Chapter 13
THE ABERDARE VALLEY IN 1901-21.

1. One hundred and sixty years of industrial development had seen the Aberdare valley change from an agricultural area to first, one of the leading iron towns and then one of the leading coal towns in Britain.

From 1760 to 1901 the population had grown from an estimated 400 people to a total of 75,000 people. Since 1875 iron had died and coal had become the only basic industry. On coal, the towns of Aberdare and Mountain Ash had become urban centres of some distinction in the life of Wales.

2. The Coal Industry.

The coal industry in the valley continued to expand steadily, but instead of new pits being sunk, it was the expansion of the already existing collieries into very large units. The older pits along the fringe of the outcrop and alongside the Aberdare canal continued in production, but the big pits were now in the side valleys of the Aman, and the Dare, and in the lower reaches of the river Cynon at Aberaman and Mountain Ash.

With the coming of the new South Wales Miners Federation and a new leader at Aberdare, Mr. C.B. Stanton, there began an even more militant period in the industrial history of the Aberdare valley miners. From 1900 onwards there were constant local disputes over wages and conditions. This led to the great strike of 1910 in the Aberdare valley. The reason for the dispute was the deterioration of the wages of the mineworkers:—

(a) Average wages had fallen from 60% to 49% of 1879 level.

(b) A fall of basic wage since the 8-hour day of 1909.

The 1910 strike started in Aberdare on 20th October and went on with great bitterness until 29th December 1910. At one time there were 12,000 men out in Aberdare and 10,000 out in Mountain Ash. There were serious riots, officials were attacked, pits blockaded, doors tarred and feathered, demonstrations, trains stoned, and fights between the workmen. Extra police were called in and finally the Government sent troops in to quell the growing disorder.

In Aberdare in 1919 the number of miners was 14,000.

In Mountain Ash the number was 12,000.

There were 20,000 trade unionists.

In 1911 there was another 10-week strike at the P.D. Collieries in the Aberdare valley.

3. Closure of Collieries.

In 1910 began the first closure of pits in the Aberdare valley. In Cwmbach and Abernant, the small mines of the Bute Estate began to close down. They were the Tunnel pit, Werfa pit, Number 9 pit, Little and Big pits, De Winton Pit and Ynys (Meadow) pit. The men who were displaced had no difficulty in finding work at the big pits in the other parts of the valley.

4. The First World War.

In the decade before the First World War, the population of the Aberdare valley had been expanding with rapidity, despite the turbulent industrial and political life of the area. In 10 years the population had gone up by 19,000 to 94,090 people.

With the outbreak of war there began an intense demand for steam coal and every colliery worked round the clock, and there was again an increase in the population of the valley.

The outbreak of war had seen great bitterness on the political front in the valley. The local M.P. was J. Keir Hardie and he and his supporting party, the I.L.P., had opposed the waging of the war. He and his supporters had been mobbed by the Liberals and the Tories in a meeting in the Market Hall, Aberdare. In September 1915 Hardie died. In the bye-election that followed the official Labour man was opposed by a renegade Independent Labour candidate, C.B. Stanton, who won the election on a win-the-war ticket. This defection of a former miners’ leader to the Liberals split the Aberdare Labour movement for seven years.

Except for a three-week strike in 1915 against the rapidly rising cost of living, the miners of the Aberdare valley were peaceful and worked magnificently during the whole of the war, despite long queues for food, and shortages.

At the close of the war a crisis arose in the mining industry, the men after four years of low wages and bad conditions asked for a 7-hour day and an increase in wages. The Government, which controlled the industry, were forced to grant this concession, and in view of the great demand for coal from all over the world the mines made excellent profits, and prosperity was present in the Aberdare valley.

In 1920 there were 18,000 mineworkers in Aberdare.

However, this was but the last phase of prosperity before a long depression was to descend on the mining industry in the Aberdare valley in the spring of 1921.

5. Social Life in the Aberdare Valley 1901‒1921.

By 1901 life in the Aberdare valley had softened from the grim Victorian industrialism that had existed since 1875. From the start of industrialism the men and boys had to walk to the ironworks and to the pits, or to their place of work. They did their 10 and 12 hours work and they walked home, often never seeing the daylight except on Sunday. Then in 1903 the men of Cwmaman collieries petitioned the Great Western Railway to run colliers’ trains from central Aberdare to the Cwmaman pits. The G.W.R. did this and soon three trains were conveying the thousands of men who worked there. In 1905 colliers’ trains were running to all the distant pits of the valleys and facilities were given to miners to travel on the ordinary trains.

The rich in Aberdare valley had of course their carriages, the well off could hire one, but the poor had to walk. In the ’80s, omnibuses began to ply for passengers in the streets of the valley. In 1893 there were 32 carriages and 42 omnibuses plying or operating in the district. In 1903 the G.W.R. Company began to operate local passenger services on their spur line to Cwmaman and better services were operated on their main lines, between the villages of the valley.

All these improved transport facilities meant that the workpeople had greater leisure to use the facilities that had come into being in the district.

These leisure facilities were the institutes of the villages that had grown up since the ’80s. The first at Cwmaman in 1886, with library, billiards, baths, lecture and dance hail. Aberaman Hall and Institute followed in 1887. Nixons Workmen’s Hall in Mountain Ash in 1898. Trecynon in 1902, and as the first decade of the 20th century passed every village of the valley had its institute as the centre of leisure activities.

6. Other Leisure Activities.

But the better transport not only led to a mass use of the cultural facilities in the Aberdare valley, but also of the professional theatres that existed in the area.

From early times, the valley had been visited by bands of wandering players. In the ’60s, the Holloways had a circuit in S. Wales and frequently played at Aberdare. In the ’70s, Warren and Mange’s acting company played South Wales. In the ’80s and ’90s Warren’s theatre, Noakes theatre and Haggar’s theatre played in Aberdare frequently. In the Temperance Hall the leading stock companies, opera companies, and personalities played to the crowds. Whilst there was boxing, foot-racing, football, rugby football, roller-skating, horse racing, whippet racing, rifle shooting, fishing, swimming at the various grounds in the valley.

Aberdare was particularly prominent in the world of cycling. In the ’90s there were two world champions living in the district, Arthur Linton and Jimmy Michael, with several national champions.

One of the earliest cinemas in South Wales, if not in Britain, was started with William Haggar, in a wooden theatre in Aberdare in the early 1900s. He not only showed Gaumont films, he made them for the company.

Easy district transport also made possible the mass use of the public parks, which existed in the valley since 1869, 1880 and 1900. It also made it quite possible for people to travel to Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Merthyr to see the shows or the facilities there.

With the rapidly expanding population in the valley in the 1900s the Aberdare U.D.C. decided to introduce a public electric tram service and this started in 1913 with 10 single deck tramcars and 8 trackless buses.

The tramcars were an instant success. The greatest number carried in one day was 20,463 passengers.

7. A Weekday in the Aberdare Valley in 1900‒1921

At 6 o’clock in the morning a vast army of miners surged on to the street and made their way to the railway stations where the colliers’ trains took them to the mines, another army that had been on the night shift came surging through the streets making the pavements ring with their heavy boots. Others who lived near the pits walked in droves to the pit-tops. The early morning was broken by the hooting of the sirens, the noise of the trains, and the clank of the machines on the surface of the collieries, the bumping of the railway wagons rolling to and from the pits.

The commercial life of the valley went on during the day, then at four o’clock a vast army of black-faced miners came bursting on to the streets of the town to disappear as rapidly as they came.

Life was dominated by the miners, people thought coal because the life of the community was based on coal. In the evening the miners thronged the institutes and the other leisure facilities, including the public houses.

8. A Sunday in the Aberdare Valley in 1900‒1921.

On Sunday the pits were quiet. The public houses were shut and any person abroad in the morning was on his way to chapel or to church. A percentage of the people went to a place of worship three times on Sunday. Other men went out walking; some played cards in out of the way places or went to the very few drinking clubs that existed before 1921.

In the evening they went to chapel again, to a concert, or to a political meeting and if they were young, they went promenading along the main street of the town, or the village, wherever custom had built up the local “monkey-parade” as it was called. Where the young of both sexes ogled one another and dates were made for seeing girls home.