ON the morning of Sunday November 24 this year, the village in which I live, Trehafod, was under siege from a rising tide of water.

Following the worst of Storm Bert through the night, the only roads into Trehafod from north and south, along with the railway line, were all closed due to flooding.

In the meantime, the river Rhondda to the west was rising at an alarming rate, while to the east, culverts were gushing fiercely down the rocky mountainside. The village felt like a perilous place to be, with no escape route.

Trehafod is a low-lying village on the banks of the Rhondda where the valley is at its narrowest, known locally as “the kingdom of Atlantis,” having suffered from serious flooding in the past.

At the end of the 1990s, a high defensive wall was built to hold back the river. On the Sunday morning of Storm Bert, the river had risen to within three feet or so from the top of this wall, had it overflowed, the results would have been disastrous.

Some streets in the village suffered from flooding — ironically, it was Fountain Street that got the worst of it — but the water came not from the river but from the high ground above the railway line, with drains choked with spoil and leaves, unable to cope.

Once more, it was the town of Pontypridd, about two miles down the valley, that suffered most, with the inhabitants of Sion Street and Berw Road bailing out filthy water from their homes and shops and cafes on Mill Street also suffering flood damage. This was a repeat of the nightmare of 2020.

Following the devastation wreaked back then by Storm Dennis, there were forums held and questionnaires filled in by local businesses on how to prevent such future flooding.

There was talk of definitive plans by the Westminster government and the Welsh Senedd to combat the effects of global warming.

As the visit of Storm Bert showed, nothing much has changed, minor improvements have been made but only to ease, not dispel, the problem. When a hard rain falls in Trehafod and Pontypridd, the residents are worried and afraid.

These valley communities suffered greatly during past times of industrialisation, living in squalid conditions, sending their children out to work, dying young from progressive illnesses or violent accidents while digging the coal that made immense fortunes for others in the name of capitalism and empire.

When the mines closed down, they were left without hope, without alternative work or any real plan for future regeneration.

The burning of the very fossil fuel produced by the Rhondda and neighbouring valleys has contributed significantly to global warming, and the descendants of those who dug the coal are now suffering the effects of flooding and landslides from towering slag tips.

The relief funds required to solve these problems are available but not forthcoming from the austerity Budgets of successive London governments, while Cop conferences dither and populist politicians deny that climate change is even happening.

In the meantime, the tide of injustice continues to rise, and again, it is those with the least to their names who stand to lose the most.

Guto Davies is a member of the Pontypridd Branch of the Communist Party of Britain.