It is time now to talk about men and manners

Not so good days

In a couple of paragraphs, I will be posting a youtube video that is only a few minutes long, that was taken from the 1941 film, How Green Was My Valley.

The film of course, was based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel and tells the story of the Morgan family who are living and working in a South Wales mining valley during the 19th century and although some may find fault with it, I believe it to be one of the finest films ever made.

Now some of you might ask, what this film, about the hardships of a 19th century mining family has to do with our struggle to save Blaina Fire-station, but if you have some patience all will be revealed after you watch the clip below.

As you will have gathered if you watched the video, the clip is about the conflict caused in the family, when their wages have been undercut by people from outside their area coming in and doing their jobs for less money because they are starving.

Now in the video, the sons talked about the importance of trade unions and their dispute with the pit owners and what was important in the 19th century is just as relevant now and that it is a necessity for workers to have strong union representation.

So I am pleased to tell those of you interested in the campaign to save Blaina Fire-station from closure, is the news that no less than Matt Wrack,  the FBU general secretary, who despite all his other work in fighting for the pensions of the firefighters has agreed to lend his weight to our campaign alongside Mark Watt, also of the FBU.

We must hope that Matt and Mark can resolve this dispute, so our fire crew can have this unwanted stress removed from them and to allow the people of Blaina sleep easier, knowing that their local fire service is still going to be around for the foreseeable future.

Now there were another two parts of the discussion that the father has with his sons that I found most interesting and that inspired this article.

The first is where the father says that "They are men too, like us" to which one of his sons responds with; "Men yes, but not like us" and that is true of some of the people that the people campaigning to save Blaina are up against.  They are men but not men like us.

They have chosen to submit a document containing inaccurate information as a proposal to justify the closure of Blaina and continue to ignore the fact that Blaina has the best availability record of all the stations in Blaenau Gwent.

So yes, they are men but not men like us, for they no not know the meaning of words like honesty, integrity and honour and should hang their heads in shame.

The other part of the film that stuck with me was when they spoke about manners and the elder son says: "But if manners prevent us from speaking the truth, we will be without manners".

Well I am by nature a non confrontational type of person but when it comes to defending my community and my grandchildren, then I too will be without manners.

Seriously, if you get a chance to watch the full film do so.