Where was the defence of “our history” when the Chartist mural was ripped down?

By Scott Jones

The Chartist mural in Newport, a beautiful 200,000 piece mosaic in memory of working-class struggle, was destroyed in October 2013. But unlike the hated Colston statue in Bristol, Newport’s mural was destroyed completely legally – not by any protesters, but by Newport’s Labour council.

This disgraceful act of vandalism sneakily pre-empted a planned protest to save it later that day. It was destroyed to build a new shopping centre.

The mural was built in 1978, a 35-metre wall depicting an 1839 march from the Valleys to Newport by Chartists – the world’s first mass working-class movement. They rose up to demand democratic rights for the working class. The mural also depicted the moment the march was fired upon and 30 workers were massacred by the army.

The council could have saved and moved the mural. They pleaded the high cost, but the council had spent millions on the new shopping centre. I remember seeing and learning from the mural many times as a child on trips to Newport, likes generations of others.

The authorities, capitalists and defenders of statues of slave traders and racists like Churchill (who twice sent troops into South Wales and killed working class people!) scream blue murder about ‘vandalism and destruction’. But in Newport in 2013, they happily destroyed a beautiful and visible expression of working-class people and struggle. In the same way they have destroyed our services.