Working-class heartland whose pacifists fought the good fight
Briton Ferry and Aberavon have been named as one of Britain’s top areas for World War I conscientious objectors by historian Cyril Pearce in his new book. Political editor-at-large Martin Shipton takes a look
TWO adjacent Welsh communities have been identified in a new book as one of the greatest hotspots for conscientious objectors in Britain during the First World War.
Between them, Aberavon and Briton Ferry had 110 residents who objected to joining the military services on grounds of conscience.
While there were towns and cities that had more conscientious objectors, the density of them in the two south Wales industrial communities in Port Talbot and Neath was among the very highest.
In his book Communities of Resistance, historian Cyril Pearce investigates why some places were hotspots of anti-war activity and some regions its “heartlands”, and unpicks the wider circles of support – political, social, religious, familial – on which those who opposed the war relied.
The book tells the stories of the men and women who stood by their own judgements on the war, who suffered imprisonment, social exile, physical abuse and sometimes death, and who as individuals and in likeminded communities found their own ways to resist.
Aberavon and Briton Ferry had both grown in the years leading up to the war as a result of industrial expansion, with the former including the rapidly growing steel town of Port Talbot. Briton Ferry’s growth over the same period was part of the same regional phenomenon, augmented as it was by the growth in related employment in the railways and the coal-exporting ports of Cardiff, Barry, Swansea and Port Talbot.
The book states: “Both [Aberavon and Briton Ferry] were relatively new settlements and products of the industrialisation of south Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As with the rest of Glamorgan, they were substantially workingclass communities with the majority of their employment in skilled and unskilled manual trades.
“Along with that went a vigorous and, at times, militant trade unionism dominated by the South Wales Miners Federation, the ‘Fed’, and present in all the other major industries.
“Relatively new though they might have been, Aberavon and Briton Ferry were more than industrial ‘frontier towns’. Before the war both places had established a rich and lively local culture with numerous local societies and organisations which expressed their particular identities in different ways.”
The communities of Port Talbot had dozens of churches and chapels of various denominations – Calvinistic Methodists, Church of Wales, English and Welsh Baptists, Evangelical, Gospel, Independent, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist and Wesleyan.
The same was largely true of Briton Ferry, and the dominant influences were Nonconformist. Churches and chapels were the focus of both intense theological debate and, arguably more significantly, social life, entertainment and a sense of community.
Inevitably and intentionally, much of that extended beyond the chapel walls and into the wider public realm. The Temperance movement was closely associated with local Nonconformity and the Band of Hope, a children’s temperance organisation, was a popular adjunct to many local Sunday schools. It was, indeed, the way in which that chapel sense of social morality intersected with the issues of the day which gave them their particular political potency.
The chapel represented an important focal point for social and political as well as religious matters, often encompassing the principles of co-operation, pacifism and internationalism.
The book states: “It is no surprise that members of the ILP [Independent Labour Party] found intellectual sanctuary here.”
By the time war came, huge pressure was put on men to enlist.
The book says: “Young men … volunteered to fight and the cenotaph in Briton Ferry records the names of 120 who died. The local war-related industries stepped up their output while drawing in new workers from other parts of Wales and the British Isles.
“And yet, while recruiting committees went about their business and war-related industries expanded their production, groups of men and women set about organising local opposition to the war.
“The war resister communities [in Aberavon and Briton Ferry] were almost universally working-class and were firmly supported by the twin pillars of radical Nonconformity and the ILP.”
The strength of the war resister community in Aberavon and Briton Ferry certainly impressed their many visitors. The philosopher and anti-war campaigner Bertrand Russell, on a lecture tour in the summer of 1916, wrote to Ottoline Morrell from his hotel in Port Talbot: “The state of feeling here is quite astonishing. The town subsists on one enormous steel works, the largest in south Wales, the men are starred [in reserved occupations] and earning very good wages; they are not suffering from the war in any way. Yet they seem all to be against it.
“On Sunday afternoon I had an open-air meeting on a green: there were two chapels on the green, and their congregations came out just before I began. They stayed to listen. A crowd of about 400 came … their energy is wonderful.”
Later that day Russell spoke in Briton Ferry at “a really wonderful meeting
– the hall was packed, they were all at the highest point of enthusiasm – they inspired me, and I spoke as I have never spoken before”.
The impact of Russell’s tour led to much anxiety within the Home Office and the domain of the intelligence services and Special Branch, but the strength of local anti-war feeling had already led the authorities to take action to try to curtail its effects.
As early as May 1916 the police had begun to raid the offices of local antiwar groups and the homes of their members. The ILP centre at Cwmavon was raided and all the branch’s literature seized.
A subsequent court case resulted in charges against four leading campaigners that they had distributed material likely to prejudice recruiting. Identical charges were laid against 10 other leading members of Briton Ferry ILP.
Tal Mainwaring and Dan Morris refused to pay their fines and were sent to prison. Their departure from Aberavon station drew a large crowd singing the Red Flag and climbing the platform fences.
On their release, a “demonstrative” crowd of 2,000 awaited them in Port Talbot. Shortly afterwards a social was held in their honour at the Co-operative Hall in Taibach.
The raids and the confiscation of anti-war literature continued, accompanied by prohibitions on the use of certain public spaces.
Repression of this kind appears to have had little effect. The war resisters of Aberavon and Briton Ferry remained resilient and, despite inroads into their n numbers made by consc scription, continued to su sustain their campaigning an and organising through to th the end of the war.
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