Welsh Journals

THE Merthyr riots of 1831 have always provoked extreme opinions. At the time they were seen as a conflict unprecedented in Britain for their circumstances and duration. Richard Carlile, the radical atheist and owner of the famous Rotunda Hall in London, wrote of them as 'the first crude attempt to fight, on the part of the British people, against the soldiers'.2 Amongst more extreme radicals the conflict became known as the 'massacre'3 or 'slaughter'.4 To the authorities, on the other hand, the 'massacre' was a gigantic act of plunder,5 the rioters having committed 'lawless aggression upon the Military and Civil Power of their country, without the palliation of want of employment or distress'.6 The liberal press, anxious to preserve the respectability of the reform movement, maintained that the conflict was simply an industrial dispute, but the Tory newspapers spoke of 'revolutionary forgemen, Jacobin moulders, democratic colliers, and demagogue furnace-men, .7 Some years later the disturbances were recalled as the famous 'Bread' riots of Merthyr,8 and William Chambers junior, the liberal magistrate of Llanelly House in Carmarthenshire, even went so far as to state that the outbreak had been a Chartist affair. None of these opinions can be rejected out of hand, for one of the important features of the Merthyr riots was their remarkable complexity. Moreoever, some of the vital evidence on the disturb- ances is missing, and what remains is often difficult to interpret. There were many accounts of, and inquiries into, various aspects of the conflict, but few are completely reliable.10 With such difficult evidence, it is not surprising that some modem writers have made errors of detail. Unfortunately, however, their accounts have also 1 P.R.O., H.O. 52/16. Letter from E. Thomas to the Marquis of Bute, 16 June 1831. 2 Prompter, 18 June 1831. Reference given by J. R. M. Butler. The Passing of the Great Reform Bill (1914), p. 279 n. 2. 8 N. L. W., Taliesin ab Iolo Letters, no. 151. Undated letter, written in Welsh, from John Davies, 'Brychan'. to Taliesin Williams. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, Third Series. IV, 204. 5 H.O. 52/16. Letter from the marquis of Bute, 15 June 1831. 8 The Cambrian, 11 June 1831. 7 See ibid., 18 June 1831. 8 N.L.W. MS. 10705 B. The manuscript is in Welsh, and the reference to the riots is on page 55. The Commission on the State of Education, 1847, Mining and Manufacturing Population, Llanelly and Neighbourhood, question 2 (i). See also E. Jenkins, Chartism Unmasked (1840). p. 31; and J. E. Lloyd, The Early History of the Old South Wales Ironworks, 1760-1840 (1906), p. 70. where the Merthyr riots are called 'the Chartist riots 10 See G. A. Williams. 'The Merthyr Riots: Settling the Account'. The National Library of Wales Journal, XI (1959-60), 126.