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:
“Uncomprehending when they have heard, they are like the deaf. The saying describes them: though present they are absent.”
—Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)
“The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look nor know each other’s face
The present mixed with reasons gone
And past and present all as one
Say maiden can thy life be led
To join the living with the dead
Then trace thy footsteps on with me
We’re wed to one eternity”
—John Clare (1793–1864)
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)