Iron, coal and revolt: industrial south Wales
Ironworks and then coal mines turn the valleys of south Wales into one of the world's great industrial regions, home to radical risings at Merthyr in 1831 and Newport in 1839 and to a fiercely solidaristic working-class culture.
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
- The Merthyr Rising — Gwyn A. Williams, Croom Helm (1978)
- The Last Rising: The Newport Insurrection of 1839 — David J. V. Jones, Oxford University Press (1985)
- The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century — Hywel Francis and David Smith, Lawrence & Wishart (1980)
- Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980 — Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press and University of Wales Press (1981)
From the late eighteenth century ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil and along the northern rim of the south Wales coalfield made Wales a world centre of iron production. From the mid-nineteenth century steam coal from the Rhondda and the other valleys fuelled the world’s ships and railways, and by 1913 some quarter of a million men worked in the south Wales coalfield.
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
- Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980 — Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press and University of Wales Press (1981)
Iron and the Merthyr Rising
Merthyr, home of the Cyfarthfa and Dowlais works, was by 1801 the largest town in Wales. Wages were low, the truck system tied workers to company shops, and debtors’ courts seized their goods. In June 1831 workers took control of the town for several days in the Merthyr Rising; a red flag, said to be among the first raised in Britain as a symbol of revolt, was flown. Soldiers fired on the crowd outside the Castle Inn, killing somewhere between sixteen and two dozen people by different counts. A young miner, Richard Lewis, known as Dic Penderyn, was hanged at Cardiff for wounding a soldier, protesting his innocence; he is remembered as a working-class martyr.
- The Merthyr Rising — Gwyn A. Williams, Croom Helm (1978)
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
Newport, 1839
The Chartists demanded votes for all men and other democratic reforms. On 4 November 1839 several thousand men from the valleys of Monmouthshire marched on Newport, led by the former mayor John Frost. Soldiers in the Westgate Hotel opened fire, killing around twenty. Frost and two others were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, commuted to transportation to Tasmania. The Newport Rising is often called the last large-scale armed rising in Britain. In the same years, the Rebecca Riots saw farmers in the south-west, dressed as women, smash toll gates.
- The Last Rising: The Newport Insurrection of 1839 — David J. V. Jones, Oxford University Press (1985)
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
King Coal
The Rhondda’s population rose from under a thousand in the 1850s to over 150,000 by 1911, as migrants poured in from rural Wales, England, Ireland and beyond. Cardiff grew into one of the world’s greatest coal ports. Mining was dangerous: the explosion at Senghenydd in October 1913 killed 439 men and boys, the worst mining disaster in British history. The South Wales Miners’ Federation, “the Fed”, founded in 1898, became the most powerful institution in the valleys, and Keir Hardie was elected for Merthyr in 1900 as one of the first Labour MPs.
- The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century — Hywel Francis and David Smith, Lawrence & Wishart (1980)
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
- Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980 — Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press and University of Wales Press (1981)
Depression
After the First World War demand for Welsh coal collapsed. Unemployment in some valley towns reached over half the workforce in the 1930s, and Kenneth O. Morgan and John Davies describe a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of people, many to the new industries of the English Midlands and south-east. The memory of the “hungry thirties” made south Wales one of the most loyal Labour heartlands in Britain, and fed Aneurin Bevan’s vision of the NHS.
- Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980 — Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press and University of Wales Press (1981)
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
- Aneurin Bevan: A Biography — Michael Foot, MacGibbon & Kee (1962)
Industrial south Wales was built by working people who were exploited by ironmasters and coal owners and who fought back, from Merthyr and Newport to the miners' union, creating a culture of solidarity that is one of Wales's great achievements.
- The Merthyr Rising — Gwyn A. Williams, Croom Helm (1978)
- The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century — Hywel Francis and David Smith, Lawrence & Wishart (1980)
Industry drew in huge numbers of English-speaking migrants and, over generations, made English the language of the valleys, so that the coalfield that made Wales rich also helped push Welsh out of much of the south.
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin (2007)
- A Concise History of Wales — Geraint H. Jenkins, Cambridge University Press (2007)
Why it matters today
Most Welsh people live in the south-east, and the valleys that coal built are still at the heart of Welsh identity: the terraced streets, the male voice choirs, the rugby clubs, the miners' institutes and the habit of voting Labour. Merthyr's red flag and the Newport Chartists are part of a proud radical tradition. So is the bitterness at how much wealth left the valleys and how little came back.