Book Description

First published in 1967, South Wales Miners: Glowyr de Cymru is a vivid portrayal of contending personalities in the generation before the first world war, often set forth in their own words. Outstanding amongst them are the founder of the Labour Party., Keir Hardie and the young Liberal politician Winston Churchill whose successive ministerial duties brought him into close relation with the miners of South Wales. Out of the almost insurrectionary situation of 1910 in Glamorgan there has come a widespread belief that Churchill was responsible for the shooting down of Welsh miners and that Tonypandy in the Rhondda was once a scene of massacre. In destroying this picturesque myth, Page Arnot uncovers an array of facts that are stranger than this long-lived fiction and also richer in their interplay of personalities. Here, soberly, recorded, are the facts that could make a chronicle play with dramatis personae ranging from Monarch and Minister to mineowners and working miners who daily lives create the tensions of the time. Their national characteristics and their exceptional conditions, at home or in chapel, underground or on the surface, form one side of the picture, of which the other is furnished by the entrenched position of the associated coal owners. This book will be of interest to students of history, economics and labour studies.