Tonypandy Riots

A dispute at the Ely pit and wider tensions over wages led to a miners’ strike in the Rhondda Valley in 1910. Mass picketing and clashes in Tonypandy brought police reinforcements into the district, and the role of the government in maintaining order became a lasting source of political controversy.

The disturbances came to symbolise the increasingly organised and confrontational labour politics of the South Wales coalfield before the First World War. They form a key historical episode in Alexander Cordell’s This Sweet and Bitter Earth, which follows Welsh workers from slate quarrying into the coal industry.