Editorial Team

Lead Editors

Maria Parker

Ceri Carter

Co-Editors

Ryan Fackrell

Sam Evans

Special Thanks

Dr Jane Finucane

Prof. Chris Evans

Kris Carter

Contents

Editorial Maria Parker & Ceri Carter

1

A turning point in History: The lesson in brinkmanship which made the University of Glamorgan. Denize McIntyre

3

Recalling the Riots Maria Parker

10

The Life, Death and Rebirth of the Pontypridd Rail Network Mark Jones

18

‘Industrialization saved the Welsh language’- Discuss Ceri Carter

21

Evaluating the Significance of Women in Munitions Production during the Second World War in South Wales 1939-1945 Ian Prosser

26

Have historians overstated the importance of organized sport in the construction of a Welsh identity in the late Victorian and Edwardian period? Ryan Fackrell

31

‘A farrago of filth…every page teems with clotted idiocies [Western Mail]…the literature of the sewers [The Welsh Outlook]’. Why did commentators respond so angrily to Caradoc Evans’ My People (1915)? A Discussion. Huw Edwards

36

China’s hierarchy- the Welsh ‘slums’ criminal class and how changes in historiography have led to doubts about its existence. Samantha Rickards

43

Editorial

Croeso and welcome to the first issue of the University of Glamorgan’s student history journal,

History from the Forest. A group of postgraduate students embarked on this exciting venture -

aiming to set up a student history journal which would showcase the talent of students at the

university. We recognise that it is so difficult to establish oneself as an academic and we hope

that this publication will enable students to gain vital experience at having work peer reviewed

and published. The buzz surrounding the first issue has been outstanding amongst students and

staff alike. Our authors and editors have worked extremely hard to compile this issue for its St

David’s Day release, and we are immensely proud of the outcome.

Why the St David’s Day launch?

2013 is the year we celebrate the University’s centenary as an educational institution. To coincide

with the one-hundredth anniversary, the theme of the first issue has been dedicated to Welsh

history. For this issue we have been fortunate enough to obtain an article from Denize

McIntyre, who is currently producing a book for the University’s centenary. And the journal

begins with McIntyre’s article on the history of the University of Glamorgan and its beginnings

as the School of Mines; looking at the tensions that surrounded the school’s establishment.

From the School of Mines to the mines themselves, postgraduate student Maria Parker takes us

to Tonypandy in 1910 and the riots that took place there. Using Tonypandy as an example,

Parker explores the use of memory as an historical tool and debates the way we choose to

remember events in our past and how memories change over time.

Staying with the important theme of the coal industry, undergraduate Mark Jones in his

journalistic article tracks the history of the railway network in South Wales and discusses its

significance specifically to Welsh industry. He plays particular attention to the railways in the

Pontypridd area and draws upon personal knowledge having grown up in the town.

Industrialisation had an enormous impact of the South Wales valleys and the makeup of the

population: MA student Ceri Carter tackles the historiography surrounding the debate into the

influence of industrialisation on the Welsh language.

Undergraduate, Ian Prosser, moves us forward in time to the Second World War and

investigates the importance of women to the war effort in industry. Prosser examines the role

1

women played as a reserve workforce called upon to fulfil vital job roles whilst the men fought

overseas.

From the industrious battle field to the playing field, MA student Ryan Fackrell tackles the role

that sport played in creating a Welsh national identity; specifically focusing on Rugby Union and

its huge influence in South Wales.

Continuing with the theme of national identity, graduate Huw Edwards looks at contemporary

responses to Caradoc Evans’ My People. Edwards poses the question of whether such reactions to

Evans’ book were justified?

Finally, undergraduate Samantha Rickards delves into the infamous Welsh slums in Merthyr’s

China district examining Keith Strange’s categorisation of a professional criminal class. Rickards

challenges whether such a criminal class really did exist.

This journal is a celebration of history. We have high ambitions that it will become an enormous

success in the future and we hope that it serves as a useful development tool for students today

and in the future.

Maria Parker & Ceri Carter

Lead Editors

2

A turning point in History: The lesson in

brinkmanship which made the University of

Glamorgan.

By Denize McIntyre

Whether we are looking at enormously significant international events which may have caused or

ended a war, or a more prosaic incident at a family or community level, there is often one point

in a history which time reveals to be the turning point – a pivot - which dictated the future path

of that story. There is one such moment in the history of the University of Glamorgan.

In 2013, the University of Glamorgan celebrates its one hundredth anniversary and, in the best

of traditions, a book is being authored to mark the occasion. Some writing on the history of the

University has already been done: Professor Dai Smith and Meic Stephens book, A Community

and its University1; Basil Isaac’s articles, From Pitboy to Professor 2and The Iron Prince’s Mansion3; and

Peter Harries PhD thesis, Colleges for Miners4 are probably most of the known examples. But

these (recommended) writings naturally take a view from the author or editor’s particular focus.

Smith and Stephens’ work looks at the community of Pontypridd and the University’s place in it,

Isaac’s interesting items focus on small but key elements of the history, and Harries includes the

University (in its earlier identities) in its contribution to miners’ education. The University’s

planned publication intends, optimistically, to walk the line between a history of the institution

and its people, and a souvenir of its important birthday. In undertaking the research for the

history an important and revealing document came to light. The document is an almost

verbatim record of a meeting which took place in April 1928 to arrive at a final solution for the

future - or not - of the College, and it is an object lesson in brinkmanship. To paraphrase the

reputed words of US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, at the climax of the Cuban Missile crisis in

1962, it was the point where the key parties went ‘eyeball to eyeball and the other fellow

blinked’5.

1 Dai Smith and Meic Stephens (Eds), A Community and its University: Glamorgan, 1913-2003, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004). 2 Basil Isaac, ‘From Pitboy to Professor’, Country Quest, 30.4 (1989), pp 22-23. 3Basil Isaac, ‘The Iron Prince’s Mansion’, Country Quest, 32.2 (1992), pp 38-39. 4 P.H.G. Harries, ‘Colleges for Miners’, (doctoral thesis, Aberystwyth University, 1999). 5 Various sources including Thomas Blanton, ‘Annals of Blinkmanship’, The National Security Archive, The George Washington Universit,< http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/annals.htm> [Accessed 14 February 2013].

3

The background to the showdown is this: By the early twentieth century, coal production

dominated South Wales’ industry, economy and society and its scale of influence is beyond the

imagination of all but the most ardent fans of Welsh industrial history. For example, in 1913, the

year of peak production in the coalfield, around 56 million tons of coal were produced and close

to 233,000 men were employed.6 This massive output was, at various times, shipped from the

Bristol channel ports of Newport, Cardiff, Barry, Port Talbot, Swansea, Llanelli, Milford Haven,

Gloucester, Bristol, and, on times, Barnstaple and Bridgewater.7 At that time the industry was in

the private ownership and management of magnates who organised themselves into the

powerful Monmouthshire and South Wales Coal Owners’ Association. The Association

recognised their industry’s needs for a qualified pool of men from which to draw for their

colliery officials. Following lengthy deliberations stretching over a period of years, a proposal to

establish a School of Mines for the advanced education of miners was formulated and circulated

to members of the Association. In November 1912, enough members of the Association had

returned their ‘positive’ reply slips and the plans were put into motion. As it happened, the

resulting activities were very quick indeed, really impressive, and considering achievements

versus timescales it can only be regarded as a measure of what’s achievable in a benign

dictatorship with strong intentions and robust bank balances! In January 1913 the Board of

Management, which had been set up to run the new School, interviewed and appointed its first

Principal, Professor George Knox. Prof Knox then worked with the Board to appoint the rest

of his small team of staff, design the curriculum, equip and establish the building, and set and

run the entrance examinations. The first students enrolled in October 1913: 29 full-time and 110

part-time students.

However, mining education already existed in the area - a lot of it, with a long-standing history.

It was run by those organisations one would expect: the (then) University College of South

Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, established in 1883, had an existing department of Mining

and Geology, and the local authorities ran non-advanced mining education in local centres as

well as their mainstream education. Discussions with the University College had taken place

with a view to enlarging and equipping its department to cover the needs of the Coal Owners.

But, putting it simply, the arrangements just did not suit: the curriculum at Cardiff couldn’t cope

6Unknown author, ‘South Wales Coalfield Timeline’, Coalfield Web materials, Swansea University (2002), <http://www.agor.org.uk> [accessed 14 February 2013]. 7 ‘Quantities of coal, coke, and patent fuel, exported, supplied for bunkers, and shipped coastwise each month from the year 1895’. Compiled by Finlay Gibson, Secretary to the Monmouthshire & South Wales Coal Owners’ Association, Cardiff, 1920, in Glamorgan Archives (Cardiff) [henceforth GA].

4

with the desired ‘sandwich’ system of education in which a significant element of practical work

dove-tailed with the classroom-based learning. Neither would the governance arrangements of

the University College allow ‘interference’ in management from the Coal owners, who wanted to

have a say in the courses they were paying for and the appointment of the teachers who would

deliver it. The local education authority, primarily the (then) Glamorgan County Council also

bemoaned the investment in this privately-funded institution. In a document accompanying a

letter from the County Council (30 January 1917) to members of a ‘Deputation to Education

Authorities regarding grants on Treforest Mining School’ there is clear evidence that the Council

did not understand why the Coal Owners chose to fund and establish their school. The

document argues that significant investment in miners’ education had already been made in

Cardiff [the University College] and the document reports that ‘no single complaint has ever

been received about the standards, or scholarships or any other matter’.8

Even after the founding and opening of the School of Mines in 1913, which should feel like a

‘done deal’, the discussions about whether it should become a department of the University

College went on. And on! For years! In fact, some discussion went on right up until the first

years of the Second World War. The documents covering the extent and repetition of these

talks makes exasperating and depressing reading even today but it is illustrative of the

frustrations that many in authority felt towards this maverick, privately funded institution which,

to irritate them more, went on to volunteer for formal inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectors of

Education – and came out of the process with glowing praise for its standards.9 It’s extremely

unlikely that those who were against the Coal Owners’ decision to fund and run their own

School were overly pleased when it proved so successful. This is clear from numerous reports

produced for ‘conferences’ held by the representatives of local authorities and the School of

Mines senior staff from 1916 to 1923 when discussions about an all Wales scheme of mining

education were considered, as was a third location for the School of Mines at Swansea (a second

campus had been opened at Crumlin in Monmouthshire in 1914). For example, Alderman W.N.

Jones, representing Carmarthenshire, said that they [his County Council] would ‘wipe out

Treforest altogether and have the School of Mines at Cardiff with a branch in Monmouthshire

and Swansea’.10

8 GA GD/E18/52. 9 Report of HM Inspectors on the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines (Crumlin, May 1916), and Report of HM Inspectors on the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines (Treforest and Crumlin, February 1927). 10 ‘Report prepared for the Miners Welfare Fund’ (July 1922), University of Glamorgan archives.

5

So, from 1913 to 1928 there is a privately, and generously, funded institution of advanced

learning delivering high quality education which meets the needs of the industry which held the

purse strings. But those providers of publicly-funded education would have much preferred the

investment to be made into their institutions without any funder’s strings attached. And there is

no doubt that there was plenty of acrimony around this situation. The point where the future of

the successful School of Mines arrives at the brink is at the end of the general strike in 1926.

The School of Mines had received heavy investment to set it up. The Coal Owners had spent

£50,000 establishing the School and were spending a further £15,000 on annual maintenance

and running costs.11 A grant of £22,595 from the Miners’ Welfare Fund had also been made

toward the founding of the School. The Coal Owners cash input was derived from applying a

levy of 0.1 of a pre-decimal penny to every ton of coal produced by the subscribing colliery

companies. Therefore the continued funding for the School depended entirely on coal being

produced. If coal production dropped, or ceased, there would be no funds.

From shortly after the end of the Great War when the demand for coal had been high largely

due to the needs of war, the mining industry throughout the UK experienced dropping prices for

coal, colliery closures, and changing markets. The Coal Owners consequently expected their

miners to take cuts in wages and work longer hours. This view was somewhat backed up by the

findings of a Royal Commission which found the industry needed a major reorganisation and

that some miners should take a wage cut, although the level of the proposed cut was set by the

Coal Owners. Industrial action, strikes, followed which culminated in the call-out by the Trades

Union Council (TUC) of most of the British workforce: the 1926 General Strike. After a

relatively short time most workers returned to work but the miners continued until the end of

the year when their pitiful circumstances drove them back; it was the most difficult of times. For

the School of Mines the obvious consequence was that in the period May 1926 to the end of the

year almost no coal had been produced which, in turn, meant that the funding dried up.

The Coal Owners were no longer in a position to fund the School. Neither did the longer term

prospect look as if it were likely to see old markets resurrected and the high level of demand

return. A new solution to paying for the School of Mines had to be found, and fast. At this

11 Letter from Hugh Ingledew, Secretary to the Board of Management of the School, dated 25th October 1921 to the Under Secretary for Mines (a now defunct cabinet office position).

6

point it is interesting, although maybe not historically valid, to speculate on the feelings and

attitudes of the University College’s management, and the committees of aldermen of the local

authorities. Some of that bile which is so evident in the early reports and letters must have

surfaced in comments made behind closed doors and in quiet conversations in corridors.

However, the good news was that the government did not want to lose the School of Mines; it

had earned a respected reputation after just 15 years of life, and its staff had done very valuable

research work on a number of safety issues in mines. The School had even received

international recognition for its excellence and for its sandwich model of education; the

Treforest School was used as the model for establishing the Imperial School of Mining and

Geology at Dhanbad in India in 1920.

A temporary stop-gap to the missing funding was found in the form of a grant from the Miners’

Welfare Fund, which was a major funder of miners’ education across all areas of the coalfield,

but that couldn’t continue indefinitely. A conference was organised to try and find a solution, a

lasting solution. The conference was arranged to take place on Tuesday, 10 April 1928; less than

15 years after the opening of the School. Among those present were the key decision makers:

Lord Chelmsford, spokesman for the Central Committee of the Miners’ Welfare Fund; Principal

A. H. Trow of the University College, Cardiff; Hugh Ingledew, Secretary to the Board of

Management of the School of Mines; the Hon W. N. Bunce, representing the University of

Wales; and Alderman Hubert Jenkins, representing the Glamorgan County Council. This is the

moment where the decision on the future of the School would be made. The options available

were to close the School, or to give it to the University College where it may have become a

department, or to transfer ownership from private hands to public ownership through

Glamorgan County Council. An almost verbatim record of this meeting exists in the Glamorgan

Archives in Cardiff.12 The tension in the meeting is palpable in the document. It is possible to

hear one party’s voice as they try to get their way. The reader can imagine the firmness of voice

and the hand banging the table.

Lord Chelmsford spoke about the possibility that the University College might take over the

Treforest school and use it for part-time study with teaching in chemistry and physics stripped

out (as that was the province of the University). The report of the meeting goes on to record

that Lord Chelmsford

12 GA GD/E/18/76

7

… pleaded with the governors [i.e. the Coal Owners] to keep the school open for

another year in order that a scheme might be prepared in the meantime’. He said ‘I do

ask the governors to seriously consider this: If Crumlin and Treforest are dropped, they

will become derelict. Once the continuity is broken, it could not be resuscitated. The

institutions would be left with whatever is in them, but material might be stolen…13

The Hon W. N. Bunce, representing the University said ‘The University can contribute nothing

at present to the maintenance of the School of Mines and do not consider Crumlin, only

Treforest, in any case’. 14 And Principal Trow of the University College felt that the local

authorities should decide first; the University College would, as he said, “hold its hands”. Hugh

Ingledew, for the Coalowners, explained that his Board had hoped to hand over the schools to

the local authorities from the 1 February 1928, but they were likely to have appreciated the

difficulties of the authorities which had been caused by the economic depression. As a result,

the Coal Owners had “agreed to struggle on until June or August 1928”. Without the income

from the levy attached to coal production this most likely means that the individual men, the

members of the Association, were financing the School from their own resources. Mr Ingledew

added

The governing bodies have now decided to close the schools on 31st August [1928] and

the staff have been given notice. The constituent members have been finding £11,000 per

year. It must be taken as definite that the coal owners are not prepared to carry on the

school indefinitely, with the pious hope that the LEAs or the University will take it.14

In response to another round of suggestions that the Coal Owners might carry on paying up for

a short while longer he firmly replied that

[…] the coal owners are going nowhere after 31st August, and many students are in the

middle of their course at present, and they [the County Councils] must make

arrangements for these students almost immediately.14

It is clear from the language used and the terseness of the report that this was it, the brink, and a

decision was going to be made in this room on this day. Mr Ingledew, one can imagine, had been

9 GA GD/E/18/76 14 Ibid.

8

left by the Coal Owners with absolutely no alternative but had instructions to pass along the

schools to one party or the other. He was holding firm. And he won. The County Councils

were not prepared to close the School which had so quickly won a first class reputation when the

training and safety of miners was an issue of national importance.

This is the day the decision was made which means the University of Glamorgan is a flourishing

place of learning today. The School of Mines grew, changed its title to reflect a growing breadth

of courses. It became a polytechnic in the 1970s and a university in 1992. And the current status

quo is almost certainly down to the persuasive prowess and steely nerve of Hugh Ingledew,

Secretary to the Board of Management of the School; a Cardiff solicitor, and former Welsh rugby

International player.

9

Recalling the Riots

By Maria Parker

Many of us can recall the riots which took place in London, Manchester and the West Midlands

in August 2011 - although the cause behind these riots is perhaps more difficult to determine. In

the initial few days of the riots many of us simply appeared to be disgusted and perhaps afraid of

the level of destruction and violence which was taking place. As the media exhibited these acts of

rioting and looting in the newspapers and on television reports, members of the public seemed

to call for tough judicial sentencing. However, by 16August 2011, some ten days after the riots

initially began, there seemed to be a change in opinionon the toughness of sentencing with civil

rights group claiming that punishments were disproportionate to the crime.1 But why this sudden

change in opinion - why did people alter their point of view from absolute disgust with the

rioters, to one of sympathy over the tough punishments administered? One possibility is that this

change in opinionwas associated with our system of processing memory. As individuals we

specifically arrange our memories so that we can make sense of our past and present lives,

however, our memories are also shaped by our ‘ideologies, social relations and culture’.2

Therefore, whilst society was disgusted by the behaviour of the rioters - was the act of

administering tough sentencing on all involved felt to have been in opposition to the ideologies

of our society, and hence this change of opinion?

Memory as an historicalsource is placed under the same umbrella as ‘oral history’. Prior to the

1970s, oral history and memory was not favoured by historians. It was deemed to be too

inaccurate to use as a historical source because as demonstrated above, individuals ‘construct’

their memories to fit in with their ‘ideologies, social relations and culture’. From the 1970s

however, oral historians like Alessandro Portelli, argued that the importance of oral historyis that

it provides historians ‘with new ways of understanding the past, not just in what was recalled, but

also with regard to continuity and change in the meaning given to events’.3 This paper will

1Owen Bowcott, Helen Carter, et al., ‘Facebook riot calls earn men four-year jail terms amid sentencing outcry’, The Guardian, (16 August 2011), <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/16/facebook-riot-calls-men-jailed> [accessed 30 December 2012]. 2Ann Green and Kathleen Troup, The houses of history: A critical reader in twentieth-century history and theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p.240; Graham Smith, ‘The making of oral history: Sections 1-2’, Making History: The changing face of the profession in Britain, Institute of Historical Research, <http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/oral_history.html> [accessed 10 November 2012]. 3Alessandro Portelli, 'What makes oral history different', in The Oral History Reader, ed. by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 2006), cited in Smith, ‘The making of oral history’ : Sections

10

consider memory, specifically memories associated with the Tonypandy Riots of 1910.In the

words of historian Dai Smith, ‘Tonypandy is one of those sites where public and private

memories intersect’.4 Today, the Tonypandy Riots are most predominantly recollected as an

emblem ‘of working-class resistance and struggle in the face of murderous troops’.5 They are

dramatic events which continue to ignite passion amongst communities of South Wales, as well

as creating tensions in parliament. They have also inspired writers and poets to produce literature

such as, Lewis Jones’ novel of 1937, Cwmardy and Alexander Cordell’s novel of 1977, This Sweet

and Bitter Earth.6 This discussion will look at both how our society remembers the Tonypandy

Riots and how contemporaries recalled the events at the time.

The Tonypandy Riots of 1910 are not being compared to the riots of 2011 – in fact unlike the

riots of 2011, the cause of the Tonypandy Riots is clearly understood. Long ongoing disputes

had begun in the coal industry of South Wales in September 1910, when miners refused to

accept a price list of 1s 9d per ton of coal plus 1d per ton of hard stone –amounts which miners

felt were simply too low to live off and support a family from.7 Negotiations began between the

owners and the workers of the Cambrian Colliery in the SouthWales valleys, but by November

negotiations had come to a standstill.8 Men from the Ely pit had already been on strike since

September 1910, and by 1 November a further 12,000 men came out on strike from the collieries

of Tonypandy, Penygraig, Llwynypia, Clydach Vale and GilfachGoch.9 On 2 November 1910,

the miners decided that no officials or replacement workers would be allowed to enter the

collieries, and on 7and 8 November in Tonypandy, rioting commenced as miners tried to stop

black legs from entering the colliery.10 This rioting included the destruction of colliery property,

attacks on and looting of shops in Tonypandy, and violent clashes between miners and the

police. Miners from the Cambrian Combine were not the only workers to strike or display scenes

of violenceduring this period in Welsh history. For example, in the Cynon valley about 11,000

miners employed by the Powell Duffryn Company came out on strike in 1910 again for wage

1-2’, Making History: The changing face of the profession in Britain, Institute of Historical Research, <http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/oral_history.html> [accessed 10 November 2012]. 4Dai Smith, In the Frame: Memory in Society 1910-2010 (Cardigan: Parthian, 2010), p.298. 5Dai Smith, Wales! Wales? (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp.60-61. 6Ibid., pp.60-61; Lewis Jones, Cwmardy (Cardigan: Parthian, 2006); Alexander Cordell, This Sweet and Bitter Earth (Sutton: Severn House, 1996). 7Kenneth O. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation: A History of Modern Wales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p.146. 8Ibid., p.146. 9Smith, In the Frame, p.2; Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, p.146. 10Ibid.

11

disputes; and in the national railway strike of 1911 around 145,000 workers throughout Britain

went on strike for disputes concerning wages and want of recognition.11 However, this is just a

small sample of the industrial disputes ongoing at that time. The significance of the miners’ strike

in Tonypandy can be understood when we consider how vital the coal industry was to South

Wales. This industry not only created mining jobs, it also created jobs through the transporting

and exporting of the product. The South Wales coalfield produced about a third of the world’s

coal exports and is believed to have been one of the most profitable coalfields in the world at

that time.12 Welsh coal was said to have been used in ‘the domestic heating of eastern and central

Europe, the railways of France, Italy, Brazil and Argentina [...and] all the oceanic steam-driven

carrying fleet of the world’.13 Bearing this in mind, it seems quite remarkable that these workers

had to strike to achieve a reasonable pay.

The conflict between workers and employers in the coal industry, rested on the employers drive

for profit. Back in 1908, the government introduced the Eight Hour Day act and this meant that

there was a shorter working day, which consequently meant that there was a decrease in the

amount of coal produced per day–and subsequently this meant lessprofitwas being made. The

concept of less profit was not a viable option for capitalist coal owners therefore wages were to

be reduced to make up for any profit shortfalls. Miners who made up a significant proportion of

the population of South Wales (about a quarter of a million people alone were employed as

miners) could not afford to have a reduction in wages, especially since the price of food was

rising swiftly at this time.14 A reduction in wages would have meant ‘considerable discomfort to

those millions of people who lived on the subsistence level or just above’.15 Ultimately, because

workers like those miners from Tonypandy chose to strike and act out against the coal owners,

this industrial action helped contribute to the eventual introduction of the Minimum Wage Bill

of 1912. The benefit this law had and continues to have today on the lives of individuals across

Britain is undeniable, because it produced a reliable wage system.

11 Chris Williams, ‘‘The hope of the British Proletariat’: the South Wales miners, 1910-1947’, in Miners, Unions and Politics 1910-47, ed. by Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman, et. al (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), p.124; Smith, Wales! Wales?, p.57; Deian Hopkin, ‘The Great Unrest in Wales 1910-1913: Questions of Evidence’, in Class, Community and the Labour Movement: Wales and Canada, 1850-1930, ed. by Deian Hopkin and Gregory S. Kealey (Llafur: CCLH, 1989), p.249. 12 Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, p.125. 13 Ibid., p.125. 14Ibid., p.125; Hopkin, ‘The Great Unrest in Wales’, p.254. 15Hopkin, ‘The Great Unrest in Wales’, p.254.

12

Consequently, the Tonypandy Riots of 1910 are proudly remembered in the South Wales valleys

today. Historian Kenneth O Morgan best summarises the general opinion held when he states

that:

Tonypandy has become a symbol, the name itself is now associated with great popular

uprising brought by social injustice and state brutality, not just in Wales but further

afield. Those actions at Tonypandy not only left a local legacy but a wider one.16

The centenary of the riots has only recently passed and a commemoration of the acts of 1910

was eagerly celebrated by the current residents of Tonypandy and the Rhondda Cynon Taff

County. This was the first official commemoration to take place and the method of celebration

included a parade, live music and entertainment, a firework display, lantern making, miner helmet

making and family history tasters.17 These celebrations were certainly family orientated – but

whilst they demonstrated the joyful aspect of the legacy of the Tonypandy Riots, they did not

necessarily portray the true passion which the riots are able to ignite. For example, a serious bone

of contention for miners back in 1910 was that the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill had

deployed soldiers to Tonypandy to quash the dispute. A telegram from the Miners’ Federation to

the Home Office in 1910 stated that:

While deeply regretting the disturbances which have occurred, consider that the civil

forces are sufficient to deal with such disturbances, and strongly deprecate

theemployment of the military for such a purpose, and if the military have been sent into

the district affected asks the Home Secretary at once to recall them.18

16Sion Morgan, ‘Tonypandy miner’s struggles secured the town’s place, not just in Welsh history but further afield’ , Western Mail, (6 November 2010), <http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/11/06/tonypandy-miners-struggles-secured-the-town-s-place-not-just-in-welsh-history-but-further-afield-91466-27610719/> [accessed 10 November 2010]. 17Josie Ensor, ‘It Was a Pivotal Moment’, Wales on Sunday, (7 November 2010), <http://infoweb.newsbank.com.ergo.glam.ac.uk/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=WLSNB&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=1335E879301AE160&p_docnum=15&p_queryname=3> [accessed 10 November 2010]; ‘Riots to be remembered during family fun event’, South Wales Echo, (23 October 2010), <http://infoweb.newsbank.com.ergo.glam.ac.uk/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=WLSNB&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=1330F350D8643788&p_docnum=38&p_queryname=3> [accessed 10 November 2010]. 18Gwyn Evans and David Maddox, The Tonypandy Riots 1910-1911 (Plymouth: University of Plymouth Press, 2010), p.95.

13

For the people of Tonypandy and the South Wales valleys the presence of the soldiers was seen

as an arbitrary act – and it is an issue which continues to ignite distaste amongst Welsh

communities today. It is an issue which can also provoke tensions in parliament. For example, in

November 1978 when new mining issues arose, Prime Minister James Callaghan caused uproar

in the House of Commons when he asked MP Winston Churchill (grandson of former Home

SecretaryWinston Churchill), ‘I hope that the hon. Gentlemen will not pursue the vendetta of his

family against the miners [...] at Tonypandy for the third generation’; and again on 21 July 2010,

Conservative junior minister Crispin Blunt apparently said that ‘it was marvellous that today was

the one-hundredth anniversary of Winston Churchill making a superlative speech on prison

reform’, to which Chris Bryant the Labour MP for Rhondda responded stating that the people of

Wales had very different memories of Churchill.19

Within Gwyn Evans and David Maddox’s book, The Tonypandy Riots 1910-1911 there are a

collection of memories of the events of 1910 including photographs; newspaper reports;

telegrams; and eye witness accounts from miners, members of the public, the police, and

soldiers. Through these accounts we can build up a picture of how individuals viewed the riots at

that time. For many, whether members of the public, police or soldiers – the reaction to the riots

was one of fear and shock. However, the rioters were not an out of control mob. For Smith,

‘the crowd was not organised but it knew what to do’.20 For example, the crowd did not destroy

the shop owned by revered former Welsh international rugby football player, Willie Llewellyn.

And the controlled aspect of the crowd is also demonstrated in the eye witness account of Sarah

Ann Jones from 7November 1910. On the night of the 7 November, she and her aunt went to

the colliery to see what was taking place, they stood near the policemen whilst the miners were

up on a bank prepared with stones as ammunition – and before any stones were thrown the

miners arranged for the women to head for safety.21 There are many eye witness accounts from

women in Evans and Maddox’s book and they all portray a rather negative image of the riots.

Sarah Ann Jones stated that ‘it was frightening to hear the crowd outside’ their houses; Lilly

Pontsford described how she helped bathe the wounds of men on the first night of rioting,

‘there were ever such a lot, men and young boys, and they were hit about in all shapes...beaten

with the truncheons’; and Annie Mary Thurston described the ‘terrible noise’ as rioters walked

19Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, pp.146-147; Hansard 30 November 1978, cited in Evan and Maddox, The Tonypandy Riots, p.162; Simon Hoggart, ‘Coalition government is a nest of liberalism’, The Guardian, (21 July 2010), <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/21/liberalism-coalition-justice-simon-hoggart> [accessed 10 November 2012]. 20Smith, In the Frame, p.403. 21Evan and Maddox, The Tonypandy Riots, p.51.

14

down the streets ‘carrying these different implements with them, and as they were coming down

the street they were smashing the windows each side’.22 An eye witness account from PC Knipe

of the Swansea police also shows an unflattering image of the rioting, ‘I have never seen anything

like it my life. It was terrible. There was blood everywhere, and injured men were lying about all

over the place’.23 And for Major-General Sir Wyndham Childs reflecting back on the situation

from 1930, he stated that:

I can honestly say that in France I saw towns and villages evacuated by the Germans which

were in better condition than those rioters had wrecked. All the shops had been looted, and

not only the contents, but the actual fittings (such as gas brackets, shelves etc) had been

carried off. There was hardly an unbroken pane of glass in the place.24

The accounts from newspapers are similarly judgemental of actions taking place in Tonypandy in

1910. The newspapers describe the events as ‘a state of anarchy’, ‘distressing and disgusting’, and

miners as ‘molesting the unfortunate officials’.25 The Western Mail newspaper includes quite

detailed accounts of the events of the riots, but the focus of these events by newspapers alters

depending on geographical location. For example, some mention of the riots can be found in the

Cardiff Times where attention is specifically focused on the destruction and looting of shops; but

no mention of the riots appears in local papers like the Barry Herald.26 And for newspapers

outside of Wales, such as The Times and the Sheffield Telegraph, the focus rests on the absence of

military involvement and criticism of Churchill.The Times on 9 November 1910 stated, ‘the

absence of troops which had been asked for was severely felt’; and the Sheffield Telegraph reporting

on 11 November 1910 wrote, ‘Mr Churchill does not cut a very brilliant figure. To delay

compliance with the urgent request of the local authorities for the help of the military was a

highly questionable measure’.27 These latter newspaper reports are interesting. As noted

previously, troops were sent to South Wales at that time and their presence was disapproved of

by miners - and it continues to offend members of the South Wales valleys today. Essentially, the

deployment of soldiers can be seen as the full force of the state acting against the interests of the

impoverished mining community – which is why it continues to ignite anger amongst former

22Ibid., p.78, p.74, p.86. 23Ibid., p.73. 24Major-General Sir Wyndham Childs, Episodes and Refelections (London: Cassell and Co. Ltd, 1930), cited in Ibid., p.92. 25‘Mad Scenes in the Rhondda’, Western Mail, 9 November 1910, p.5. 26‘At Tonypandy Today’, Cardiff Times, 12 November 1910, p.7. 27‘Welsh Strike Riots’, The Times, 9 November 1910, p.10; ‘Editorial’, Sheffield Telegraph, 11 November 1910, cited in Evan and Maddox, The Tonypandy Riots, p.95.

15

mining areas in Wales. However, the research undertaken by Evans and Maddox demonstrates

that the soldiers on duty in areas like Tonypandy actually had quite a good relationship with the

people in the mining communities – in fact, they had a better relationship with the miners in

comparison to the police. Accounts show that soldiers married women from these communities,

played sports with the miners, and so on.28

The memories outlined in the eye witness accounts above are of fear and disgust. And such

feelings are unsurprising because the scenes of destruction were still fresh in the minds of the

witnesses- and ideologically the concept of violence in a perceived civilised world would appear

as immoral. However, this initial disgust would shortly change for contemporaries within these

communities. The strike at Tonypandy continued for approximately ten months and during that

time the ability to feed families was extremely difficult. Concerns for the hunger of mining

families, especially the children of these miners – was widespread, and some aid was provided in

the form of soup kitchens. The miners did finally return to work in September 1911, and at that

time they had not necessarily achieved the cutting price which they had hoped for – however,

their industrial action did play a part in the introduction of the Minimum Wage Bill of 1912.29 It

is this latter achievement which must take precedence in the memory of Welsh communities –

and it undeniably was the focus of the one-hundredth anniversary celebration. The violence

undertaken in the riots and the challenges faced by families involved in the strikes are not

forgotten by the communities of South Wales, they are experiences which are deeply considered

and understood. Consequently however, the memory of Churchill as someone who used the full

force of the state in opposition to the plight of the miners – is one which appears cannot easily

be erased. As previously noted, it is an issue which still has the ability to create a reaction both

inside and outside of Wales. For example, in July 2010, when Chris Bryant the Labour MP for

Rhondda stated that the people of Wales did not have fond memories of Churchill; Simon

Hoggart writing in the Guardiangave the following comment:

They have long memories in that part of the world. Even most middle-aged people in

Britain now vaguely assume that Tonypandy was a children's puppet show on TV,

featuring Andy Pandy and Looby Loo.30

28Evan and Maddox, The Tonypandy Riots, p.99. 29Ibid., p.149. 30Simon Hoggart, ‘Coalition government is a nest of liberalism’, [accessed 10 November 2012].

16

But as noted above, the achievement of the miners from the early twentieth century takes

precedence in the memory of Welsh communities today, especially if we consider the centenary

celebrations where the focus was on reform - not rioting or the controversy of Churchill. These

family orientated celebrations, whilst not necessarily representing the passion that the events of

1910 could ignite – perhaps demonstrate the desire to involve the whole family because it is

Welsh families who haveabove all benefitted from the experiences and achievements of their

ancestors.

To re-iterate the words of Dai Smith, ‘Tonypandy is one of those sites where public and private

memories intersect’.31 Only a selection of the range of memories which exist for the Tonypandy

Riots have been explored in this discussion, but as demonstrated, the events of 1910 continue to

ignite passion to the communities of South Wales and consequently new memories are

ceaselessly created. Furthermore, because memories are shaped by our ‘ideologies, social

relations and culture’, as our ideologies and culture change over time so too do our memories

and how we choose to recall events. Within this discussion, there was an exploration of how

memories of the Tonypandy Riots changed from initial disgust at the range of violence and

destruction, to the emergence of the legacy of the riots as a stance against social injustice. The

topic of memory is just one of the many fascinating ways of researching this significant period in

Welsh history, and it is one topic which is worthy of further study.

31Smith, In the Frame, p.298.

17

The Life, Death and Rebirth of the

Pontypridd Rail Network

By Mark Jones

If it can be said that Birmingham was/is Britain’s waterway equivalent of Venice then,1 due to

the extensive mileage of railway track, South Wales can be deemed its rail counterpart; the major

hub of which is Pontypridd. By looking at the transportation of consumables and the changes in

railway companies and systems, this article will provide a brief outline and basic history of our

local rail network and former coalfield.

From the mid 1800s, firstly via canal then rail, there was a need by industrialists to transport their

consumables to the docks of South Wales, most notably coal and iron. However, due to the

geographical constraints of South Wales, specifically its steep valleys, there was competition to

meet that need which ultimately saw the formation of various railway companies in a

comparatively small area. Such companies were the Taff Vale Railway (TVR) which existed from

1836 to 1922; the Rhymney Railway (RR) which existed from 1854 to 1922 and the Barry

Railway (BR) which existed from 1884 to 1922. All of these companies were incorporated into

the famous Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1922. The formation of these companies led to a

criss crossing network in the valleys with many lines and destinations being duplicated. It was

once possible to catch a train from Pontypridd to Barry with a choice of two routes.

Before the upgrading of trunk roads or the opening of motorways, South Wales was not the

easiest place in which to transport goods via road; its geographical constraints being its steep

valleys. Thus, the railway at that time was indeed ‘king’. But times and ideas change and from

1950s onwards there was a move towards people buying into the idea that railways were

outdated, and that having their own car or mode of transport was the way forward. This coupled

with the decline of major and traditional heavy industries meant that our local rail network was

going to start being rationalised beyond recognition.

1 S. Jeffries, ‘It has more miles of canals than Venice, more trees than Paris and smells of brown sauce. Ar, I'm proud to be a Brummie’, The Guardian (23 June 2006), <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/23/comment.stuartjeffries> [accessed 17.12.12].

18

The South Wales, and in particular the Pontypridd area coalfield has always been a fluctuating

market. Various collieries have risen and fallen; but from the sixties onwards there was only one

way the South Wales coalfield was going and that was spiralling evermore downward. Newbridge

Colliery in Pontypridd closed in 1897 and between 1948 and 1966, the Aber Rhondda, Nantgarw

and Albion collieries had closed with the Coed Ely, Cwm, Great Western and Lady Windsor

Collieries closing between 1983 and 1988 and all within roughly a 5 mile radius of Pontypridd.2

Evidently, collieries were being closed in the local area from the late 1800s; although, it can also

be seen that there was a spike in the 1980s. Nonetheless only four of the collieries mentioned

were closed after the Miner’s Strike of 1984 -1985. From this we can deduce that the local

Pontypridd area coalfield was in a downward spiral well before the miners’ strike and the actions

of the coal board and the then Conservative government.

Coal was the main freight export of the local rail network. There were rail linked quarries at both

Penderyn at the top of the Cynon Valley and Creigiau, which is situated just to the north west of

Cardiff, both of which closed in the 1980s. The shrinking of the coalfield inevitably led to a

shrinking of the rail network. The closure of collieries and the publication of the much

commented on ‘Beeching report - ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’ published by the British

Railways Board 1963 led to the closure of idyllic branch lines and lines with heavy freight usage

alike.3

Today Pontypridd is still a major artery for the rail network with lines heading northwards to

Aberdare, Merthyr and Treherbert. And the valleys last flow of coal from a deep mine the Tower

Colliery (Hirwaun) - to mainly Aberthaw power station still continues daily. Although, the

closure of many lines has had a negative effect it has also had a few upturns. For example,

walkers and cyclists in the area benefit from the ‘Taff Trail’, a very enjoyable scenic walk, much

of which in the Pontypridd area is on old track bed. The line from Abercynon to Aberdare was

reinstated as a passenger line in 1988 after being axed in 1964; this was achieved by British Rail.

The much acclaimed electrification of the valleys network is next with an estimated cost of 350

million and with work taking place between 2015 and 2019. This clearly shows that Pontypridd

and the valleys are still seen as an important area financially and socially, although, the majority

2 ‘Introduction’, Welsh Coal Mines, < http://www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/index.html> [accessed 1 February 2013] 3 ‘Institute of Railyway Studies and Transport’, The University of York, <http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/features/readings/archive/beeching.htm> [accessed 1 February 2013]; ‘New Adlestrop Railway Atlas’, SystèmeD,<http://www.systemed.net/atlas/> [accessed 1 February 2013]

19

of passengers are students and commuters.4 Coal may well be in its final death throes in

Pontypridd and the production of coal will eventually come to an end - although the date is yet

to be specified.5 Nonetheless rail seems to have a bright if somewhat unrecognisable future to

that of forty to fifty years ago.

In conclusion, the main commodities of our local rail system have changed and people are now

of more value than coal. The reason for the ‘iron road’ to exist has changed, yet its necessity

remains as passenger figures have grown to the extent of overcrowding.6 Thus it will be of

interest to read and hear what fellow historians make of a likely changed local rail system in the

future. Nothing is guaranteed, however, its existence looks bright.

4 ‘Valleys Lines electrification to be completed by 2019, minister says’, Wales Online (18 October 2012), < http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2012/10/18/valleys-lines-electrification-to-be-completed-by-2019-minister-says-91466-32058001/ > [accessed 1 February 2013] 5 ‘Tower Colliery’, Miner’s Advice, <http://www.minersadvice.co.uk/tower.htm> [accessed 1 February 2013] 6 ‘Rail passenger numbers and crowding on weekdays in major cities in England and Wales: 2011’, Gov.Uk, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-in-major-cities-in-england-and-wales-2011 [accessed 1 February 2013]

20

‘Industrialization saved the Welsh

language’- Discuss

By Ceri Carter

The absence of the Welsh language in the South Wales Valleys has been hotly discussed on many

forums, including nationalist politics. Those who do speak Welsh in South Wales, speak an

anglicised version of the language. Different hypotheses have been posed to explain the reasons

behind the decline in Welsh usage. One argument is that industrialisation significantly reduced

the numbers speaking the language for a variety of reasons; however, industrialisation is also

claimed to be the saviour of the language. It is also contended that the decline in the use of

Welsh had nothing to do with industrialisation but was part of a wider social and political

problem.

The nineteenth century saw a dramatic change to the Welsh landscape, particularly in South

Wales where industrialisation took the biggest hold. The growth of industries, such as the iron

works and coal mines, saw a striking shift in population patterns in Wales. Immigration into the

country was rapid; the population of Wales increased by 406 per cent between 1801 and 1911;

this coupled with huge migration within Wales, from rural areas to the industrial south.1 Prior to

1801, ninety per cent of the Welsh population spoke Welsh and seventy per cent were monoglot

Welsh speakers.2 The 1891 census, the first to include figures on the Welsh language, showed

that that figure had dropped to 54.4 per cent of the population (for persons over the age of two)

spoke the language, varying from place to place; of those fifty six per cent were monoglot.3 By

the 1911 census, these figures had decreased again with only 43.5 per cent claiming to speak

Welsh.4 These figures, on the surface seem to confirm the belief held by many Welsh in the early

twentieth century, that ‘industrialization and capitalism were a powerful Anglicizing force which

swept over most of Wales in the nineteenth century’.5 Janet Davies blames the decline in

proportion of Welsh speakers on the rise in the population between 1891 and 1911. This is

particularly due to immigration into industrial Wales of people seeking work; the only country

1Geraint H. Jenkins, ‘Introduction’ in Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Geraint H. Jenkins (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), pp. 1-20. [p.1.] 2 Ibid., p.2. 3 Janet Davies, The Welsh Language (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993), p.53. 4 Ibid., p.56. 5 Brinley Thomas, ‘A Cauldron of Rebirth: Population and the Welsh Language in the Nineteenth Century’, in The Welsh Language and its Social Domains 1801-1911, ed. by Geraint H. Jenkins (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp.81-99. [p.81.]

21

attracting more immigrants at the time was the United States.6 There is certainly an argument for

this when looking at the numbers; over 100,000 people migrated from England to industrial

Wales.7

It is easy to blame industrialisation and capitalism for the downfall in Welsh speakers, the figures

show a dramatic decrease at a time when industrialisation is on the rise. There are, however,

other factors to consider both in favour and against this argument; after all, the figures only

show a fall in the number of Welsh and not the reason. For instance, industrialisation had been

occurring all through the nineteenth century and as Davies points out, in the period leading up to

1900 the Welsh were able to cope with the influx of immigrants by assimilation. 8 However, that

does not account for the fall in the speakers between 1801 and 1891. The negative effects of

industrialisation on the Welsh language do not account for the fact that the 1891 census reveals

seventy two per cent of residents in the most industrialised counties (Glamorgan, Flintshire,

Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire and Caernarfonshire) were Welsh speakers.9 This is likely down

to the internal migration from North and South-West Wales to the coalfields of the South Wales

Valleys, a factor that Gwyn A. Williams suggests had been previously underestimated.10 Williams

also supports Davies’ point that prior to 1900, immigrants from outside Wales were assimilated;

apart from the Irish who were segregated for religious reasons. Many English, Spanish and

Italian immigrants learned the Welsh language, though on the whole the majority of the working

population of Wales during this time were Welsh.11 This moves away from the seemingly logical

argument that immigration caused the downfall of the Welsh language, if the majority of

migration was internal and immigrants were learning the language.

The argument for industrialisation saving the Welsh language was largely brought about by

economist, Brinley Thomas. Thomas compares the figures for Wales with that of Ireland, which

was largely bypassed by industrialisation. He claims that between 1841 and 1901 the population

of Wales doubled to two million with nearly half speaking Welsh; whilst in Ireland the

population halved to just under four and a half million with only nineteen per cent speaking

Irish Gaelic.12 Thus, the argument is that had Wales not been industrialised the vast majority of

the population would have had to migrate elsewhere, such as the United States, taking the

6 Davies, The Welsh Language, p.56. 7 Ibid., p.56. 8 Ibid., p.57. 9 Thomas, ‘A Cauldron of Rebirth’, p.81. 10 Gwyn A. Williams, When Was Wales? A History of the Welsh (London: Penguin, 1985), p.179. 11 Ibid., p.179. 12 Thomas, ‘A Cauldron of Rebirth’, p.85.

22

language with them and allowing it to die out there. This is an argument principally supported by

Williams, who goes further to suggest that industrialisation not only saved the Welsh language

but saved Wales as a ‘recognisable entity’.13 Obviously, this does not count for the rapid influx of

outside migration post 1900 which Davies blames for the degradation of the Welsh language.14

One possible reason for the stark contrast between the two periods of immigration is the rise in

political awareness and the movement from a liberal Welsh workforce to a Socialist workforce.

The second half of the nineteenth century saw liberalism take hold of Welsh Society. Liberalism,

Nonconformity and Welshness were intertwined;15 the Welsh language playing an integral part.

Not even the damnation of the Blue Books in 1847; a derogatory report on education in Wales

by English, Anglican commissioners; could prevent the growing usage of Welsh in the years

following.16 The area playing host to this industrialisation also happened to be the place where a

new national identity and mythology was being born.17 Clearly this is evidence that the migration

of English workers to the region was seen as a threat to the Welsh ‘identity’ and language. There

does appear to be a correlation between the demise of the Welsh language in industrialised areas

and the rise of Unionism and Socialism. All of a sudden workers’ rights became more important

than preserving Welshness and the Welsh language. Gwyn Thomas remarked that ‘The Welsh

language stood in the way of our fuller union and we made ruthless haste to destroy it. We nearly

did’.18 The Welsh language’s alliance with liberalism forced workers to choose between their

language and their rights. Liberalism failed them, therefore so did the Welsh language. They were

part of a bigger social unity now, in British workers’ unions, and the Welsh language did not fit

into that unity.19 The election of Britain’s only socialist Member of Parliament in Methyr Tydfil

in 1900 is evident of the precedence socialist unity was taking over Welsh only interests. Keir

Hardie was neither a Welshman nor a Welsh speaker; he hailed from Scotland and had hoped

that he would be elected in Preston, but after suffering a heavy defeat he received an ‘unexpected

13 Williams, When was Wales? p.180. 14 Davies, The Welsh Language, p.57. 15 Ibid., p.57. 16 Thomas, ‘A Cauldron of Rebirth’, p.91. 17 Philip N. Jones, ‘The Welsh Language in the Valleys of Glamorgan c’ 1800-1914’, in Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Geraint H. Jenkins (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), pp.147-180 [p.148]. 18 Gwyn Thomas quoted in Davies, The Welsh Language, p.57. 19 Davies, The Welsh Language, p.57.

23

invite’ from the miners of Merthyr who elected him to the two seat constituency.20 This speaks

volumes of what was important to the Welsh working population, certainly in Merthyr Tydfil.

So why does industrialisation play such an important role in the story of the Welsh language

during this period of time? Brinley Thomas also alludes to class to explain the fall in Welsh

speakers. However, instead of the working classes, he looks to the middling classes’ reliance on

English for ‘material gain’.21 Something that seems to coincide with the argument that English

was the language of the British Empire and therefore business transactions abroad had to be

conducted in English; a point in favour of industrialisation as damaging to the Welsh language.

Thomas is also keen to point out that religion was the major downfall of the Welsh language,

with Welsh ministers giving sermons in English to cater for the ‘spiritual needs’ of the English

immigrants. He claims that this anglicised the Welsh more than it evangelised the English.22

Again, an argument in favour of industrialisation damaging the Welsh language; because had

Wales not been so successfully industrialised there would not have been any English immigrants

to provide for. His argument that the British Empire and imperialism had more of a detrimental

effect on the Welsh language than anything else is an argument that resonates through the ages.23

Even when talking about the language’s high points in the nineteenth century, they are nowhere

near one hundred per cent of the population. The spoken language has been deteriorating since

its conquest by the English; Gwyn Williams alludes to the point that Dr John Dee was from the

non-Welsh speaking Radnorshire part of Wales.24 Although the Welsh language looked to be on

the rise after the publication of the Blue Books, Thomas contends that subsequent British

governments had based their Welsh language policies on the doctrines of the Blue Books. An

hypocrisy in his opinion when compared with the positive way in which the British dealt with the

preservation of French in Quebec.25

In conclusion, it is clear that there is very little difference in the reasons behind the arguments

for and against industrialisation saving the Welsh language. There definitely is a case that

industrialisation was severely detrimental in the survival of Welsh as a widely spoken language,

particularly in the beginning of the twentieth century. Brinley Thomas and Gwyn A. Williams

argue that if it was not for industrialisation there would not be a Welsh nation or a Welsh people

20 Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘Hardie, (James) Keir (1856–1915)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33696> [accessed 19 Feb 2012] 21 Thomas, ‘A Cauldron of Rebirth’, p.94. 22 Ibid., p.94. 23 Ibid., p.96. 24 Gwyn A. Williams, The Welsh in Their History (London & Canberra: Croom Helm Ltd, 1982), p.16. 25 Thomas, ‘A Cauldron of Rebirth’, p.96.

24

to speak of let alone a Welsh language; so in that sense the language was saved by proxy.

However, it is clear that despite the initial assimilation of migrant workers in the growth years

prior to 1900, the rapidity of immigration after that date meant that assimilation was not

possible. The argument that social-political unrest and the radicalisation of the workforce put the

Welsh language on the backburner, slowly allowing it to decay, has at its roots industrialisation;

no industry, no downtrodden workforce to radicalise. Thomas’ point that nonconformity had a

greater role in the demise of spoken Welsh by giving English language sermons to cater for the

English immigrants; also has industrialisation at its heart; no industry, no immigrants to provide

for. The case against the British Empire is perhaps the strongest. It cannot be doubted that

British Imperialism had the largest part to play in the demise of the Welsh language; the

precedence is clear over a longer period of time. However, there is a case to be put forward that

the language was not in any real danger until industrialisation took a hold in Wales. Therefore, it

is possible to argue that industrialisation was only the catalyst and that imperialism is the root of

the decaying language. Perhaps the better statement; and perhaps the most important point for

Wales as a surviving nation; should be ‘Industrialisation saved Wales’. Though the Welsh

language took a devastating hit in the early part of the twentieth century, the language that bears

the closest resemblance to the original language of the Britons is being saved; this would not be

happening had Wales been allowed to disappear.

25

Evaluating the Significance of Women in

Munitions Production during the Second

World War in South Wales 1939-1945

By Ian Prosser

The employment of women to sustain the British workforce during the Second World War

raised debates about a woman’s role in the workplace and her home life, but it also opened

opportunities for women to demonstrate their skills and abilities through their contribution

towards the war effort. The employment of women during the period 1939 to 1945 in the realm

of the munitions industry was particularly significant in South Wales. The need for female

workers and the significance of maintaining a sustainable female workforce are raised here and

compared with the financial opportunities that it provided in using women in the manufacture of

weapons.

With the advent of the Second World War inevitable, the civilian female population of Britain

were already earmarked by the government as a potential workforce that would be required to

assist with civilian defence and as auxiliary labour. The latter involved both employment in the

manufacturing of arms and weapons, but also engineering and agricultural employment. The

labour strategy of using women as a replacement workforce had been used previously by the

government in the First World War when in 1916, the government requested women volunteers

to work in industry, shops and offices and also on public transport. Women were intended to

take over the roles that normally involved the employment of men.1 Following the armistice of

the First World War, the female volunteer workforce that aided the war effort on the home front

were informed that it was now their duty to return to the domestic lives they had prior to the

start of the war. The encouragement to women that it was ‘Their duty to return to the home’ was

also promoted by the trade unions.2 This stance was further strengthened by enforcing

employment that was originally associated with women (a form of employment agreed as

acceptable for women), such as the civil service and the nursing profession. However, these

forms of employment offered limited opportunities because once a woman married, she was

expected to forsake any employment and resolve to a life of domesticity.3

1 Carol Harris, Women at war 1939-1945:The home front (Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd,2000), p. 1. 2Ibid., p.1. 3 Ibid. p.1.

26

In 1938, with the possibility of another large scale war on the horizon, the government realised

the importance of women to the war effort. The recollection of the First World War initiated a

campaign aimed at the female population, which resulted in the formation of the Women’s

Volunteer Service (W.V.S.) in 1938 under the main title of the National Service.4 This organisation

was central to generating volunteers and then using their assistance and support for other

volunteer organisations in civil defence such as the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and other

auxiliary services. One of the key roles of the W.V.S. upon first entering the war effort was the

planning and organisation of the evacuation of children from the primary targets of the expected

aerial bombings. The duties of women volunteers during these evacuation procedures included

organising the billeting of the children being evacuated and overseeing their welfare. Many

posters depicting images of women assisting in the evacuation process appeared; they urged

women to help in the evacuation of children from expected targeted cities as part of the

recruitment drive. However, this was a limited role based around child welfare and women were

soon looked to for a more involved role to underpin the war effort.

By 1940 it became clear that even with the new organisations in civil defence and other Auxiliary

services there would be a shortfall of labour. Sir William Beveridge, who was appointed under-

secretary to the minister of labour, was assigned the task of calculating the required numbers

needed for the reserved occupations expected during the war.5 His 1940 report found that to

achieve the numbers of men required to sustain the armed forces it would leave a deficit of

approximately one and a half million in the labour force. To compensate for this shortfall the

same amount of women would be needed to sustain and maintain the work force in the auxiliary

services. Following the report and the registration of employment order of 1943 this number was

achieved with the compulsory recruitment of women (conscription).6Most women secured

employment in agriculture and other auxiliary employment, but as the demand for munitions

increased and as the war lengthened, many women found themselves involved in the

manufacturing of munitions and arms, and working in the heavy industry associated with the war

4 The Women’s Voluntary Services (W.V.S) was established in 1938 by Stella Isaacs, the Dowager Marchioness of Reading. The Women's Voluntary Service was to act as a support unit for the ARP and in matters of civil defence. 5 Eugenia Low, ‘Biography of Sir William Beveridge’, Liberal Democrat History Group, (29 December 2008), < http://www.liberalhistory.org.uk> [accessed 16 January 2012] 6 Mark Donnelly, Britain in the Second World War, (London: Routledge, 1999), p.39.

27

effort. This led to a different working and home life which most women had not experienced

before, especially in terms of skills and independence.

A number of publications written about women in the auxiliary services and their employment

during the Second World War highlight the significance and value of women’s employment in

the area of munitions manufacturing. Women’s contribution to the war effort can be ascertained

through primary source evidence such as private diaries and letters, as well as through the

observation diaries collated through the Mass Observation project that ran from 1937 to 1950.7

This source gives an insight into the lives of the women that had been employed in the

munitions factories and other associated employment related to the war effort, describing both

the disruption to their existing lives and the importance of their roles. A more focused source by

Maria Williams entitled, ‘A Forgotten Army’: Female Munitions Workers of South Wales 1939-1945 is a

valuable record of Welsh women’s lives and the effect on those who worked in the munitions

factories in Wales (or munitionettes as they were known). 8 Using reconstructions from primary

source evidence, Williams explores the wider context of the parts these women played and she

offers an insight into their social, cultural, and economic lives during this period. What many of

these women faced was not just finding themselves in employment for the first time, but a total

change in lifestyle as many who had husbands away fighting in the war found themselves juggling

home life, family, and work. An article appeared in the South Wales Argus, on 3 July 1943 by

Alexander M. Thompson in which he commented on the effect that the war had on the working

women of Wales, where thousands of women now found themselves working in the munitions

factories. Thompson’s concerns were that, despite the appreciation of women’s contribution to

the war effort, he feared that there would be consequences of this revolution in the national

habit. In his opinion, these war time conditions had changed the traditional role of women in the

work place and had permanently altered their social standing with shifts in the traditional gender

model of women.9 He was concerned that, once these women had found a type of independence

in the work place, after the war they would not want to return to their original domestic lives,

but in fact many of the women who entered employment in the munitions industry managed

both their work in the factories and their domestic lives. Many women worked eight hour shifts,

7 The Mass-Observation diaries were initiated in August 1937 by the social research organisation Mass Observation as an anthropological study of the everyday lives of men and women in Great Britain preceding and during the war years 1937-1950. . 8 Maria A. Williams, ‘A Forgotten Army’: Female Munitions Workers of South Wales 1939-1945 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002). 9 Alexander M. Thompson, cited in Williams, ‘A Forgotten Army‘ p.109.

28

returned home after their long shifts and completed all their domestic tasks, including taking

charge of childcare arrangements.

The significance of the role of women in the wartime factories and other auxiliary services

proved to be crucial. The employment of women was a turning point in gender evaluation in the

short term in respect of the self-perception of the women, but also in its long-term effects which

altered the attitudes of those involved in the employment of women in the work place, especially

in the munitions manufacturing sector. However, the need to use women in the war effort did

cause concern and debate amongst the coalition government of the time. They knew that they

had to sustain a substantial workforce and that women would be able to complete the work

required but there was also concern that the traditional female role was being changed from

home maker/ mother because the perception was that a women’s place was with the family.10

But, in reality a substantial workforce was needed and the women of war time Britain provided a

solution. 1940 to 1941 saw a large insurgence in the number of women recruited for the

munitions factories, especially in Wales and this is the period when the impact of the war was

fully realised. Thousands of women were recruited for five new Royal Ordnance Factories

(R.O.F) that were built in Bridgend, Glascoed, Haran, Llanishen and Newport in South Wales.11

By 1943 the two Welsh factories of Bridgend and Glascoed had employed a total of 50,000

people, of which 35,000 were women.12 Employment figures show that during the period 1940

to 1941 the workforce of Wales was essentially made up of women, with the number of female

employees in the munitions industry growing dramatically.13

The financial gain for women working in the Royal Ordinance Factories provided a new

opportunity for Welsh women, and the high wages offered a further incentive. Many mothers of

teenage children, especially teenage girls, found it more beneficial for their daughters to give up

their lesser paid work and to stay at home to look after younger brothers and sisters, whilst they

themselves went out to work. In 1941 a young girl who worked in a retail store in Maesteg South

10 Penny Summerfield, ‘Women and Social Changes in the Second World War’, in ed. by B. Brivati & H. Jones What Difference Did the War Make?(Leicester: Leicester University Press), p.66 cited in Donnelly, Britain in the Second World War, p 42. 11 Donnelly, Britain in the Second World War, p.55 12Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) (5th series), vol.329, 395, (17th November1937); ibid vol 334, 1281 (14th April 1938); Earnest street, Royal Ordinance Factory.Glascoed’, Gwent Local History No 60(1986), 15-18 cited in Williams, ‘A Forgotten Army’, p.55 13 Williams, ‘A Forgotten Army’, p.68.

29

Wales finished work to stay at home to look after her two younger brothers whilst her mother

went to work in the munitions factory at Bridgend as it proved to be more lucrative.14

The government strategy and employment figures show the change in the role and expectations

of women during the Second World War, particularly in the munitions and arms industry, but

also in other war time employment. Women’s employment was essential to the war effort and

played a significant part in sustaining the workforce in the munitions industry that was

paramount to the war effort. South Wales was a major contributor of female labour in the arms

industry, with nine factories in Wales all manufacturing weapons and other engineering products

associated with the war.

14 Ibid., p.116

30

Have historians overstated the importance

of organized sport in the construction of a

Welsh identity in the late Victorian and

Edwardian period?

By Ryan Fackrell

‘A game democratic and amateur is a rare thing – a unique thing to be

cherished, and therefore the concern of thinking men who value …

higher levels of citizenship… Wales begins… evolutionary turns

forward’.

The Welsh Outlook, January 1914

Readers would be forgiven for incorrectly assuming that the focus of the above extract is

political in nature. The mention of democracy suggests politics; however, in fact the subject

being so passionately described is rugby. Similarly, have historians incorrectly overstated the

importance of organized sport in the construction of a Welsh identity in the late Victorian and

Edwardian period? D. Gareth Evans acknowledges rugby as the Welsh national game that

represented national pride and expression.1 Gareth Williams claims Wales’ win against New

Zealand in 1905 to be as important as the publication of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.2 Is then

the proposed question flawed? Should it specifically assess the influence of organised rugby only?

Dai Smith states rugby was just one representation in a golden age of sporting achievement that

included champion cyclists and boxers.3 So why does rugby continually steal the limelight while

other sports are left on the ‘bench’? In understanding the process of how rugby became the

national game, it can be further understood how that game represents the nation both externally

and internally.

To create a recognisable nation there must be social solidarity or a common identity: the sharing

of a common history or, the sharing of common culture like a language is just two examples.4

The creation of a national identity fundamentally occurs in a number of phases: most

1 D. Gareth Evans, A History of Wales 1906-2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), p.60. 2 Gareth Williams, ‘From Popular Culture to Public Cliché: Image and Identity in Wales, 1890-1914’, in Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism: British Culture and Sport at Home and Abroad 1700-1914, ed. by J.A. Mangan (London: Frank Cass, 1988), p.126. 3 Dai Smith, ‘Focal heroes: a Welsh fighting class’, in, Sport and the working class in modern Britain, ed. by Richard Holt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p.199. 4 Graig Calhoun, Nationalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), pp.4-6.

31

importantly in this case are social construction and expression.5 This paper argues that

movements like nonconformity and liberalism were important in constructing a Welsh identity.

Furthermore, organised sport was essential to the construction and expression of this national

identity.

The foundation of any national identity must be a shared history: for national identities to

progress societies require knowledge of ancestral experiences that have contributed to their

current social climate. ‘…Welsh people have been oppressed by the English State for some seven

centuries’.6 This oppression stifled the flourishment of a Welsh culture; furthermore, notable

gaps have been left in an independent Welsh history. 7 Therefore, Welsh nationalists of the

Victorian and Edwardian periods resorted to inventing or exaggerating traditions: one example is

the Gwerin a semi-mythological group of ancestors from Wales’ not so distant past. Self reliant

and progressive the Gwerin were a conceptualisation that was endorsed by Welsh scholar O.M.

Edwards.8 Gwerin translates into a multitude of meanings, and each translation relates to

specified contexts. Gwerin translates as ‘force’ or ‘warriors’; therefore, the Gwerin could be

guardians of Welsh culture and society. More humbly Gwerin translates as working class or

common folk and portrays the everyday values of being progressively self reliant.9

The integration of organised sport into Welsh culture was a new to the Victorian and Edwardian

periods. Rugby was a product of England’s middle class schools, which filtered into Victorian

Wales via English landlords. However, Welsh nationalists wanted to forge their own links to the

game of rugby. In 1603, George Owen gave a detailed description of a ball game called Cnappen:

played in Pembrokeshire, Cnappen was viewed as a violent and primitive form of rugby.10

Similarly, in 1914 The Welsh Outlook claimed that Welsh rugby had an ‘unassailable tradition’. 11

This is true regarding the national team’s achievements of 1900 to 1914, however, with regards

to time, Welsh rugby was not popular until the early twentieth century. The invented tradition

5 Ibid., p.6. 6 Raymond Williams, ‘Wales and England’, in Who Speaks for Wales? Nation, Culture, Identity. Raymond Williams, ed. by Daniel Williams (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2003), p.16. 7 Raymond Williams, ‘Welsh Culture’, in Who Speaks for Wales?, ed.by Williams, pp.5-11, 8-9. 8 Evans, History of Wales, pp.127-8. 9 Prys Morgan, 'The Gwerin of Wales - Myth and Reality,'pp.134-152’, in, The Welsh and their Country: Readings in the Social Sciences, ed. by I. Hume and W.T.R. Pryce (Llandysol: Gomer Press, 1986), pp.134-38. 10 George Owen [1603]. In, The Description of Pembrokeshire, ed by Henry Owen (London: 1892), pp.270-82. Cited: Martin Johnes, A History of Sport in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales, 2005), pp.1-2. 11 The Welsh Outlook (1914), <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/browse/listissues/llgc-id:1311205> [accessed 2 February 2012] .

32

was also influenced by ethnic concepts that would differentiate the Welsh from their neighbours.

Welsh nationalists began to associate themselves with an ancestry all of their own. One example

is the Celts, an ancient warrior race that refused to conform and challenged the might of Rome. 12

In turn ‘Celtic’ came to resemble physical and mental qualities like courage, strength, speed and

others that typified the Welsh race and their sporting achievements.13

To create common cultures, social movements are required to establish social structures which

give nations purpose and direction. In the Victorian period the non-conformist chapel became

the central hub of life in Wales: It influenced socio-cultural undertones and provided moralistic

guidelines that could lead to individual salvation.14 Coincidently, the rise of Liberalism enforced

the democraticization of the nation, and enforced the idea of a nonconformist nation. In 1907,

the founding of the National Library of Wales and the National Museum of Wales were notable

achievements. The establishment of a network of university colleges in turn provoked a

revitalisation of nationalistic understandings.15 In contrast, domestic sport created social divides

in early twentieth century Wales, however, the unifying qualities of national sporting

achievements contributed to nationalism in unique ways. The emergence of sport and leisure in

the twentieth century threatened the Victorian non-conformist tradition. Nonconformist officials

believed the nation was turning to vain pursuits like sport and drinking which undermined the

chapel’s traditional values.16 The chapel was central to nonconformity, whereas, the local ‘arms’

was central to organised sport. The religious revival of 1904 to 1905 clearly defined the contrasts

between the nonconformist pursuits and the moral indecency of sport. One rugby veteran

claimed during the revival: ‘I used to play full-back for the Devil, but now I am forward for

God’.17

National identity is a collective of numerous locally formed identities that flux according to

geographical, cultural and ethnic factors. In the early 1900s, football was a middle class pastime

and was popular in Northern Wales.18 Similarly, tennis was more symbolic of an individual’s

social status rather than preferences regarding leisure.19 Contrastingly, rugby and boxing were

12 Williams, ‘Welsh Culture’, p.8. 13 Examples in: Smith, ‘Focal heroes’, in Sport and the working class, ed. by Holt, pp.214-15, and Johnes, A History of Sport, p.31. 14 C.R. Williams, ‘The Welsh Religious Revival, 1904-5’, The British Journal of Sociology, 3.3 (1952), 242-259 (pp. 242-43). 15 Evans, History of Wales, pp.1-6. 16 Williams, ‘Religious Revival’, pp. 242-46. 17 Gareth Williams, 1905 and All that (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1991), pp.76-7. 18Johnes, A History of Sport, p.34. 19 Ibid., p.38.

33

primarily working class pursuits that thrived in the industrialised valleys of South Wales.20 These

sports typified the physical force and masculinity required by the average industrial worker.

When these forces collided in recreational sport a common outcome was violence: violence that

typified regional rugby teams who defined their identities from those around them by way of

victory.21 There was also a clear gender divide in organised sport as women played an entirely

passive role. Sport was typified by manliness and women were treated as second class citizens

even in times of leisure, and this was the case regardless of class or social standing.22 The

domestic game created numerous social divides but the national sport was a different ‘ball game.’

The national rugby team had no visible class boundaries: ‘Embracing well-educated, white-collar

backs (for their skill) and manual worker forwards (for their strength)’.23 Furthermore, the team

was free of ethnic differentiation: caps were being won by men from Somerset, Devon and

Tyneside.24 This attitude filtered into the fan base, for example, after their win against New

Zealand in 1905 crowds were filled with people of both sexes and of different races and

nationalities.25 The experience of the national game is one that embodies the aims of both

nonconformity and liberalism in creating a unified Welsh nation.

Using sport as an expression has its limitations, primarily; the quality of the expression directly

reflects the quality of the sporting achievement. Positively, the period 1900 to 1914 was a golden

age of Welsh sport that witnessed notable achievements in numerous pursuits.26 Despite notable

achievements, Welsh liberalism was still bound to and therefore limited by the English/ British

government. The nonconformist religion was only as strong as its congregation, and in the early

twentieth century its influence came under attack from social influences like organised sport.27

Therefore, sport was in a healthy position to represent a progressive Welsh nation. But why in

this golden period does one sport, namely rugby, get the lion’s share of the glory? Quoits is a

game which involves throwing iron rings around spikes: it was popular in working class areas and

attracted large amounts of spectators who witnessed notable successes against England.

However, quoits was not as exciting as rugby; furthermore, it did not display the same levels of

20 Smith, ‘Focal heroes’, in Sport and the working class, ed. by Holt, p.199. 21 Williams, ‘Public Cliché’, in Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism, ed. by Mangan, pp.131-32. 22 Andy Croll, ‘Popular Leisure and Sport’, in A Companion to Nineteenth Century Britain, ed. by Chris Williams (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p.407. 23 Williams, 1905, p.80. 24Ibid., p.80. 25 South Wales Daily News, 18 December 1905, cited in Ibid., p.70. 26 John Davies, A History of Wales (London: Penguin Books, 2007), p.480. 27 Williams, ‘Religious Revival’, p. 246.

34

masculinity that epitomised working class sports.28 In the early twentieth century the industrial

valleys of the south produced boxers like Jim Driscoll, Freddie Welsh and Jimmy Wilde, who

were emblematic of sporting achievement and their society. However, boxing never established a

strong tradition or a strong symbolism in Wales.29 ‘The boxer stands alone. His relationship to

his particular society is as complex as the spectator’s role is ambivalent’.30 Football is followed

widely in modern day Wales, however, Victorian and Edwardian Wales viewed it as an alien

game that represented England.31 David Lloyd George once attributed the political non

responsiveness of Monmouthshire to a ‘morbid Footballism’.32 Rugby was commonly viewed as

the national game because it represented everything that the sports above failed to. It was a

violent game that first and foremost provoked spectator excitement, furthermore, it symbolised

masculinity inherent within the industrial working class. There was also an extensive amount of

skill involved that highlighted physical qualities that were believed to be typical of the Welsh

race.

Organised sport is a phenomenon in Welsh history in that on paper it has no socio-political

qualities. Symbolically, organised sport and specifically rugby represented all the achievements of

a progressive Welsh nation. Domestic sport at times created divides in society that was

marginally harmful to the construction of a national identity. However, national sporting

achievements at times reflected the democratic ideals that were typical of liberal politics. Due to

monumental and global successes, organised sport transcended the social restrictions of the

Victorian and Edwardian period. Therefore, sport could represent a Welsh national identity

more effectively than the movements that had become limited by the social structures they had

influenced.

28 Johnes, A History of Sport, pp.37-8. 29 Ibid, p.42. 30 Smith, ‘Focal heroes’, in Sport and the working class, ed. by Holt, p.200. 31 Williams, ‘Public Cliché’, in Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism, ed. by Mangan, p.141. 32 Johnes, A History of Sport, p.32.

35

‘A farrago of filth…every page teems with

clotted idiocies [Western Mail]…the

literature of the sewers [The Welsh

Outlook]’. Why did commentators respond

so angrily to Caradoc Evans’ My People

(1915)? A Discussion.

By Huw Edwards

‘The repute of the man who defrauds servant girls with coloured bibles was fairer in Wales than mine’1

The ‘snippets’ of invective contained within the article title and aimed at Caradoc Evans’ My

People are from two publications; The Welsh Outlook and the Western Mail. A brief analysis of the

profiles of these publications provides a strong clue as to the nature and vested interests of the

vicious opposition to Evans’ debut work. The former prided itself on being an erudite

mouthpiece for an educated, allegedly classless Welsh society, attempting to promote, in 1915,

the under-fire notion of y gwerin. The owner of The Welsh Outlook was D.A. Thomas [Llandinam],

a Liberal M.P and owner of the vast Ocean Mining Combine. Its editor was Thomas [TJ] Davies,

a man who would go on to achieve Cabinet Secretary status under Lloyd George. The Welsh

Outlook is described by Dai Smith as a journal whose educative mission was to defend

‘…moderate trade unionism against belligerent employers and insisting upon the value of The

Workers Educational Association and of the university movement in the fight against the spread

of rank and file agitation and Marxist pedagogues’.2 It is no small wonder, therefore, that they

should invoke a reference to the ‘sewer’ in their criticism of My People. The second, the Western

Mail, is described succinctly by John Harris as a ‘…newspaper of Tory persuasion but one which,

for all its dealings with Caradoc Evans, appropriated the tones of militant Liberal-

nonconformity’.3

1 Caradoc Evans cited in ‘Introduction’ by Gwyn Jones to My People, (London: Dobson,1953). 2 Dai Smith, Aneurin Bevan and the World of South Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1983), p.57. 3 John Harris. ‘Introduction: “The Banned, Burned Book of War”, in Caradoc Evans, My People (Bridgend: Seren Classics, 1987), p.9.

36

On examination of the context of socio-political forces at play in early twentieth century,

Edwardian Wales, the anger and vitriol displayed against Evans is unsurprising. David Lloyd

George was Minister of Munitions in the Liberal government and heading for the position of

Prime Minister of a country waging fervent war against Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, with a Navy

powered by the renowned Welsh steam coal from a heavily industrialized South Wales. The

Kaiser himself was known to be an admirer of this Welsh product. Many Welshmen had

volunteered to do their duty and fight in the British World War. Liberal-nonconformity was in

crisis in South Wales. The religious revival of 1904-1906, characterised by collier’s son, Evan

Roberts, ‘God’s chosen instrument’, had petered out and the country was reeling from an uneasy

period of unrest and industrial protest, strikes and riots. In the land of the supposedly ‘classless’,

quasi-mythological gwerin, the syndicalist movement and the irresistible rise of the forces of

organised labour ensured that the voice of a burgeoning working class was heard. Both Liberal

politics and religious non-conformity could have no cause for complacency and pallid

conciliation, the age of Mabon had passed. It is not surprising therefore that a work such as My

People, coming at this time, met with vehement opposition from both chapel and state.

The timing of the publication of My People could not have been worse…or better, dependent on

one’s political, cultural and religious outlook. In short, it was clear that Evans was seen as ‘off

message’ and running contrary to the nationalistic image that the forces of Liberal-

nonconformity were keen to project to a world where Wales was holding centre-stage

industrially. M.Wynn Thomas describes My People as being ‘…part of the product of a specific

historical crisis, a period of power-transference as the Socialists wrested political power in Wales

from the grasp of the Liberals’ and that opposition to the book, as exemplified by the extracts in

the title of this article, ‘…proclaimed it to be an impure fantasy and claimed the author had

adulterated the truth as unscrupulously as other Londonised Cardis had watered their milk’.4

Evans, as can be seen from the quotation on the front-sheet of this article accepted his

reputation and notoriety. To a certain extent he relished it and encouraged it. He wrote with his

usual provocative impishness in the Western Mail in November, 1915 in response to being

accused of a ‘farrago of blasphemy and obscenity’ that:

4 M. Wynn Thomas. ‘My People and the Revenge of the Novel’ The New Welsh Review, 1 (1988), pp.17-25.

37

Wales would be brighter and more Christianlike if every chapel were burnt to the ground

and a public-house raised on the ashes thereof…for I have heard no song, only young

servant girls screaming frightfully in the arms of praying men.5

Having described the ‘battle-lines’ drawn between Caradoc Evans and his fierce detractors, this

article will seek to answer two seemingly simple questions; what did Evans’ critics accuse him of

that inspired such anger and venom? And was there any justification for their hostility? , was

there indeed, as Gwyn Jones maintains, ‘a tincture of truth’ in the criticisms of a work where the

Welsh rural gwerin are portrayed as ‘…elementals, stripped to the very fork, and at one with the

soil and the beasts’?6 The main criticisms levelled against Evans were treachery against his

countryfolk and language, lies and lack of realism, blasphemy, sacrilege and misogyny. This brief

discussion will attempt to address these four main areas of criticism and will cite literary and

historical academic sources alongside extracts from several of the fifteen mordant short stories

of which My People is comprised.

Lloyd George said of Evans in 1919, ‘Pride of race belongs to the lowest savage. This man is a

renegade’.7 Evans had made some powerful enemies; he was considered a betrayer of his race; he

was accused of ‘…gaining popularity by pandering to his English audience’s prejudices about the

gothic and barbaric Welsh’.8 Whilst the ‘tincture of truth’ may be residual in that he undoubtedly

benefited from English book sales and had had to move to the English capital, as many other

creatives felt compelled, to pursue his art, the accusation of anti-Welsh treachery is unfounded.

In January 1917, the Western Mail accused Evans of living ‘…in a moral sewer’ and that his

characters were ‘…gross and repulsive…and not Welsh and certainly not Welsh peasants’. His

reply was that he wrote because ‘…I believe that the cesspools of West Wales should be stirred

up, because I want to see my people freed from religious tyranny, because I love my country so

much that I would exhibit her sores that they may be healed’.9 Evans also admits his complicity

in growing up with nonconformist values. In a 1924 lecture he confessed ‘You may say that no

man should accuse unless he himself is clean…And in accusing my people, I accuse myself’.10

5 Caradoc Evans, Western Mail, 27 November 1915. 6 Gwyn Jones, (Introduction) to My People (London: Dobson,1953). 7 Trevor Lloyd William, Caradoc Evans (Cardiff, 1970), 21. 8 Ibid. 9 Caradoc Evans, the Western Mail, 23 January 1917, cited in John Harris (Ed). Fury Never Leaves Us (Bridgend: Poetry Wales, 1985). 10 Caradoc Evans, ‘Lecture at University College, Bangor, November 1924’, Cited in Harri Roberts, ‘The Body and the Book: Caradoc Evans’s My People’, Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays. 11, (2006/7), p.48.

38

The second count of treachery levelled against Evans is that he wrote the book in a desultory,

mock-biblical, invented Welsh dialect and not in his native tongue and first language, Welsh.

John Harris and M. Wynn Thomas, feel that Evans’ opponents miss the point and fail to

understand his unique and clever use of a stylistic language. In his introduction to the 1987

edition of My People, Harris recounts how Evans was inspired by randomly opening the bible

‘…at the homely eighteenth chapter of Genesis. I read that chapter seven times, and as I closed

the book I made a vow to write My People’.11 The Old Testament proved an innovative template

for Evans that fired his artistic and political mission. Harris maintains that ‘Genesis 18, the

chapter in which Abraham intercedes on behalf of Sodom, helped convince Evans of his high

mission…to save Wales from itself’. The biblical-style dialogue increases the power and authority

of the narrative and adroitly becomes ‘a satiric weapon for attacking those who would

commandeer biblical language and precepts for their own dark ends’. He then asserts that

‘Ministers and deacons had made rhetoric their ‘hateful weapons’; Evans would now turn it

devastatingly against them’.12 My People is replete with examples of this theory, In ‘Lamentations’,

the self-important deaconess and village gossip, Bertha Daviss admonishes village renegade,

Evan Rhiw, ‘Awful are the fingers that will grasp you by your rib trousers and throw you into the

Fiery Pool’.13 Thomas believes that Evans had developed a ‘…baroque language to convey…the

indwelling ugliness of perverted spiritual shape, of his people’.14 Belinda Humphrey agrees and

summarises the issue economically,

His strength is in his style; overall he blends the cadence of the Old Testament and Marie

Lloyd’s music-hall storytelling skill through what she didn’t say. The ponderous biblical

style is, of course, ironic, given its evil usage in Caradoc’s peasant community.15

The case can be made that should Evans have written My People in Welsh, then the power and

impact of this clever satirical style might well have been lost.

11 John Harris. ‘Introduction: “The Banned, Burned Book of War” in Caradoc Evans, My People (Bridgend: Seren Classics, 1987) p.9. 12 Ibid., p.11. 13Caradoc Evans, ‘Lamentations’ , My People, (London: Dobson, 1953), p.141. 14 M. Wynn Thomas. ‘My People and the Revenge of the Novel.’, The New Welsh Review,1 (1988), p.23. 15 Belinda Humphrey, ‘Prelude to the Twentieth Century’, Welsh Writing in English V11, (Cardiff: UWP, 2003).

39

As can be seen from the feverish criticism of My People by publications such as the Western Mail

and The Welsh Outlook, Liberal-nonconformity had taken a kick in its rigid underbelly from

Caradoc Evans and protested loudly that he had drawn a scurrilously inaccurate portrait of the

Welsh rural ‘yeomanry’. Russell Davies, in his fascinating, and painstakingly researched, history

of rural West Wales [1996], disagrees. He states that in the

…traditional view, rural Wales is seen as an idyllic Eden. The cottages are clean and

whitewashed, with ivy growing on the walls, and latticed porches overgrown with pink

roses. The inhabitants of these houses are rosy-cheeked, fit healthy and sturdy.16

Nothing could have been further from reality. Davies chronicles an area of Wales teeming with

suicide, mental illness, crime, class division, putrid housing, appalling sanitation and disease; high

infant mortality rates, incest, baby farming and misogyny. This is the heartland of Liberal-

nonconformist Wales. The gwerin were portrayed by Liberal-nonconformity as ‘classless’. Davies

argues that Nonconformist religion actually promoted class division between the Minister,

Deacons and congregation. This was overlaid socially with patriarchal class hierarchies that

included the rich landowners, revered clergy, rich farmers, ‘shopocracy’ and teachers and finally

the cottagers and the destitute poor in workhouses or on ‘indoor’ or ‘outdoor’ relief. Davies

found a strict correlation between religious and social prestige, where Deacons in Baptist

chapels, a group for whom Caradoc Evans reserved special vitriol, were ‘…largely drawn from

the farming and shopkeeping classes; very few were workers’. He then quotes from a picante

item from the Carmarthen Weekly Reporter in 1896, which postulates the idea that ‘Class division

might not exist in Heaven, but if Christ went to some of the Carmarthen Chapels he would have

to sit near the door whilst his ‘betters’ sat ‘higher up’.17 Evans begins My People with ‘A Father in

Sion’ and introduces the reader to the pompous and evil Sadrach, Danyrefail the epitome of

Evans’ target group. Sadrach is a relatively prosperous farmer thereby purchasing kudos and

status as a Capel Sion deacon, enforcers and henchmen for the all-powerful ‘clerisy’, known as

‘rulers’. His false religiosity is satirised when Evans describes him in the initial paragraph as ‘…a

man whose thoughts [as opposed to his deeds] were continually employed upon sacred

subjects…he often prefaced his remarks with ‘on my way to Sion I asked God what he meant’--’

His false divinity, greed and hypocrisy is exposed when the reader learns that the farm belongs,

in fact to his wife Achsah who, after bearing him eight children, he declares ‘mad’ and

16 Russell Davies, Secret Sins: Sex, Violence and Society in Carmarthenshire 1870-1920 (Cardiff: UWP, 1996). 17 Davies, Secret Sins, p.205.

40

‘charitably’ keeps her locked in the harness-loft and exercises her by driving her as a cow in a

bovine halter rather than imitating the ungodly act of ‘Twm Tybach who sent his wife to the

madhouse of Carmarthen’. Sadrach has purchased his status in the Seiet, the ‘…solemn, soul-

searching assembly’, with publicly visible gifts of baskets overflowing with ‘chicken, two, white-

hearted cabbages, a peck of potatoes, bread and half a pound of butter’.18 Possessions are the

status symbols of the avaricious residents of Manteg, social standing is equated to wealth and

membership of the deacon class entitles residents, like Sadrach, to claim an enhanced closeness

to the Big Man [God], who they constantly refer to intimately as ‘Big Man Bach’ or ‘Little White

Jesus’. Russell Davies confirms the high incidence of lunacy amongst women in patriarchal West

Wales and also of madness inspired by childbirth and poor midwifery, ‘puerperal mania’.

Along with blasphemy, Caradoc Evans is continually accused of misogyny. As previously stated,

Evans admits his own collusion, but it is the misogyny of his characters, in particular to pious

religious hypocrites that are under attack. Liberal Welsh nation building was strictly gendered

from politics, religion and the arts down to sport and employment. Harri Roberts notes that

Sadrach ‘manipulates biblical discourse in order to justify behaviour…such as lust, avarice and

bestial carnality’.19 He justifies the insertion of Achsah’s ‘substitute’, Martha by invoking a

skewed interpretation of Genesis 2:20, in which carnality is denounced as making man ‘no better

than the beasts in the fields’, by stating ‘Man was born to be mated, even as the animals in the

fields’.20 The fate of his daughter, Rachel is equally grim. Whilst hoeing turnips in the twilight she

has an epileptic fit and expires in an irrigation ditch. The next morning Sadrach notices that

‘Death had come before the milking of the cows’, and upon emptying the manure cart, ‘…cast

Rachel’s body into the cart, and covered it with a sack and drove home singing the hymn which

begins: ‘Safely, safely gathered in; far from sorrow, far from sin’’.21Many of Evans’ critics appear

not to appreciate that My People is a satire. The Manteg inhabitants are grotesque caricatures,

gross exaggerations of human types; exaggerated to make an allegorical point, in the manner of a

Hogarthian political cartoon - but the misogyny and superstition are real. In Manteg society,

women are painted by Evans as being less valuable than farm stock. Even the most impressive

matriarchal figure in My People, Nanni of ‘Be This Her Memorial’, is seen as complicit in her own

downfall by regarding the ‘Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan’ whom she had ‘swaddled in her own

18 Caradoc Evans, My People (London: Dobson,1953), pp.8-9. 19 Harri Roberts, ‘Body and the Book’, 37. 20 Evans, My People, p.12. 21Evans, My People, p.19.

41

flannel petticoat’, as ‘greater than God’.22 Nanni is the a major threat to the Nonconformist

patriarchy with her talents as receiver and transmitter of oral folklore, Nanni ‘saw the phantom

mourners [toili]…and the spirit hounds [cwn annan]’;23 she is eventually devoured by the rats she

has to consume in order to pay for the gaudy bible, a gift for her ‘God’, Bryn-Bevan. This

metaphor is blatant; the stranglehold of the Liberal-nonconformist ‘unholy alliance’ devours

those who succumb to its hypocritical cant. She is the ‘Woman of Bethany’ who anointed the

feet of Jesus in Matthew, from where ‘Be this her memorial’ is taken. Evans choses his titles

carefully, this is MY People [my emphasis].

Although Wales was in the vanguard of the Atlantic economy and was considered to be amongst

the world’s most religious countries, Russell Davies notes that, despite being in a churning

maelstrom of ‘…rapid educational, scientific and technological change’ in South West Wales ‘…

a large number of the rural population were preoccupied with survivals from a pagan and

mediaeval age’ and that in the families of the idealised gwerin ‘…envy, cruelty, hatred, malice and

spite were often the dominant emotions in a savage , vicious world’. He concludes that ‘…even

in an intensely religious period, there was a beast in Welsh man, and in his heart there remained a

pagan darkness’.24

The anger and venom exhibited towards My People was understandable if unjustified. M.Wynn

Thomas concedes to the view of Tecwyn Lloyd in that ‘Caradoc contributed shamefully to a

long-established literature parodying the Welsh and their way of life…racist mockery designed to

make the colonial Welsh seem sub-human’.25 He continues by paraphrasing the review of the

Seren edition of My People by Hywel Teifi Edwards who asserted on Radio Cymru that

‘Nonconformist Wales saw the treachery of this book…as a repeat of the Treachery committed

by the Blue Books in 1847’ which depicted the Welsh ‘…as a licentious and retarded people,

brutalised by their primitive language’.26 However, the views of Gwyn ‘Alf’ Williams are probably

most pertinent here by pointing out that ‘…Caradoc Evans’ My People with its ‘mean vignettes of

a sly, crabbed peasantry’ to whom hypocrisy was a way of life…was not as remote from reality as

it may seem; it would hardly have been so effective if it had been’.27

22 ‘Be This Her Memorial’ in Evans, My People, p.96. 23 Ibid., p.95. 24 Davies, Secret Sins, 11-12. 25 M. Wynn Thomas. ‘My People and the Revenge of the Novel.’, The New Welsh Review, 1 (1988), p.23. 26 Ibid., p.20. 27 Gwyn A. Williams, When Was Wales? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p.238.

42

China’s hierarchy- the Welsh ‘slums’ criminal

class and how changes in historiography have

led to doubts about its existence.

By Samantha Rickards

Keith Strange in his 1980 article, ‘In search of the Celestial Empire’ examined the criminal class of

Merthyr Tydfil’s ‘China’;1 an iconic slum described as a ‘criminal Alsatia’.2 The structures presented

by Strange, those that describe the operation of a professional criminal class with a distinct

hierarchy, have however, become outdated falling behind the modern views based upon new

evidence. With newspapers and other forms of print becoming cheaper and easier to obtain

throughout the nineteenth century, as well as increasing levels of sensationalism, stories of burglary,

murder and pickpockets sold by the thousands to a bloodthirsty audience just waiting for the next

drama to unfold. 3 Strange’s characters, such as the delinquent ‘Rodnies’ and the debaucherous

‘Nymphs’ with their ‘Bully’ protectors, along with less notable players almost certainly existed, as we

can see from the newspaper reports and articles of the time. The slum of ‘China’ as a geographical

location also existed and was even represented on maps of the era,4 but Strange’s setting, the so-

called ‘Empire’ of organised crime which lurked in ‘Chinese’ basements seems to be of the authors

creation; as fictional as Fagin’s layer in Dickens Oliver Twist. In this article, there will be a discussion

on each of Strange’s characters and an assessment of their contribution to his claimed hierarchy.

The article will also examine the evidence used by Strange and the problems it presents.

‘Rodnies’ are Strange’s take on the classic juvenile delinquent, young men committing a multitude of

crimes who turn to the lifestyle for both economic and psychological reasons,5 which are a main

outcome of the slums ‘culture of poverty’, 6 poor economic and environmental conditions. In

1 Keith Strange, ‘In search of the Celestial Empire’, Llafur: the Journal of Welsh Labour History, 3.1 (1980), pp.44-

86. 2 Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 (Harlow: Pearson education limited, 2005), p.178. 3 Christopher A. Casey, ‘Common misperceptions: the press and Victorian views of crime’, Journal of

Interdisciplinary History, 41.3 (2011), 367-391 [p.373]. 4 The area is named ‘China’ on an Ordinance survey map, 1828. 5 Strange, ‘In search of the Celestial Empire’, p.46. 6 Ibid., p.56.

43

contemporary terms, Rodnies were the Victorian equivalent of media-hyped ‘ASBO teens’. The

name Rodnies was given to these boys in newspapers of the era and was borrowed from such

publications by Strange. These poverty-stricken young men roamed the street stealing what they

could - petty theft often being ‘the only means of providing regular meals’.7 The Rodnies place in the

criminal class hierarchy is relatively low, often working under the influence of older and generally

more skilled professional criminals. Young people were often sent in by their leaders to do the

‘most dangerous tasks’ as they received shorter sentences than their tutors; however they appear to

be apprehended more frequently, reflecting their lack of finesse.8 But Strange’s view of youth crime

is flawed, as modern historians have discovered a far more authentic reason for its existence; ‘rather

than the offenders being in thrall to Fagins, it seems probable that a considerable amount of pocket

picking, especially by juveniles, was the result of opportunism’. 9 The slum’s ‘culture of poverty’

certainly did play a part in the creation of petty thieves, however, the stronger pull seems to be that

of opportunism in the form of an open first storey window, or washing left unattended on a line, or

an expensive handkerchief seen in an upper-class gentleman's back pocket. So, Strange was correct

in one aspect of his analysis because poverty was an important factor, however, poverty created the

need for opportunistic petty theft rather than skilled organised crime. It is highly unlikely that the

Rodnies pickpocketing benefited anyone other than the young man himself, rather than a whole

troupe of juveniles and their master ‘Kidsmen’.

‘Nymphs’ and ‘Bullies’ are Strange’s terms for the prostitute and her protector. An interesting union

who both live and work together, but are not engaged in anything more than a business

relationship,10 and appear to show the only concrete form of hierarchy within the slum. Again the

slums ‘culture of poverty’ rears its ugly head in causing young women to head out walking the streets

or to work in brothels, as well as forcing them into a corrupt environment. Cheap accommodation

meant the poor flocked to ‘China’. The dishevelled appearance of prostitutes held them back from

obtaining better jobs, of which there were few. Limited job opportunities existed for women at that

time and no employer would take on a girl who ‘had no shoes to wear to work’.11 However, prostitution

may not have occurred on such a large scale as presented by Strange or even by some primary

7 Ibid., p.46. 8 Ibid. 9 Emsley, Crime and Society in England, pp.174-175. 10 Ibid., p.50. 11 Ibid.,p.56.

44

sources of the time, sensationalism within the media was rife when it came to predicting the number

of girls selling themselves. The number of Nymphs on the streets, estimated by Patrick

Colquhoun12, is said to be roughly 50,000 in London alone.13 These figures are discredited by David

Philips;14 they were given in a works trying to persuade the public that London needed a police

force, so Colquhoun’s appeared to ‘exaggerate the relevant figures, in the interests of exciting

apprehension about the size and threat of the “criminal class”’.15 The Bullies ‘acted as protectors for

their partners in crime… they assisted the girls in robberies, attempted to prevent the latter’s capture

and conviction by the police, and tried to ensure that no other members of the underworld deprived

their particular girl of her “pickings”’.16 The relationship between the two is symbiotic; the bullies

often lived off of their partner’s earnings17 and in return provided the protection needed to survive

life in ‘China’. However, though they display a weak form of hierarchy based upon mutual gain,

they are not linked to any of the other criminal classes in a significant way; ‘Brothel keepers’ being

the only other persons who may procure minor gains from this relationship by employing Bullies to

protect their Nymphs based within their brothels.18

Some minor characters, such as ‘Brothel keepers’, ‘Smashers’ and ‘Vagrants’ also play a part in the

so-called ‘Celestial Empire’, but again show very little link to each other or even to the major players.

‘Brothel keepers’ ran establishments that ‘doubled up as lodging houses, cheap eating places and

beershops’ 19 and obviously interacted with Bullies and Nymphs, but as discussed before, this

relationship is minor in comparison to the overall hierarchy suggested by Strange. The only

hierarchical structure present is seen between the Brothel Keepers and the Nymphs, as the latter is

in the formers employment and gives him a portion of her earnings. Also discussed is the brothel’s

location as meeting place for the criminal classes to discuss and plot their dastardly deeds.20 This

role is again overplayed by Strange, due to the lack of organised crime in ‘China’. What little

12 Colquhoun (1745-1820) was a wealthy Scottish merchant who wrote in support of an organised police

force, so was liable to exaggerate figures in his work to almost shock the public into supporting his cause. 13 David Philips, ‘Three “moral entrepreneurs” and the creation of a “criminal class” in England, c. 1790s-

1840s’, Crime, Histoire and Sociétiés, 7.1 (2003), 79-107. [p. 83]. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Strange, ‘In search of the Celestial Empire’, p.50. 17 Ibid., p.51. 18 Ibid., p.53. 19 Ibid., p.65. 20 Ibid., p.65.

45

occurred was probably discussed in a unlicensed public house of some form, however it is difficult

to prove that these events did occur, Strange himself having to rely on a 1846 Chief Constable

report that calls the establishments a ‘vast nuisance’ but gives very little information on the plotting

of crime in these locations.21 On top of this, if the public houses would not have existed, or had

been monitored closely by the police, would it really have prevented such ‘organised’ criminals

coming together? If there were such high rates of organised, rather than opportunistic, crime, then

these discussions would have taken place at a different convenient location if the brothels were not

available, displaying their insignificance within the suggested hierarchy.

Other minor characters discussed by Strange are the ‘Smashers’ and the ‘Vagrants’, the ‘Smashers’

counterfeited coins while ‘Vagrants’ begged for other people’s. The skill of fake coin production

appears to be one that ran in the family, as Strange uses a case study of ‘Ellen Mulcahy and her

daughter, Catherine’ who both were found counterfeiting coins in their house by a Superintendent22

to support his view that environment plays a role in the creation of criminals. However, the benefit

of counterfeiting coins appears only to apply to the family who are producing them, they appear to

be the only ones who receive any monetary gain from the endeavour, so their contribution to the

supposed criminal hierarchy is again minor. As well as this, Smashers sometimes travelled from area

to area in an attempt to evade the law or to ‘work’ a new district,23 meaning they would not have

adequate time to integrate themselves into any hierarchies they may encounter; making their

involvement all the more questionable. Vagrancy also had no contribution to this hierarchy, the need

for cheap accommodation brought the beggars to ‘China’ and led to further opportunistic petty

thefts 24 which would only benefit the individual; another victim of the Victorian ‘culture of

poverty’.25

The major flaws in Strange’s argument lie in the evidence he uses to produce his views on these

characters that inhabit ‘China’. Some of the main primary sources he uses are written by Henry

Mayhew, a ‘social explorer’ of the era who regularly published articles in newspapers about the state

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., p.67. 23 Ibid., pp.66-67. 24 Ibid., p.68. 25 Ibid., p.56.

46

of the slums. He provided ‘real-life counterparts to the characters and stories of Charles Dickens’26

and recorded notes of their interviews, in which they would demonstrate to an audience their

criminal skill. However, these interviews were a sham, and Mayhew’s articles are now seen to be

highly exaggerated by contemporary historians, such as Roger Sales. In his article ‘Platform,

Performance and Payment in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor’ Sales reveals that

Mayhew paid his clients for their stories, so exaggeration would have gained a higher wage than a

simple story of a stolen handkerchief.27 Sales also claims that Mayhew should be seen more as a

journalist than a social explorer, which makes sense, newspapers in general are not the greatest

sources of information. Sensationalism must be taken into account when discussing these texts, as

should the tastes of the audience being written for, two factors which Strange fails to acknowledge

adequately. Sensationalism was a key feature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and still

continues today. Reports on crime in the Victorian era were much like the reports on the modern

‘footballer sex-scandal’; people wanted to hear all the gritty little details, so they were supplied by the

writers to thrill and shock. Casey puts this ‘obsession’ with crime down in the press to the ‘gradual

increase in the size of the reading public’,28 and it’s easy to see why. The Victorian culture was

consumed by the gruesome, with broadsides that detailed even the most grisly of murders being sold

as souvenirs at major crime scenes.29 So, as discussed, exaggerations and assumptions made by

reporters would have gained extra interest, Casey even claims those who wrote the articles were

aware of the effect they were having: ‘media outlets were conscious of how exaggerated coverage of

violence might distort contemporaries’ (not to mention future historians’) perception of the crime

rate during the period’.30

Despite outlines of the distinct groups within Merthyr’s ‘Chinese’ district, Strange fails to provide

viable, strong links between them. To be considered a hierarchy, the groups must be linked

together, benefit each other and have a set structure, with one group above another. The only links

26 ‘Henry Mayhew (1812-87)’, Science Museum Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine,

<http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/henrymayhew.aspx> [accessed 4 January 2013]. 27 Roger Sales, ‘Platform, Performance and Payment in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London

Poor’ in Journalism, Literature and Modernity: From Hazlitt to Modernism, ed. by Kate Campbell (Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University press, 2000), 54-71 [p.55]. 28 Casey, ‘Common misperceptions’, p.372. 29 Judith Flanders, The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians revelled in death and detection and created modern crime

(London: Harperpress, 2011), p.4. 30 Casey, ‘Common misperceptions’, p.375.

47

seen between groups have been of either mutual benefit or have not included more than three

categories of criminal, with no distinct leader. The only thing that links the classes is their shared

participation in the ‘culture of poverty’, which not only forces them to turn to crime out of sheer

desperation, but also into the realm of ‘China’ to look for cheap accommodation in the first place. If

any criminal structure existed in Merthyr Tydfil we can be certain that it was not created by the

individuals who dwelled in the damp slum, but by both the fiction and non-fiction writers of the era.

48