# The Red Commune of Merthyr, 1871



## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

_Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The class experience is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born--or enter involuntarily. Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms. If the experience appears as determined, class-consciousness does not. We can see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way._
 - Edward Thompson, Making of the English Working Class

This week marks the anniversary of when the people of Merthyr rose up and attempted to create a utopian and egalitarian society in *1831*!


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## Donna Ferentes (Jun 2, 2008)

Which makes it most unfortunate that you've titled the thread as if it were the Paris Commune instead.


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## butchersapron (Jun 2, 2008)

Well worth remembering, well worth celebrating but please 'red commune'?


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

Donna Ferentes said:


> Which makes it most unfortunate that you've titled the thread as if it were the Paris Commune instead.



I accidentally typed the date wrong, but you can't edit post titles. While the Merthyr Rising certainly didn't have time to develop the radical forms of democracy of the Paris Commune 40 years later - it was crushed by a thousand troops. I think it is important to defend the record of the Merthyr Rising as an insurrection. The rich and bosses _were _ejected from the town which was under workers control. 

With the exception of Gwyn Alf William's groundbreaking book, somehow this epochal moment in working class history has been overlooked outside of Wales. This is especially strange given the Peterloo Massacre and deportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the same period are widely known.

My contention is that this is because of the insurrectionary nature of the rising that saw workers disarming soldiers, even liberal historians can feel at ease with the Tolpuddle Martyrs. And also that Wales has been peripheral to the vision of many English socialist historians.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

I always found the reference to Jacobinism in Wales by Gwyn Alf Williams very fertile, in _Artisans and Sans-Cullottes_ he writes:

_By this time, factory operatives, 'mechanics' and industrial workers were active in the shadowy popular societies and it was in this dense and dark atmosphere, under a cloud of hostility and repression, that artisan Jacobinism was transmitted face-to-face to workers beginning to think of themselves as a class. 

One of the centres of this underground was the novel iron and coal community of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales_

Merthyr at this time was the biggest town in Wales, often characterised as a wild "frontier town". 40% of Britain's iron was being drawn from the mines of Merthyr.

I've alway been intrigued by this suggestion by Murray Bookchin that one of the reasons for the explosive millenarian character of much of the uprisings of the twentieth century was due to a disolcation in consciousness, For example, workers at the Car plants of America in the early twentieth century who had come to the city from the Appalachian mountains bringing an expansive  rural consciousness into the narrow jungle of the city. Bookchin describes the utopian impulse that led anarchists in Barcelona to burn money in looted gun-shops.

I think you can talk about the explosiveness of Merthyr 1831 in terms of the weird nature of the town at the time. Within a short period it had quadrupled in size, it has no MP, Councillor or political representative. Loads of the workers were migrants from Ireland and England. Many were rural workers who still had ties back home and would make long treks back to West Wales during the harvest time. Add the expansion of popular literacy, the political context around the great reform bill and corn laws, and you begin to see the roots of the explosive character of the rebellion.


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## Belushi (Jun 2, 2008)

Good thread Udo



> By this time, factory operatives, 'mechanics' and industrial workers were active in the shadowy popular societies



They were called the Scotch Cattle iirc


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

butchersapron said:


> Well worth remembering, well worth celebrating but please 'red commune'?



I forgot to remember another reason why this was a historic moment -
It was the first time the Red Flag was raised in Britain. A white sheet was dipped in the blood of a calf and placed at the front of the march as a symbol of workers power.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

In this time of credit crisis, it is important to note that a credit crisis and attacks on wages underpinned the Rising. 

From 1829, Britain had entered a deep economic depression.


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> With the exception of Gwyn Alf William's groundbreaking book, somehow this epochal moment in working class history has been overlooked outside of Wales. This is especially strange given the Peterloo Massacre and deportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the same period are widely known.
> 
> My contention is that this is because of the insurrectionary nature of the rising that saw workers disarming soldiers, even liberal historians can feel at ease with the Tolpuddle Martyrs. And also that Wales has been peripheral to the vision of many English socialist historians.



The second point is more telling IMO, and an interesting admission from yourself Udo - its a clear example why a number of us find it very galling to be lectured on internationalism, and the apparently poisonous nature of any form of welsh nationalism, when many on the English left have ignored Wales and its history quite so blatantly.

Quoting Thompson is particularly striking in this context - 'Making of the English Working Class', indeed. The Merthyr Rising was never discussed or even mentioned in the several years I spent in or around the far left in England.

Commune is overcooking it (it lasted 4 days, and vapourised strangely at its height) but it is a great book. Williams really injects analysis and life into it all, particularly vivid in my memory is the workers loading stolen muskets with marbles after they ran out of ammunition, during the battle outside the Castle Hotel.

If you are ever fortunate enough to find yourself in Merthyr (), there is a plaque to Penderyn on the of the old Library in the High Street, with a statue of S.O. Davies in front, while we are talking about lefties. 

Cyfarthfa Castle, home of the 'Iron Master' Crawshay has a museum that looks at merthyr's radical history. Remnants of the foundries are also being uncovered slowly. Also at Vaynor church  (between Trefechan and Pontsticill) you will see the gravestone of another Crawshay, which has a ten ton slab over it, with 'God Forgive Me' inscribed across it.

Its worth an afternoon if you are that way inclined, and passing through. You could even have a pint in the Three Horsehoes (unless its closed recently) by the Fire Station, where the Chartists used to plot. Merthyr has had a very strong local history scene for many years, and so plenty of stuff should be fairly easily available.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

I have often wondered why that peoples remembrancer,Thompson chose not to include Welsh working class struggle in his book (though it might have meant renaming it), I guess one can't cover everything, though much of english and welsh history seems entwined, People like John Frost and Lewis Lewis deserve to have been remembered in that monumental work.

I defend the famous quote by Thompson on class as a relationship, describing the transformation from marx's class-in-itself to a class-for-itself because it captures the firestorm in people's consciousness that exploded in Merthyr.

Gwyn Alf Williams described the Merthyr Rising as an epochal moment, afterwards we see explosion of class organisation, the birth of the modern labour movement. He called it the end of the prehistory of the Welsh working class. Thereafter, the emphasis was upon organisation: "In Merthyr Tydfil in 1831, the prehistory of the Welsh working class comes to an end. Its history begins"


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

Gavin Bl said:


> Commune is overcooking it (it lasted 4 days, and vapourised strangely at its height)



It vapourised because there was a split in the movement after the bosses offered concessions. Though some might suspect the bosses were buying time, until the troops arrived to restore order. Some of the insurgents wanted to end the rising, while others wanted to storm the local winter palace.

They were internationalist and politically conscious rebels chanting, "REMEMBER POLAND!", "REMEMBER PARIS!"  and "DOWN WITH THE KING!" and also "BREAD _AND CHEESE_!"


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## Brockway (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> I forgot to remember another reason why this was a historic moment -
> It was the first time the Red Flag was raised in Britain. A white sheet was dipped in the blood of a calf and placed at the front of the march as a symbol of workers power.



That's cool never knew that.

Must do something soon on police attacking Communist demonstrators in the '30s in Cardiff - nobody ever remembers that either.


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## Brockway (Jun 2, 2008)

Gavin Bl said:


> The second point is more telling IMO, and an interesting admission from yourself Udo - its a clear example why a number of us find it very galling to be lectured on internationalism, and the apparently poisonous nature of any form of welsh nationalism, when many on the English left have ignored Wales and its history quite so blatantly.
> 
> Quoting Thompson is particularly striking in this context - 'Making of the English Working Class', indeed. .



Innit. Thompson was just another English public schoolboy with a guilt complex.


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## Belushi (Jun 2, 2008)

> I have often wondered why that peoples remembrancer,Thompson chose not to include Welsh working class struggle in his book (though it might have meant renaming it), I guess one can't cover everything, though much of english and welsh history seems entwined, People like John Frost and Lewis Lewis deserve to have been remembered in that monumental work.



Isnt one of the criticisms of that work the limited geographical area he extrapolates from? (could have that completely wrong, hell  of a long time since I studied it!)


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## butchersapron (Jun 2, 2008)

Brockway said:


> Innit. Thompson was just another English public schoolboy with a guilt complex.


Do leave off, he wrote specifically about the english working class for perfectally respectable reasons that were outlined in the famous preface:



> Finally, a note of apology to Scottish and Welsh readers. I have neglected these histories, not out of chauvinism, but out of respect. It is because class is a cultural as much as an economic formation that I have been cautious as to generalising beyond English experience. (I have considered the Irish, not in Ireland, but as immigrants to England.) The Scottish record, in particular, is quite as dramatic, and as tormented, as our own. The Scottish Jacobin agitation was more intense and more heroic. But the Scottish story is significantly different. Calvinism was not the same thing as Methodism, although it is difficult to say which, in the early 19th century, was worse. We had no peasantry in England comparable to the Highland migrants. And the popular culture was very different. It is possible, at least until the 1820s, to regard the English and Scottish experiences as distinct, since trade union and political links were impermanent and immature.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

Difficult to write the history of chartism in england without referring to wales though. Dorothy Thompson wrote stuff on John Frost.

Turning to that moment Gavin talks of when the movement vapourised, surely part of the poblem was precisely that history was being made. What the working class was doing at Merthyr had never been done before, so they had no maps.

I do see an afinity with Mexico in the early 20th Century when the Nestor Makno of the Western Hemisphere, Zapata takes Mexico City along with Villa.
Let's qualify the use of the phrase "take Mexico City". They both march at the head of armies into the capital. But then they don't actually know what to do. They have no conception of the working class seizing power in the state. They wait, hesitate, and finally just march out of the capital again.


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## butchersapron (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Difficult to write the history of chartism in england without referring to wales though. Dorothy Thompson wrote stuff on John Frost.



It's not a history of chartism.


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## phildwyer (Jun 2, 2008)

Seen the statue of Dıc Penderyn there--the ınscrıptıon declares hım a 'hero of the workıng class.'  They don't put stuff lıke that on statues ın England.


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## Brockway (Jun 2, 2008)

butchersapron said:


> Do leave off, he wrote specifically about the english working class for perfectally respectable reasons that were outlined in the famous preface:




So do you think he wasn't an English public schoolboy with a guilt complex then? He wasn't very working class that's for sure. His work reads like anthropology - like some posh person talking about the natives.


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

> Finally, a note of apology to Scottish and Welsh readers. I have neglected these histories, not out of chauvinism, but out of respect. It is because class is a cultural as much as an economic formation that I have been cautious as to generalising beyond English experience. (I have considered the Irish, not in Ireland, but as immigrants to England.) The Scottish record, in particular, is quite as dramatic, and as tormented, as our own. The Scottish Jacobin agitation was more intense and more heroic. But the Scottish story is significantly different. Calvinism was not the same thing as Methodism, although it is difficult to say which, in the early 19th century, was worse. We had no peasantry in England comparable to the Highland migrants. And the popular culture was very different. It is possible, at least until the 1820s, to regard the English and Scottish experiences as distinct, since trade union and political links were impermanent and immature.



to be honest, that sounds like someone making excuses.


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Gwyn Alf Williams described the Merthyr Rising as an epochal moment, afterwards we see explosion of class organisation, the birth of the modern labour movement. He called it the end of the prehistory of the Welsh working class. Thereafter, the emphasis was upon organisation: "In Merthyr Tydfil in 1831, the prehistory of the Welsh working class comes to an end. Its history begins"



And yet it is pretty much ignored....

Dic was hanged (slowly and painfully) outside what is now Cardiff Central Market. I understand there is a plaque to commemorate him and the Merthyr rising (by the the St Mary's Street entrance) but I have never had the opportunity to look since finding this out


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## butchersapron (Jun 2, 2008)

Gavin Bl said:


> to be honest, that sounds like someone making excuses.



What, saying that there were different regional, cultural, economic, religious etc conditions that would need others books to cover adequately (the original book already being over a 100o large pages of tiny type) is an excuse? Sounds to me like an acknowledgment that he didn't personally have the necessary insight or knowledge to do the wider subject justice. Maybe he should have done it though and wrote a shit book full of gaps and misinterpretations? I do think some people would genuinely have prefer him to have done that  as it would fit their own national prejudices better.


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## llantwit (Jun 2, 2008)

Gavin Bl said:


> to be honest, that sounds like someone making excuses.


Sounds reasonable enough to me. All books have to have boundaries, don't they? Or are we gonna barrack anyone who doesn't include Wales in their remit like some crazed nat version of Stattler and Waldorf?



			
				Brockway said:
			
		

> So do you think he wasn't an English public schoolboy with a guilt complex then? He wasn't very working class that's for sure. His work reads like anthropology - like some posh person talking about the natives.


It's a history ffs. Some distance from his subject matter is kind of inevitable isn't it?!


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## Brockway (Jun 2, 2008)

llantwit said:


> Sounds reasonable enough to me. All books have to have boundaries, don't they? Or are we gonna barrack anyone who doesn't include Wales in their remit like some crazed nat version of Stattler and Waldorf?
> 
> It's a history ffs. Some distance from his subject matter is kind of inevitable isn't it?!



There's distance and there's distance. What did posh boy Thompson really know about the working class? Public school, Cambridge, feck.


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

No, I'm suggesting that its part of a (normally) unintentional tendency of the English left to see what has gone on in Wales as a bit less 'important'. Maybe thats unfair to Thompson, but how does it make sense to talk about something like the formation of the working class on these islands, and arbitrarily stopping at Offa's Dyke and Hadrian's Wall, as opposed to 


> different regional, cultural, economic, religious etc conditions


 that were quoted to justify the boundaries of the book. I'm quite happy to be wrong about the book, but its part of a wider phenomenon in my opinion, like the marginal status of the Rising on the left, and even the far left.



> I do think some people would genuinely have prefer him to have done that as it would fit their own national prejudices better.



That's right, its only other people who have national prejudices or assumptions - not you, not EP Thompson, and not the left. That stone is just as easily cast straight back - the Welsh twitching at every perceived English slight, or the English vocally assuming that they couldn't possibly make unfair assumptions about the Celtic fringe. Most likely, a bit of both.


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## zog (Jun 2, 2008)

Gavin Bl said:


> And yet it is pretty much ignored....
> 
> Dic was hanged (slowly and painfully) outside what is now Cardiff Central Market. I understand there is a plaque to commemorate him and the Merthyr rising (by the the St Mary's Street entrance) but I have never had the opportunity to look since finding this out



never seen the plaque, but I'll keep a look out now.


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## zog (Jun 2, 2008)

Brockway said:


> That's cool never knew that.
> 
> Must do something soon on police attacking Communist demonstrators in the '30s in Cardiff - nobody ever remembers that either.



tell us more


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## butchersapron (Jun 2, 2008)

If you're happy to be wrong about the book Gavin (and you are wrong) then i'm afraid your stone is not coming anywhere near me.


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## Divisive Cotton (Jun 2, 2008)

Brockway said:


> So do you think he wasn't an English public schoolboy with a guilt complex then? He wasn't very working class that's for sure. His work reads like anthropology - like some posh person talking about the natives.



No it doesn't, it reads like a history book - which it is.

There was always going to be a detachment from his subject as there is a 150 gap, but that's historiography....


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

butchersapron said:


> If you're happy to be wrong about the book Gavin (and you are wrong) then i'm afraid your stone is not coming anywhere near me.



Sadly, I relish the opportunity to walk away from an argument - and you are a well-read guy, so OK I'll defer to your knowledge of the text. 

But the general point is a valid one - with reference to the Rising in this case - the attitudes I'm talking about are unspoken assumptions, not crude anti-welsh prejudices.

Don't forget it was your stone - I was just throwing it back.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

There was a campaign led by the late former Cardiff Cllr. Charlie Gale for a pardon for Dic Penderyn, who almost certainly was innocent of the crime for which he was hanged. I think they chose Penderyn for punishment precisely because he wasn't one of the leaders. They wanted revenge and they picked a typical worker, to show all workers what faced them if they stepped out of line.

I'm a little dubious about the concept of a pardon. For though Penderyn was innocent, it kind of implies that it was a crime for working people to be prepared to defend themselves, and who is giving a pardon? The same rulers and bosses who are screwing us today. Why do we need anything from them?

Gavin Bl criticises English socialists, but more to the point how is the Welsh Left remembering the moment when Merthyr was the storm-centre of rebellion? There was an event supported by the Wales TUC around five years ago, I recall Niclas mentioning something last year or the year before, a comemoration of Dic Penderyn at the indoor market a couple years back, but hardly a sustained attempt to keep the flame of memory alive! What is Dic Penderyn on this board doing to make sure the people remember Dic Penderyn? What is Lewis Lewis doing? And the trotskyist Penderyn from this website? 

Comrades, Udo, the People's Remembrancer, declares that at Cardiff Indoor Market the anti-capitalist left, the unions, the workers must come together on August 13th or thereabouts to remember the flower of Merthyr, our martyr, Dic Penderyn and the spirit of the Merthyr Rising! 

Discuss.


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## Belushi (Jun 2, 2008)

> Comrades, Udo, the People's Remembrancer, declares that at Cardiff Indoor Market the anti-capitalist left, the unions, the workers must come together on August 13th or thereabouts to remember the flower of Merthyr, our martyr, Dic Penderyn and the spirit of the Merthyr Rising!



Lets hope its more succesful than your anti-St Davids Day protest!


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Gavin Bl criticises English socialists, but more to the point how is the Welsh Left remembering the moment when Merthyr was the storm-centre of rebellion?



Cheeky sod, I fair gave you bloody guided tour in post #9


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 2, 2008)

Well there are all kind of annual commemorations: Leveller Day, Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, Burston School Strike

Seems English Left is better than the Welsh Left at remembrance, No?


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Well there are all kind of annual commemorations: Leveller Day, Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, Burston School Strike
> 
> Seems English Left is better than the Welsh Left at remembrance, No?



that's a really dumb remark Udo - no ones saying the Welsh are better than the English - is it really that awful an idea that the Merthyr Rising might be so badly remembered outside Wales because it happened in Wales, which is viewed as a rather marginal place?


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## Brockway (Jun 2, 2008)

Divisive Cotton said:


> No it doesn't, it reads like a history book - which it is.
> 
> There was always going to be a detachment from his subject as there is a 150 gap, but that's historiography....



His attitude to his subject is precisely what I'm on about. For a start it isn't totally detached - he has an agenda which he openly states - you know, going on about wanting to save the stocking makers etc from obscurity and all that. There's something of the missionary about him I reckon - maybe that's his parents' religious background coming through.

The distance I was referring to was social and cultural: posh boy writes book about the working-class after spending all his time in the library.


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## Brockway (Jun 2, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Well there are all kind of annual commemorations: Leveller Day, Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, Burston School Strike
> 
> Seems English Left is better than the Welsh Left at remembrance, No?



Dunno about the Welsh left but the Welsh in general don't know their own history. Looking at your list there I learnt about the Levellers and the Tolpuddle Martyrs in school but nothing about the Merthyr Rising. Maybe things are different these days but in my Cardiff comprehensive we learnt British history which is, of course, English history.


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## llantwit (Jun 2, 2008)

Brockway said:


> Dunno about the Welsh left but the Welsh in general don't know their own history. Looking at your list there I learnt about the Levellers and the Tolpuddle Martyrs in school but nothing about the Merthyr Rising. Maybe things are different these days but in my Cardiff comprehensive we learnt British history which is, of course, English history.



I learned about those, but also the Rebecca Riots, Merthyr, and the Welsh Chartists. GCSE history in a Beddau comprehensive circa 1993, to be fair.


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## Gavin Bl (Jun 2, 2008)

llantwit said:


> I learned about those, but also the Rebecca Riots, Merthyr, and the Welsh Chartists. GCSE history in a Beddau comprehensive circa 1993, to be fair.



We studied the Merthyr Rising at school, but that was in, errr, Merthyr!


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## zog (Jun 2, 2008)

Brockway said:


> Dunno about the Welsh left but the Welsh in general don't know their own history. Looking at your list there I learnt about the Levellers and the Tolpuddle Martyrs in school but nothing about the Merthyr Rising. Maybe things are different these days but in my Cardiff comprehensive we learnt British history which is, of course, English history.



I didn't learn about the chartists , levelers or the Tolpuddle martyrs in my English school. I think it may have just been the time we were educated, or the crapness of our teachers, rather than an English conspiracy to keep the Welsh down


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## niclas (Jun 2, 2008)

The modern-day commemorations of the Merthyr Rising began in 1981 (the 150th anniversary) by Welsh socialist republicans. Attempts to revive these last year were studiously ignored by the English/British left until, er, now.
 V glad you've read Gwyn Alf's book Udo. Next on the list should be Ivor Wilks's excellent Marxist study of the Newport Rising 1839.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 3, 2008)

Brockway said:


> His attitude to his subject is precisely what I'm on about. For a start it isn't totally detached - he has an agenda which he openly states - you know, going on about wanting to save the stocking makers etc from obscurity and all that.






			
				Edward thomspon said:
			
		

> I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'Utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties".



The work is quite famous for its attack on Methodism. There's the cliche that English socialism and the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than Marx, it's been quiet awhile since I read the book, but I think that he blames methodism for chanelling revolutionary energies into reformism.

Surely, what you are attacking this is a radical and humanist approach to history, the essence of "history from below" that rather than concentrate on the minutiae of ruling class politics, trying to re-construct the fabric of a whole class and bring into focus neglected individuals, groups and even regions. This was part of a general trend in history in which the contribution of workers, women and other groups were rediscovered by historians. This was a movement that was also very powerful in Wales with a whole group of social historians emerging here, who discovered that a whole history hadn't been written. 

I'd also argue that while Thompson has been criticised as having a too subjective conception of the working class, he was polemicising against a certain type of crude marxist history that portrayed the working class being driven by impersonal economic laws and as a statistical bloc. He describes a class becoming conscious of itself as a class, that rather than just being victims of structural changes and historic and economic processes, the working class was present at its own making. He tries to give some flavour of the experience of these people, their popular societies, their life, their debates.


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## JTG (Jun 3, 2008)

If English ignorance of Welsh working class history is such a problem, starting this thread in the politics forums rather than the Welsh one would be a small start in widening people's knowledge


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## dennisr (Jun 3, 2008)

zog said:


> I didn't learn about the chartists , levelers or the Tolpuddle martyrs in my English school. I think it may have just been the time we were educated, or the crapness of our teachers, rather than an English conspiracy to keep the Welsh down



Yep, exactly - I did learn about Welsh, English and Scottish working class history* from fellow Welsh, English and Scottish socialists (the Militant's original founding groups were a combination of mainly Swansea and Liverpool lefts)


* And, lets not forget Irish


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## dennisr (Jun 3, 2008)

JTG said:


> If English ignorance of Welsh working class history is such a problem, starting this thread in the politics forums rather than the Welsh one would be a small start in widening people's knowledge


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## lewislewis (Jun 3, 2008)

llantwit said:


> I learned about those, but also the Rebecca Riots, Merthyr, and the Welsh Chartists. GCSE history in a Beddau comprehensive circa 1993, to be fair.



By the early 00's I learnt about Merthyr, Rebecca, Chartists as part of the new Welsh national curriculum. A step forward. We also were taught alot of working class history from outside Wales too and I had a good teacher (a Plaid member ironically) who phrased it in class terms. 

Trying not to derail the thread but i read some statistics recently that something like 68% of school children in Wales have their national identity as Welsh, and only 30% have British or some other idea. Might be to do with the way kids are learning about Wales' history for the first time now.


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## Brockway (Jun 3, 2008)

zog said:


> tell us more



The Battle of Frederick Street (which is now a big hole in the ground). A crowd of about 300 - mainly unemployed people, communists and members of the Unemployed Workers Movement were baton charged by the fuzz causing mucho mayhem. Lots of people were hospitalised and all the ringleaders were arrested but not before getting battered.

They'd been holding a demo in Frederick street for about 2 hours where lots of inflammatory speeches were made (allegedly). They then decided to have a march thru the city starting off outside the Empire Theatre in Queen Street. It was at this point that the coppers moved in.

The main agitator was a guy called Leonard Jefferies who somebody ought to write a book about. He once got sent to prison for a long stretch for dropping literature into a Newport barracks urging the squaddies to mutiny. A cool man.


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## zog (Jun 3, 2008)

cheers


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 3, 2008)

There's an article on the birth of the Cardiff labour movement from late 19th Century through to the 20s by Neil Evans in an old copy of _Llafur_ magazine from '84 that gives an example of the birth of left organisation, talks about the history of Cardiff Trades Council and the launch of the Labour Party, In 1918 they stood winning no seats. Evans claims that the right wing were always in the ascendant in Lab in Cardiff.

In relation to Lewislewis's point, there's a dry but kinda interesting article by the same Neil Evans on the teaching of history and calling for a people's museum in merthyr here: http://www.iwa.org.uk/publications/pdfs/celeb_citiz.pdf


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 3, 2008)

Brockway said:


> The main agitator was a guy called Leonard Jefferies who somebody ought to write a book about.



You sound like your volunteering


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## Brockway (Jun 3, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> You sound like your volunteering



Politics is not really my bag. But for you politicos with a literary bent he's definitely a good subject. Bit of a forgotten man. Maybe I should email Dai Smith. Or something.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 3, 2008)

Is he still alive?


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## Brockway (Jun 3, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Is he still alive?



Nope - he's dead I presume. But there are recordings of him speaking somewhere or other. I know he lived in Ely, Cardiff for a bit. He's mentioned here too as Len Jeffries: 

http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info/cgi-bin/anw/fulldesc_nofr?inst_id=35&coll_id=11724&expand=


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## chilango (Jun 3, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Difficult to write the history of chartism in england without referring to wales though. Dorothy Thompson wrote stuff on John Frost.
> 
> Turning to that moment Gavin talks of when the movement vapourised, surely part of the poblem was precisely that history was being made. What the working class was doing at Merthyr had never been done before, so they had no maps.
> 
> ...



You can still have coffee in the place where Zapata and Villa met up.


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 4, 2008)

Brockway said:


> Nope - he's dead I presume. But there are recordings of him speaking somewhere or other. I know he lived in Ely, Cardiff for a bit. He's mentioned here too as Len Jeffries:
> 
> http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info/cgi-bin/anw/fulldesc_nofr?inst_id=35&coll_id=11724&expand=



Sorry the reason I referred to that Llafur article was because it mentions him!


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## Udo Erasmus (Jun 4, 2008)

chilango said:


> You can still have coffee in the place where Zapata and Villa met up.



Bit out of my way. I should mention the classic Sergio Leone flick set in the Mexican Revolution - Fistful of Dynamite (or if you are viewing in America: Duck you Sucker!)


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## chilango (Jun 4, 2008)

Udo Erasmus said:


> Bit out of my way. I should mention the classic Sergio Leone flick set in the Mexican Revolution - Fistful of Dynamite (or if you are viewing in America: Duck you Sucker!)



The "Zapata trail" is a big tourist draw for Mexican familes (and others), they're certainly keen on celebrating revolutionary heritage here. I've been to the mud hut where Zapata was born, the hacienda where he was killed (though I met an old guy there who whilst pointing out the bullet holes claimed that Zapata had sussed the plot, sent a body double and fled to "arabia"...), Zapata's grave, the aforementioned cafe, some cantina with Villa's bullet holes in the ceiling etc etc. 

You can buy these posters everywhere







However, the revolution has largely been utterly coopted and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are a bucnh of nasty murdering bastards who killed the students in 68, Zapatistas thru the 90s and are supporting the ongoing dirty war against indigenous and peasant activists to this day.


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## Terrie (Jan 17, 2016)

Brockway said:


> The Battle of Frederick Street (which is now a big hole in the ground). A crowd of about 300 - mainly unemployed people, communists and members of the Unemployed Workers Movement were baton charged by the fuzz causing mucho mayhem. Lots of people were hospitalised and all the ringleaders were arrested but not before getting battered.
> 
> They'd been holding a demo in Frederick street for about 2 hours where lots of inflammatory speeches were made (allegedly). They then decided to have a march thru the city starting off outside the Empire Theatre in Queen Street. It was at this point that the coppers moved in.
> 
> The main agitator was a guy called Leonard Jefferies who somebody ought to write a book about. He once got sent to prison for a long stretch for dropping literature into a Newport barracks urging the squaddies to mutiny. A cool man.



Len Jefferies was my great grandfather. Your right someone should write a book about him.


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## bendeus (Jan 18, 2016)

Terrie said:


> Len Jefferies was my great grandfather. Your right someone should write a book about him.


Hello and welcome. Great ancestry you have there


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## Gromit (Jan 18, 2016)

And there was me thinking the most exciting things to have happened in the history of Merthyr was 
1. Mike Tyson's visit 
2. That crazy afternoon where Red Dragon Radio chose it as the location of their Phrase that pays competition. 

The number of wild eyed loons that ran up to me shouting some random phrase on the off chance I was the bloke from the radio. Quite scary.


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## Iolo (Jan 26, 2016)

JTG said:


> If English ignorance of Welsh working class history is such a problem, starting this thread in the politics forums rather than the Welsh one would be a small start in widening people's knowledge




I'm not sure - decent family history would reveal a vast deal that is carefully forgotten.   My own ancestors can hardly NOT have been involved in the Rebecca actions against the toll-gates, the Merthyr Rising and the March on Newport (and certainly one of them shifted like a whippet to the Rhondda and a less good job in the month after the latter)   One of my wife's ancestors was jailed for armed rebellion in the Chartist days, and only the dimmest memory survived till my daughter looked into it.


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