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A reprint of one English newspaper reporter's response championing the cause of the hardship of the longest strike in trade union history, that of the Big Strike of the Penrhyn slate quarry workers, 1900-03, with a valuable introduction comprising background information on the author by J. Elwyn Hughes. First published in 1903. 14 black-and-white photographs. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

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9781843233244

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The incorporation of Wales into England lasted for over 450 years from early Tudor times until the opening of a National Assembly for Wales in 1999. A paradoxical consequence of the ending of incorporation has been the virtual disappearance of Welsh affairs from the pages of the London newspapers. From the days of Empire to Commonwealth twilight, London had dedicated correspondents covering Welsh stories. The editor of The Times, for instance, sent Thomas Campbell Foster to Carmarthen in 1843 to report on the invasion of the town by the Daughters of Rebecca. Over a century later, in the era of decolonisation, a subsequent editor of The Thunderer appointed Trevor Fishlock as his Welsh Affairs correspondent. Fishlock covered the civil rights protests of Welsh-language campaigners in the 1960s with the same sympathy and insight as Foster had demonstrated in his reporting of the Rebecca Riots. Charles Sheridan Jones belongs to the same distinguished company. Aged 24, he was sent by the editor of the campaigning Daily News to Bethesda to cover Y Streic Fawr, the great strike at the Penrhyn Slate Quarry that had commenced in 1900 and had become the longest strike in Trade Union history. Sheridan Jones’s reports were as instrumental in focusing public attention on Bethesda as were those of his colleagues on the Boer War (in the case of Winston Churchill) or the provisions of the 1902 Education Bill (in the case of Dr Clifford). What I Saw At Bethesda was published in 1903 as a tract, championing the quarrymen’s cause and graphically depicting the suffering of their community. By this time, Sheridan Jones was a member of the Penrhyn Quarrymen’s Relief Fund. The almost feudal power of the Penrhyns over the lives of their workers is vividly conveyed in this gripping piece of reportage and Gwasg Gomer is to be congratulated for republishing it in the centenary year of the ending of the strike. It was a strike that had at once defeated and ennobled a people referred to by Sherdian Jones throughout as a 'noble race'. Included in the volume is a penny pamphlet: Lord Penrhyn’s Methods. The Press Gag, and How it was Burst. Also from the pen of Sheridan Jones, it was published defiantly by the Daily News in 1902 following attempts by Lord Penrhyn to gag the paper using the libel laws. An introduction by J. Elwyn Hughes sets the strike in its broader context. It is salutary to be reminded that the initial Penrhyn investment in the quarry derived from the profits of slave sugar. Hughes has also made a valiant attempt to rescue Sheridan Jones – who is conspicuous by his absence from standard histories of the press in Wales – from an obscurity bordering on oblivion. Although a Jones, Hughes does not think that Sheridan had any Welsh connections. Like other Englishmen sent to cover stories in Wales before and since, he found himself in a foreign country that he came, perhaps to his own surprise, both to appreciate and to serve. The text is augmented by period photographs, one of which shows Shiloh Wesleyan chapel where, one evening towards the end of the strike, the entire congregation stood and filed silently out of the service when two 'traitors' walked in. A century later, sensitivities remain: a tribute to the callous obstinacy of one plutocrat. -- David Barnes @ www.gwales.com

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