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The Great Rising
In 1820 Robert Jones wrote in "Drych Yr Amseroedd" (Mirror of the Times):
There has been riot and commotion in England,
Scotland and Ireland, because [those countries]
neither feared God nor honoured the King . . .
but our nation [Wales] remained wonderfully
faithful to the Government in all troubles.
 Jones had somehow neglected to mention that serious troubles had indeed come to Wales. In 1793, several hundred copper workers and colliers from the Valleys had marched on Swansea protesting the high prices of grain, cheese and butter, and demanding higher wages. Nor did Jones mention three Merthyr men who were sentenced to death for rioting in 1801. But compared to other places in Britain, most of Wales had been relatively peaceful in the haste to industrialize. Then came the unrest brought about by the infamous Corn Laws, passed in Parliament in 1815 that kept the price of bread artificially high to benefit the landed interests and wealthy farmers.
In an attempt to better conditions, workers tentatively began to form unions, but their members were treated harshly. At the Abbey Works in Neath, for example, in the 1820's, when fifty men tried to form a union, they were immediately fired. The rest of the workers, fearful for their jobs abandoned the idea. "The Cambrian," Wales' leading English-language newspaper, published in Swansea, and ever on the side of the authorities, portrayed the union leaders as "gin-swilling degenerates."
The very idea of workers' union was also roundly condemned by the Calvinistic Methodists, who called on all church members to boycott such "devilish" activity. The times were not yet ripe for the general acceptance of unionism, though they were becoming increasingly attractive to the workers. In 1831 a miner at Merthyr Tydfil told his magistrate: "My Lord, the union is so important to me that I would live on sixpence a week rather than give it up."
With the failure of the unions to win concessions, however, there was a return to violence as a way of improving working conditions and of keeping workers in line with union rules. In Monmouthshire, a group called the Scotch Cattle fought back against the absolute control and power over their lives by the iron masters and coal mine owners. They began a reign of terror in the valleys, destroying property of employers and threatening many workers who refused to go along with their demands. After one of their leaders, Edward Morgan, was hanged in 1834 by the authorities, their activities faded considerably, but by that year the Merthyr Rising, with its fearful consequences for its leaders had already taken place.
Early in 1831, what began as a popular protest against unjust and often deplorable working and living conditions, the Merthyr rising quickly grew into a full-scale, armed rebellion. John Davies has described it as "the most ferocious and bloody event in the history of industrialized Britain."
The revolt was inevitable: the great depression of 1829 had led to massive unemployment and wage cuts leading to substantial debts among the working population. At Merthyr, where iron master William Crawshay had lowered wages, there was a crisis among the shopkeepers and tradesmen, and the Debtor's Court (the Court of Requests) was responsible for a widespread confiscation of working men's property.
Chapter 16 Continued
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