The Fight for Survival Wales in the Eighties

In the '80s, Wales was inspired by men and women

who followed their dreams, and through their spirit,

they would help revitalise the nation.

Here was part of the cultural heritage of Wales that was

so important to try and preserve.

We were teaching people, they would come for a course,

learn to surf and then they would be hooked completely,

come to our beaches every weekend and surf here.

I wanted to show that the same passion

and commitment was there in both languages for the one thing,

and that was for Wales, and let's bring it together.

This is the story of the trailblazers,

whose passion for Welsh heritage led the nation's fight for survival.

Wales in the 1980s became

a battleground for the preservation of industrial heritage.

After the loss of thousands of jobs in coal and steel,

local authorities were desperate to attract new industries to Wales.

Many in power wanted to do away with the old,

but this was sacrilege for those who treasured the past.

Historian and TV presenter Richard Keen crossed swords with

a local councillor responsible for regeneration of industrial sites.

We were talking about the preservation of a coal mine,

and he was banging his desk with his fist and saying to me,

"I will not rest

"until I've removed every piece

"of the symbol of subjection from my landscape!"

And I thought, "Whoa, hang on, symbols of subjection."

So I said to him, "OK, fine, you see that as a symbol of subjection."

I said, "Well, what about Caerphilly Castle?

"What greater symbol of Welsh subjection

"can you get than Caerphilly Castle?"

I said, "Surely we should be bulldozing that as well."

He said, "No, no, no!" He said, "You can't do that, that's history."

And there was this lovely construct concept about

what was history...

and what wasn't history.

The '80s became a race against time for those who cared

passionately about the preservation of industrial sites.

Closure of coal mines accelerated rapidly after the miners' strike

was lost in 1985.

It left many miners' lives turned upside down

and the valleys transformed.

I was in a former miner's house and he was standing in the bay window of

his house, which overlooked the site of the pit where he worked, and he

was standing with his back to me and he was looking out on this area now,

which was a swathe of green grass blowing gently in the breeze, and he

said, almost to himself, and he said,

"What the hell was that all about?"

And in that one statement there was...

He encapsulated...

the change from the industrial to the post-industrial society.

# If I could see the Rhondda

# Once again

# And walk where I used to

# Run as a child

# The dust from that coal

# Made its mark upon my soul

# And I'd love to see the Rhondda

# One more time. #

But for those who saw a future in the past, all was not lost.

Historians and mining engineers mounted a concerted campaign

to save Big Pit in Blaenavon, Torfaen.

They identified it as the only colliery in South Wales

where it would be practical and safe to take visitors underground

and give them an experience of what mining was like.

Big Pit opened to the public in 1983.

One of the curators was Brian Davies.

I suppose, to my generation, it seemed self-evident that we

should have a museum of what had been the major industry

in South Wales for, really, 100 years.

It seemed just a huge gap, you know, a presentation of our history.

Right from the start, curators said the story of coal should be

told by the people who worked in the industry.

It wasn't difficult to find miners to take

the jobs as guides in the museum.

I thought it was absolutely essential to have ex-miners

take the visitors around and tell the story.

On days when we were really busy, I'd put a cap lamp on

and do it myself for a couple of hours,

and I could get it historically right, I could get it academically

right, but I couldn't tell the kind of personal stories that the man

who'd worked underground could tell,

and it's generally the stories

with a personal element to it that

visitors relate to most readily.

And it was noticeable that the miners were quite happy

to stay on well past their nominal retirement age, frankly,

because this was the first time

that they had had the opportunity to talk to people

about a job which had been their life, and they hugely enjoyed it.

In the '80s, the communities of long established industries

were struggling.

With each wave of redundancies,

their traditional way of life was fading into history.

Yet some things they loved survived,

thanks to a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Peter Thomas came from a family renowned for the quality

of its meat pies in Merthyr Tydfil.

The miners lived in an era where their entertainment

was in their locality.

Wonderful shows in the clubs,

with the singers and the comedians

and all sorts of entertainment, and it was the pies

and the pint, you know, it was

because of those wonderful people that our business became successful.

The Thomas brothers transformed their father's business

into a multi-million pound company,

selling their Welsh pies all over Britain.

They employed 600 people at their new factory in Bedwas, Caerphilly.

But to Peter, it was like one big family.

I never left the factory floor, that was my domain.

And it was all about the people. We had a family

of people in Bedwas,

and I'd go from one department to the other,

and I knew everybody by name.

Minnie Mitchell, Mary the Farm... There's

so many characters. Lil Connick...

Morvey Jones, Terry Foley,

our production director,

John Griffiths, marketing, Mel Jones on sales.

We'd been together as a family for many, many, many years

and we knew each other's strengths and we worked as a team.

It was loyalty and trust in people.

Even Wales' oldest industry, agriculture, was changing fast.

In April 1984, dairy farmers vented their anger at the government

over the sudden introduction of European milk quotas.

The dramatic fall in the price of milk

left many farmers facing bankruptcy.

One farmer's wife, who felt the protestors needed more publicity,

was Thelma Adams in Pembrokeshire.

It was very difficult to get the message across of the plight

that the farmers were in, so I went home and I thought a bit,

and then I remembered the story of Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen,

who bathed in milk because water was too common for her, so I thought,

"Well, maybe that is a way to get the message across that now is the

"very opposite for us, because milk is cheaper to bathe in than water."

Thelma and her friends dressed as Cleopatra

and each sat in a bath of milk on a trailer.

The convoy of protesters then made its way into Carmarthen.

They made their point, but the quotas remained.

If the farmers were to survive, they had to come up with a way

to use the surplus milk from their cows.

Thelma Adams was inspired to make a Caerphilly cheese to her own recipe,

but when she and her husband, Gwynfor, produced it commercially,

Thelma was in charge of quality control.

I was always interested in cheese making

and I insisted that I only make cheese

if Gwynfor milked the cows. And I never, ever departed from that rule.

You get a consistency then, and you can be 100% certain that you've

followed that milk from the way it was milked to the finished article.

That approach brought outstanding success,

right from the start of production.

The Adams called their cheese Caws Cenarth,

and limited the amount the sold to what they could produce themselves.

So although it was not widely available in Wales, good publicity

attracted customers to the farm to buy it directly from Thelma.

It was very important to bridge the gap between the farmer

and the housewife, and one way of doing that was to open

the farm up to people to come and watch cheese making,

free of charge, and for me to have the time to talk to them.

We wanted to welcome people from all over the world to come

to our farm and appreciate the beautiful scenery

and the way that we lived, our simple lives.

And even after a hard day's work, we would have people

come in at 7.30 for me to give a talk.

I don't know where I got the energy from, to be honest,

but, you know, you were carried away with enthusiasm of the thing.

You get a glow from that, that they like what you're doing.

Thelma became the leading light

in a renaissance of traditional cheese making in West Wales.

In the North, the once mighty slate industry was fighting for its life.

By the 1980s, the skills needed to turn slate into a commercial product

were fast disappearing as, one by one, the quarries were closing.

Here at the National Slate Museum near Llanberis, Richard Keen

recorded the work of men who were at the heart of the local community.

The quarrying of slate demanded very, very special skills, and these skills

depended very much on understanding the material that you were working.

How you quarry the enormous blocks from the mountainside,

from the quarry face, and how you break them down

into a workable size, constantly breaking them down,

and then being able to split those blocks

into very, very fine pieces of slate.

Now that was something that was learnt

father to son, brother to brother,

very much kept in the family, whose culture extended beyond the quarry.

It was very much part and parcel of the community.

So many of them belonged to choirs, they belonged to debating groups,

they would belong to reading groups.

There was this whole sense of community,

and they were so deeply imbued with what they did.

The skills of different generations would be

remembered for ever in the museum.

So here was part of the cultural heritage of Wales that was

so important to try and preserve.

But in the '80s, there was also a very different fight for preservation

involving industry... and it was led by surfers,

determined to clean up the seas around the coastline of Wales.

# I used to think maybe you love me

# Now, baby, I'm sure... #

The waves at Aberavon were particularly good for surfing,

and such was the quality of home grown talent, half the British team

at the World Surfing Championships were Welsh.

Among them was Linda Sharp, who grew up next to the beach at Aberavon.

The feeling of actually being on the wave, riding the wave,

nothing else to think of, it is a complete escapism

because you can't... you can't think of anything else,

you have to completely concentrate on what you're doing

at the moment. And you're basically on your own, it's you and the sea.

You don't have to fight it, you just have to go with it.

But it's such a good feeling.

It's just fabulous.

# And don't it feel good?

# All right now And don't it feel good?

# Yeah... #

Surfers were coming to the South Wales coastline

from all over Britain, attracted by the establishment of the

nation's first proper surfing school, nearby on the Gower Peninsula.

We were, in the very early '80s, teaching people in South Wales

to learn to surf safely.

They would come for a course, learn to surf

and then they would be hooked completely,

come to our beaches every weekend and surf here.

So, through the '80s, we just saw it grow and grow and grow and grow.

The spin-off from that was just a huge boom in the surfing industry.

The wetsuit manufacturing, the board manufacturing, the surf shops.

# Let me hear your body talk

# Let's get physical, physical... #

However, there was a major problem that threatened

this fledgling industry - pollution.

The issue became serious

when Welsh surfers hosted a national competition for the first time.

We brought the British Masters Championships to Aberavon,

and two days afterwards, we had reports

that 80% of the competitors had gone down with some kind of bug.

We were ashamed and angry that we were presenting fabulous waves,

fantastic venue, but it made everyone ill.

The whole of the Bristol Channel and the whole of the Gower Peninsula,

the water was absolutely filthy.

There was industry everywhere, there was

very little control about how the industry were getting rid

of their waste, it was just going into the sea. And on top of that,

the sewage in this area wasn't being treated properly so we,

in South Wales, as surfers, decided, "We've had enough of this,

"we'll get ourselves organised, pull ourselves together,"

and we formed an association,

together with people in Cornwall, called Surfers Against Sewage.

The campaigns included going up to Parliament

dressed in our surfboards and wetsuits, going up and just

standing by the door, just showing them we need something changed,

so there were a lot of campaigns like that

and ultimately they worked.

The Aberavon coast was awarded Blue Flag status in 2007.

Winning awards for conservation and preservation was crucial

to those who cared deeply about the heritage of Wales.

Throughout the '80s, Richard Keen was closely involved with

the saving of Blaenavon iron works, that many regarded as an eyesore.

But for him, the old industrial site was

so important, it was worthy of the highest recognition.

I spoke to the World Heritage people and said, "Look, I think

"there's an opportunity here, come and have a look,

"see what you think,

"whether or not this is a contender for World Heritage."

They saw the potential, they saw this totality of the landscape

and they said, "Yes, we think that this may well be a contender."

We had to give it that status

so that it became the same kind of status as the Taj Mahal

or the Great Wall Of China. This was of supreme significance, and I think

it was... My role was very much in telling that story,

in getting out and about, in giving talks, in writing papers,

in attending meetings

and constantly repeating and re-repeating that story.

It was giving it context, giving its place in our heritage.

The Blaenavon industrial landscape was made

a World Heritage Site

in 2000.

What happened in the 1980s

was that we had

the reclamation of industrial sites that were an integral

and important part of the history and the change in culture and

community that had taken place in Wales over the past 200, 250 years.

The 1980s saw no let up in the drive to preserve the Welsh culture

and its language.

Leader of Plaid Cymru Gwynfor Evans went on hunger strike until the

Tory government committed the fourth TV channel for the Welsh language.

Sianel Pedwar Cymru, S4C, started broadcasting on

November 1st 1982.

Gary Slaymaker was a student at the time.

I was in college on the opening night of S4C, and we all

gathered in the common room,

in front of the big telly we'd rented, and just

sat there and watched from start to finish the first evening of S4C.

There's a term that quite often was used demeaningly for S4C,

which was "ein sianel cartrefol" - "our friendly little channel".

And it felt comfortable, like Dad and Mam programmes.

It was the kind of thing that your Auntie Glenys wouldn't get

upset by, but you never really felt there was anything for us

out there, for the 20 pluses.

Kids were being catered for. I mean,

it was really strange in the early days of S4C. The kids'

programmes, I thought, were way, way better than the adults' programmes.

Yng nghanol rhes of dedis bach cyffredin roedd un heb gael ei...

SuperTed was a runaway hit

and quickly boosted the profile of the new TV channel.

It's creator, Mike Young,

produced the series in Cardiff to help build up local talent.

Nid tedi cyffredin mohono bellach...

It was the fact that he was a Welsh speaking superhero teddy bear

and the fact that the series was based in Cardiff, because

the opening titles, you were outside Cardiff Castle, so all of a sudden

you know where SuperTed is based and you're going, "How cool is this?"

HE SCREAMS

The success of SuperTed

kick-started the animation industry in the capital.

O! Ti wedi newid, SuperTed.

S4C was at the vanguard of a media revolution,

bringing independent Welsh language programmes to the screens.

The well-funded dramas were a great opportunity for actors

like Sharon Morgan.

What was wonderful about it was that it was people who really believed

in Wales and giving Wales a voice,

who are now making the programmes,

as opposed to people who are working for a large company, corporations

from outside Wales.

And so that was really, really heartening.

There was a tremendous self-belief, a tremendous confidence

and excitement about it at the beginning, it was amazing,

it was wonderful.

Rhtthy Dwr, 114, take one.

Action!

The budget of S4C, really, was fantastic,

and during the '80s, I went to Italy twice, to Brittany

for a fortnight, to Amsterdam,

to make drama programmes for S4C,

and it was...that was, in itself, was a fantastic thing to do, really,

because we felt very European. We were now, because of S4C, in a sense,

we had a stake in the world and it wasn't confined just to Wales,

that we could go and make programmes abroad where,

you know, they were all in Welsh,

but that we could be part of Europe, we could be part of the world, and

that was very exciting, because the budgets did allow that to happen.

Ni'n dechrau deall ein gilydd, o'r diwedd.

Though there were high hopes for S4C, Welsh language activists

continued campaigning on issues like English immigration,

education and equal status of the language.

Many people were driven to break the law, even though there was

a strong possibility of arrest and imprisonment.

Sharon Morgan was arrested after painting

slogans on the walls of the Welsh Office.

We were arrested and I spent the afternoon in a police cell.

We were only there for a matter of, well, I don't know,

hours, but it was incredible when we were released. My gosh,

I take my... I don't know how people do it.

Just the sense of the loss of your freedom for that amount of time,

you know, is incredible, so I have tremendous admiration for all

those people who spent so long in jail.

Many, many members of the Welsh Language Society have been

jailed for months and months, and years sometimes,

for what they've done for the Welsh language and culture.

But the 1980s saw some activists take the campaign to a whole new level -

the burning of holiday homes.

The tactic was to destroy property that they felt should have

been available for the local population.

This extremely controversial campaign shocked many people in Wales.

23 of those arrested for the crimes were put on probation.

Another was jailed. In all,

there were over 200 arson attacks.

One Welsh musician who did not agree with the campaign of arson

was Mike Peters of The Alarm.

I didn't want Wales to become locked in this terrorist battle,

didn't want to see...

I was all for the peaceful protests

and the direct action about saving the language, but when it got into

real violence and that somebody's life could have been lost, I thought

we would lose all sympathy for the battle...

and so I spoke out about it.

Mae'n ddrwg gen i. Dydw i ddim yn siarad Cymraeg.

Rydw i'n dysgu siarad Cymraeg.

Sorry, I don't speak Welsh, but I'm learning the language.

APPLAUSE

Mike Peters voiced his concerns to the Welsh Language Society

in Aberystwyth and at concerts across Wales.

There are people waging an arson campaign in this country.

And I feel and believe that it is time

to speak out about that, because I believe that...

..that should their campaign bring about the loss of life,

and I feel that that loss of life could be very, very imminent,

I feel that that would affect every single person here in Wales.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We must now speak out against all acts of violence.

We needed to be beyond that kind of stuff,

we needed to strengthen our voice through unity

and find a Welsh voice that was...

that could embrace everybody who

lived in Wales, whether they spoke the language or not.

In 1989, The Alarm released their new album in two language versions.

MUSIC: Dim Ffiniau by The Alarm

Gary Slaymaker worked as a DJ on Radio Cymru at the time.

I think I used to play at least two Alarm tracks in Welsh every

week on the radio show, and it was excellent because you'd be able

to hear The Alarm tracks going out on Radio Wales

and The Alarm's Welsh tracks going out on Radio Cymru,

and no-one had done this that I recalled.

And even if you weren't the big Alarm fan,

by the time you'd heard the Welsh language version,

"Oh, I'll have to go and watch this band."

# Going out in a blaze of glory Setting your sights for the sky

# They can offer you anything at all

# But your dreams must not be sold... #

I consider myself to be Welsh,

and just because I couldn't speak the language,

I did not consider myself any less Welsh than somebody who did.

So I thought if I built a bridge into my own culture,

I could make a difference, you know, and I thought the only way

I could do it is through music, really, that's what I know.

I wanted to show that it was the same passion

and commitment that was there in both languages, for the one thing,

and that was for Wales, and let's bring it together.

# Early one morning

# Across the fields of dawn

# Crooked is the shadow

# That falls on my land

# Storm clouds overhead

# Like birds of prey in wait

# How can we undo

# What cannot be undone?

# I feel the darkness heavy

# Heavy on my heart

# There's distance between us

# Tearing us apart

# Oo, mi groesai'r afon drosot ti

# Stormydd ar y gorwel

# Cymylau yn y gwynt

# Oo, mi groesai'r afon drosot ti!

# A'r cyffro'n gwneud

# I'm calon guro'n gynt ac yn gynt... #

The burning of holiday homes ceased a few years later.

Mike Peters personified the fighting spirit that brought Wales

together in its battle for survival in the '80s.

It was this kind of tenacious spirit that helped the nation

overcome a painful industrial decline

and face the future with confidence and pride.

# Oh, how many rivers must I cross?

# Somehow, somewhere I will find a way

# To cross. #