[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Open Veins of Wales

[Bill Totten]

Dr Beeching helped turn the country I've come to love into an outpost of
empire. Now his legacy can be reversed.

by George Monbiot

The Guardian {December 30 2008}


A strange thing has happened to me over the two years since I moved to
Wales. I have become susceptible to a novel and disturbing sensation:
pride in my adopted country. England, the land of my birth, means
nothing to me. The same goes for Britain. I despise nationalism. But I
have been overtaken by an irrational impulse. I find myself supporting
Wales in rugby, football (someone's got to do it, and we did beat
Liechtenstein) and all its competing claims against other nations.

This impulse arises from a number of observations, viz:

1. In two years of walking through the valleys and over the hills here,
I have never been shouted at.

2. The cafe in the local leisure centre serves smoothies in measures
labelled "small" (about a pint) and "regular" (about two pints).

3. When I wrote to a very active councillor, asking his permission to
recommend him for a gong, he replied, "I would prefer not to seek such
an honour".

Through such observations, I have begun to form the impression that
Wales is less socially stratified, less grasping, more liberal than the
rest of Britain. Though I am an outsider, from the colonial power, with
an unerring ability to wind people up, I have never been made to feel
unwelcome here. And it seldom rains here, and then only at night.
(That's not strictly true, but this is what nationalism does}.

In this spirit I have to record that something is missing. Its absence
offends my new-found national pride. It mocks our attempt to become a
coherent country. It means that the Gogs (of North Wales) and the Hwntws
(of South Wales) will forever be at each other's throats. It means that
the greenest nation in the UK is locked into unsustainability. It is
also bleeding ridiculous. As far as I can discover, this is the only
country in Europe which you cannot traverse by rail without spending
most of the journey passing through another. The only rail link which
allows you to travel from north to south crosses the border near
Llangollen and doesn't re-enter Wales until it approaches Abergavenny,
100 miles away.

The railway map of Wales is a classic indicator of an extractive
economy. The lines extend either towards London or towards the ports. As
Eduardo Galeano established in The Open Veins of Latin America, the
infrastructure of a country is a guide to the purpose of its development
{1}. If the main roads and railways form a network, linking the regions
and the settlements within the regions, they are likely to have been
developed to enhance internal commerce and mobility. If they resemble a
series of drainage basins, flowing towards the ports and borders, they
are likely to have been built to empty the nation of its wealth for the
benefit of another. Like Latin America, Wales is poor because it was so
rich. Its abundant natural resources gave rise to an extractive system,
designed to leave as little wealth behind as possible.

Just as the railway network was developed largely for the benefit of
another economy, it was dismantled for the same purpose. Wales was hit
very hard by the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. Before that, one of the
lines which could have been used as part of a North-South railway was
flooded by Llyn Celyn, a reservoir which drowned the village of Capel
Celyn in order to supply water to Liverpool. It was this act of
enclosure which inspired RS Thomas's famous poem Reservoirs, in which he
mourned

... the smashed faces
Of the farms with the stone trickle
Of their tears down the hills' side.

The dam wall was built across the Bala to Ffestiniog line.

Before Beeching, a handful of minor routes existed, which could have
enabled a determined passenger who was prepared to make a few changes to
travel from north to south, but there was no line either conceived or
used as a long distance railway connecting the nation. Could such a
railway be built? Thanks to the efforts of a remarkable man, the idea is
beginning to seep into the national consciousness.

Archimandrite Deiniol is the only Orthodox priest serving in North
Wales. Bull-headed, magnificently bearded, he is the spokesman for Yn
Ein Blaenau, a group set up to lobby for the regeneration of Blaenau
Ffestiniog, one of the country's poorest communities. Unlike many other
depressed Welsh towns, Blaenau has a way out: but it is blocked. It is
surrounded - hideously - by the waste from its slate workings. The
British government has a policy of replacing virgin building stone with
mining spoil and rubble. The slate waste around Blaenau would supply
Britain with roadstone for years, but it's stuck there until the Conwy
Valley railway line is upgraded. Father Deiniol has been negotiating
with the byzantine network of railway companies, authorities and
regulators, and has so far been frustrated.

But in doing so, he has learnt a good deal about how the railways of the
United Kingdom work - or don't. He has also discovered that a railway
can be critical to a region's regeneration, and that the north-south
roads in Wales are close to gridlock.

There are plenty of lobbyists calling for new roads, but Father
Deiniol's plan is likely to be cheaper and more sustainable. His survey
of the disused railway lines of Wales shows that there is one route -
from Rhyl through Denbigh, Rhuthun, Corwen, Newtown, Llanidloes, Rhaeadr
and Builth Road to Dowlais - which would require only two miles of new
formation to link Holyhead to Cardiff {2}. The rest of the way makes use
of current and former railways. He proposes that short feeder lines also
be built connecting this trunk route to Mold, Llangollen, Oswestry,
Bala, Hay-on-Wye and Brecon {3}.

The One-Wales Line could not only offer a much faster journey than the
current long detour through England, it would also knit the other
railways of Wales into a coherent network, as it uses the north coast
railway and crosses the Cambrian line and the Shrewsbury to Swansea
line. It would help to regenerate a desperately poor region in the south
called the Heads of the Valleys. The project would look rather like the
Western Railway Corridor in Ireland, which is reopening 184 kilometres
of disused lines between Limerick and Sligo {4}.

The least the Welsh Assembly Government should do is to commission a
feasibility study and cost-benefit analysis of Father Deiniol's plan.
His railway would help Wales looks like a country again, rather than a
depot for someone else's empire.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Eduardo Galeano, 1971. Originally published as Las Venas Abiertas de
America Latina. Siglo XXI Editores.

2. Tad Deiniol, 3rd February 2008. Proposal for a Direct, All-Wales,
Holyhead to Cardiff Fast Rail Link. Yn Ein Blaenau. If you would like a
copy of this document, I can send it to you.

3. Tad Deiniol, 2008. Map of Proposed North South Rail Link and Feeder
Lines. Yn Ein Blaenau. If you would like a copy of this document, I can
send it to you.

4. See http://www.westontrack.com/

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com | site by Tom Dyson

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/12/30/the-open-veins-of-wales/


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