THE NUMBER of people without Britain in 1932 was estimated to be seven million. The decline of Britain's traditional industries and the collapse of international trade after the crash of 1929 caused suffering throughout the length and breadth of the country.
South Wales, heavily dependent as it was on coal, iron, steel, and fin plate, showed what a reserve army of labour meant in awful reality.
Lt. Col. Sir Parliament in 1934 on the eastern area of South Wales, found that unemployment there was 44.5 per cent. Many mining villages, especially those on the worked-on seams in the north of the coal field, such as Blaina, Bryn Mawr and Merthyr Tydfil, Portal describes as 'derelict, two-thirds of the workers unemployed Of 50,000 miners unemployed had been out of work for a year, 56 per cent for two years, and 35 per cent for over three years. Behind these statistics lay problem.
The coal and steel industries had undergone a period of expansion during the First World War, when they were vital for the war machine needed to defeat German imperialism. Even after the war the demand for Welsh coal and steel was high because the Belgian and French industries had been destroyed.
But 1923 the boom collapsed. depression which began in Wales was to last until the outbreak of the Second World War. Raw materials Areas of Britain which had a greater variety of industries were more depression. But the large population of South Wales was concerned with the extraction of raw materials, such as coal, and the production of the basic material for other industries, such as steel bars, rather than the production of finished goods.
The over-valuing of British currency with the rise in the gold standard in 1935 made exports from South Wales uncompetitive. The protective tariffs which many countries put up to prevent foreign goods interfering with the development of domestic industries after the First World War added to trade problems for Wales.
The British Navy began to use oil and this further and hydro-electric power reduced the domestic consumption of steam coal.
Although the stayed at its 1913 level, the production of steam coal began to fail. The antiquated steel piants work in William Portal, reporting for with over 76 per cent The resilient to the majonty undercut the market. Motor transport production of anthracite coal and coal mines of South Wales found it increasingly difficult to compete magnificently re-equipped industries as those in Belgium.
From an output of 10m tons of steel in 1929 in Britain as a whole, production plummeted to half that figure by 1931. Coal output fell from 257m tons in 1929 to 207m tons in 1933.
Protection Although the government protectionism after 1934, this did not solve the employment problems of South Wales because its industries depended on exports. Even in 1939, with re-armament well under way, there were 100,000 people unemployed in South Wales.
in desperation, many younger people left Wales in search of work. Between 1931 and 1938 the population of Greater London increased by nearly half a million while that of South Wales fell by 115,000.
Migration 100k strongest members of the community. It cut the DOWN of those ntensified the poverty and dereliction. It meant that the social services declined.
Whole families being common. Often it was only the very young who found work. Wages were appallingly low due to the massive competition for jobs. Shops closed, charities dried up, the roads were neglected.
Merthyr Tydfil, once a proud borough and cradle of the British iron industry, became a ghost town. A Royal Commission described the scene in 1935:
"Merthyr Tydfil has many sites of decaying iron works, the most modern of which stands like memorial to past prosperity hillside of Dowlais. The mayor of the explained very graphically how the number people made destitute by greater such light Eg smal commission inhabitants. introduced distant off on the dole.
away the youngest and left was 'IT was a point of honour never to buy anything if you could get it in other ways. We took wood from fences without any sense of shame. We would steal timber from the pit heads.
'And if sheep could be enticed from the hillside, it would be killed and the meat divided among the people of the village. We were not ashamed because we were being made outcasts by those who owned the means which could have given us a livelihood.
"The miners would climb in their pit clothes a thousand feet or so up the mountain to on the of the country. town this change was far directly months in the USA, and Thatcher, Too, thrown out of work:
«When the works were in full employment, a large number of elderly men were employed as watchmen, signalmen, gatekeepers, and on other work, who are nOW anemployable and in receipt of public assistance.
'Similarly, elderly men and women who had shop when these industries because of the reduced purchasing power of the Women who kept lodgers, went working days cleaning and washing for workers who are now unemployed, are also in receipt of public assistance.' The pits in the Merthyr area, which had employed 24,000 in 1913, were down to 8,000 in 1935. Miners were desperately seeking work at collieries. spending so much on fares that if they were married with fair-sized families they were better Humanlives In 1934, 63.4 per cent of the workers in Merthyr were registered unemployed.
As with all communities which face poverty and social deprivation, the uitimate price was paid in human lives. In 1935 in the Home Counties the rate of infant mortality was 42 per 1,000 live births. In Glamorgan, it was 63 deaths per 1,000 live births.
•In 1936 the maternal mortality rate was 3.65 per 1,000 for England and Wales taken together. In Wales alone the rate was 5.67. Death from Arthur Horner, "The Incorrigible Rebel' tuherculosis was twice as common in Wales South Shields and Gateshead as it was in the rest Resistance to government policy in these areas was fierce. The degree of solidarity among the unemployed was unparaileled. In 1935, when the vast majority of the unemployed suffered a * just as in same nation' expansion of regarded all-Wales were. down action, SW England Midlands Wales Scotland Northern Ireland of Commons:
country and enjoyed by Movement in the limiting the As Ralph same path.
Port Talbot— cut in the dole and the means test was applied in a savage fashion, South Wales w The anthracite miners called for a 24strike, which was followed by a similar call the Cambrian Combine Miners in the Rhor The South Wales Miners' Federation calle conference and set up a counc which brought 300,000 people In Merthyr Tydfil a demonstration of wi smashed the windows of the newly-establ Unemployment as a percentage of insured workers by region in 1932 London and SE England Unemployment Assistance Board.
WH Mainwaring, Labour MP for the Rhondda, made a desperate appeal in the F *I hope the working classes of this countr pay heed to what is said and done here toda that from now onwards the agitation which its height in South Wales (Hon members Al over'] will spread like a flame throughou English working classes will join with the Welshme make the demand that come what will damnable regulations must be withdrawn The reductions that had beer made in th were refunded. But despite the massive su the Wor depressed areas, bott Labour Party and the trade unions natic refused to take up the cause of the victir capital sturmiess anve lot plous.
It was left to the Communists to organis unemployed nationally. Despite the enthus of many rank and file Labour Party mer their leaders, afraid of the militancy they\v unleash, refused to take on the capitalist sy They were bound then, as they still are tod struggle the confine Miliband explained Parliamentary Socialism the Labour Party deliberately refused to further that educatio organisation outside parliament, of a mi movement in defence of working class inte (our emphasis). When the chips are down Jim Callaghan and Len Murray will follo
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scramble for bits of coal among the slag. A day of this weary work — as hard as any day in the pit — might fill a hundredweight sack of coai worth 1s.3d, while under the valley floor the rich