RHONDDA & WALES
The demise of the coal industry in the Rhondda will always be the fault of that nasty tory party and that nasty women Margret Thatcher. The rundown of Rhondda's coal mines started long before thatcher, and every mine that closed in the Rhondda was carried out under the watch of Labour Party MPs.
Yes Thatcher was responsible for the ultimate demise of the coal industry in the UK, but without the support from bodies like the TUC, Thatcher was always  going to win the fight that she had with the Miners. Prominent MPs refused to back Arthur Scargill giving  Thatcher all the help that she needed.
By 1924 the population was almost 170,000, including nearly 40,000 miners.
There was a vast array of supporting industry in the Rhondda and of course when the mines started to close so did those supporting industry's diminish.  

Other industry's started to flourish in the Rhondda industries of various types, from steel tubes, fire extinguishers, furnisher company's, knife and spoon producers, shoe factory's, and numerous other producers of a variety of products. The most successful of these was of course Polikoff clothing Factory in Ynyswen Treorchy opened in 1939, was one of the biggest employers employing over one thousand men and women and relieved some of the stress of the start of the mine closures, producing civil and military garments. Again we saw this hugely profitable company taken over by Burberry in 2006 and being shut down by them in 2007 despite being still a profitable company, with just three hundred jobs, even still we see pressures jobs leave the Rhondda.
Of course it is not only the Rhondda that suffered in this way, all south Wales valleys lost thousands of jobs during this period, steel works in Wales were savaged by the companies that wanted more profits by closing and moving their works else where. Thousands of jobs were lost  from the 1950s onwards and the effects of that loss are still being felt today.     

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