On my mind

ONE Thomas Picton has been in the news along with the tawdry folly in Carmarthen in memory of his disreputable career. The memory of another Welsh Thomas Picton has paled and his remains lie unmarked in the soil of Bilbao.

When I was researching the Spanish Civil War, Dr Robert Havard kindly sent me a fascinating article he had written on the two Pictons – General Sir Thomas and Tom. They would be at two ends of any spectrum but shared some similarities: their names; both were Welsh; both fought in Spain. Sir Thomas was regarded as Wellington’s finest general and died at the battle of Waterloo; Tom fell in the civil war against Franco. He was imprisoned and shot in Bilbao prison while trying to protect a fellow prisoner.

Sir Thomas, governor of Trinidad and a planter, administered Spanish law with authoritarian brutality decorating the gallows on the Port of Spain waterfront with corpses. On his return to London with his fortune he was arrested for sanctioning torture in Trinidad.

The man whom Wellington himself described as “a rough, foul-mouthed devil as ever lived” was elected as Tory MP for Pembroke.

They called Tom Picton in Spain “the mad Taff”. The 52 year old mountain fighter from Treherbert had supplemented his miner’s wages with bare fist mountain fighting and soon lost his teeth. Tom’s stay in Spain was littered with indiscretions. He wrote home: “At last the poor class of Spain, kept 500 years behind the times, kept under like dogs, have risen”. His unwillingness to accept what Fascism dealt out led to his being shot in cold blood in a Bilbao prison.

Two Pictons. One has no right to be honoured, but the people of Carmarthen and Wales should reflect on the lives of both.

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