Senni Valley Community Web
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Senni Valley Community Web
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In late 1971, the 'Daily Telegraph' published in a supplement, an account of how Senni was saved from becoming a reservoir The Senni is a calm Welsh valley, the valley of one of the tributaries of the river Usk in Breconshire, scattered with a score or so of farms, the farmers conservative, law-abiding, not gregarious, each independent in his own small domain. Flood it, and you have a cheap capacious reservoir. Senni was first threatened in 1963. (Industry swallows oceans of water every split second, and by the year 2000 Wales and the Midlands will want an extra 900 million or so gallons a day.) Glyn Powell, a farm worker's son from the next valley, a history graduate of Bangor University, an ex-Army officer then aged 29, had just come home again to Wales. Now he is head of Brecon High School's Middle School. "There were wild rumours that all the head valleys of the Usk were in danger. We had already lost thousands of acres of agricultural land for reservoirs and for a military range. Many of those living in Senni had already lost homes elsewhere. For the Tom Williamses of Blaen Senni it would have been their third home lost. So the farming organisations sponsored meetings in areas considered to be in danger. "The Senni meeting was at Defynnog's 17th-century schoolroom, a musty, drowsy place no longer used as a schoolroom. It created an atmosphere of depression. Any question raised produced no answer. There tended to be one representative of each family, the senior, the head of the household. It was that sort of meeting. Nothing positive was said or done. Everyone left depressed, unhappy, and uncertain." A County Co-ordinating Committee was set up to report to Breconshire County Council, which opposed the schemes. The River Authority was flirting with the idea of also flooding the main Usk valley at Llansbyddyd, outside Brecon, a project that came to be known as the Big Usk scheme and would have entailed the drowning of some splendid estates, including that of the Lord Lieutenant, Capt. Garnons-Williams, RN. In June 1968, the River Authority finally asked the County Council's planning permission to make test borings on the Big Usk and Senni dam sites. The Council made no decision, the River Authority appealed to the Secretary for Wales, there was a public inquiry, and the Secretary said no to the Big Usk and yes to the Senni. For the people of Senni (although another inquiry would be needed before the valley was actually flooded), it was Doomsday. "The County Co-ordinating Committee had to submit to the decision. The River Authority was to make test borings on four farms, Jonathan Davies's at Brychgoed, my father's, the Jones brothers' at Bailea, and their brother Charles Jones's at Llwyncrychydd, and from now on these four were on their own. They seemed to us abandoned, defenceless. It was really concern for them that induced us, the following Wednesday when we were discussing it at the Senni Bridge Fat Stock Market, to form the Senni Local Defence Committee, with myself as secretary and the Chairman of the Parish Council, Jonathan Davies, as Chairman."
Mr Powell is a tactful and articulate man with a facility for writing and a chapel deacon besides, a compere of Senni Bridge Young Farmers Club concerts and an Eisteddfod adjudicator, and he would have been the natural secretary of any Senni committee, whatever its purpose; but the purpose of this one was defence, which meant that Mr Powell, skilled and experienced as his years in the Army had presumably made him in such military mysteries as strategy and tactics, was unequivocally perfect. We had a series of meetings and invited all political parties, farming organisations, ministers of the church. We had to exclude rigidly any suggestion of violence, however slight. We had to be neutral in everything." And had manifestly to be seen to be neutral: a reporter and photographer got a number of ladies of the village to strike a defiant pose brandishing their fists and who should be standing among them but the Plaid Cymru prospective parliamentary candidate George Jenkins. "The picture suggested we were unreasonable. After that only Jonathan Davies or myself was to speak to the Press, and we enforced that rule rigidly. "You have to have unflinching unity. Every time you see a crack of uncertainty you have to start again at the beginning. Somehow you have to restore confidence. Was it a newspaper report that disturbed them? What did the report mean? Did they perhaps misread it? Had they heard some rumour? If so, who had heard it? What was the rumour? What did it mean? Who had passed it on? What were the facts to set against the rumour? And so on. So there had to be a meeting after every major announcement, and after every major letter, too, because every time a farmer had a letter from the River Authority he had the willies. Imagine the amount of work that had to be done explaining Mandamus. We paid a solicitor to come and do it." Mandamus? "Since the farmers continued to refuse permission to the River Authority to come on to their land, the River Authority applied to the Magistrates Court at Brecon for warrants to enter 'with the use of force if necessary', a phrase we never let them forget. The farmers kept their gates chained and put up barbed wire and obstructed them with farm machinery. We rigged up an old air-raid siren as an early-warning system. On the Friday of the hearing, which happened to be market day, we marched through Brecon to the court with our supporters in a large procession carrying SOS banners - Save Our Senni. We had solicitors to defend the farmers, and the warrants were refused. The River Authority had failed to comply with the conditions of the Secretary of State's 'decision letter' and had not produced any plan. "Then the River Authority applied to the High Court for an order of Mandamus against the magistrate, which was also refused, so it made a fresh application to the magistrates court. Again no plan, again no warrants. Finally the Authority provided a plan and got a warrant and on August 5, 1970, contractors moved into the valley. They were gentlemanly enough to let us know they were coming. "The people of Senni decided to meet in the valley to show their objection, but they really believed it was all up. By chance the day before some of them were down at the National Eisteddfod at Ammanfofd and spread the word about it. 'We are assembling to meet an invasion tomorrow morning,' they said. And the result was that about 100 or so young and old from the Eisteddfod came to lend a hand." So next morning when a car approached from Senni Bridge there were lots of people to stand in its path and the car stopped. There were two men in the car. Somebody asked where they were going. Somebody said, "Excuse me, are you anything to do with the drowning of the valley?" The men said no, they were on their way to Merthyr; and the crowd let the car through. An old lady who had come from South Carmarthenshire to be in the Senni with the farmers that morning said in Welsh as the car passed her, "They have things in the back. Stop them." And the car was stopped. The crowd was angry with the men. Mr Powell was engaged on the telephone at his mother's house, but a runner came to him and said that the first group of "the Howells" (which was the farmers' name for the River Authority, the Clerk to which was a solicitor named W. J. R. Howells) had arrived and was being held. Mr Powell went to the scene and released the car. Around lunch-time came a lorry bearing a prefabricated hut optimistically identified by the driver as the poultry-house of a local farmer. The young people who had come from the Eisteddfod asked the community, "Will you sit with us?" and the community said yes. They sat right up against the bumpers of the lorry and so the lorry stayed there all day. Later came officials in several cars, then policemen in a Land-Rover, then other vehicles, then a crane. A message arrived that an army lorry was on its way but the army lorry did not arrive. The queue of vehicles blocked the road. The crane driver said that if he had known what was happening he would not have come, and the crowd helped him to turn his crane around. Eventually all vehicles reversed up the road and departed. On September 8, 1970, at 7 a.m. an insurance agent who lived in the valley whose telephone was out of order drove as quickly as he could to Mr Powell's house. The contractors had their rig in a field and their drill on the site. Mr Powell raced to the scene and there spoke to Mr Howells, who explained that he and his men had come so early in the day in order to avoid militancy. Already they had unloaded some of their stuff in the farmyard, and Mr Powell asked Mr Howells if he would kindly refrain from unloading any more until they could discuss etcetera etcetera. Mr Howells replied (as the men continued to unload) that he was sorry they had had to come like this but etcetera etcetera, and he trusted that there would not be any obstruction. By chance there were two loads of oats on lorries and Mr Powell said to Mr Howells, Do you mind? We would like to get these oats out; and in the course of that operation the farmers managed to leave a tractor blocking the farmyard gateway. A minister's son was sitting on the tractor (and he sat on it for the next 14 hours). To remove the tractor would have involved removing the minister's son, and that would have taken a physical act that nobody present contemplated. The police asked Mr Powell and his supporters if they would kindly withdraw and they politely refused. (By now the BBC and Harlech Television were filming the event.) The farmyard belonged to Jonathan Davies but nobody had emerged from the house (into which had earlier passed Mr Davies's mother-in-law, a lady nearing 90, so that she might take charge of the family in this acute situation), so the warrant was not served. So the day drew on. It was an inclement day, to say the least. It rained from morning to night. No one ate. From time to time the Defence Committee met in the shelter of the barn. Emissaries passed between the parties and from time to time Mr Powell and Mr Howells conferred. "Mr Howell's weakness was that he had no authority to unload in the farm yard but had to do so because his lorries carried very heavy material that had to be taken into the field by tractor. When that evening he and his men at last withdrew, the off-loaded material remained by permission in the slush up against the retaining wall of the dung heap. Dripping wet and tired and hungry, people made their way on foot to Brychgoed Chapel. The following morning the off-loaded material was withdrawn. There were no cat-calls, no jeering. No one had lost face. "Throughout Mr Howells behaved as an absolute gentleman. He was embarrassed at being there. He was too much of a gentleman not to be. The country attitude is that only sheep-thieves and poultry-thieves creep about at dawn." On September 22, 1970, the Water Resources Board, which was preparing a survey of Wales and the Midlands, visited the valley (which was on its itinerary) and met a delegation from the Defence Committee. The Committee and the River Authority agreed to await the Board's report. Meanwhile Mr Caerwyn Roderick, newly-elected MP for Brecon and Radnor, made the Senni's predicament the subject of an adjournment debate in the Commons. On October 28, 1971, the Board published its report. It opposed the drowning of the Senni Valley and said the necessary extra water could be got largely by redeveloping existing reservoirs. Mr Powell had a subject and a community attractive to television and the newspapers, and the campaign was much publicised (although there was no formal appeal for money, money came in), and he had also Mr Roderick, the new young active MP anxious to make his mark in the House and in his constituency. But there was a turning point. "It was the change of Government after the 1970 election. Contrary to all expectations in Wales, the Conservative Government has shown more sympathy with Welsh rural aspirations than the more radical Labour Government. It is more in tune with what the Welsh community wants. It is as if the Socialists are somehow too industrially orientated. "Also the decision not to drown the Dulas valley was important." In December, 1970, the new Secretary for Wales, Mr Peter Thomas, accepted the report of his inspector Mr B. I. Brough that the Severn River Authority should not be allowed to make investigations in the Dulas in the expectation that they would prove satisfactory and the Dulas valley become a reservoir. "But all we wanted was to show that there was no need to drown the Senni." The Committee got experts to do studies to show how the projected water needs might otherwise be met. "We've done that." "The Water Resources Board report is only a recommendation, but it is unlikely that it will be disregarded." Updated by Webmaster 08 October 2005 18:51 |
