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THE SCOTCH CATTLE AND THEIR BLACK DOMAIN IN December 1816, this paper was found at the Tredegar ironworks: Take Notice The Poor Workmen of Tredega to prepare yourself with Musquets, Pistols, Pikes, Spears and all kinds of Weapons to join the Nattion and put down like torrent all Kings, Regents, Tyrants, of all description and banish out of the Country, every Traitor to this Common Cause and to Bewry famine and distress in the same grave.1 This notice is a vivid testimony to the appearance of a new and dangerous force in the history of industrial conflict in south Wales. Since the turn of the century the miners of Merthyr had been noted for their own brand of aggressive trade unionism and Luddism, but in the huge strike of 1816 it was the newer body of workmen to the east which held out longest and with most success against employers and soldiers. Henceforth the men of Monmouthshire and Brecknock- shire ceased to rely on the advice and example of their Merthyr colleagues; instead they developed their own peculiar organisation known as the 'Scotch Cattle'. For almost a generation the 'Cattle', which historians have ignored or misunderstood, held the allegiance of the south Wales colliers in a way which was the envy and horror of employers, chapel, union, and friendly society. If the 'Black Domain' belonged to anyone, it belonged to them.2 The 'Black Domain' was a term first used by commissioners who were investigating the social conditions in south Wales in the 1840s. The area covered by this term extended from Rhymney to 1 Public Record Office, Home Office Letters and Papers (P.R.O.. H.O.). 40/4. The Scotch cattle have been compared to the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania and to 'rattening' in Yorkshire: E. W. Evans, The Miners of South Wales (1964), P. 51. For other comparisons, see C. R. Fay, Round About Industrial Britain, 1830-60 (1952), pp. 65-66; Trades Union Commission: Sheffield Outrages Inquiry Committee, 1869; and D. Forde (ed.). Efik Traders of Old Calabar (1956). The last reference was kindly supplied by Dr. J. Latham of Swansea. E. W. Evans, op. cit., has written the best account of the 'Cattle', but he assumes that without trade unionism the workmen were in 'a state of disorganisation': see pp. 57, 69. For another interpretation, see E. J. Jones, 'Scotch Cattle and Early Trade Unionism in Wales', reprinted in W. E. Minchinton (ed.), Industrial South Wales. 1750- 1914 (1969).