7. Plaid Cymru Debate: High-risk tips

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:08 pm on 30 March 2022.

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Photo of Delyth Jewell Delyth Jewell Plaid Cymru 6:08, 30 March 2022

And Sioned talked about the duality, again, of the legacy of these tips, a legacy that inspired and injured. She reminded us that coal tips are not the only tips, of course, that need to be made safe, and, again, about the practical and psychological toll that these tips take when there's an identified risk but that can't yet be put right. That was very powerful.

Thank you, again, to the Deputy Minister for his response, for talking us through some more information about the trials on early warning systems, some reclamation options, and again reminding us that it's only morally right that Westminster should pay.

Llywydd, when we're talking about tips that stain our mountain sides, we're talking about blotches, stains, smears, marks on our collective memory, objects of shame. They ensure the ugliest, most cruel, perilous elements of mining have defiled and scarred communities. Mining has marked them all, but some marks wear thin. There's a cemetery in Llanfabon above Nelson and near where I live. I know almost every contour because all four of my grandparents are buried there. It's a beautiful cemetery. In lots of ways it's unremarkable, but there's at least one aspect that sets it apart. Along the northern wall, not far from the entrance, there's a row of 11 graves. In the middle of that row is a formal monument, but each of the graves is marked with the same words: 'Unknown. Albion explosion, 1894'. The monument itself has none of the names of those lost souls. It would appear there is no trace of their identity. I always find it hard to grasp how it could be that there would be no trace left of a human being. Perhaps their injuries meant that they were unidentifiable, but surely their families would have given up a list of the missing and the dead. Maybe none of them left behind any family. Perhaps the only people who knew them were the people who perished with them.

A total of 219 men and boys died in the Albion colliery disaster, but these 11 were further robbed in death by that most basic right—the right to have a name, to be known and remembered. A quarter of a century later, Rudyard Kipling chose the phrase 'known unto God' for Commonwealth graves of unknown soldiers. It's just as suitable for these 11 men, since no mortal mourned their passing. They left no trace, no mark, no signal they had ever lived, drawn breath, laboured and died. There is a perverse cruelty in the fact that, in these tips, we are left with a constant physical memory of an industry that, at its worst moments, wiped men and boys from the face of the earth without mark or trace. And those who lived, the lucky ones, had the dust, as it was referred to—in the Valleys, dust doesn't mean something that you just wipe off surfaces; it was the name for the crippling disease that disabled generations of men and left them gasping for breath. That is mining's legacy. So too are these tips the scars that hide in plain sight. We cannot bring back the memory of those known only unto God, but we can honour their memory, and honour the sacrifices of all miners and all who lost so much in those years. We cannot wipe the slate clean, but we can at least try to balance the books. I hope this motion will pass. I hope that, in the corridors of Westminster, some justice can at last be done.