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Slate strike's scars - 100 years on |
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Bethesda is a Hebrew place name, one of the many adopted by Welsh villages whose nonconformist religion liked to borrow the authority and grandeur of Biblical titles both for communities, and for personal names.
The Victoria Inn, Bethesda, which strikers attacked because it sold beer to strike breakers. |
Bethesda itself means “House of Peace”, but the quarrying community had been anything but peaceful during the three bitter years of the strike. A full century later, people in the village can remember which families were strikers and which were “Bradwyr.”
Even though the Welsh slate industry itself has shrunk to a fraction of its former size, the memories and values of the industry, and the communities which were formed to serve it, still live on
A body of literature which examined the passions and conflicts caused by the strike has grown over the years, and December 2003 saw the publication of two new books about the strike in its 100th anniversary year. Eigra Lewis Roberts’s latest Welsh-language novel Rhannu’r Ty (“Dividing the House”) tells the story of the splits the dispute caused.
Meanwhile Gomer Press have republished John Sheridan Jones’ (Daily News journalist ) classic 1903 account of the strike, What I Saw in Bethesda. These books, and others like them, are testimony to the abiding interest the strike attracts.
Words: Grahame Davies
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