Welsh Journals

'THE LABYRINTH OF FLAMES': WORK AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN EARLY INDUSTRIAL MERTHYR TYDFIL. Studies in Welsh History, Vol. 7. By Chris Evans. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1993. Pp. xiv, 237. £ 20.00. I frankly wondered whether there was room for yet another analysis of the Industrial Creation-Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais. The turbulent development of these communities, which have a fair claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, has inevitably attracted historians; and especially so because of the remarkable source material available. The Dowlais Works letter books and the Crawshay correspondence both chart the development of the two greatest ironworks of the times; and they were not the only works. As Chris Evans reminds us, the coexistence of four such works (Dowlais, Cyfarthfa, Penydarren and Plymouth) around the 'Merthyr-village' distinguishes Merthyr Tydfil from all other single iron settlements. They make Merthyr Tydfil 'a metropolis of the ironmasters'. So has the Evans study anything new to say? My heart sank when, in his introductory chapter, 'Merthyr in History', Mr. Evans rehearses recent fashions in industrial and labour history, the new models and theory which emphasize 'work' as a discursive space in which the cultural and ideological priorities of past societies were expressed, rather than an economic activity as such. From this perspective work is understood as involving the production of meaning and discourse rather than artefacts or commodities (p. 8) I feared momentarily that the amazing story of industrial Merthyr's first twenty-five years would be subjected to jargon, demeaningly squeezed into some artificial revisionist historian's model. Fortunately, none of my apprehension materialized. Mr. Evans's study is first and foremost a finely researched and beautifully written account of the birth of an industrial society. I now realize how superficially some of his predecessors have drawn upon the rich source material to which Mr. Evans has added a particularly useful discovery, interestingly from the Gloucestershire Record Office-the letters of William Lewis of Pentyrch, one of the Dowlais partners. They help in the building of his portrait of the 'community of ironmasters'. Chris Evans's study explains, in convincing detail, the reasons why Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais have stood apart as communities (and still do) from all neighbouring industrial societies. Their distinctive character was literally forged. The concentrated 'iron experience' has given the towns a different dimension, an energy, a vibrance and a violence which one does not quite find in the traditional valley mining communities. He describes in graphic detail the development of the separate ironworks, the harsh unrelenting scouring of the land for precious raw materials, the violent demarcation disputes which created 'the phenomenon of work loyalties and conflicts'— Dowlais versus Penydarren, versus Plymouth. But, at the same time, 'countervailing forces' were at play. Communal solidarities developed to transcend individual works-the solidarity of the ironmasters gradually matched by a solidarity among the forgemen and furnacemen and puddlers. Even