Heddwch Nain // Grandmothers' Peace
Liz Evans provides a potted history of Llanelli through the signatures on a hundred-year-old petition, and her memories of a town celebrating the centenary of a strike
My heart has followed every single step that those second best shoes made, ever since I learned about this extraordinary story – forgotten for almost a hundred years.
During a conference of Cymdeithas y Cymod (Fellowship of Reconciliation) in 2018 at Blaenau Ffestiniog, we learned that in 2014 a leather binding and the text of an appeal made in 1923 by the women of Wales to the women of the United States of America had been discovered at the Temple of Peace and Health in Cardiff. The full story is told in a recent book, The Appeal 1923-4, edited by Jenny Mathers and Mererid Hopwood.
This was a petition which urged women in America to call upon the government of the United States to join the League of Nations in order to prevent a repeat of the humanitarian catastrophe that had ripped the heart out of all humanity during the First World War.
Imagine how proud we felt during that fateful conference at Blaenau Ffestiniog, learning about newspapers written in 1923-4. Reports suggested that had the signatures been placed end to end, they would have stretched for seven miles. The first woman delegate who represented Britain at the League of Nations Assembly in 1922 was from Wales. She was Winifred Coombe Tennant from Castell Nedd (Neath), who called upon the League of Nations to become ‘a League of Mothers, for it is from the mothers of the world that it will receive a dynamic power and the driving force essential if it is to accomplish successfully a task which has hitherto baffled all ages and all races – the task of establishing an enduring peace.’
The first conference of the Welsh League of Nations Union was held at Llandrindod Wells in 1920, only three years before the Appeal by the Women of Wales to the Women of America was proposed and adopted.
The forgotten petition had been stored in the basement of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, but in May of last year, it was returned to Cymru and now takes pride of place at the National Library in Aberystwyth.
The professional staff, at both the library and the university have been assisted in digitising the original by a small army of dedicated volunteers. It is now possible to search for your grandmother or great-grandmother’s signature online, or to visit the National Library in order to view the original petition.
Apart from the main list of signatures found on the petition, it is interesting to note the names of 142 organisers. Lady Howard Stepney was the organiser for Llanelli, Mrs Rosina Davies for Glan y Feri (Ferryside) and Nellie Painter of Llandybie to name but a few heroines local to me. The organisers list also includes male signatures, because the men of Wales took great pride in their womenfolk and supported their David-and-Goliath struggle to the hilt. Possibly they had little choice, for who is brave enough to challenge a Welsh Mam in full throttle?
While I have been writing about our ‘mamgus’, another piece of modern Welsh history has been percolating its way into my conscious mind. This is an episode of Llanelli history which was forgotten for a hundred years because it was deliberately suppressed by the establishment.
One evening, during the first decade of this new millennium, the late Mr John Edwards – historian, teacher, and in my opinion one of Llanelli’s greatest cultural assets – gave the Llanelli branch of the WEA a talk on the 1911 Llanelli (then Llanelly) Railway Strike and Uprising. To paraphrase Dickens, this is a tale of two towns. Those individuals in Llanelli, who had been in a position to reap the rewards and benefits which flowed from the town’s ever expanding industrial wealth had truly never had it so good.
In stark and shameful contrast those who literally oiled the wheels of this new-found wealth lived in grinding poverty and deprivation. The Llanelli Guardian reported: ‘We have plague spots, slums and unwholesome dens in our midst… the death rate for Llanelly is higher even than Stepney, one of the most crowded parts of London… what is the use of turning out tinplate boxes by the million if the home conditions of the poorer classes of this town are to remain as they are?’ The paper also recorded that 113 babies died in Llanelli during 1911.
I noticed that my grandfather’s name was mentioned in the Llanelli Mercury and Cambrian newspapers on 26 January 191. He was an under-manager at Trimsaran Colliery; I pray he supported the colliers and their strike.
The railwaymen began their strike on 17 August 1911, a day after the Home Secretary Winston Churchill had despatched 58,000 soldiers around the country. On Saturday 19 August, two innocent bystanders who had nothing to do with the strike were shot dead, and two others injured.
In retaliation for these killings by the soldiers, a crowd marched to the railway station. Rioting, looting and a tragic loss of four other innocent lives ensued, this time caused by the actions of the rioters.
By eleven o’clock that Saturday evening , news came from London that the strike had been called off. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, had chaired talks between the unions and owners and the dispute was settled.
Churchill’s response? ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. It would have been better to have gone on and given these men a good thrashing.’
I can not omit from my potted history the heroism of a lone soldier from the Worcestershire Regiment, who refused to obey an order to shoot a civilian in cold blood.
One hot afternoon in 2011, the streets of Llanelli were filled with dancing, singing people who wanted nothing more or less than to honour those railwayman who had dared to defy an all-powerful establishment which existed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Mr Robin Campbell, teacher and musician, from Swansea, told his story in words and music, in almost all the schools in the Llanelli area, during the months that led up to the August 2011 celebrations.
I was privileged to be asked to support him with this happy task and I shall never forget watching the pupils of Bryn School rehearsing for their school production of the Railway Strike drama with the Arad Goch Theatre Company. The Copperworks School pupils delighted us all with their production; their tadcus would have been proud of them all.
Y Apel – The Appeal 1923-24; edited by Jenny Mathers and Mererid Hopwood is published by Lolfa. The Llanelli Railway Strike and Uprising 1911 (Hawlfraint, 2012), is available to download in a bilingual edition here.