was little coverage of the 40^th anniversary of the year when ‘The Sixties’ were finally dead and buried, 1973. Perhaps the media are waiting for the Golden Jubilee, or more appropriately, the Rust and Shit Jubilee that the year deserves. It may by then be recognised how significant 1973 was and how it marked a watershed. Many of the events of that year may have largely passed from immediate memory but have echoed since. For example, Britain was recovering from the after-effects of a boom, which had been fuelled by cheap credit and consumer confidence, followed by a banking crisis. As the UK Government announced its economic recovery policy the Opec nations, aggravated by the latest Arab-Israeli conflict, quadrupled the price of oil. Sound familiar?

Some things have of course changed dramatically but can be seen to flow from the events of that year. The response of the Miners Union to the counter-inflationary wage capping proposed by the government was a 40 per cent pay claim which triggered a State of Emergency. When asked by the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, what he wished to achieve in that dispute the Scottish miners' leader, Mick McGahey, is supposed to have replied that his aim was to effect a change of government. In the event a hasty general election was called and fought on the issue of "Who governs Britain?"  The people’s choice then was a minority Labour government. 12 years later the issue was to be decided more conclusively in favour of a Conservative government. Thirty years after that, in the wake of this week’s general election, a pair of maps have been circulating on the internet illustrating the coincidence of the remaining Labour vote and the former coalfields of the UK 

 (https://twitter.com/VaughanRoderick/status/596967966647971840?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=VaughanRoderick&utm_content=596967966647971840)

It can be argued that 1973 signalled the rise of middle-class dissatisfaction and that the subsequent wage and price inflation of the following five years contributed to this. That impacted on middle-class living standards, effectively eroding the differential between white-collar and blue-collar salaries during the decade and the determination of the trade unions to preserve or close wage differentials was then perceived to be a form of ‘proto-communism’. Were those who voted for Thatcher in 1979 thus drawn into a class war?

 “If the 18 years of Conservative government that followed had an animating force, then it was the resolve of the affronted British bourgeoisie to get a little of its own back, and the explanation lies here in the world of Slade singing "Merry Christmas Everybody", Edward Heath's barking voice resounding over the radio, the television set suddenly failing, and the curious sensation invoked in the breast of every civilised person by the sight of a street-full of houses at dusk where, mysteriously, no light shines.” (DJ TAYLOR Independent Sunday 29 December 2013)

The antics of the Far Left certainly assisted the paranoiac rantings of the right wing press through the 1980’s. As they could only portray the hapless Miliband as ‘slightly weird’ rather than ‘Loony Lefty’ the recent election campaign saw new bogey-men emerge to engage the attention of an Even Further Right. However, among these is the old stalwart Europe. On January 1st 1973 Britain officially joined what was then called the Common Market - the EEC. What was perhaps most depressing about last week’s election results was the apparent vote in favour of kicking Europeans out of Britain rather than Britain getting out of the EEC. The cold comfort is that the latter issue might serve to rip the guts out of the Conservative party over the next few years. The harsher truth is that within the former coalfields UKIP came in second to Labour in several constituencies.

1973 presaged an uglier and less optimistic world and the release of The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd that year was remarkable in that it anticipated rather than reflected the zeitgeist of the following decade. Roger Waters’ sixth-form doggerel does not of course match the gravitas of ‘September 1 1939’ by WH Auden (who died in 1973) whose words still reverberate from a year more widely accepted as changing the world forever.

They certainly came to my mind watching last week’s election results;

" Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again."

In short, to paraphrase Auden, we face the prospect of another lower and more dishonest decade. As suggested above, the decade of 'The Sixties' started around 1963 and was finished off in 1973. There was demarcation, depressingly so in the USA with the assassination of JFK in the USA, but in Britain The Beatles first number one, 70,000 people marching from Aldermaston  and the slide of the Conservative party during the Profumo affair gave cause for optimism. It appeared to signal a new and better era and Harold Wilson led the Labour party to victory the following year. For those of us who were fortunate to spend our childhood or teens in that decade the future appeared bright. Wilson's first Labour government introduced an era of liberalisation and social change including the relaxation of laws on censorship,homosexuality, abortion, immigration and divorce. Capital punishment was abolished. The emphasis was on social change and increasing social opportunity, particularly through improvement and expansion of the education system and developing rapid scientific progress - the 'White Heat of Technology'. It seemed possible that one day everyone would have a Ford Cortina and eat cheese fondue.

However, what Wilson's governments failed to do in that and later tenures was significantly improve the long term economic performance of Britain. Whilst not personally committed to nationalisation Wilson presided over an era which saw public ownership of badly managed major industries. These and other sections of the economy were badly hit in the global economic crisis precipitated in 1973. Those who had acquired homes in the prosperity of the 1960's were left exposed by inflationary interest charge rises following the Secondary Banking Crisis of that year. The sixties were over and the rot was in. Those who had prospered were keen to conserve what they had gained. Wilson eventually resigned in 1976 with a peerage, littering honours on his cronies in the infamous Lavender List. 

The altogether more malignant strain of Tory that emerged under Thatcher in 1979 threatened all of the aforementioned social advances of the 1960's. The consolidation of the power of their successors in last week's election will almost certainly lead to further social division.  If the Labour party is to defend what was achieved until 1973 it has to rebuild from the bedrock of support in its traditional heartlands. These, as suggested above, are the former coalfields and industrial centres of Britain. The traditional values and objectives of the Labour Party remain relevant in these areas. They are not conservative because they have fuck all to conserve. The harsh statistics presented by the poll are not the whole picture. Other measure affirm a more optimistic picture, not least the fundamental sense of decency, fair play and social commitment evidenced by levels of voluntary work and charitable giving in Wales which, per capita, shame the Conservative constituencies of middle England. 

In Wales there is therefore a very specific challenge given the measure of regional devolution and a Labour party in control of the Assembly. The fightback needs to start here with a labour party that can demonstrate to the rest of the UK that social, if not socialist, policies are in everyone's best interests. We have to deliver the best healthcare, education and an enviable environment. Those who oppose such aspirations must be viewed as enemies of this infant state.  Last week's vote suggests that the Conservative party may not be the principal object of concern. The whingeing scum who voted for UKIP in the valleys need to be told that immigration is not the problem - they are. The Labour party needs to be committed to the pursuit of excellence in Wales, to social justice and the ideals that led to the 1964 election victory. We have to be tough on UKIP - tough on the causes of UKIP.

For richer or for poorer

Some more before and after shots of Cardiff.....

Bottom of St Mary Street - Custom House

Hayes Bridge Road looking north - Homfrey Street on right

Bridge Street looking west - Mill Lane in distance

Top of Bute Street looking south from railway bridge

Railway bridge at top of Bute Street near junction with Bute Terrace

Churchill Way

Cory Hall and YMCA

Davies Street looking south

Docks post office

Drill Hall, Dumfries Place

The Mountstuart - corner of Bute St and James Street

For better or for worse......

Some before and after shots of Cardiff......

Looking south down Bute Street

Custom House Street junction with Bute Street

Canal at castle

Mill Lane

Queen Street Station and bridge over Newport Road

Wood Street and Royal Hotel

St Mary's Butetown

The Hayes looking north

Bute West Dock Basin - Oval Basin (Plas Roald Dahl)

THE FUTURE OF THE VALLEYS

The BBC Wales documentary on the future of the South Wales Valleys broadcast on 16 March 2015* may be justified as provoking debate but what is desperately needed is intelligent and rational discussion of the issues. Engineering yet another confrontational exchange may be the default setting for those making cheap television but will do little to address the deep rooted social and economic problems of this or other parts of Wales. All too often any meaningful progress has been retarded by this approach in which reasoning turns quickly to rhetoric.

The documentary did little to properly explore the issues that were raised by Jonathan Adams in his IWA paper entitled A Catalyst for Reshaping the Valley Towns. The key point is in the word ‘reshaping’ and the prevailing tone of the trailers and the programme implied some vague proposal for a latter day Highland Clearance. The suggestion originally made by Jonathan Adams was neither ‘radical’ or ‘controversial’ as claimed by the narrator of the documentary and can in fact be seen  to be a simple reiteration of observations made in the South Wales Outline Plan of 1949;

 “ One of the major tasks facing the present generation is to devise means for rejuvenating the (mining) valleys…. The environment of those who live and work in these valleys must be radically improved……. The dual objective of physical planning in these (mining) areas must be to so ameliorate present conditions that industry can function more efficiently, and that those living there and dependent on it can do so in surroundings, and as part of a social structure, comparable with the best standards of modern neighbourhood planning”(South Wales Outline Plan 1949, p19)

The 1949 plan also suggested that the clearance and ‘thinning out’ of outworn dwellings was part of this process of renovation together with better communications, schools and community centres and recreation facilities. An underlying point is that the settlements in that particular area were dysfunctional from the time they were built. The 1949 plan recognised that the impact of coal mining on forms of urban development  was the rapid unplanned construction of “dwellings anywhere and anyhow” and an “untidy sprawl of towns and villages”. In short the settlements were produced by an inherently toxic combination of economic imperative and challenging topography. The proposals by Jonathan Adams are then more optimistic than the view of the great urban geographer Harold Carter in The Towns of Wales in 1965:

“The general character of these towns is, unfortunately, only too well known, and modern planning can do but little to improve it”

It is not then a novel debate nor did the documentary make any new observations. Those settlements that were the focus of the programme were largely the product of coal mining, an industry which grew from the 1850’s in that area, peaked in 1913 and progressively declined until   1989. In short it is 25 years since it’s been gone and 40 years since Max Boyce recorded Rhondda Grey and the issues are still not being discussed rationally.

The relationship between the Valleys and Cardiff was again raised as a contentious issue although that should be recognised as being symbiotic since BEFORE the industrialisation of South Wales. Cardiff relied upon its hinterland when its principal export was butter. Industrialisation must be seen to have been entirely dependent upon transport infrastructure for only with the construction of railways and connection to docks at Cardiff would the mining industry and ports grow from the 1840’s.  Communications remain central to the overall prosperity of the region and this has, again, been a standing issue since the South Wales Outline Plan of 1947;

 “As to regional communications, drastic improvements are called for ……. Though geographical circumstances in South Wales, and particularly in the mining valleys, often cause difficulties in attaining that end” (P10)

The documentary also did a disservice to the counter arguments for the Valleys.  Clearly there has been a need to address the catastrophic decline in the mining and other industries of South Wales.  As was pointed out in the course of the programme interventions in the form of factory building to create and diversify employment have been undertaken since the 1930’s when unemployment in the Valleys was around 40%. Interestingly the first major initiative, even then, involved the establishment of the Treforest Trading Estate on 272 acres of land closer to the coastal belt. The Distribution of Industries Act 1945 granted extensive powers to the Board of Trade for;

·        Building factories in the old ‘Distressed Areas’ and providing finance for industrial estates.

·        The provision for grants or loans to be made available to industrialists willing to establish factories in in these areas and

·        Financial aid for improvement of basic services and clearance of derelict sites

From the 1970’s there were the land reclamation programmes, industrial estates and other major interventions of the Welsh Development Agency. These so-called ‘regeneration’ initiatives have undoubtedly mitigated the full impact of industrial decline but, overall, GDP figures and other statistics suggest that the Valleys are falling further behind the European average. The area remains consistently at the top of league tables for inequalities of poverty, health and education.  Since devolution over £1.2bn of European aid has been spent in the Valleys and West Wales and nearly £300m on flagship Communities First projects to reduce poverty and empower the poorest areas in Wales. As to the latter the Welsh Assembly's Public Accounts Committee suggest that such initiatives have failed and the conclusion must be that small community based projects, as worthy and well intentioned as they are, will not in themselves reverse the damaging legacy of massive industrial decline.  

A forty minute television programme is not going produce a solution to the problems of the Valleys. From the outset the people who live there had to confront adversity from the nature of the predominant form of employment itself, mining, and the nature of the people who employed them. That history of struggle might even be said to inform the tenor of the argument put on their behalf in that television programme which was one of aggressive sentimentality. It most certainly colours their response to proposals emerging from Cardiff, London or Brussels and therein lays another problem. City regions have been a given through the course of human settlement and the vocal denial of this fact by those who claim to represent valley communities has retarded initiatives which might benefit the region and there is every sign that they will continue to do so. The deep seated parochialism of the Valleys communities can be represented as local pride and independence but there will come a time when the world will decide it can move on without them. 

    

The people of Wales and many elsewhere fully recognise that there is a unique history and character in the South Wales valleys and acknowledge that it has contributed significantly to a distinct regional identity. However, it may well be the case that more negative perceptions will be formed by the repeated claims that their lifestyle choice to remain there must be perpetuated by permanent subsidy of others in wider society. That was the impression given by those opposing Jonathan Adams proposition and a much more positive and constructive approach and tone may be needed to avoid further alienation of the Valleys from other communities in Wales. My first job was in Cardiff Docks and there was a tacit understanding that I would be obliged to go there i.e. they weren't going to bring the boats around to Skewen to save me the bother. 

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05gndqz/how-green-is-my-valley-a-future-for-the-valleys

WOLF HWYL II - Neath Abbey

As a footnote to the preceding blog Richard Cromwell, the character played by Joss Porter in the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall, was born by 1502 in the parish of Llanishen, Glamorganshire.  He was the great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell, and one time owner of Neath Abbey. He was the eldest son of Morgan Williams an ‘aspiring Welsh lawyer’ who moved to Putney and set up as an innkeeper and brewer. Williams was married to Katherine, sister of Thomas Cromwell and both Morgan and Richard would benefit financially through the familial relationship with Cromwell, the younger taking his uncles surname.

Sir Richard Cromwell, a soldier of some note, was introduced to the Court of Henry VIII and was active in the dissolution of the monasteries. Among them was Neath Abbey which was surrendered to Thomas Cromwell in 1539. The site and demesnes at Neath were first leased to Richard Cromwell who then bought the site and demesnes along with a large part of the abbey’s other estates in South Wales for the sum of £731.0s.7 ½d in 1542. The same year he sold on the grange and chapel at Nash, lands in St Brides, Wick and Marcross and the vicarage of St Donats to Sir Thomas Stradling. The Grange at Sker was sold to Christopher Turberville. 

In the course of the 16^th century the site and demesnes at Neath were acquired by Sir John Herbert, second secretary of state to Elizabeth I and James I who rebuilt the former abbot’s house into a large country manor house. (See preceding blog for The Herberts). The remains of that Elizabethan house form the south elevations of the remaining 'abbey ruins'. In the absence of a male heir the estate passed to the Doddington family and then to the Hoby family. In 1699 Mrs Hoby died, and her daughter Katherine, who was married to Griffith Rice of Dinefwr, Carmarthenshire, inherited the bulk of the property. 

The estate remained in the hands of the barons Dynevor until it was sold in 1946 but during the C18th the abbey fell on very hard times. By 1731 it was being used for copper smelting and subsequently as part of the nearby Neath Abbey Ironworks. The Tennant Canal was driven through its south side in the 1820’s and Brunel ran the Vale of Neath railway on an embankment along what would have been the north side of the abbey church in the 1850’s. Various copper works were built on the adjacent river bank through the C18^th including the Mines Royal and Cheadle  It remained in a state of extreme dereliction half buried in industrial detritus which was cleared by volunteers in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Through the 1950’s and 1960’s the town rubbish tip was located across from the abbey on the canal bank. For a short time the ground on the west side of the abbey was used as a greyhound track and then a motorcycle speedway in the early 1960’s. That area is now covered with the Neath Abbey industrial estate facing the A465 dual carriageway and a large used car showroom.

Described by John Leland just before its dissolution as ‘the fairest abbey of all Wales’ it has remained behind a Ministry of Works fence. The setting of the abbey ruins remains an utter disgrace but they are occasionally put to profitable use by BBC Wales when they need a noble ruin completely untroubled by visitors. It should not be beyond the limited wit of Cadw and local planners to formulate a long term plan to incorporate the abbey ruins into a programme of work which would embrace local marshland, the adjacent River Clydach and the Tennant Canal into an attractive local amenity.

This could perhaps be done by the 500^th anniversary of its dissolution in 2039. It would be best not to wait until 2112 and the millennium of its foundation as an abbey…….