The Merthyr Rising 1831

On this day, 30 May 1831, 2000 workers gathered on a common outside Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and decided they'd had enough. This is a short history of the events that followed.


Understand the moment.
Across the UK, people are starving and they cry out for democratic reform. Reformism has captured the popular imagination and would include workers and bosses both. While philanthropists got the statues, and moderates took the credit, it was the radicals who brought the change.

In Nottingham, workers attack the home of the local Duke - some are executed.
In Bristol, they trash the Mansion House; a number are killed by police, so they set fire to the gaol.
These stories repeat up and down the land. The people want representation, believing that with it, they wwould find liberation from under the crushing boots of the capitalist elite. The Reformist bosses want happy workers and a good Christian vogue. A more critical view might be that their thinking was "if you give the plebs who work in your factories and live in your houses the right to vote for you every four years, they might not do a full revolution and murder you" and their support was little more than appeasement.

Throughout May in Merthyr Tydfil ironworkers, colliers, and others had been organising together. Times were rough, and the working class was being crushed. They weren't out for revolution - just fair pay for fair work. In response to the economic crisis, ironmasters were cutting wages and laying people off. Even reform-minded ironmaster William Crawshay cut their wages again. He had sympathy for the workers but was like, sorry lads, gotta make the iron pay, eh?

On 23 May, dozens of miners and puddlers known for political organising were given wage cuts, and 84 were sacked. That was it. The workers were out on the streets protesting most nights, burning effigies of Tories and smashing up businesses. Enough.

The Rising
On 30 May, 2,000 leaderless protesters assembled on Waun Common*, Dowlais (just north east of Merthyr), and came up with four demands, accounts vary but they go something like:

- Abolish the Court of Requests
- Abolish debt imprisonment and the workhouse
- End price gouging
- No hiring of new labour on lower wages

On 31 May 1831, bailiffs attempted to seize goods from the home of Lewis Lewis (Lewsyn yr Heliwr) at Penderyn, near Merthyr. However, Lewis and his neighbours stood their ground and fought them off. The magistrate of the Court of Requests (a type of small claims court established to deprive debtors of their possessions) showed up with more men and he agreed to let them remove a trunk.

The next day, a crowd led by Lewis marched to the home of a shopkeeper now in possession of his trunk and took it back by force. They then began a march to Merthyr. Along the way, the crowd went from house to house, seizing goods the Court of Requests had taken and returning them to their original owners. They also raided the homes of a particularly nasty bailiff, a hated moneylender, and a few others sorely in need of a bit of rough justice.

On the same day, miner and reformer Thomas Llewellyn called for a rally at Hirwaun Common. The moderate Reformists bumped into a more radical lot who took their white Reform flag and dipped it in calf’s blood. This was the birth of the Red Flag.**

On top of the makeshift flagpoles, they impaled a symbolic loaf of bread. The chant went up: Bara neu Waed - "Bread or Blood". They also chanted Caws a bara - "Cheese and bread" and I lawr â’r Brenin - "Down with the King" as they ransacked the debtors’ court and shared out the goods, returning them to their rightful owners. They also torched the Debtor's Ledger and fought the local law for two days.

As they breathed a moment of collective action, soldiers from Cardiff and Brecon descended upon them. On 2 June, the soldiers met with the local bosses at the Castle Inn, military brass and bosses came together to see about how to put the peasents back in line. Lewis and others rocked up outside, their demands were simple. The bosses didn't care. Things got heated and even the Reformists and meek among them couldn’t calm the growing crowd. It kicked off. Soldiers shot three in the first volley of a 20-minute ruck, a score were dead and hundreds more were injured.

Afterwords the army and bosses bailed from the town and held up in a nearby mansion, Penydarren House. The workers had taken their town in an insurrectionary moment and quickly established blockades to limit the military's ability to regroup. Crawshay - boss first, Reformer second - helped the army organise themselves, get numbers, and gather munitions. (Assimilationists and liberal appeasers take note.)

By 6 June they were armed with melee weapons and rifles obtained by ambushing the Swansea Yeomanry (who were then forced to march back to Swansea to re-arm—a fair old walk). The word had spread, and workers from nearby towns - some 12,000 strong - were gathering. Before they could organise, they were ambushed by cavalry, who managed to break up the assembly with brandished sabres and an earnest intent to kill.

The following night came the raids as leaders were rounded up.
The workers defeated returned to their jobs.

What comes after moments of liberty
The uprising lasted a week.
Twenty-four were dead; twenty-eight faced court sentences of transportation and imprisonment.

Two were sentenced to be hanged: Lewis and Dic Penderyn (Richard Lewis. They were cousins, before you ask), accused of stabbing a soldier in the leg.

The soldier couldn't identify them. They didn’t do it. Everyone knew they didn’t do it. People knew they weren’t even there.

Lewis had his sentence reduced to transportation, as he had tried to protect some police officers during the ruck and you don't want to go about executing rebel leaders now, amateur move.

Dic Penderyn was not so fortunate. Despite the fact he was barely involved and certainly no organiser and wasn't even at the location of the stabbing at the time, someone had to be made an example of. There were protests, a 11,000-strong petition, heart felt please from respectable members fo the community. They murdered him on 13 August 1831.

It would later be revealed that Lord Melbourne, Home Secretary at the time, had forced one of the witnesses to give false testimony. Another man gave a deathbed confession some 40 years later.

Dic Penderyn, miner and Welsh working-class martyr, is buried in a simple grave in Port Talbot. A small plaque donated by the NUM in 1980 marks the spot where the oubliette of the country Gaol sat in Cardiff and where he spent his last days. Rest in Power.

Melbourne, child abuser, toff, tyrant, and active oppressor of the working class, would later become Prime Minister (thrice) and have a city named after him. He is buried in the church next to the monstrosity that is Hatfield House and has a memorial in St. Paul’s. Rest in Piss.

The following year, the government would appease the middle class by passing the Reform Act. The working class remained disenfranchised, but at least the liberal elite were alright, eh? It would be another 35 years before the working class got the vote in 1867, though it remained limited to the financially secure until 1884/5, when poorer workers were finally allow to vote.

Women would finally get the vote after various bombings and riots in 1918, alongside men who didn’t own property, though only if they were over 30. Full suffrage wouldn’t come until 1928 (after several more direct actions)...

All of which happened because people gave them hell, but we somehow forget that, and accept the assertion that it was due to the benevolence of our betters and a few specific individuals (usually wealthy, of course), who get the statues, just don't go do what they did!

Meanwhile, we are keenly encouraged forget the scores of leaderless working-class people who fought and died for liberty (albeit a false hope that choosing a new master every four years) and for their communities, who fought brutal oppression at the hands of distant authority and local aristocracy all while being actively undermined by liberals, moderates, appeasers, and capitulators.

Remember the Merthyr Rising.
Remember Dic Penderyn

Peter Ó Máille

Read Two much more robust accounts here: libcom.org/article/1831-merthyr-tydfil-uprising

* Waun Common, I see this repeated... Waun is Welsh for Common/Moor, do they mean Merthyr Common or is this a Bread Bread thing with English speakers getting confused... I can't see a “Waun Common” on old maps... I think they mean Twyn y Waun? Contact us and set me straight!

** Most likely... well at least it's the moment later socialists would point to as the genesis of the Red Flag. It would also be raised during The June Rebellion in Paris the following year. Yes the one from Les Mis.