Welsh Journals

him as he reads from resolution to resolution. Rarely does the analysis divest itself of the caricature it is denouncing; the prose, never. All of which is a pity since, if he could abandon polemic for explanation, his case is sound. The General Council did betray the solidarity of the Strike and, once it was under way, the C.P. was quite right to demand unity, militancy and an end to the pretence that the state was not being challenged, that the strike was merely 'industrial'. Any other attitude would, and did, lead not only to defeat but also to humiliation. The real roots of the failure of the General Strike lay in the same soil that failed to fructify a revolutionary mass party. Perhaps this is why Mr. Klugmann is reluctant to investigate them. The more interesting, and briefer, part of the book concerns C.P. life and organisation in the Districts. South Welsh readers will be all too familiar with statements such as that the S.W.M.F. 'was the Federation of A. J. Cook Arthur Horner the Federation of the "Red Rhondda", of long revolutionary tradition'. That it was also the Federation of Enoch Morrell, Tom Richards and W. H. Mainwaring of the Rhondda seems to have escaped his notice. Of more interest are some comments on the evanescent papers of C.P. pit groups, such as 'The Cambrian Xray', 'The Cymmer Searchlight' and the Ferndale group's 'Red Dawn'. It seems, though, that these groups were not prominent during the General Strike; most of the local activity stemmed from the Councils of Action which had representatives from many organisations. Membership of the Party rocketed in south Wales in the course of 1926, though it remained true that 'members were relatively easy to win for the Party but relatively difficult to organise'. The Party was fortunate that those who stayed on proved, in the 1930s, to be men and women of such outstanding calibre. DAVID SMITH Lancaster SHORT NOTICES The first Annual Report of the Secretary of the Commissioners, 1968-69 (H.M.S.O., 1969. Pp. 75. 15s.), of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts incorporates the old Bulletin of the National Register of Archives and the Report of the Commission to the Crown. The series will thereby make more regularly and conveniently available a record of the Commission's plans and publications, a list of private collections examined by it (including here the Thomas Telford MSS. relating to the South Wales Mail and Holyhead Road schemes), and a summary of the National Register of Archives' reports. The only Welsh accessions noted in the latter are those of Monmouthshire Record Office (especially the Kemeys-Tynte Collection). In fact, in 1966-68