People who are unable to work need to be cared for properly and not be accused of being work-shy, the Archbishop of Wales said last night.
Dr Barry Morgan said the mark of a civilised society was the way it cared for its worst off members.
He was speaking at a service to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tonypandy Riots.
He said, ‘This Government talks about benefit frauds, as if the country is full of people who are out to milk the system. There are people who genuinely cannot work and if the State cannot take care of them in a proper way, then the whole society is damaged and diminished.
‘There are enough psychological effects of not going to work every day, of not being able to provide for your children, without being accused as well, of being people who are work-shy.’
Dr Morgan warned that the worst of the benefit cuts were yet to be seen and that job losses were inevitable. He said the 1910 strike reinforced the community spirit of the Rhondda and demonstrated the importance of standing together through difficult times.
He said, ‘One of the great characteristics of the mining communities was that they did care for the less fortunate – they made sure that widows and orphans had enough to eat and coal to heat their homes. They knew what it meant to be members of one society. The Big Society concept would not have been strange to them – they implemented it long before this Government thought of it.’
He added, ‘So all this reminds us of the importance of community, the importance of working together, the importance of looking after one another, of the essential dignity of being able to work.’
The ecumenical service, at St Andrew’s Church, Tonypandy, marked the beginning of a week of events remembering the centenary of the riots. More than 150 people filled the small church. They included civic leaders and political representatives. The service was led by Revd Philip Leyshon, vicar of Tonypandy with Clydach Vale
The full text of the sermon follows:
Sermon – Tonypandy
31st October 2010
I am delighted to preach at this service tonight because I too was brought up in a mining community, where at one stage, there were three working mines. Nearly all the men folk of my family worked in them. So the symbols of lamps and coal brought back many memories for me. My forebears, fiercely proud of the fact that they were miners, paradoxically felt that the last thing in the world they wanted for their sons was for them to work in the mines and that is why they set such great store on education. It was the only way out of the valleys that they thought possible and most of us did get out – not that there are now any mines left for us to work in, had we stayed.
But even though the mines have gone from the South Wales valleys, they still affect and deeply influence the communities in which they were set, which is why we celebrate, 100 years later, the Tonypandy Riots of 1910. Though in some ways we do not want to return to the days of mines and mining, because life down the pits was no picnic, as the recent events in Chile have shown us, nevertheless we want to hang on to the values of that bygone era because they exemplify something about living in a community which our modern age for all its sophistication, is in danger of losing.
So, what are we, in effect, celebrating and remembering at this service? And why is the local Council and community groups in Rhondda Cynon Taff marking the centenary of the Riot with a programme of events?
The riots at Tonypandy, of course, were just part of the long and bitter industrial dispute which extended across the whole or most of the South Wales coalfield. The Western Mail and The Times called it “the coal war” and it consisted of eleven months of strikes and stoppages, spread across the Rhondda, Cynon, Garw and the Afan Valleys where different sets of grievances led to a series of strikes and stoppages involving well over twenty thousand mine workers from the autumn of 1910.
Most of the strikers worked for one or two colliery companies – the Cambrian Coal Trust in the Rhondda Valley and the Powell Duffryn Company in the Aberdare Valley. At the heart of both disputes was the determination of the miners to resist the attempts of the colliery companies to protect their profit margins in the face of ever rising costs of mining coal in the geologically challenging conditions of the South Wales coalfield. What the miners demanded was that a day’s labour in a difficult seam, which yielded little, should be rewarded with a fair wage, just as a day worked in a more productive part of the colliery. In effect, the disputes were really about securing a minimum level of wage.
By now, the Powell Duffryn strike has been forgotten about but people still remember the strike at Tonypandy. Why? Because it has become a symbol of coalfield unrest in Edwardian Wales. The Cambrian men held out until September 1911 and it set about organising things officially and as a result emerged a strong Miners Federation. By contrast, the Powell Duffryn men returned to work on 2nd January 1911 with little immediate reward to show for their protest.
Tonypandy could be remembered as part of a proud tradition of labour history in the South Wales Valley, the Powell Duffryn dispute could not because the Rhondda men had held a ballot and twelve thousand of them went on strike officially at the end of October 1910 after giving the statutory one month’s notice whereas the Powell Duffryn stoppage began on 20th October when the workers simply downed tools. Theirs was an unofficial stoppage and they received no strike pay and consequently they were forced back to work sooner.
So, what can we learn from this because, after all, shop windows were broken in the town, premises vandalised, and police and troops moved in. In the subsequent violence, one miner, Samuel Rhys died of injuries said to have been inflicted by a police baton, eighty police and over five hundred other people were injured along with an unknown number of miners. Tonypandy was like a military camp with thirteen miners arrested and prosecuted and during the days of their trial, up to ten thousand men marched in support of them. Two of their leaders were jailed.
Despite further sporadic rioting and violence, by May 1911 the Miners Federation of Great Britain had withdrawn its financial support for the strikers. Ten months after the strike began, the miners were forced to accept the minimum weekly wage of £2, 1s and 3d which had been negotiated months before, by the Rhondda MP, William Abraham. One of the fiercest encounters in Welsh industrial history officially ended.
We remember all of that because, of course, it at least established the principle in this country, of a minimum wage. Up until this time, coal owners and indeed in North Wales, quarry owners, just paid what they could get away with. Workers were there to do their masters’ bidding. Although life was still hard for them, a minimum wage was a step in the right direction. The principle was established that a labourer was worthy of his hire and that there was a dignity about the worth of working, no matter what that work was, and that no-one should be exploited. We take all those things for granted these days but a century ago, they were things that were bitterly fought for.
The second thing that emerged from this strike was the fact that the workers realised that there was strength in solidarity; that things could really change if they worked together; that communities are more important than individuals. That’s a true biblical insight – that there cannot be joy for anyone unless there is joy for all. They stood together. These people gave up household wages for a year, in an area where life was already tough; where medical treatment had to be paid for because there was no welfare state; where children left school at 12 as often as not; houses were dark and cold, food was often scarce. There was strength in unity and that’s why strike breakers were treated with disdain. This reinforced the community spirit of the Rhondda so that 100 years later, these men are regarded as heroes and their legacy of fair pay and conditions are taken for granted.
One little boy told an interviewer that these riots reminded him and his classmates of the valley people pulling and working together . They were ready to make sacrifices for the sake of the future.
Thirdly, of course, it reminds us that there are some people who are simply unable to work and need the support of others. This Government talks about benefit frauds, as if the country is full of people who are out to milk the system. There are people who genuinely cannot work and if the State cannot take care of them in a proper way, then our whole society is damaged and diminished. There are enough psychological effects of not going to work every day, of not being able to provide for your children, without being accused as well, of being people who are work-shy. One of the great characteristics of mining communities was that they did care for the less fortunate. They made sure that widows and orphans had enough to eat and coal to heat their homes. They knew what it meant to be members of one society. The Big Society concept would not have been strange to them – they implemented it long before this Government thought of it.
The mark of a civilised society is the way in which it cares for its worst off members. We have not, as yet, either seen the worst effects of the Government cuts which is going to entail massive job losses. The funding of most Local Authorities has been cut and since most Local Authorities’ budgets are spent on salaries, it means that jobs will inevitably disappear.
Somebody said of the Chancellor’s Speech, that he laid out the price of everything, of things that needed to be cut but the value of nothing that he was cutting such as libraries, public services, local government and the effect all of that has on communities.
It reminds us that we do live in a world where there is inequality and suffering and where lots of people live on less than a dollar a day. We ought not to forget that there are countries in the world where there are no human rights, where people cannot strike, there is no freedom to protest, to assemble or to strike and that people have to endure these things in silence and that demeans them as people and accords them less than the dignity which they deserve, as people made in the image of God. These things were fought for by men such as the miners.
We ought not to forget either the great hardship that people endured in working the mines. The Chilean tragedy has shown us that. Had 33 people been trapped down the mine in 1910, as they were in Chile recently, they probably would have died because although the Chileans were entombed for 69 days, food and water could be passed to them, and drills and generators freed them which were not around in earlier centuries. The probe that rescued the Chilean miners found them nearly 2,300 feet beneath the surface.
So, all of this reminds us of the importance of community, the importance of working together, the importance of looking after one another, of the essential dignity of being able to work.
And also it reminds us that when tragedy happens in our world, there are no easy answers. God cannot wave a magic wand to make our ills disappear but the Christian Gospel maintains that in and through our suffering and tragedies, God is there with us, strengthening us and helping us. Mining communities knew all about that and were strong in their faith.
When the Aberfan disaster happened, my predecessor as bishop of Llandaff and Archbishop of Wales, Glyn Simon, said that the only thing he could say to the people there was that when he had lost a child, he had been strengthened by the knowledge that he believed God was helping him to endure it. These communities faced adversity on a frequent basis. Their faith in the providence of God remained undiminished. They themselves knew what it was to suffer and the knowledge that the heart of the Christian gospel is that in and through Jesus God suffers with His world, gave them hope. May that hope and faith be ours as we grapple with the problems of the very different society in which we live today.
