Welsh Journals

The 'Khaki Election' in Gower by KENNETH O. MORGAN 1900, THE YEAR OF THE Khaki Election' in Gower, was a year of contrasts and contradictions. A commentator in the journal Young Wales considered that not for many a long year had Welsh politics been so dull and uninteresting'.(') From the traditional standpoint, this attitude is understandable. For five years, radicalism and nationalism in Wales, so dominant since 1868, had been in eclipse, with a Unionist government at Westminster and Welsh Liberalism fatally divided after the collapse of Cymru Fydd. Disestablishment seemed a dying cause. Welsh Home Rule could not command a bare quorum in the Commons. The land question was tranquil, with the prices of agricultural produce rising and the seven bulky volumes of the controversial Land Commission unheeded and unread. After the death of the one-time Parnell of Wales', Tom Ellis, at the age of forty in April, 1899, the 25 members of the Welsh Party were torn between futile compromise and meaningless revolt'. This most political of nations seemed bored with political debate, expending her passion on higher education and rugby football. Yet, m other ways the scene was alive and turbulent, in Gower as elsewhere. It was the high noon of Imperialism and passions ran high during the South African War. One of the many myths of modern Welsh history is that Wales, with her traditional fellow- feeling for small nations, was ardent in support for the Boers. In reality, the pro-Boers' were a minority in Wales as elsewhere, though Lloyd George made them an unusually vocal minority. Mafeking was celebrated with the same wild enthusiasm from Bangor to Aberdare. Lloyd George advised Herbert Lewis against attending a meeting in Caernarfon I thought one broken head a sufficient sacrifice to Moloch'.(2) Few other members of Parlia- ment denounced the war. Instead, Welsh sentiment took ir- rational pride in the deeds of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers at Paarde- berg and the Welch Regiment on the Tugela River, in Sir George White (born at Glasfryn) and General Sir James Hills-Johnes of the famous Dolaucothi family, in the Welsh Field Hospital, under Dr. Mills Roberts, the erstwhile goalkeeper of the Preston North End Invincibles'.(3) In one constituency after another, Liberal Associations rejected Little Englanders' as candidates, Burnie at Swansea, Bird at Cardiff, and, as will be seen, Lleufer Thomas at Gower. On a different level, 1900 saw the working class of Wales politically articulate for the first time. In the far North, the perse- cuted Penrhyn quarrymen excited nation-wide sympathy. In the