In Defence of a Coalfield Community: Resisting Urban Redevelopment in 1950s Wales

This chapter offers a case study of an urban social movement stimulated by what Manuel Castells sees as one of the main motivations for grassroots mobilisation: the defence of cultural identity or territory. Specifically, it investigates and contextualises a successful campaign of community opposition to council plans for large-scale redevelopment of working-class housing in the South Wales town of Aberdare in the late 1950s. It argues that residents of this close-knit, coal mining community, viewed Glamorgan County Council’s proposal to demolish thousands of old Victorian miners’ cottages in the town and replace them with modern new council homes, not as an investment in their future, but as an existential threat. This perspective gave them a powerful motive to mobilise in defence of their traditional homes and communities at a time when wider patterns of economic and social change in Wales—as well as the County Council’s planning proposals—seemed to devalue them.