Welsh Journals

There are not many history books written by a husband-and-wife team and the thanks given in the preface to a baby-minder are a reminder of the circumstances in which this book was produced. There are no tell-tale signs of joint authorship, for the book consists of a fluent narrative in which detail and interpretation are effortlessly combined. It is a stylish biographical essay which makes a very telling historical point whilst providing a handsome and moving tribute to a man who worked hard 'to help create a more humane and compassionate society'. PETER STEAD Swansea THE FED: A HISTORY OF THE SOUTH WALES MINERS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. By Hywel Francis and David Smith. Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1980. Pp. xix, 530. £ 12.95. Some years ago, reviewing a book on Welsh labour history which contained an essay by Will Paynter on the South Wales Miners' Federation, I attacked his approach as uncritical, and then added 'But what a story it was'. Here we have that story in full, magnificently fleshed out (to use one of the authors' favourite metaphors) from the foundations of the Fed in the late 1890s down to the famous victories of 1972 and 1974. These helped bring down the Heath government, put coal centre stage once more in British economic and political life, and did something to atone, at long last, for the devastating defeat of 1926. The title is something of a misnomer. This is not really a history of the Fed, based on minute books, internal politics and confrontations at union conferences, though some of this is there. It is not even, as its subtitle says, a History of the South Wales Miners. Rather it is a social history of the mining valleys of south Wales. Here, in the space of a lifetime, a rural paradise, where trout swam and pheasant flew, was transformed by a few masterful men like D. A. Thomas and the muscle power and skill of countless others, into the white-hot crucible of an industrial revolution. It produced the finest steam coal in the world, anthracite and coking coal in abundance, and steel which spanned the globe. But the material product of this period of growth and exploitation was as nothing compared to the real riches of that place and time. This was the creation in another crucible of a whole new culture based on solidarity, sharing, the chapel and a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The authors have managed to communicate this ethos in a manner both precise and moving. The insatiable demand for labour sucked in people from all over: south-west England (where A. J. Cook was born), Ireland, all parts of Europe. One has only to look at the names on memorials erected after pit disasters to realise the diversity of people who lived and died in south Wales. A superb first chapter on the making of the society from which the Fed sprang reveals the importance not just of the more familiar Italians in the mix of population, but of Spanish workers, who played a part in the spread of syndicalist ideas.