Welsh Journals

silence him' explains Mr. Webb, His house and furniture went up in flames as well'. A pity, perhaps, that Coffin did not follow his chattels? For who can miss the faint, sighing regret later on=- and one sniper had bad luck when the wind of his bullet fanned the fat cheek of Crawshay' ? Confronted with this pyrotechnic display, the more earth-bound seeker after truth stands disconcerted. In a subject so bedevilled by myth and contradiction as the Merthyr riots of 1831, it is easy to ferret out errors and inconsistencies. The background is sketchy indeed. Crawshay's threatened wage-cut is given prominence as the prime cause of the rising; there is no attempt to relate the riots to the general turmoil of the crisis over the Reform Bill, no reference to the appearance of London radical newspapers, no emphasis on political motivation at all. Nor, surprisingly enough, is there any real attempt to place 1831 in the context of Welsh working-class history. The rising and the first union clubs represent a crucial phase in the growth of the workers' movement, but their significance is not made clear. The author contents himself with a few vague generalities, an over-optimistic account of Merthyr Chartism, and a misplaced eulogy of Rebecca's squire, Shoni Sguborfawr, shortly to be employed as an informer against the Scotch Cattle. Factual detail receives cavalier treatment. The old 'huntsman' legends cluster again around Lewis Lewis the haulier; the deputation to Crawshay in the Castle Inn, of which Dic may have been a member, is not mentioned; the arrests of Lewsyn and Die are confused, as are the roles of Brougham and Melbourne; there is some muddle over the execution and the burial. More important, the author assumes throughout that Dic was, in fact, a leader, from the beginning; credits him with the organisation of the mountain squads and the ambushes on the Swansea and Brecon roads. Here is the rub, for, in truth, the evidence is cloudy and inconclusive in the extreme. The central mystery of the Merthyr Rising is precisely this question of Penderyn's role in it. A descendant of his widow, writing in Tariany Gweithiwr in August, 1884, actually claimed that Dic had deliber- ately taken refuge on Aberdare Mountain to avoid implication in the riots. He may have been a leader, but it is equally possible that it was his very innocuousness which made him the martyr he undoubtedly became to the workers of South Wales. More constricting than these technical faults is the author's straitjacket of dogma. He believes that Dic was 'murdered because he was a Welsh- man who had resisted the rape of Wales by alien capitalism'. This, to say the least, is a highly debatable conclusion. Moreover, it is one which leads him into contradiction, even within his own terms of reference. To oppose the misery of his English bayonets drinking Welsh blood' he has recourse to the glory of the Triple Alliance and the General Strike, neither of which, to my knowledge, was confined to the Celtic Fringe. This is not to say that the pamphlet is without value. When he holds back from the margin of frenzy, Mr. Webb writes well, with vigour, clarity and some wit. He has the gift of humour (sometimes abused, as when the embezzling union organiser Twiss is given the more useful patronymic Twist) The overall picture is vivid and he has an instinctive feeling for the texture and climate of life in those frontier' days. Moreover, he has the grace and the sense to rename the 'Merthyr Riots', the 'Merthyr Rising' Talk of 'The '31' and 'The '39' in Welsh working-class history is frequently ludicrous, but the thinking behind it is certainly sound. We desperately need to re-interpret, indeed, rediscover, our industrial, urban tradition. This, apparently, is the purpose of Gwasg Penderyn and its first author, Mr Webb. But surely, we do not need to go through all the travail of adolescence again ? Geoffrey of Monmouth and Iolo Morganwg are surely enough, even for us ? As Mr. Webb says, the story of Dic Penderyn badly needs retelling. But it must be told straight. We do not need myth any more We can stand on our own feet now, even in the cyclopean ruins of Dowlais' GWYN A. WILLIAMS.