Mariam Kamish, Rhondda Cynon Taff (RCT) Socialist Party
“Shame on you!” roared the crowd outside the RCT council offices in Pontypridd. “Stop the quarry! Whose mountain? Our mountain!”
After a magnificent march from the quarry, 200 adults and kids had arrived with banners and placards.
The blue stone at Craig yr Hesg is 70% quartz, ie silica. Which makes its chippings used for road building highly skid resistant.
Silica dust – proven to cause cancer – falls from the sky. Yet, the council says the high rates of asthma, COPD and cancer are anecdotal.
Greed
Kids in Glyncoch are breathing silica dust to make a nice road surface. What an indictment of capitalist greed and indifference!
The Labour council has allowed multinational Heidelberg to rip out the mountain for years. In 2014, it sold 27 acres for an extension for £4,000 – and mineral rights for £2.2 million. But when the Labour-led Senedd granted a further extension last year, people in Glyncoch organised to fight back.
The campaign demands the council makes the greatest possible use of its powers to monitor and regulate the quarry – and to be transparent – while campaigners are trying to get the quarry shut down. The council has delayed the build of a new school to protect slow worms. Why won’t they use their powers to protect children?
Houses in Glyncoch shake like there’s an earthquake, every time a blast comes. They shake when the massive lorries pound by.
The blasts terrify the kids. The quarry is now only 164 metres from the school. In Germany – home of Heidelberg HQ – legally, the distance would be 1,000 metres.
Houses come right to the quarry fence. Massive cracks have opened in walls and ceilings, but the council still sends out full council tax bills.
People think of Glyncoch as ‘just a council estate’. They don’t know what it’s like to live on the mountain with all that nature and beauty. Sunsets to make you weep, rare species. Views you’d travel miles for – if you only knew.
Heidelberg is taking that mountain. Ripping down landmark trees people love. Destroying quiet places people come to just ‘be’.
Not backing down
But the heroic working-class fighters of the Save Craig yr Hesg campaign are determined to stop them. They stood in front of lorries for weeks. Dragged off the land by security. Pushed by the lorries. Young kids got up at six every morning to picket before school. Until the company got an injunction to clear the road.
The campaign has taken the fight to the council and the Senedd. They can’t retrieve what’s already been lost. But they’re in this to win, and they won’t back down.
The Socialist Party has joined the fight, and we’re in it to the end. We say: unless we build a movement to challenge capitalism, profit will always come before people.
We demand RCT council:
- Intervenes to safeguard human health, using all its powers to stop quarry expansion and close it
- Repairs the damage to houses and the environment, at no cost to residents
- Puts in place a plan to guarantee alternative well-paid, trade-union organised, jobs for the workforce
