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Riotous scenes
without parallel in a South Wales
Coalfield were enacted last night in
mid-Rhondda and at Aberaman. At both
places, the police and the mob were in
fierce conflict for many hours, charge
after charge being made by the
constabulary upon the infuriated
crowd. In the mid-Rhondda alone over a
hundred casualties were reported,
injured strikers being conveyed to
local surgeries for treatment. There
were 60 casualties at Aberaman., and
both there and in mid-Rhondda many
members of the police force were
struck by huge missiles, not a few
sustaining injury.
In the mid-Rhondda district the first
outbreak of disorder took place in the
afternoon at Tonypandy and Llwynypia.
A mob of young men were charged by the
police who, using their batons, drove
them off, leaving six on the highway
injured. These as quickly as possible
received first aid, and were
subsequently removed home. Later in
the evening there were grave
developments at Tonypandy. Time after
time police and strikers came into
serious conflicts, and the riots that
ensued were the most serious witnessed
within living memory in the coalfield.
First the strikers, repeating the
demonstration of Monday night,
attacked with showers of stone within
the Power Station of the Glamorgan
Colliery. Repulsed by the police after
a sanguinary baton charge, the
strikers, reinforced, returned again
to the attack, and were once again
charged by mounted police, dozens
being rendered prostrate by blows from
police batons. Later the strikers,
forming in procession marched through
the main streets of Tonypandy smashing
the windows of scores of
establishments on route to Penygraig
and looting the contents of shop
windows.
At Aberaman a combined attack was made
on the Powell Duffryn washery. A mob
of two thousand men joined in the
assault, accompanied by a large number
of women. The police were fiercely
attacked, and some were seriously
injured. The rioters climbed over the
fencing and set fire to a quantity of
straw stored in a railway wagon.
Immediately there was a huge
conflagration and expensive property
was in imminent peril. Prompt rescue
measures, however, were taken and the
fire was extinguished ere much damage
had been done. The mob only yielded to
a series of baton charges, and the
crowd rushed pell mell along the canal
bank many being jostled into the
canal.
Last night a troop train conveyed two
squadrons of the 18th.
Hussars from Tidworth to Cardiff,
where they were quartered for the
night, accommodation being found for
them at the Barracks, ready at any
moment to proceed to the scene of
operations in the affected districts.
Companies of the North Lancashires and
the Lancashire Fusiliers, who had
started from Tidworth Barracks in
company with the Hussars, remained
behind at Swindon. The Hussars, it is
officially reported, were drafted into
South Wales at the request of the
Chief Constable of Glamorganshire, who
communicated through the local
military authorities an appeal for the
assistance of two hundred cavalry and
two companies of infantry in the
protection of colliery property. In
the early morning a troop of Hussars
travelled from Swindon through Cardiff
to Pontypridd.
At the time of going to press the
turmoil had subsided, and quiet was
being maintained throughout the
disturbed areas.
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