Mari's Symposium

Merthyr Riots by Penry Williams, 1816.

People’s Collection Wales:

My family’s from the south where Welsh has been spoken less in favour of English beyond my parents’ (even grandparents’) time; so it’s not a personal experience to them necessarily. A lot of recent events, such as Tryweryn, that parents and grandparents would personally share due to being alive then, have personally effected north Walians where most of the population aren’t from. Yet all over the country felt ripples of hurt. There’s the original ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ (remember Tryweryn) sign in Llanrhystud, which is over 1 hour away from Tryweryn.

The government have been very very tactful in which communities they strip away from in recent years. They have targeted smaller communities, Welsh speaking communities, where due to size and language barrier for information, we don’t hear much about them. I think the government were genuinely surprised at the backlash of Tryweryn’s drowning.

I’ve noticed a lot don’t really talk about what they think is obvious, and that’s where discussion and documentation of oppression fails throughout the years. My family was directly impacted by the mining closures, but whenever I was told about it, it was casual. No ‘the English government stripped this massive industry away from us without any support for further careers in Cymru’, it was more like ‘well, that sucked, didn’t it. That’s why you don’t have hope’. I think instead of anger, a lot of us feel hopeless and don’t have the energy to share, to see oppression as oppression. We feel it, the oppression still lingering, but we just don’t know it - like having a mild cough and not knowing that you actually have a cold.

When I was researching the Tonypandy workers strike, when Rhondda people were asked about Churchill (who sent over armed forces that we overwhelmingly feel encouraged police to beat peaceful protesters), the older generation hated him. The younger generations? Didn’t know a bloody thing. They only knew him by English media and whitewashed history of a ‘war hero’.

I go around south and mid Wales often, yet I didn’t know about the Epynt clearance, Tonypandy strikes, Merthyr Rising, Rhondda hunger marches, Llanelli riots, and I only knew about them after going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of very brief details of events. My dad knew about some of these events, knows I love learning about history and culture, but didn’t bring them up with me. He didn’t even know about Epynt, Penyberth, Rhondda, Frongoch, Llanelli… Only yesterday was I the first to educate him on the 1919 south Wales race riots (a deeply shameful part of history on our end).

2. The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard

3. "Abolitionists turned the tables on Europeans by accusing them of being cannibals when they ate sugar tainted with the flesh and blood of slaves."

here's the intro

Fathers at Blaenrhondda, South Wales, taking their babies out for some fresh air. They're using a siôl fagu (a special Welsh woolen blanket) to keep their children cozy whilst on the move. March 5, 1937

Image Source: Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, Volume 9, No. 42, 1930, pg. 823.

Artist: John Heartfield

Title:  „Das tote Parlament“

“The dead Parliament”

Caption: „Das blieb vom Jahre 1848 übrig! So sieht der Reichstag aus, der am 13. Oktober eröffnet wird.“

“This is what remained from the year 1848! This is what the Reichstag looks like, which will be opened on October 13th.”

Note from Heartfield Online: „Der Paragraph 48 der Weimarer Reichsverfassung war die sogenannte Notverordnung, durch die auf den Reichspräsidenten weitreichende Befugnisse übertragen wurden.“

Upon the publication of her book, ‘Petticoat Heroes’, a study of popular protest in the Rebecca riots, author Rhian E. Jones draws parallels between the inspiring insurrection of the period and the radical protest movements of the 21st century… .

Rebeccaism, then: what happened, and why? For south-west Wales, the early 1840s were years of population growth, increasing poverty and unemployment, and deepening social and economic division between landowning gentry and their tenant-farmers and labourers. The latter group, facing a fall in income due to bad harvests and low prices for their produce, saw no such fall in the money they had to spend, as church tithes and poor rates remained constant or increased and landlords refused to lower their rents. This material pressure intersected with a developing sense of cultural conflict between largely Welsh-speaking, chapel-going tenants and Anglicised, Church-going landowners. Additionally, the effects of the 1834 New Poor Law were also restricting the support that poverty-stricken individuals could expect from their local authorities. Those asking for help risked being committed to one of the multiplying number of workhouses, in which families were separated and conditions frequently made deliberately harsh in order to discourage applicants from seeking further relief. .  . .

Irish Women Workers Union.

!00 years ago today the Dublin Lockout began.