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| Ray Davies with his book at Bedwas Library launch |
By Andy Brooks
Ray
Davies needs little introduction to New
Worker readers. Seldom does a week go by without a letter from the veteran
Labour councillor and peace campaigner or a report about the Côr Cochion
Caerdydd (Cardiff Reds Choir) that Ray has played a major part for many years.
But older readers will also remember his
tremendous efforts in the anti-poll tax campaign and the epic miners’ strike
from the New Worker reports from the
late Denis Martin, the NCP comrade who worked closely with Ray on the Rhymney
Valley Miners Support Group during the 12 month strike that tragically ended in
defeat in 1985.
Ray was persuaded by fellow members
of the support group to write this memoir about how the rock-solid miners and
the local community closed ranks around the pickets to raise the money and food
that sustained the strike through the bitter years of the Thatcher era.
Ray had first-hand experience of
life in the pits as a boy miner before the coal companies were nationalised in
1947. The back-breaking work, appalling conditions and miserable wages that
were the norm in those days are graphically described in the opening chapter
which also paints a picture of life in a Welsh mining village in the 1940s.
Ray, a union activist and a member
of the Young Communist League from the start, was soon plunged into struggle
and this continued throughout his life as a militant member of the Labour Party
after he left the pits to become a steel worker.
When Arthur Scargill and the NUM
threw down the gauntlet to the Thatcher government that was determined to smash
the miners’ union and destroy the mining industry Ray was at the fore-front
joining the pickets and fighting to build solidarity with the miners who were
fighting for the entire working class in their battle to stop the closures.
The role of the communist movement
within the South Wales Miners Federation that later became the South Wales Area
of the NUM is covered in the narrative as well as the struggles within the
Welsh Labour Party and the labour movement as a whole during the big strike.
But the author mainly focuses on his personal experiences on the picket line,
in clashes with the police and in the day-to-day problems of building a support
group to give the reader a priceless window into the world of militant struggle
that was 1980s Britain.
Though this is a short book it
nevertheless makes an important contribution to the labour history of south
Wales. Peppered with illustrations and contemporary photos A Miners Life is a fitting tribute to all the miners and all
who stood by them during those hard months of struggle and at £6.00 a copy well
within the means of the average reader.
All profits from its sale will go to
CISWO, the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation, to help ex-miners and
their families affected by injury or illness and it can be obtained by sending
£6, plus £1.50 postage and packing, to:
Ray
Davies
172
Pandy Rd
Bedwas
Caerphilly
CF83
8EP
Alternatively
copies are available from the Bedwas, St Cenydd, Abertridwr, Machen, Caerphilly
Visitor Centre and the Winding House New Tredegar libraries.
