A Future Slowly Cancelled

Deindustrialisation and the Politics of Health

From Planet 245

by Billy Jones

Billy Jones draws on Raymond Williams, Mark Fisher and new books from Wales to argue how a neoliberal orthodoxy continues to blight the health and happiness of Valleys communities, thereby internalising external miseries as mental illness. However, is consciousness about this beginning to shift?

In Border Country (1960), the first novel in the Welsh socialist intellectual and writer Raymond Williams’s ‘Border Trilogy’, Williams presaged the social tragedy that would emanate from the demise of local industry. Drawing upon the experiences of his father, Williams recounts a fictionalised version of the 1926 General Strike, dramatising the deep despondency that results from political defeat in the character of Morgan Rosser:

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About the author

Billy Jones lives in Cwmtillery, Blaenau Gwent in south Wales where he writes, reads and hopes. He holds an MA in English Literature/Welsh Writing in English from Swansea University and is interested in Welsh culture and society.