Tonypandy Riot

The Tonypandy Riots of 1910 and 1911 was a series of violent confrontations between coal miners and police that took place at various locations in and around the mines of the Cambrian Combine, a business network of mining companies formed to regulate prices and wages in south Wales. The riots were the culmination of industrial disputation between workers and the mine owners. The term "Tonypandy riot" initially applied to specific events on the evening of Tuesday, 8 November 1910 when strikers, impassioned by extended hand-to-hand fighting with police, smashed windows of mining officials' homes and most of the shops in the town.

Background

The conflict arose when the Naval Colliery Company opened a new coal seam at the Ely Pit in Penygraig. After a short test period to determine what would be the future rate of extraction, owners claimed that the miners deliberately worked more slowly than they could. The miners on the other hand argued that the new seam was more difficult to work in than others and that the miners were paid by the ton of coal removed, not by hours of work so working slowly would gain them no advantage.

In August of 1910, owners posted a lock-out notice at the mine. The miners went on strike. The owners then called in replacement workers. The miners responded by picketing the work site. They were joined by thousands of others who successfully acted to shut down all the local pits except one Llwynypia colliery. Rioting occurred, and Glamorgan's chief constable requested military support from then British Home Secretary Winston Churchill.

Churchill's response

Churchill did send troops, which was exceptional on the UK mainland, and an action for which he was widely criticised at the time and for years afterwards. He did not specifically deploy them but authorised their use if deemed necessary by civil authorities. As the prime measure, he deployed large numbers of metropolitan police officers. The question of whether troops opened fire on strikers is controversial and appears to lack documentation, but it reflects the deep anger at troops being present at all.

Although no authentic record exists of casualties, as many of the miners would have refused treatment in fear of being prosecuted for their part in the riots, nearly 80 policemen were injured and over 500 other people. Samuel Rhys, a miner who sustained head injuries, said to have been inflicted by a policeman's baton, later died of his injuries. Thirteen miners from Gilfach Goch were arrested and prosecuted for their part in the unrest and the authorities transformed Tonypandy into a near military camp. They had reinforced the town with 400 policemen, two troops of infantry and a squadron of the 18th Hussars.

Purported eyewitness accounts of alleged shootings persisted and were relayed by word of mouth. In the autobiographical 'documentary novel' Cwmardy, a contemporary communist trade union organiser Lewis Jones presents a stylistically romantic but closely detailed account of the riots and their agonising domestic and social consequences. In a chapter Soldiers are sent to the Valley, he narrates an incident in which eleven strikers are killed by two volleys of rifle fire in the town square, after which the miners adopt a grimly retaliatory stance. In this account, the end of the strike is hastened by organised terror directed at mine managers, leading to introduction of a minimum-wage act by the government—hailed as a victory by the strikers.

A more official version states that "The strike finally ended in August 1911, with the workers forced to accept the £2.1s.3d [minimum weekly wage] negotiated by William Abraham MP prior to the strike . . . the workers actually returning to work on the first Monday in September, being ten months after the strike began and twelve months after the lock-out which started the confrontation. Minimum-wage legislation was in fact enacted by the Asquith government in mid-March, 1912, to resolve a national coalminers' strike and threats of a general strike.

References

External links

• History of the Cambrian Combine miners' strike and Tonypandy Riots
• Tonypandy 1910
• Tonypandy history Rhondda Cynon Taf Council heritage website
• Welsh Coal Mines - history of all the pits