The other week, we received very depressing news. The most recent Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation showed that the St James Ward of Caerphilly contained the second poorest sub-ward in Wales – Lansbury Park.
This report needs to be taken seriously, not least because the Index uses a range of indicators to identify relative poverty – income, unemployment, health, education, housing, physical environment, and community safety.
The reasons why Lansbury Park is such a poor area are complex and far from straight-forward. However, it is safe to argue that as the economic down-turn became sharper, so those who were already finding it difficult to make ends meet found things more and more difficult. This tends to reinforce what is happening throughout the UK. That is the poorer are getting poorer, while the super rich are becoming even more prosperous.
The surest way to improve the wealth of individuals is to improve their employment prospects. One of the myths all too often heard is that ‘people get rich on benefits’. The truth is that people who are in work are almost always better off than those who are not, and the first phase of the economic downturn hit manufacturing hard and, in an area like Caerphilly, manufacturing is still important.
Looking to the future, we are likely to see the public sector coming under increasing strain. Central Government cuts are working their way down to the Welsh Assembly and from there to local government. Central government agencies, like the Tax and Social Security Offices are also in the process of making deep cuts.
How are things to be changed? Obviously, the policies of central government are critical. Despite devolution, the quality of people’s lives is largely determined by macro-economic factors which are controlled by London. It follows that the Tory-led Government must change its policies or, better still, the Government itself must be changed.
Clearly, the Welsh Government has an important role in doing its utmost to mitigate the effect of any reduction of its block grant from Westminster. But crucially Caerphilly County Borough Council has a vital role to play in addressing issues at a local level. Rather than harping on about how it is not increasing the Council Tax, it would be far better if the Council came forward with some policies about how to tackle poverty in Lansbury Park.
Wayne David
Labour MP for Caerphilly
Ivan Lewis MP, who represents Bury South for the Labour Party, has stated that the general public is disillusioned with the Labour Party because they(the Party) think they are there to represent a metropolitan elite, and have little contact with the lives of the ordinary person in the street. Wayne David`s comments on the fact that the St James ward contained the second poorest sub-ward in Wales is a good confirmation of Ivan Lewis`s comments. Who does Wayne David think was in power from 1997 to 2010, I thought it was the Labour Party, and if any one is responsible for the problems of Lansbury Park it has to be the Labour Party, on a national and local scale. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown transformed the Labour Party from a party for the working man into a centre right party for the suburban middle class, remember the way they ditched Clause 4 and all the socialist ideals that it encapsulated. They then sucked up to the City and the Banks and let manufacturing in Britain wither on the vine, which lead to the haemoraging of jobs thorughout Britain. Then, rather than support the interests of the people who put them in power, the working class, they let casino capitalism create an overlarge and overmighty finacial sector that perverted the economic model of the country, creating in the words one one columnist an overpaid publicly subsidised City squatting like a toad on a low paid low skill country. We had a Labour Government unwilling to subdise jobs in manufacturing, yet when their friends in the City almost bankrupted the country,were able to divert public money, i.e. taxes, paid by the ordinary person, like those in Lansbury Park, to save the banks, with the result that we have to suffer years of austerity, unemployment and deprivation because the Labour Government didnt have the backbone to stand up to the bankers and bailed them out with public money. Its no good blaming the Plaid Lead Caerphilly County Borough Council, for the problems, the fault is in the failure of the Labour Party, over the years in Government to stand up for its own people, one could even say its the fault of our Labour MP, whos quite happy being a member of the metropolitan elite and a member of the best club in London, the House of Commons.
I was born in Penyrheol, more than 50 years ago, and have lived in, and around, this town all my life; apart from brief stints working abroad. During the whole of this time I have never known Lansbury Park to be considered anything other than a deprived area. I cannot understand why, just because it is published in a report that the area is poor, it has suddenly become news.
I will leave all the arguing as to the, apportioning, of blame for the deprivation of Lansbury Park to politicians. People who have only just realised the scale of the problem must have been walking around with their eyes firmly closed for the last 40 plus years.
Both John, O and Richard appear intent on establishing that the `current` levels of deprivation in Lansbury Park are all down to successive central government policy failures.
Whilst it is clear that central government, and Welsh Assembly policy has a clear and defined footprint in respect to issues of Child poverty, Health care provisions, and other specific measurements of a communities deprivation, there are processes in place which local communities can do to lift themselves and their citizens out of this melancholy.
The Department of Works and Pension have a responsibility to this community in relation to providing skills training and job application opportunities.
The Wales Council for Voluntary Action, Gwent Association of Voluntary Organisations, and the Caerphilly CBC all employ Community Development and Project Officers, to work specifically in Lansbury Park to initiate Community Projects which could recognise needs and initiate projects which would, for instance,improve health care provisions. They could provide centres which could provide training in work related and educational skills which could lead to those taking part being better trained to apply for jobs.
The Gwent Police, the Health Boards and the councils housing department, Education department, youth development officers employed by the council, Ward Councillors, and the councils Cabinet all have a responsibility to deal with the issues of deprivation and a duty to the Lansbury Park community as a whole, and do all they can to lift this ward out of its current position in these Indexes.
It is a cop-out to suggest this is all down to years of central government neglect and policy failure, that does however play a large part in it, but, no-one has yet told me how this small area of St James Ward is such an area of deprivation whilst it sits in the middle of other wards of relative affluence????, particularly if John, O`s and Richards play on this problem is correct, and, if it is indeed down to years of abject government failures. I think that old chestnut does not fit the bill in respect to only this tiny area of the borough, this is my quandary, and it remains a dilemma so far as I am concerned.
Regarding the failure, over decades, to improve Lansbury Park I am not suggesting that it is all the fault of central government policies. We all pay for them, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party demolished my pension when they removed the tax break on dividends in 1997, for instance. I note that the Tories have done nothing to remediate this, either.
What I am saying about the problem, in the St. James ward, is that it has been there for a very long time. We do not need a report to tell us what is before our very eyes.
The problem with Lansbury park is that it is a small area, and as such can be easily ignored by the powers that be, but being a small area its problems should be easily solved. The difficulty is that the problems are longstanding, Lansbury, named after George Lansbury, who was a campaigner for social justice and improved living and employment conditions for the working class, was built by the old Caerphilly Urban District Council, as an imaginative answer to the housing needs in Caerphilly in the 1960s, when there was reasonable full employment, five collieries within a three mile radius, Llanwern opening down the road, and a busy Treforest Industrial Estate, and office work in Cardiff for those with 5 O levels. Fifty years on, its a different world, no coal industry , virtually no steel industry and an empty Treforest Estate, and what jobs there are, are in the Service Sector. Jeff Cuthbert was right, in saying that the answer was to provide employment, my comment is why successive Labour Governments, havent provided that employent and/or suitable training to enable youngsters to find work?, why have they let the working class down?. I might be a Plaid voting, ex Plaid Member, but I was brought up in an Old (1905 Kier Hardie Free Welsh Wales under the red flag of socialism tendency)Old Labour family, and like the Jesuits, if they have a boy for the first seven years, they have him for life. As such I feel that it is the moral duty of Governments to provide for the welfare of the working class, because that is why my grandparents, through the Unions, established it in the early 1900s. They would be spitting blood to hear Ed Miliband`,(one of the metropolitan elite), speech at the TUC today. Trefor Bond is also right, but I ask why were these projects to counter deprivation not started years ago, when we saw the coal industry being destroyed by the Labour Government and the steel industry being destroyed by the Tories, you cant blame the current Council for historical neglect by other parties who had decades to tackle the problem.