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Welsh legend Red Ray gives his last interview tonight

THE last interview given by legendary Welsh socialist Ray Davies will be broadcast tonight in a documentary about the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

The colourful Labour councillor, peace campaigner and prolific correspondent to the Morning Star’s letters page died aged 85 on May 7.

But in March he spoke to the makers of the Streic y Glowyr (miners’ strike) programme, which will be shown on Welsh-language station S4C (with English subtitles) at 9.30pm.

They found “Red Ray” on top form, taking aim at the Tories for their war on the Welsh coalfield communities.

In the interview Mr Davies dispelled the myth that then-PM Margaret Thatcher closed the mining industry because it was unsustainable.

“She absolutely hated the miners,” he remembered.

“She knew that she could have negotiated a way out because she knew that the miners, they thrived on negotiating and they could have come to a compromise and we could have had a decent coal industry today.”

And he said: “If Thatcher and the government had just invested the amount of money they gave those police and to police the strike and ploughed it into the coalfield, the world and Britain and the valleys would be a better place to live in today.”

The programme comes ahead of an event to remember Mr Davies’s life at the Temple of Peace in Cardiff on Saturday.

Tributes will be read by actor Michael Sheen, Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn and miners’ historian and former Labour MP Hywel Francis.

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