SWML @ 50The South Wales Miners' Library at 50
41. Left Book Club, Handbook for Local Groups (1939)
The Left Book Club was founded in May 1936 by the publisher Victor Gollancz. Its aim was to reinvigorate the British left during a period of increasing threat from fascist totalitarianism and growing rearmament across Europe. In its inaugural year, the Club had 44,000 members, who paid a subscription and were supplied with a chosen book once a month. These books were not available to the general public and covered a vast array of subjects: science; politics; religion, literature and history, to name but a few. As well as their unmistakable red covers, all the publications had one determining factor: they all demonstrated a distinctly left-wing inclination and content. Contributing authors included: George Orwell, Edgar Snow and Clement Attlee.
Members also had access to a variety of lectures, reading and discussion groups, organised at a local level by the membership. In 1939, the booklet ‘Handbook for Local Groups’ was published, containing advice and guidance on the setting up of new local groups, attracting members and identifying guest speakers. New members would be informed of their nearest group and encouraged to attend meetings and to join in with the ‘terribly urgent struggle for world peace, for a better social and economic order and against fascism by obtaining and disseminating such knowledge as will spread the determination to play an effective part in this struggle.’
The original Left Book Club ceased publishing operations in 1948. The South Wales Miners’ Library holds a near-complete collection of its publications.
42. Edwin Clark, The Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges
The Britannia Bridge, which provides a railway link between Anglesey and the mainland of Wales, was built between 1846 and 1850. The earlier and smaller Conwy bridge was built in 1846–49. Both used an innovative technology whereby the traffic was carried within a wrought-iron tube or rigid box girder supported on masonry piers. The Britannia Bridge in particular was seen as an engineering triumph by contemporaries.
The successful completion of the bridge was marked by the publication of a three-volume work by Edwin Clark who was the superintending engineer responsible for the construction of the bridge. Physically it represents a fine example of Victorian book production, printed on good-quality paper with frequent line engravings and case-bound with an albino impression of Britannia on the front. It describes the process of erecting the two bridges and also the underlying mathematics – a book for both the intelligent layman and the engineer.
The work is not particularly rare, but what is interesting about the copy in the South Wales Miners Library (Bargoed Institute collection) is the inscription on the front endpaper ‘Thomas Ellis Jr / from Saml Homfray Esqre / Tredegar Works’. Samuel Homfray is the second of that name, the son of the Samuel Homfray who founded the Tredegar ironworks in 1800. He was manager of the ironworks from 1818 until 1853. Thomas Ellis, also the second of the name, was the chief engineer at the ironworks from 1828 until 1854, an unassuming man of modest origins but of great natural ability. Homfray is known from other sources to have held him in high regard (‘a careful, calculating and steady engineer’, as he described him on another occasion), which the presentation to him of this expensive volume further demonstrates.
How this volume came into the possession of the Bargoed Institute is not known, and unfortunately the Miners Library only holds volume II.
By Paul R Reynolds
43. Smiling and Splendid Women
Smiling and Splendid Women was produced by the Swansea Women’s History Group and the South Wales Miners’ Library in 1985. It documents the final six months of the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike and highlights the important role miners’ wives support groups played in supporting striking miners and their families during the twelve-month strike.
Throughout Swansea, Neath and the Dulais Valley, miners’ wives support groups packed and distributed thousands of food parcels, organised mass pickets and rallies, collected money, arranged Christmas parties for the children of striking miners, and even organised colliery lock-ins.
Smiling and Splendid Women captures these important actions and shows the strength of spirit, camaraderie and determination of these women during a period of profound uncertainty and adversity.
44. Black Friday Triptych by Andrew Turner
In 1976, the National Union of Mineworkers (South Wales Area) deposited Andrew Turner's dramatic portrayal of the 1921 lockout with the SWML. The lockout, which lasted three months and affected one million British miners, was precipitated by the re-privatisation of the coal industry and the union’s reluctance to accept the owners’ new terms of increased working hours and wage cuts. The lockout began on 1st April 1921 and ended in early July.
A week into the lockout, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britian (MFGB) sought support from the other members of the ‘Triple Alliance’, a formation that developed in 1914 with the National Union of Railwaymen and the National Transport Workers’ Federation. The MFGB called upon the alliance to announce a national rail and transport strike in support of the miners. However, on Friday 15th April 1921, the alliance declared that they would not support the MFGB’s request. This led to the fracturing of the Triple Alliance, a day that subsequently became known as ‘Black Friday’.
The three panels of Andrew Turner’s triptych depict solidarity, betrayal and defeat. In 2010, the Triptych was loaned to the National Coal Mining Museum of England for an exhibition of Andrew Turner's work entitled, The Pits & the Pendulums - Coal Miners versus Free Markets. For more information about the 1921 lockout, please visit the online exhibition – Black Friday and the 1921 lockout – developed in partnership with the Richard Burton Archives.
45. Certificate presented to Annie Powell, councillor and mayor of Rhondda
Annie Powell was born into a Welsh-speaking family in Ystrad, Rhondda, in 1906. As a teacher in the Rhondda Valley, she witnessed the poverty and hardship suffered by mining families and unemployed workers during the 1920s and 1930s. At first, these experiences led her to join the Labour Party, but after a period of reading and engagement with political theory she decided to join the Communist Party in 1938. There was significant support for Communism in Rhondda during this period, the Communist Party candidate coming close to defeating the Labour Party candidate at the 1945 General Election. While Communism remained strong in the trade unions, it diminished as an electoral force in the 1950s. However, Annie managed to push back against these trends in the sphere of local government. She was elected to Rhondda Borough Council in 1955 as councillor for Penygraig. Her work in building the trust and respect of the local community helped her to overcome anti-Communist electoral bias and serve as councillor for almost thirty years.
During this time, she was especially active in campaigns to improve housing conditions, health services, nursery education and pensions in Rhondda. She also intervened to end racial discrimination in local businesses.
In 1979, she was elected Mayor of Rhondda; the only Communist ever elected mayor in Wales. When she died in 1986, over seven hundred people attended her funeral.
46. The Ursula Masson Collection
Ursula Masson (1945-2008) was a remarkable Welsh historian and feminist. After graduating from the University of Keele with an MA, she became a lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan from 1994. She had a passion for Welsh women’s social and political history, highlighting the urgent need to preserve records relating to these fields before they were lost forever. Therefore, after receiving funding to document the history of the Women’s Liberation Movement in South Wales, Ursula was able to co-found Women’s Archive Wales in 1997. She also worked with Honno Press on the Welsh Women’s Classics series, helping to bring the works of Welsh women writers from the 19th and 20th Centuries back into print.
We have the honour of housing her wonderful collection of books at the Miners’ Library, including some of her own writings, as part of the Ursula Masson Collection.
47. The Volunteer for Liberty, 1937 – 1938
The Volunteer for Liberty was published in Spain between 1937 and 1938. The bound edition held at the South Wales Miners’ Library comprises of a complete record of this highly significant historical chronical. The Volunteer for Liberty was the official journal of the English-speaking battalions of the Internal Brigade, which fought for the Republican cause during Spain’s Second War of Independence, 1936 – 1939, known in common parlance as the Spanish Civil War. The English-speaking companies consisted of the Lincoln, British, Mackenzie-Papineau and 24th Battalions.
The International Brigade volunteers came from a wide range of backgrounds, including writers, academics, working-men and in the case of Wales, a significant number of coal miners. The one thing they all had in common was their willingness to risk their lives by answering the call to protect Republican Spain from Franco’s fascist (and Italian and German-backed) attempt to overturn the legitimate democratic process and its accompanying consequence: the Republican government.
The Volunteer for Liberty was written for and by these selfless and politically conscious partisans. Its first issue was published in Madrid on May 24, 1937, and its sixty-third and final issue in Barcelona on November 7, 1938. The publication operated from a two-fold approach: it was at one and the same time a weekly (and later, a sporadic) newspaper which carried editorials, foreign and domestic news, letters, interviews, photographs, maps and cartoons, jokes and war correspondence – but it was also an important instrument of propaganda and an aid to boost the morale of the men, and women, for whom and by whom it was written.
48. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers was the first novel by Charles Dickens. His publisher, Chapman & Hall, had asked Dickens to provide a description for a series of comic illustrations by Robert Seymour and to combine them into a novel which became The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The novel was published in 19 issues over 20 months from March of 1836 until November 1837.
This edition once sat on the shelves of the library at Park and Dare Institute in the village of Treorchy, in the Rhondda Valley. Classic novels by authors like Dickens were a mainstay across many of the institute libraries now held at the South Wales Miners’ Library. These libraries testify to the remarkable cultural and intellectual life of the coalfields that flourished during the early-to-mid decades of the twentieth century. Aside from works of literature, they comprised an array of texts covering subjects like philosophy, politics, history, art and the natural sciences.
Hywel Francis and Sian Williams’s history of the South Wales Miners’ Library Do Miners Read Dickens? (2014) takes its name from an anecdote whereby “two Swansea University Professors in 1983 looked slightly bemused as they scanned the shelves of the South Wales Miners’ Library. One said to the other, ‘Do miners read Dickens?’”.
To answer the question then: miners did indeed read Dickens and plenty more besides!
49. Do Miners Read Dickens?
Written in 2014, on the occasion of the SWML’s 40th anniversary, Do Miners Read Dickens? explores the origins and progress of the library from its establishment in 1973 to the present day. It charts the library’s development from its early days, born out of the remnants of institute libraries and welfare halls, to its current form as a research library with collections of local, regional and international significance. Many of the items that have featured in this 50-item showcase are included in the book, and if you are interested in learning more, a copy of the book is available to borrow from the library.
50. Risca Lodge Banner
As the library looks towards the future and what the next 50 years might bring, the slogan of the Risca Lodge banner seems apt - ‘The Dawn of a New Era’. Produced in 1947 to mark the Labour Government’s new Coal Nationalisation Act, the banner represents hope for the future of the industry. Indeed, the formation of the National Coal Board did much to change working conditions in south Wales for the better, with improved health and safety and pithead baths.
The banner’s affirmative slogan and carefully chosen imagery – a rising sun and wheatsheaf – symbolise hope, cooperation and plenty, something the SWML aspires for in its next 50 years. To learn more about the banners cared for at the SWML and the symbolism that feature on different lodge banners, please visit our online exhibition - Dawn of a New Era.