Present
Today there are no steelworks or mines left in or around the town, though Ebbw Vale is still recognised for its innovation and contribution to the development of Britain as an industrial nation. This includes the world's first steel rail, rolled at Ebbw Vale in 1857, and the rails for the Stockton and Darlington Railway were also manufactured at Ebbw Vale.
Unemployment in Ebbw Vale is among the highest rates in the United Kingdom, largely the result of the decline of the mining and steel industries.
In 2003 work began on demolishing the long-standing steelworks, and currently around one to two miles of the valley stands empty awaiting development.
Ebbw Vale hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1958 and again in 2010 . The Welsh language was dominant in the area until the last quarter of the 19th century and remnants of the language (Welsh hymns and pockets of Welsh being spoken in nearby Rhymney) persisted into the 1970s. The National Eisteddfod returned to Ebbw Vale in 2010.
Aneurin Bevan, the "father" of the National Health Service, represented Ebbw Vale as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) in Parliament from the 1929 general election. When he died in 1960, he was succeeded as MP by Michael Foot. The seat is now called Blaenau Gwent.
The Ebbw Vale conurbation today is a product of areas which grew during the Industrial Revolution in the South Wales coalfield and the South Wales Valleys as a result of the iron industry, local ironworks or have developed as a result of distinct housing areas to serve local industry with workers, they include: Ebbw Vale, Rassau, Garnlydan, Hill Top, Briery Hill, Glyncoed, Willowtown, Glanyrafon, Cwm, Newtown, Victoria, Tyllwyn, Waunlwyd and Ebbw Vale itself. In particular Beaufort and Victoria were the two original iron producing areas.
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Famous quotes containing the word present:
“Heav’n from all creatures, hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“It is the dissenter, the theorist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient domain to embark on seas of adventure, who engages our interest. Omitting then for the present all notice of the stationary class, we shall find that the movement party divides itself into two classes, the actors, and the students.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)