Welsh Journals

BOOK REVIEWS RIDEN, PHILIP, Rebuilding a Valley. A History of Cwmbran Development Corporation xix + 296pp, 105 illus, (Alan Sutton Publishing for Cwmbran Development Corporation). £ 5.95 The dissolution of the Cwmbran Development Corporation during this last summer marked the end of an era in the modern history of Gwent. During the preceding 39 years, the Corporation had transformed a scatter of small towns and villages in the southern half of the Eastern Valley of Gwent into Wales' fifth largest town and the Principality's only 'New Town'. This substantial, well-illustrated yet inexpensive volume documents the story not so much of the New Town and its residents, but rather of the organisation which created and developed it. The Corporation deserves to be congratulated, albeit posthumously, in publishing a work of historical scholarship as a valedictory, rather than the more usual publicity puff. Yet clearly this sponsorship must in itself have caused problems. Whilst not expecting a panegyric, the sponsors might reasonably expect the author to take a positive view of their work; many of the protagonists are still alive and active in public life, so that usual courtesy demands a less frank and rigorous appraisal of their contribution than that might be in the case of more distant historical figures; and the time available to bring the work from research to publication was too limited to enable any overview of the Corporation's work in relation to those of contemporary and later new towns. No more was there time to tap the recollections of those from outside the Corporation who also participated in the events described in the book. Consequently one knows that, locally at least, there will be many disagreements over the author's interpretation of events and their cause. These should not disguise the splendid job or scholarship that Mr Riden has done in utilising not only the Corporation's own records, but the files of its sponsoring Government Departments, released in advance of the usual thirty-year bar to access. Indeed, the chapters on the earlier years of the Corporation's history where the problems referred to above are less severe provide a cogent and comprehensive summary of its work, identifying the strengths, weaknesses and individual contributions of the members of the Board and Chief Officers who led the organisation. As the years pass, however, Board Members and Officers dissolve into a corporate anonymity, and the opportunity of identifying interests, personalities and influence in relation to changes in the Corporation's policies, is denied. For the later and more recent periods, there is a tendency to blame all the Corporations's faults and weaknesses, where these are admitted, on the policies of the Welsh Office as sponsoring Department. Whether or not this is fair will have to await the passage of time. With the demise of New Towns generally, the future will provide the opportunity for an historic overview of the New Town movement throughout the United Kingdom and only when there is a body of comparative material available