The Police Charge*

The colliers were organised by the time we got back.

Columns were being formed by the Federation stewards; tempers were regained. They even raised a cheer for us as we took our place in the Ely Lodge ranks.

Urchins and pit boys were handing out Tom Mann pamphlets and colliers' newspapers Us Justice and Labour Leader; a brass band came from nowhere and formed up at our head.

Women and children were running out of their doors, pent with excitement, the wives black-shawled and capped, hopping about us like frock-coated undertakers. Bang, bang, on a big bass drum, and we were off up the hill to Clydach. And we were but one such mass meeting.

All over the Rhondda the colliers were answering the Union's call; snake after snake of men marching in the mountain towns in search of blacklegs and imported labour - the old, old stick which was used to thrash miners.

Up past River View we went to the colliery, bringing families to their doors, waving to Patsy Pearl who was feeding her Madog on her doorstep (and I saw Ricardo, the ice-cream man, fashioned on the bedroom window) and on to the colliery where we chased out the blacklegs and hosed out the engine fires, stopping the cage.

One blackleg we caught, wrapped him in a bedsheet, and marched him like a ghost at the head of the band; another we hoisted to the top of the pit-head, leaving him swinging there, yelling for a pig-sticking.

Down the valley road then, and along the railway to the Nantgwyn Naval colliery; here we did the same, then marched on to the hated Ely through Penygraig, making sure it was shut. Back down Amos Hill we went, singing and cheering, with half the population following us now, some said twelve thousand. To the two Pandy pits and the Anthony we went - all of the Cambrian Combine, with whom we were in dispute. Here we gave the blacklegs a run, sending the women and children after them, and Primrose Culpepper and Rachel Odd in the van, had a field day, hitting the daylight out of them.

It was nearing dusk and we were tired by the time we got back to Pandy Square, leaving behind us a trail of wet fires and halted cages; the wheels of shunting engines jammed, trucks derailed.

The police, mainly Glamorgan Constabulary, watched at the en- trances to colliery offices or agents' houses, arms folded, and did not move against us. 'What of the county police now, then?' called some- one.

'And what of the big Metropolitans?' asked somebody else. 'Skulking behind the curtains of the Thistle Hotel, are they?'

'They'll stop skulking when we go down there tomorrow, 'I replied. 'Big trouble will arrive when we tackle the Scotch.'

'You can say that again,' said Bron, when I got back to the Hut...

We had been asleep for about an hour, I suppose, when I was aware of a gathering of people in the Square. Bron awoke, too, sitting up beside me. 'Mat's happening?'

'It's the Glamorgan pit - hell's setting alight.'

'But you're drowning the Scotch fires in the morning!'

'Earlier, it seems,' I said, getting out on to the boards and peering through the frosted window.

Men were thronging to and fro on the Square under the light of the fountain; I heard bass shouts and the high voices of women. And just then the door nearly came off its hinges under Heinie's fist. He entered on a rush of words: 'The Cambrian management. have taken over the Scotch,' he cried. 'Word's just come out.'

'But what about our pickets?'

'Flung out by the police. There's three outside with split heads - one's a hospital case.'

'And Lindsay's occupied the colliery?'

'That's it,' said Heinie. 'And Llewellyn, the Combine manager, has gone underground with eighty blacklegs.'

'We'll soon dig them out.'

'But there's a hundred policemen guarding the top - they're all over the yard, and in the power station.'

I was dressing hastily. 'If there is there'll be trouble!'

'There's trouble already - it never really stopped. A lot of the lads are at Llwynypia now. And another fifty Cardiff bobbies have come in overnight to the Thistle Hotel.'

'So they're making the Glamorgan Scotch a show-down, eh ?,

'That's the size of it,' said Heinie. 'A gang of our boys tried to talk to the blacklegs, but the police drove them off.'

'I'm comin', too,' said Bron. She was pulling on her drawers, unconcerned about Heinie.

'You're not. You're staying here,' I said.

Heinie said, 'Me Management's taken the scabs underground, they say, to save the ponies.'

'Yet they took those horses down themselves especially?'

'But it works,' cried Mattie, appearing at the door. 'Now there'll he talk about the brutal miners, though Manager Llewellyn don't give a sod if all four hundred ponies drown.'

'You're dealing wi' some lovely people,' said Bron. 'If he isn't careful he'll drown his eighty blacklegs,' and I flung open the door.

Bugles were blowing in strident blasts as I ran out on to the Square. Word had gone around like a prairie fire blazing. The Combine Management had got control of the Big Glamorgan colliery, known as the Scotch. Blacklegs were working the engines underground. Chief Constable Lindsay had thrown out our pickets and a force of con- stables were now guarding the colliery pits.

The colliers were infuriated. Out of their beds rolled the children, out of the doors poured the men, grabbing their tools as they went - mandrels, axe-handles, shovel hafts, brooms.

Followed by their shrieking women, they came pell-mell on to Pandy Square, raising the roof, and even the dear departed in the cemetery must have cocked their dusty ears to listen, said Bron.

From Court Street to Chapel Street they came; up from afar as The Golden Age in Williamstown; rushing in streams from Gilfach, Maddox, Primrose and the Bush, and they packed the Square - the centre of all Town activity - like sprats in a cask.

Moses Culpepper and his Primrose were there, also Rachel and her Bill. The McCarthys came in force, led by Etta, wielding a poker and shrieking like a Sioux Indian. All the Arses came, save Rosie and child; I saw Dai Parcel, Gwilym and Owen; also John Haley and Will Shanklyn with the O'Learys. Diving into the malee of the swaying mob, they joined the chorus of yells and threats, for the Town was maddened by the management's occupation of the Scotch.

Where, earlier, there had been organisation and purpose, now it was anarchy, without a Union leader in sight. All the thick-eared fraternity turned out this time, too, with famous people like Tom Thomas and Martin Fury crowding in with the likes of Dai Rush and Snookey Boxer, their blood up at the prospect of battle.

Mr Duck, lately returned from exchange work over in Senghenydd, fought his way into the crowd beside me.

'Toby, this is madness!' he cried, cultured. 'Try telling them that,' I shouted back.

'Where's Mabon at a time like this?'

'Or Noah Rees, Mainwaring - Watts Morgan - where's anyone?' The men were swaying in a body, shoulder to shoulder, across the

length and breadth of the Square, chanting, amid cat-calls, 'Me Scotch, the Scotch, the Scotch!'

I yelled to Mattie and Heinie, 'Raise me, get me up!' and they swung me high on their shoulders, turning me in the crush of men.

I shouted, my hands flung up, 'Listen, listen! Don't act like a mob. Wait for Mabon!'

A man yelled above the rest, 'We're always waiting for bloody Mabon - we don't need the Union to dig out bloody Llewellyn.'

'Pelt out the scabs - run them out of Town!'

I shouted, 'The police are waiting for us, remember?' 'Bloody bad luck for them!'

From my swaying perch, I saw the face of Bron among the infuriated men, with John Haley beside her, barging and shoving for room, trying to protect her.

'Bron!' I fought myself down and ploughed through the men to- wards her, but the sheer weight of their numbers swept me away.

'Bron, go back!'

The falling of a leaf will start an avalanche.

In hundreds we started the march on Llwynypia. Meeting other columns coming down from Clydach Vale, Dinas, Penygraig and Trealaw, we marched up the Llwynypia Road and on to the Big Glamorgan colliery. Some lit torches, and from these other firebrands blazed. The pale moon was rolling on billowy, wash-day clouds, her light dimmed with the redness of the waving torches.

Now that we were committed to drown out the Scotch by force, there came upon the marching men an unearthly quiet.

'My gran's milk,' said Heinie, beside me, 'I've never heard colliers as quiet as this.'

Doors were opening open along the road; whole families standing there, their faces pale with apprehension. The torch-light shot shadows into the eyes of the women. This move spelled more hunger: some, like the Ely people, had been eating skint for three months already; their bellies gnawed.

'How are you, Toby?' asked John Haley, pushing into the ranks with Tommy Arse.

'No better for asking,' I answered. 'This business stinks.'

'But time we stopped the Scotch isn't it? She's on the list.'

'We should have done it this morning, before the police made it into a fortress.'

'Time comes when you've got to fight, man,' said he, tersely, and his eyes were shining. 'Like loving when you've got to love.'

'Ye don't usually get your skull fractured, just for loving,' said Duck behind me.

'The women don't hold with it,' said Mattie. 'My wife's playin' Hamlet, first act.'

'She ain't usual,' replied Ben Block. 'My missus is behind us - she says give 'em hell.'

'Time'll come when we'll be behind the women,' grumbled Dai Parcel, over to my left. 'Under their skirts, me, when the batons come out - Toby's right, this business stinks.'

'Then why are ye here?' shouted Tommy Arse, and I chanced a look at him in the tramping of the boots; big and handsome he looked. a boy made into a man.

'Because colliers stick together,' I replied.

'And fall together likewise,' said Heinie. 'It won't be the first time I've had a baton on me nut.'

Lock and Company, the grocers, had barricaded their doors and windows to protect their hams, for the best money hangs from ceilings. Studley's Fruit Shop, in the process of getting out the apples and pears, hung a drape over the photograph of the late lamented Queen Victoria, since loyal subjects appeared few and far between. Watkins the Flannel had got his bales inside; the Monument Chemist slammed shut, with Tailor Jones going demented to save his Union boss frock coats, and the roars that came up from the Square that night eased the slates off the workhouse roof, according to Solly Freedman, the pawnbroker, raising dust up Zion Hill with his trunk on wheels.

We marched on.

There grew an accompaniment to the stamping thunder; a low chanting in the ranks, like cattle lowing; by the tune we neared the Big Glamorgan we numbered thousands.

We of the Ely were in the van. Behind us, I saw a massive column now, snaking back to Tonypandy, a great wedge of torch-light. The chanting rose higher as we spilled along the railings of the Scotch.

Many women had joined us, their faces wild, their shawls scragged back over their hair; many armed with pokers, for women fight to Hi.

Urchins were darting through the ranks of men. their shrill cries sparking the growing of shouts and bawls.

Before us the road lamps were bright; the pit-head of the six pits of the Big Glamorgan stood black against the stars. A man in the crowd yelled, 'Pull up the railings as weapons. If we get the power house we'll stop the Scotch!' and the men about me spilling out of the ranks and began to tear up the wooden fencing surrounding the colliery. Stone-throwing began; glass clashed and tinkled as windows shattered. Then came quiet.

Before us on the road the police began to mass. Led by a mounted figure, Chief Constable Lindsay, the 'Roman Centurion', they formed up out of the shadows silently, without command; no sound came but the clattering hooves of the horses and their slithering hobnails.

And they stood like a black barrier between us and the power station.

Big bastards, these; we feared them. They might have been ordinary Welsh policemen, but they were hand-picked in anti-riot, from Cardiff and Swansea mainly, and no bloody truck with the black-faced yobs of the Rhondda.

The silence grew in strength and power. Stock still these policemen stood, and it was clever. Even Lindsay's horse was motionless, with Lindsay astride him, his sabre stiffly up- wards.

As black marble statues, they were motionless: the night was as shifty as a monastery in Lent.

'Christ,' said Heinie beside me, 'now we're goin' to blutty 'ave it.' We hesitated.

From within the colliery came shouted commands. More police poured out, breaking the tension; others were forming up on the cast of the colliery, also behind us, boots clattering in the eerie silence.

Then a new leader swept to the fore of us, John Haley, and he shouted, wielding a fencing post, 'Right, follow me! Come on - get the powerhouse, stop the pumps!'

Bedlam came loose in a chorus of cat-calls and shouts; men lacking courage.

'Dig out the manager!' 'Beat up the blacklegs!' 'Bring up the ponies!'

A new chanting began, 'Scabs, scabs, scabs!'

Stones began whistling overhead; the windows of the power house clashed as urchins got the range. Ed Masumbala I saw, his black face shining with sweat, as the rush at the police began. Hair down, fighting to be free of men who tried to hold her, Rachel Odd was like a mad thing, swinging her fire-tongs; behind her came Primrose Culpepper and half her brood, darting forward from the crush, baiting the wedge of policemen barring our way.

But, though I joined John Haley and reviled them, the mass of colliers did not shift.

'Wait till they charge, then,' I shouted. 'And pull out these damned women!'

Stones were hissing over us now; empty windows, stab-toothed, were grinning at the moon, truck buffers ringing as the stones pelted down. The grass slope above the road was thronged with children and ruffians, but the police, so far, were out of their range.

Men hauled the women and children out of it. the road was clear for a charge.

But the police charged first.

I have never seen anything like it.

They came in a solid box of blue. Tense, gripping our weapons, we awaited them.

They came in a phalanx, the centurion attack of another age; stamping upright, like automatons, faces lifted, expressionless; knees bobbing up, with mechanical precision; approaching slowly, short, hardwood truncheons held upright at their belts, big fists gripping white. Wide-shouldered and burly, their domed helmets made them gigantic.

Their pace quickened to a rasped command as the distance closed.

Seventy yards.

A collier bawled. 'Come on, then, Bobbies, and God help ye!'

Fifty yards.

'Christ!' whispered a man beside me.

In the front rank, I crouched, waiting. Mattie was one side of me, Heinie on the other.

Twenty yards.

I could see their big faces now; jaws thrust out; some split wide in joyful anticipation. Some of these Bristol bastards were just delighted by the Welsh.

Ten yards.

Gleaming red, on a command, the batons flew up.

'Charge!'

In dervish yells, they leaped at us.

Our front ranks bulged upward to the impact: the mandrels high, the truncheons smashed down. Instantly, as pole-axed, men fell sprawling; the colliers stayed down, but all the policemen rose, as if commanded. And their truncheons rose and fell again and again in smashes of pain.

Men about me were howling, clutching their red faces; others were crawling among the stamping boots, yelling from bloody mouths. Heinie was down, pulling a policeman with him; Mattie was flailing away at bobbing heads. Helmets were being tipped off, chin-straps torn away; amid a sea of struggling, cursing colliers and policemen, the palings and batons, mandrels and axe-handles rose and fell in flailing, crunching thuds.

Men with broken limbs reeled out of the fight with disjointed cries. A face loomed up before me as John Haley struck out; I elbowed him for room and hit blindly, and the punch caught a policeman square. Instantly, he slipped down the front of me and I lowered him to the ground; next moment the bugger was on my legs. Dull blows were thudding all over me now as my companions gathered around me; two policemen at me, now three, and their weapons were thudding down an my arms, an old trick of the anti-riot: a baton actually splintered on my shoulder as I ducked and brought down my fencing post on to an unprotected head, which disappeared, as if by magic. It was a bawling melee of a fight: Tommy Arse leaped to my side, hooking with his fists and shouting madly, and I had to fight to save him from a six foot Bobby; then Haley grabbed his collar and dragged him out, a moment after somebody felled the boy from behind.

'Get him out!'

We fought for room in a chorus of yells and screams, taking the stabbing blows on the fleshy parts of our bodies, blows that brought a numbing pain.

I saw the furious, snarling faces, yet knew no anger.

Strangely, I fought in a comradeship that embraced even the police. The agony of it all seemed to stitch us together; it was neither my fight, nor theirs. Removed in time and space, in reality I was not there. Amid the cries, the blood, there was an astonishing cleanness ... until I saw the truncheon come down that felled Moses Culpepper. On top of Sam Rays he fell, soundlessly: men trampling on the mounding bodies now.

I saw another baton coming and hooked my fist into the body of a constable; he grunted and doubled up; I felt my knuckles crack on the big buckle of his belt. Another baton descended, a weapon in slow motion; step by step towards Heinie's unprotected face it came. I saw it, but could do nothing: it hit Heinie on the cheek, breaking the bone, spinning him sideways. 'Collar him' shouted Mattic. 'Haul him out,' I gasped, and barged into them with Mattic Kelly and Bill Odd beside me.

One-handed, shouting to the pain of my broken hand, my desperation drove them before me.

Will Parry was near me: there was Albert Arse, Shanklyn, O'Leary. Ed Masumbala was with us, pulling policemen aside, clubbing them down with his fist; there was Dai Parcel, Gwilym, Owen and Duck; also Snookey Boxer and Ben Block, gasping fat, but fighting like a demon beside the McCarthy lads (though Dano was down). Moses was on his feet again, his face a mask of blood. And then somebody bellowed:

'Look out, lads - look out, behind you!' and we swung to a new enemy.

Rhondda policemen were coming over the Taff Railway at our rear. They came in a tearing, swaying clutch, arms reaching for us - their capes streaming out behind them like flying witches.

'These sods are real Welsh mind,' yelled Mattic, and head down, clutching his face, he bolted.

I paused in my flight to grab Tommy with my good hand while John Haley helped me; together, dragging him between us, we ran, while Ben Block, Albert Arse and Bill Odd fought off the police like a rear party.

*from This Sweet and Bitter Earth (1977) by Alexander Cordell.