Welsh Election: Decades of Neglect Leave the Valleys Open to Far Right Threat

Reading Time: 11 minutes

YEARS OF ECONOMIC DECLINE HAVE LEFT MANY SMALL VALLEYS TOWNS IN DIRE STRAITS, WITH NEGLECTED TOWN CENTRES & FEW DECENT JOBS LOCALLY. WITH LITTLE FAITH IN ESTABLISHED POLITICS, THE FAR RIGHT HAVE TRIED TO GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN RECENT YEARS, BUT THE LEFT AND INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT CAN ALSO STAND TO GAIN FROM DISSATISFACTION WITH THE STATUS QUO. 

By SC Cook.

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On a bitterly cold day in Bargoed, Sarah is pushing her year-old child in a pram, getting some essential supplies. Despite the weather, she stops to talk to me, and even though the Welsh Elections are still a little way off, is happy to discuss politics and the issues facing her town. 

“I used to come here when I was little,” she says, looking down the high street. “And there used to be a lot more. A lot more places where you could go.” 

Sarah used to live in nearby Penybryn, but moved to Bargoed a couple of years ago. Looking around the town, many shop fronts have been closed, even from before the pandemic. On a weekday morning, the place is almost deserted. 

Sarah thinks that the area needs more investment, and complains that there’s nothing for young people to do: “There’s just kids on the street all the time.” 

Are there many jobs around for people in the area, I ask?

“I wouldn’t mind working,” Sarah replies, adding that there are very few jobs around. “I think there could be more opportunities.” 

People generally “go without work” and are forced onto Universal Credit, she explains. “It’s hard for people, especially if they’ve got kids. A lot of people are quite poor…” 

But for Sarah, she should never have found herself without a job in the first place. For 9 years, she had worked at a nearby factory which manufactured products like wrapping paper and greeting cards. 

When she became pregnant, however, Sarah began having health complications with her baby, and was forced to take a large amount of sick leave, something her employer didn’t like. 

“I would come into work and I’d be so sick I had to go home,” she says .”And then it just came to a point…they cornered me in work and threatened me. So I just left [on sick leave]. I just couldn’t do it.” 

The baby was born premature via an emergency caesarean section, but when she contacted her bosses to tell them, Sarah was told that she wouldn’t receive company maternity pay. Feeling like she had no other option, she quit her job and signed up for universal credit, where she had to wait over 6 weeks to get any money at all. 

“There’s only so much anyone can put up with in any workplace, you know? I think they’re very unfair.” 

“I did ask about a union,” she says after I ask if one was involved. “And they [the company] said they don’t deal with unions, because if they did they’d shut the factory down. It’s that bad there.” 

Sarah’s situation may not be as uncommon as people might think. Even though many of the big industries in The Valleys have gone, along with large, unionised factories, there remains a large base of small manufacturing companies, which are often highly exploitative. 

A few years ago I interviewed a woman in Tredegar, who told me that her sister, 52, worked in a small factory, often for 60 hours a week, yet brought home less than £300 per week. 

“They’ve taken the industries from the valleys; they’ve replaced the steelworks and sewing factories with lots of little companies that just exploit people,” she told me. 

The sad truth is that the plight of many communities in small town Wales has only gotten worse in the lifetime of The Senedd, which faces an election on May 6th that isn’t just about which party gets to lead the next government, but is also a vote on the very existence of that government. 

If polls are to be believed, Labour look set to stay in the seat of power in Wales, with the Tories second and Plaid Cymru third. But one phenomenon that has taken many by surprise is the ‘Abolish the Assembly’ party, which could win a small but significant handful of seats, providing them a foothold to push their message further. 

The idea of Abolishing the assembly is an incredibly simple one, and has provided the far right with a new organising idea after Brexit, but one which nevertheless provides it with the same focus: attacking the institutions whilst pretending you’re on the side of the people. 

In the context of the slow but devastating effects of years of economic decline seen in places like Bargoed, it can be a powerful message. Because of this, there is reason to worry that like Brexit, Abolish may do better than polling suggests. 

But even if this doesn’t happen now, the situation on the ground will continue to fuel a level of political volatility that is able to move not only to the right, but also the left, and even pro and anti-independence. 

Sarah describes herself as a Plaid Cymru voter, but when I ask how she voted in the 2019 General Election, she replies: “I voted for him. I voted for Nigel Farage.”

This, she tells me, was because of Brexit, which she voted for along with what she says was everyone else on her street. “Everyone was saying that [Brexit’s] just gonna be better for the country. And so I just thought, give it a chance.” 

“Everyone that I knew” was pro-Brexit, Sarah says, and even though she accepted that the economy may be worse off as a result, the desire “to be an independent country on its own” came first. 

But it was the attempt to make people vote in a second referendum that pushed her to vote for the Brexit Party in 2019. “If someone’s voted for something in particular, just let them vote. You can’t change things [afterwards].” This was a message also reinforced by family members “ranting” against another referendum. 

But Sarah also admires another Farage-type figure; former US President Donald Trump. She says he’s not “scripted.” 

“He says how he feels and I think more people should be like that, rather than them having people whispering in your ear telling you what to say.” 

But when I put to Sarah that Trump was attacked for placing child refugees in cages on the border, and banning Muslims from entering the US, she insists that she’s against those things. 

“I don’t agree with that. I’m not racist. I think everybody’s equal,” she says determinedly, before qualifying her support for Trump.  “No, there’s some things I agree on, a lot of things with him I don’t agree with. People should never be racist or discriminate against anyone.” 

There is an indication here that Sarah’s politics are more fluid than some might think.

After all, she says she will vote for Plaid Cymru at the forthcoming Welsh Elections, and when I ask her whether she would vote for Welsh Independence, she pauses for a moment, as if she hasn’t really thought about it before, then says: “I think I’d vote for it. Yeah stand up, be strong. why not…sometimes you need to change. Sometimes change is good.”

Her answer is a sign that people’s politics does not necessarily map neatly onto polling tables, but can change and be contested by various political forces. 

Clearly, it would be a mistake for the independence movement or the left to turn their back on someone like Sarah because of her recent voting choices. But if that were to happen, it could open the door to the far right through something like the Abolish the Assembly Party, which appears to offer a ‘no nonsense’ offensive against an established politics that Sarah shows little sentimentality for. 

Elsewhere in Bargoed, the danger of far right politics gaining traction is evident when I meet two young men outside a shop, who tell me about growing up in the area and express strong anti-immigrant views. 

“I know some people say the area is rough,” says Rhys, in his early twenties, “but I’ve lived in Bargoed all my life like, so I haven’t really noticed it. I like living in Bargoed, probably stay here all my life as well.” 

Rhys admits that it’s hard to find any decent work in the area, and that he works in the building trade in Bristol. The money he gets for work there is better than what he might get in Bargoed. 

“There’s jobs around here,” Rhys says. “It’s just getting them half the time. You gotta have the experience and you gotta get an apprenticeship or college, do all that shit. So it is a bit hard to get a job.” 

Work has also dried up during the pandemic, or been on and off throughout, and as such he hasn’t been able to apply for Furlough. If he wasn’t living with his parents, it’s hard to see how he would have coped. He wants to move out, but says he’s been unable to save any money. 

His friend, Cory, is in a similar situation and also works in the construction trade over the bridge. When I ask him if there are many jobs in the local area, he just says, “No, nothing”

When asked about politics, both say they’re not interested. “No, I’m not into politics at all, I don’t follow the news and that,” Cory says. Both say they have never voted in their lives and they don’t intend to now. 

“I don’t see how it affects us,” Cory says. “Like leaving the EU, I don’t see how that’s going to affect us.”

“It doesn’t affect my job like,” says Rhys. “So I just didn’t really see the point, same as him.”

What does concern them, however, is the local area. Rhys jokes that Bargoed is a brilliant place if all you want in life is a kebab and a haircut, but there’s little else on offer for young people, even before Covid. 

Cory says there’s nothing to do despite the area being surrounded by countryside. “We live in the Valleys like, there should be more to do,” he protests. “All these mountains and that. If you want to do something, like go up a mountain on your motorbike, that’s wrong now isn’t it. Obviously you can’t do that.” 

Rhys says they used to go to youth clubs. but they’re too old for that now, and in any case, he’s doubtful there’s any left. Decent nightlife is something the pair say would massively improve the town. As it is, Cory says they are forced to go to Cardiff, even though he “hates” the capital. “Just wanna be around people you know,” he explains. “Like if you go to a pub down Bargoed, you know everyone like, it’s just like home.” 

The problem is that there are increasingly few pubs to go to. What used to be a thriving town built and sustained on the back of large scale industrial employment has seen money flow away from it in recent decades, a casualty of a wider economic restructuring under neoliberalism. 

The long term social effects are laid out clearly by Rhys and Cory. Both say that the easiest way to make money for young people is through selling drugs. They explain that people don’t even need money to start, and they can quickly make a profit to lift themselves out of poverty. Both say the issue of drug addiction is rife. 

But it is when they raise the question of immigration that the two young men start to get animated about politics. 

“Get ’em out of here, get all the immigrants out of here,” Cory says, as if it’s a strongly held view. 

I ask him to explain why, and if there is a big migrant population in Bargoed. 

“Not so much in the Valleys but you go to like Newport, and they’re everywhere,” he tells me. 

“I read earlier that up in Merthyr, they had Albanians running a weed factory up there,” Rhys adds. “They can come over here and they got more rights than us. It’s crazy…  I mean there’s homeless people and they [immigrants] get a house straight away.”

“I’m not sure that’s the case,” I respond, and say that there are also many homeless immigrants who get no money at all. “You seem to see them getting it more than our own people like,” says Rhys. 

When I probe a bit further they both qualify their thoughts by adding that the migrants they work with – who seem to be the only ones they have any direct experience of – are good people. 

But they say they would still vote for a politician who came along with a hard, anti-immigrant message. 

“Yeah yeah,100%,” says Cory. 

But they say they would also support a political platform which puts forward demands around decent wages and housing.

“I’d be up for that,” says Rhys. “Everything’s going up apart from the wages, and when it does go up, it’s only by a couple of pence anyway.” 

Cory says he has heard about some protests in Cardiff that are for legalising Cannabis, and he would go to one of those next time if it was on. 

Elsewhere in the town, I meet others who echo some of these sentiments. Each is different, but there is a common thread of economic deprivation feeding into the political vacuum. 

A woman called Faye, who is out with her grandchild in a pram, stops to talk. She says she has always voted Labour but hasn’t made her mind up about the upcoming Welsh Elections. Having lived in the area almost all her life, she says it has changed “quite a bit” over the years, with fewer shops now and “a lot of poor people around.” 

Unfortunately, Faye is finding it difficult to manage herself. On Universal Credit, she lives with her granddaughter and daughter, who is also out of work. After bills are paid, she has a very small amount of money to live off. “I do struggle,” she explains. “But you gotta put up with it.” 

A Remain voter in the referendum, Faye also raises the issue of immigration, and thinks it is a problem, albeit not in a major way, and links the issue to jobs. “There’s no jobs for the youngster,” she says. “They should let them have the jobs and not give it to them.” Faye reckons that “quite a lot” of people think like this in the area.

More importantly for her though, she believes that there needs to be change in the country, especially to help the homeless, something Faye knows about because she was once a street sleeper herself. Alarmingly, she has even noticed a rise of homeless people in Bargoed, sleeping near the Morrisons. 

On the day I visit, the town and high street are cold and quiet, with several closed shops and facilities. But under this sleepy exterior you can sense another political storm brewing. 

It was places like Bargoed that delivered Brexit in the early hours of June 24th 2016, just hours after much of the political establishment had gone to bed thinking that Remain would win. 

It is places like this in America that helped Donald Trump to victory in America and which may propel the fascist Marie Le Pen into power in France. It would be foolish to think that with the election of Joe Biden and the settling of the Brexit question that forces on the radical right have gone away. 

And while it is true to say that the class composition of such parties or political forces is indeed heavily made up of the more well-off and the traditional right, it’s also the case that some of the poorest can be drawn to the right as well, especially in a society where the political mainstream have drummed up anti-migrant racism for years. 

It’s not hard to see how a party like Abolish the Assembly could gain traction here. To many, they may appear to offer something tangible and change-making, even if all they offer is just direct Tory-rule. 

But the independence movement and the left can offer the promise of real radical change, one that is genuinely in favour of the majority of people. 

To do that, however, it would be a mistake to hitch itself to the record of Welsh Government. In the 22 year life span of devolution, Bargoed has witnessed a huge depletion of wealth and jobs. Yes, that began well before the Welsh Assembly came along, and the majority of the blame lies with Westminster, who have introduced devastating fiscal cuts. 

But that doesn’t mean Welsh Government are blameless, and many justifiably see it as part of a political establishment which has failed them. 

Opinion polling hides a strong current of disillusionment and dissatisfaction under the surface of Welsh politics, one that may break through at this election or at a future point. 

If the left or the independence movement don’t recognise that, then it will be the right who stands to gain the most from the political malaise.