Inside the impoverished Welsh communities abandoning Labour and turning to Farage’s Reform
D.Dragons Indoor Market, with its dimly lit and depressing Brackla Street arcade, remains one of two occupied shopping units. But it won’t be for long, as the center of Bridgend will be entirely empty shop fronts as low footfall, rising business rates and a lack of financial security mean Christmas is here.
Kim Whitehouse, the owner of a shop full of artisan crafts and local products, is desperate. His store was initially successful when it opened 18 months ago, but the closure of Poundland, Iceland and Wilko’s in the city center reduced his customers to “zero” and he decided to close.
“I know a lot of locals aren’t happy with so much closing down and so little happening in the city. Everything that opened was a vape shop or a barber shop. There’s not a lot of opportunity or support for small businesses to get started here,” he said.
It is impossible not to notice the dismal state of shop windows in the South Wales town, just 20 miles from Cardiff. In another blow, the indoor market was forced to close abruptly in September 2023 after reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) was found on the roof.
Speaking anonymously, one local councilor said: “Whenever we talk to people they all say they are fed up with the Labor Party. People see them as money-grubbing people who need money.”
This is a complaint echoed throughout the Welsh valleys. Deprivation is rife in an environment where the population struggles with high levels of unemployment, low wages, an aging population, long NHS waiting lists and poor distribution of services.
These are issues that Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK hope to exploit to their own advantage; Early polls ahead of next May’s Senedd elections suggest Labor could lose its 100-year unwavering grip on Wales.
In the former mining town of Maesteg, a short drive from Bridgend into the Llynfi Valley, Farage’s promise that his party’s policies would be “very different from the status quo” caught the attention of locals.
Jason Ryall, 55, is among those who have converted to Reform, citing immigration, poor support for local businesses and a lack of opportunities for young people as key reasons. “Almost all of my friends will vote for Reform,” he said.
“People are killing Labor heartlands in the north because they’re fed up with it. We’ve had Labor here for 100 years and nothing has changed and all the scandals in Parliament with MPs like Angela Rayner have been ridiculous,” he said.
Another shop owner, who did not want to give his name, said: “Labor was always god around here. Not anymore, they lost our trust.”
Even though it’s a rainy Monday morning, local Wetherspoons pub The Sawyers Arms is very busy. A punter can buy a full English breakfast and a pint for just £3.79, and there’s a mix of pensioners, regulars and teenagers inside.
When asked for their thoughts on their high street, many criticized the abundance of takeaways and the increasingly commonplace brightly colored vape shops with names such as ‘ESCAPE2VAPE’ and ‘Liquid Lab’.
One thing is certain: community ties are close. ‘Okay butt’ and ‘how’s it going mate’ can be heard across the street and it’s clear that the town and its locals still have a deep passion for their ties to their industrial past.
By the 1920s, more than 7,000 miners were employed in the coal industry in Maesteg, and the valley was gaining a worldwide reputation for its high-quality steam coal.
However, the closure of the last mine in 1985 put an end to generations of families working in the pits, as unemployment rates soared due to a lack of public and private investment.
“Unemployment and drugs are a major problem here,” says local resident David John Waters, 76. “Surely there are no opportunities for young people here. All of these places used to be prosperous, now they’re ghost towns.”
Another recent blow was the closure of the Port Talbot steelworks, one of the main employers in the area. Tata Steel lost 2,000 jobs last year when the last of its coal-fired blast furnace closed as it began work to build a £1.25bn electric arc furnace.
“Families worked in the steel works, fathers, sons and sons. There’s nothing here for them to get by,” he said. In line with Reform’s policy that net zero is an expensive farce, Farage has promised to reopen the bakeries, although this is impossible.
Mr. Waters remains skeptical. “It doesn’t matter who comes in. With all due respect, it’s all talk. If you talk to the kids who’ve worked here all their lives, they’ll say the same thing, and if you go anywhere in the Valleys they’ll say the same thing.”
Surrounding Maesteg are smaller villages such as Caerau, which was identified as the fifth poorest area in Wales in a 2019 Welsh government report. Rows of gray social housing stretch across the valley, while the grand former Station Hotel remains abandoned after guns and drugs were found during a police raid in 2021.
As you drive along the winding roads between the two Rhondda valleys, little remains of the coal mines that formerly devastated the countryside. For over a century Labor has been able to rely on the support of these former mining communities to propel them to power in both Westminster and the Senedd.
But while terraced houses remain, loyalty to Sir Keir Starmer’s party has all but disappeared, with Wales’ chief minister Eluned Morgan facing an uphill battle to regain confidence ahead of the May election.
A local woman in a pub in Treorchy says: “The way Labor is going is brutal. Everything goes up and up, the prices in the pub, the amount we pay for food. I’ve been voting Labor all my life but I won’t vote for them again.”
Not all of them are critical of local Labor councils; Nigel and Lesley Locke, 56 and 50, praise the work Rhondda Cynon Taff does to support charity Valley Veterans. The team, which aims to help 7,500 former armed forces members living in the area access housing and mental health services, described the work of local councilors as “fantastic”.
“It’s the big people at the top who let us all down,” says Lesley. “This is a case of disenchantment in general.” Her husband Nigel adds: “The Tories have never been around here or in the Valleys. From what we hear here, Reformation is a development to watch in the UK.”
“Our local council is very supportive of us as a charity, but it is local people who suffer from what is happening nationally. Starmer is not looked upon favorably anywhere in the world. There is an argument almost every day.”
While the bar where they sit is busy with locals gathering for a bingo competition, the community in Tonypandy is facing the same problems as other communities in the Valleys.
“The Valleys and West Wales are two of the most deprived areas in Europe,” said Joe Rossiter of the Institute of Welsh Affairs. “They received a lot of infrastructure spending from the EU and this did not actually lead to the economic transformation of these communities.
“When this money is gone, where will the scale of investment be to provide long-term jobs in the future? The Welsh government does not have the money to do this.”
As of October, polls show a two-horse race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK; Labor is in a dismal third place.
“If these polls bear out, it would mean a fundamental realignment of Welsh politics and we would see the end of Labor coming to the fore for over 100 years,” he said.
