Winston Churchill and the Rhondda valley

I read the article in the Express below with interest

[www.express.co.uk]

Is Churchill really hated in the Rhondda? or is it the usual claptrap that is printed by the media??

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wheldale
I read the article in the Express below with interest

[www.express.co.uk]

Is Churchill really hated in the Rhondda? or is it the usual claptrap that is printed by the media??

No Wheldale its not claptrap that is printed in the media about churchill.He was hated by miners in abertillery let alone the Rhondda.It was through him that the likes of my dad and thousands of other miners was blacklisted because of Churchills stance against the miners it was in defence of the old coal owners that churchill got the army involved protecting thier interests.listening to my dad my gradfathers and thier familys he was hated with a passion that is hard to understand today.I hate David Cameron and the tory party because they are a party that still would act like churchill did given half a chance.

Same here in the Ebbw Vale my grandfather couldn't stand him. Mind you Chris Bryant is hardly a native of the Rhondda!

Out of interest,where does Chris Bryant hail from?

According to someone from the Rhondda,apparently he is a good MP for the area.

But,personally i think he is wrong on this account,Why should`nt children of South Wales be taught the True history of the area,not kept in the dark,what Churchill done,happened,it should not be swept under the mat.

Kairdiff

In books I have read the riots in the Rhondda in particular were stirred up by the owners and the local chief constable who was a one time police chief in India, the owners would cry wolf and in the end the establishment- for that was what Churchill stood for - had to send in the army via the Home Secretary- Churchill -to restore order. Miners and families were beaten and prodded with bayonets, ( no owners were harmed of course) and he made a flippant remark about a bloody nose being better than them being shot etc, however, his reaction was mainly due to his position, if it wasn't him there were plenty of other chinless wonders at the top in those days who would do the same or worse.

Wales was being fully exploited for the coal riches and the strategic need by the navy from about 1890- exploited by Welsh owners who had taken their peerages( until the change during WW1 to warships fuelled by bunker oil by guess who- Churchill- accelerated its decline- 1913 was peak production year of S Wales- 56 Million tons of virtually hand cut coal exported )

The need for oil created Iran/ Iraq after WW1 and see all the problems there now, we haven't found a replacement fuel so I see the Middle East as the large scale exploited region of the last 100 years, theres lots of parallels with the valley but on a global scale.

During WW1 and he was a complete buffoon of Blackadder type stupidity, yet, in WW2 he became a figurehead of the work the government was doing and took full praise, and wrote the history etc afterward, being half Yank the USA tended to like him too.
He was always disliked in the Valleys, hated by Nye Bevan but was a curates egg of good and bad from the perspective of the UK as a whole.

I was born and bred in the Rhondda Valley and from an early age in the fifties my father told my of involvement of the troops in the Cambrian Combine Dispute of 1910. Churchill as Home Secretary was responsible for sending in the military. Churchill was and still is 'hated' in the Rhondda Valley with a vengenance. The presence of the military ensured that the miners would be unable to pursue effectively their policy of stopping men, including officials from working. The military were used in a support role to the police particularly during the trials in Pontypridd of miners. Several regiments were involved at different times throughout the ten month strike: the '18th Hussars', the Lancashire Fusiliers, the Somerset Light Infantry, the Devonshires, the West Ridings and the Royal Munster Fusiliers. The suffering, deprivation and poverty experienced by the miners and their families was solely down to Churchill. Arguably without the military intervention Cambrian Combine miners would have won the day.

Mr. Chris Bryant is to be commended for standing up in the House of Commons and speaking for the people of the Rhondda Valley who were so badly mistreated by the Liberal Government of the day. By the way, D.A. Thomas MP Owner of the Cambrian Combine was a Liberal Member of Parliament . This man later became Lord Rhondda!!. As always 'vested interests'.

Chris Bryant is not the only Member of Parliament to show his disregard for Churchill. In November 1978 Callaghan sparked a Commons row when he accused Winston Churchill (Grandson of Churchill) of maintaining a 'vendetta' against the miners.

In January 1949 Cardiff City Council agreed by 30 votes to 19 to a recommendation by the Lord Mayor that a new highway be named Churchill Way. This of course caused outrage in the Mining Valleys. But it is, unfortunately still there today, just off Queen Street.

The role of Churchill is outlined in the book 'The Tonypandy Riots 1910-1911 by Gwyn Evans and David Maddox.

While we are on the subject, D.A. Thomas MP took a directorship in the Ebbw Vale Company in November 1910, he and another new coal owner director, J.W Beynon, made it plain that they were only interested in coal, Edward Mills, a technical director who had revitalized the concern, was asked how much return could be made and he replied 10 %, Thomas maintained that only 15% or more was acceptable from his concerns and he persued to close the works even though Mills explained that the small coal produced at the collieries- Marine, Waunllwyd, Victoria #5 etc made excellent coking coal, 200,000 tons per year for the furnaces.

Thomas was not convinced and shut the concern in April 1911 throwing thousands out of work from Newport docks up to the town itself, this was the first time the company had Welsh directors since Walter Watkins in 1791! The workers endured 10 months of hardship with no real relief for the sake of 5% for a billionaire!.

Thomas' motive was only personal profit, whereas Mills was Humane. Thomas had large coal and oil interests in the USA and he visited them in summer 1911 and returned in the autumn to find Mills was correct, not using the slack prevented him making his 15% so he agreed to reopen the iron and steel plant in April 1912 and built a sheet mills to make galvanized sheets.
The works then continued to make good profit.

He and his wife lived in Llanwern hall, which was demolished 50 years later to build the steelworks there.

This is all very interesting, I had no idea of the hate, even after 100 years. I still think that the children should be taught about it as after all, it is a piece of Welsh history.

History is a very subjective subject , who is right , who is wrong ?? Over time memories become faded and blurred like an old sepia photograph There have been many books and articles written on the Tonypandy riots , their cause and the eventual defeat of the miners and i have always regarded Churchill in respect of these riots as the main protagonist . However nothing is quite as it seems. Here is a documentary by the BBC and there is quite a startling revelation by the then Cambrian Lodge Will Mainwaring regarding Winston Churchill and his conduct and the role of the police and army . .

As for the teaching of history whether you agree or disagree that Winston Churchill was the villain of the piece in the the Tonypandy riots , i for one still think that the children of the Rhondda and elsewhere in Wales should be taught about Winston Churchill . He was a major part of the history of Britain and of Wales and his story should be told and not covered up and consigned to the rubbish bin because to some people he stood for everything that they despised

That is censorship of the worse kind and is a distortion of history . Let people read the history and make their own minds up, which is as it should be and let us make sure that bigotry does not win the day . Because censorship by bigotry leads to history becoming " one great big lie " and the people of this country deserve far better than that .

Here is the documentary [www.bbc.co.uk]

I wasn't just the Welsh miners that hated Churchill, many miners throughout the UK detested him, my Lancashire born grandfather in the last few years of his life would not allow Churchill's name to be spoken in the house, he called him a tyrant and a murderer, as bad if not worse than Hitler. I remember the word "Holocaust" being used but never thought much more about until many years later I spent sometime working in coal mines in India, the link between a hatred for Churchill and the word "Holocaust" cropped up again;

[www.winstonchurchill.org]

time erases much of what should be remembered.

No one is saying there should be censorship or that Churchill's role in the second World War should be ignored. What many people will object to is that Churchill of all the politicians over the last two/three hundred years should be singled out and be part of the school curriculum. It is the Tory party at work again trying to rewrite history. There would be outrage in the Tory press if a future Labour Party forced school children to say study Clem Attlee, whose Government did so much for the welfare state, gave us the National Health Service, that the Tory Party hate and are endeavouring to destroy.

Let us not forget that Churchill was a 'turncoat'. He switched allegiance to the Tory party being a highly ambitious individual.

We in Wales must never allow the school cirruculum to include the study of Churchill.

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John Stephens
We in Wales must never allow the school cirruculum to include the study of Churchill.

Why not? Surely that's the best way to ensure that his dark deeds in South Wales are remembered and understood for what they were.

I don't believe I'm saying this Caiman, but I agree with you!

Why not? Surely that's the best way to ensure that his dark deeds in South Wales are remembered and understood for what they were.

I also agree with this statement by Caiman , i also think that John is right in condemning the Tories for forcing the teaching of Winston Churchill and ignoring other famous persons from the past . The whole point of my first post is that censorship by whatever political party regarding the teaching of history in schools is to be condemned Any national curriculum should not be decided by any political party because of their vested interests . The curriculum should be set out by a board of independent academics who should then be able to deliver an unbiased curriculum without prejudice .

History is constantly re-interpreted as time passes, just think of the discussions on this forum over Thatcher’s death. Churchill’s political past was more or less forgotten or perhaps even forgiven after his exploits during World War 2. Over the years various industrial disputes in South Wales have been used as excuses for anti Semitism and racist attacks, history is written by those with the power and they tend not to dwell on the more uncomfortable truths.
I remember being told whilst at Penrhiwceiber Colliery that they didn’t employ eastern Europeans, was that true?

I believe that individual NUM lodges were left to decide whether Polish workers would be allowed to work in a colliery. There were loads in the Cwm for example but none in any of the Rhondda pits apparently. Can anyone verify that?

Ceri

We had loads in the South + Ukrainians, Croats, Serbs, Russians etc. Good workers.

There were Polish Miners in some of the Rhondda Collieries. The Lewis Merthyr and Tymawr Collieries readily come to mind, albeit, their numbers were small.

The Polish workers in South Pit & N.Rhondda, Glyncorrwg were all great workers
& soon blended into the local communities.
On the other hand, the Hungarians we had were a bunch of pampered lazy gits.
Apparently, we were told that the Hungarians came from monied families who
had the means to flee Hungary.

All of those Eastern Europeans would have been refugees in those days, not the economic migrants of today. I wonder why some communities welcomed them and others did not? I assume NCB was happy to take anyone willing and able to work in a pit.

When i worked at Hamsted Colliery in Birmingham the Manager asked the NUM to ask the men to attend a meeting on a sunday morning in which he wished to address the men and pay them a quarter of a shift if the attended the meeting.To cut a long story short he had had word from somewhere that the pit would have to accept west indian workmen.it seems that he must have worked in the west indies and he told the meeting that the nature of these men was to laid back and would be an hindrance to the workings of the pit because of their laid back attitude a vote was taken and it went against the west indian people.This was in the 1950s that could not happen today because there would be riota saying their human rights was abused.buut the time i am on about these rights did not exsist.It was a common sight to see bid notices pinned to the doors of houses that took on logers no ethnic people accepted We did have polish men at the pit and they was brilliant workmen.I worked with one for several years and he had done his training at oakdale then worked down the nile mile point before coming up to the midlands.