[net.nlang.celts] British Coal Miners Strike: An Historical Perspective

jmm@bonnie.UUCP (Joe Mcghee) (01/17/85)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

	The recent coal miners strike in Britain may not be correctly
interpreted unless we view this event in historical perspective. The strike
has been particularly bitter in South Wales where the clashes between the
police and the strikers became increasingly bloody. The coal miners of South
Wales have frequently been in confrontation with the British Establishment
during the last 200 years.
	But the violence has yet to escalate to the level it reached in 1839,
when Welsh miners and ironworkers mounted an insurrection against the Crown
which took the might of the British army to subdue. This Welsh rebellion of the
19th century is described in a recently published book entitled "South Wales
and the Rising of 1839" by Ivor Wilks, University of Illinois Press.
	The South Wales Rebellion was more than just a strike that got out of
hand, however. The rebellion had been carefully planned and the intention of
the rebels was to break the tie with the British Crown and set up a populist
republic in Wales. The rising was not successful, of course. The miners and
the iron workers came off second best in a savage confrontation with troops
at Newport and the workers were beaten into submission.
	The roots of the uprising lay not only in the traditional animosity
between workers and the wealthy mine owners, but also in the perception of
the Welsh people that the English controlled all of the wealth in Wales and
were not about to share any of it with the Welsh. The uprising was not,
therefore, intended just to give workers a say in their own destiny, but
also to banish the ancient enemy, the English, from the Welsh homeland and
make Wales a separate and distinct nation - free of English rule.
	Wilks examines all of the roots of the Rising of 1839, but he pays
particular attention to the Celtic vs. Anglo-Saxon quarrel, which had been
going on in Wales just as long as it had been going on in Ireland. He also
focuses on the role played by Welshmen who aided and abetted the English
Establishment for personal gain, these men who wanted their fellow
countrymen to abandon Welsh culture and language and become completely
integrated with the English nation.
	There are also many insights into the rebellion which are known by few
outside of Wales and receive scant attention from historians such as the
horror of children as young as five years of age working down in the mines and
the sense of alienation from the English masters which was shared with the
Irish people.

					bonnie!jmm
					J. M. McGhee