Welsh Journals

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continuing use of ceffyl pren-style community-based tactics-in which women maintained key roles-in the twentieth century, often as a vital part of more formal modern industrial disputes.82 During the eighteenth century, a number of social boundaries were being redrawn, ultimately working to marginalize riotous community politics. It was, though, a long drawn-out process: the strengths of the riotous community saw to that. Nor was there a sudden rupture at the turn of the eighteenth century, before which there was no conflict or change. But this was a troubled, dramatic era of upheaval and realignment, for all ranks of Welsh society, which we cannot understand by reference only to its wealthy sections. The riotous communities of eighteenth-century Wales were complex and vigorous people, neither class heroes nor passive, forelock-tugging peasants. Neglecting them, their experiences and their politics, has impoverished our under- standing of this tumultuous period of Welsh history. SHARON HOWARD Aberystwyth 82 R. A. N. Jones, 'Women, community and collective action', pp. 3 3-7.