How Green Was My Valley

How Green was my valley is a story about a Welsh mining family in the late 1800's.

This clip is about the conflict caused in the family when their wages have been undercut by people from outside their area coming in and doing their jobs for less money.

It is a warning to us now of what is happening with the importation of cheap foreign labour today.

In this video, the father with old fashioned values of decency and fairness does not realise the true nature of the company that employs him and his sons.

As a spokesman for the miners, he accepts the companies argument about the "current financial climate" and the need for a drop in their wages, but his sons know the real truth. The cuts are about the greed of the pit owners and one shows the future when he holds up an empty metal lunch box that is used underground.

The father says that "They are men to like us" to which one of his sons responds with; "Men yes but not like us".

And those words are as true today as when the novel was written in 1939. The world and business is run by men but not men like us. They are cold parasitic creatures that care only about their own lives, comfort and wealth. The rest work for the price of a meal or starve.

In Wales today, you will find many people with broad Welsh accents with names like McDonald and O'Dowd. Scottish and Irish names, they are the descendants of starving workers who were brought into the Welsh Valleys to undercut the local workers and destroy the trade union movements that were fighting for better conditions.

And their descendants are now welcome but at the time there was bitter animosity between the imported job takers who were referred to as "Scotch Cattle" and the native Welsh.

The local people knew the interlopers had no choice, it was work or starve for them. But their arrival threatened their own existence and that is happening again now. And the only ones to profit then as now were the corrupt and crooked bosses. Because they have power and we have none. It must change.

Now I know you have watched the video and I am only repeating what I have seen also but I believe there are important comparisons to be made as to what is happening in Our Country now.

The father is punished for being an unofficial spokesman and wants nothing to do with "politics", he does not realise that politics and action are sometimes something people have to get involved in, if their way of life is to be preserved and improved.

We have seen how The Establishment have persecuted Our Spokesmen and nationalist activists who have been falsely detained. As another sons say;
"But if they learn they can do things like that to the spokesmen, what will they try and do with the men?". Well we know the answer to that.

Finally the last line from me and taken from near the end of the clip.

"But if manners prevent us from speaking the truth,
we will be without manners"