Llanelli Riots

This is the start of a journey.

A journey which takes us back to the long, hot summer of 1911.

A summer of violence and loss of life in the town of Llanelli.

It's my home town and this is a journey to discover what happened when the workers of this town

came face-to-face with the might of the British state.

I want the story to be heard and I want to set the record straight.

I grew up in Llanelli. I never heard of the Llanelli riots.

I heard about Owen Glendower, I heard about David Lloyd Jones,

I heard of all sorts of people.

I never heard about the great event, the big event of 1911 in Llanelli.

I hadn't an aunt who was quite an avid cricket fan

and I remember her asking my uncle, "Who is playing against Glamorgan today?"

"Worcester," he said. "Oh," she said, "the murderers!"

I first heard about the events from my grandmother

who remembers the police coming round to her back garden -

she was a child - and digging up the back gardens,

looking for looted produce.

Llanelli, at the turn of the 20th century, was a town in flux,

a town where rural Welsh-speaking Wales met industrial English-speaking Wales,

a town where the old chapel traditions met the trends of the modern world.

Above all, this was a boom town.

Llanelli wasn't called Tinopolis for nothing.

In the late 19th century, it was the great industrial centre

in its particular sector and that's actually reflected itself

in a town which had wonderful buildings,

trams, all sorts of facilities, which many people envied.

I think the Royal Lieutenant called Llanelli the Garden Of Eden of Carmarthenshire.

But, like the Garden Of Eden,

the serpent was lurking there and the serpent was slum housing.

We had problems with sanitation and child mortality.

This was common to all towns who were industrialised at that particular time.

In a town of tin, steel, copper and coal,

only 5% of the workforce were railwaymen

but they really were the poorest of the poor.

The typical porter or shunter at Llanelli railway station

would have got around 20 shillings a week or less.

Most miners in South Wales, for example, at that time

would have been on something like 30-34 shillings a week.

By August 1911, the struggle for a living wage had become a national strike.

The rail unions pleaded for fairness

but the Liberal government supported the owners and showed very little sympathy.

The railway lines were where you carried troops,

where you carried goods, where you actually conducted much of your business.

The idea of a railway strike, therefore, filled them with horror.

On Thursday August 17th,

the leaders of the main railway unions met the Prime Minister

and Lloyd George as Chancellor Of The Exchequer in London.

They informed them that they were rejecting the offer of yet another commission of inquiry

into their grievances and when they told the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith,

that they were going to go ahead with their plans for a national strike,

his response was, "Then your blood be on your own heads."

In Llanelli, they didn't think it would affect them at all.

So much so, the chief constable decided to send the main body of police constables in Llanelli

off to where there would be real trouble further down the line - Swansea, Cardiff, wherever.

While they were a way, of course, Llanelli experienced far more trouble than anyone anticipated.

There were just a few hundred members of the rail union in Llanelli

but, the crucial thing is, they were joined by hundreds of other workers

and one of the main strike leaders was a signal man called John Bevan.

He told a local reporter, "We're out for victory and our forces are ready."

Well, they might have been ready but the authorities clearly weren't.

I'm Ron Bevan and John Bevan was my grandfather,

better known to his colleagues as signalman Jack Bevan.

And on the night of the 17th,

he had the gates closed at the eastern end.

All the men congregated around there. The mood at that time was quite good.

Around the railway station, you have a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000.

There were only 500 railway workers. Where did the others come from?

They were actually the people in heavy industry - lighting workers, steelworkers,

brewery workers - who had come in solidarity.

They had mock elections. There was an impromptu vote.

John Bevan did actually offer to put up any stranded passengers as well.

But what was important was that the gates did stay shut

and they were manned so that no trains could pass through.

The fact is, Llanelli was a strategically important railway station.

On the main line from London to Fishguard,

a prime link between Britain and Ireland.

And yet, it was vulnerable. Why?

Because there was just one way in,

through those gates there on Station Road,

and just one way out, along the line, a quarter of a mile to the west.

When the gates were shut, nothing could move.

So, on the evening of the 17th, all approaching trains came to a standstill

as the few remaining policemen in the town just stood and watched.

But as Friday the 18th dawned, the situation and the mood were about to change.

One of Llanelli's magnates, Thomas Jones, Justice of the Peace

and also a very big shareholder in the Great Western Railway, sent for troops.

There was a pool of troops in Cardiff and the troops arrived

and he was there to meet them outside the gates at 7:30 on Friday morning.

So, the first troops to arrive were 127 men from the North Lancashire Regiment.

As it turns out, they were vastly outnumbered and they failed in their attempts to get the gates reopened.

So, what did they do? They set up camp on the outskirts of the town and sent out for reinforcements.

These arrived at about 4:30pm and they were mainly Worcestershire's - a very highly disciplined regiment.

And the moment the troops arrived - the Worcester Regiment - the atmosphere changed.

I think that, to me, is the triggering point.

So, what can we say about the Worcestershire Regiment?

They had a long, illustrious and, it has to be said, rather bloody history.

Back in 1770, they had fired on a crowd in Boston, Massachusetts.

it was one of the seeds of the American Revolution

and that episode earned them a nickname, the Vein Openers.

They were guarding the Custom House in Boston.

There was a riot and they opened fire and killed three protesters.

It is still known in America as the Boston Massacre.

Their commanding officer on that August weekend in 1911

was Major Burleigh Francis Brownlow Stuart.

He was commissioned before the Boer War, he served in the Boer War

and got accelerated promotion during the Boer War to the rank of major.

Well, Major Stuart certainly knew how to take action, because those Eastern gates were retaken,

lost and then retaken again at bayonet-point on the evening of 18th August.

The trains started to move again.

Surely that was it, problem solved?

Well, it wasn't, because on Saturday 19th August 1911,

the crowd's attention shifted to the western end

and this would turn out to be the darkest of days.

A train appeared at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon going west.

There was something wrong about this train, something suspicious about it.

The strikers weren't really willing to let it pass.

It is said that the driver had been encouraged to drive

through the use of, as you might say, intoxicating liquor.

But certainly, he was incapacitated.

My grandfather went in front of the train, lay across the track

and said, "If this train goes through Llanelli, it passes over my dead body."

Of course, all the family are very proud of that brave act.

The train stopped with a large embankment on one side with a lot of houses

and from that embankment, some of the young lads began to throw stones, began to shout abuse.

They got hold of the driver and manhandled him

and railwaymen rake out a fire in the engine

so the engine is now immobilised.

This train is not going anywhere anymore.

The next thing that happened

is that Major Stuart of the Worcester's brings 80 of his men up.

They line up on each side of the train. Bayonets drawn.

Let's think about what was really going on here,

because the soldiers found themselves in the worst possible position.

Why? Well, they were stuck in a culvert and they were surrounded by crowds on both sides in these banks,

Bryn Road on this side and High Street up there.

Major Stuart climbed up from the bottom of the cutting

to talk to the rioters and to try to reason with them

but that didn't prove successful.

Eventually, with a lot of rocks and bricks being thrown at them,

they had to do something.

He then makes Henry Wilkins, the magistrate he'd brought up with him, read the Riot Act.

He hands him, actually, a sheet with the Riot Act written on it.

Major Stuart gave the crowds

a minute to disperse. He went through this theatrical performance

of taking out his watch, timing etc.

He mumbles through the Riot Act, reluctantly, as it comes out in the inquest,

and Major Stuart draws up a firing squad of five men.

We still don't know whether the order to shoot was given or somebody just fired

but certainly, a volley followed and it was in that moment,

that two young men on the embankment overlooking the train were killed.

Major Stuart had initially remonstrated with a group of people who'd gathered at the back

of number four High Street, which is just up there.

But when the shots were fired, they were directed, not at number four, but at number six High Street,

which is where we can see the conifer trees today.

There is witness evidence that much of the stone-throwing

came from the very group of houses where they were standing

and people even reported that Jack John, the young football player, bared his chest and said, "Shoot me!"

Now, you're not shooting in the air, you're not shooting with rubber bullets at all.

They're shooting to kill. And they actually do kill.

John Francis was hit in the throat and slumped down in the back garden of number six, wounded.

John John was shot through the heart and killed instantly.

Leonard Worsell was also shot dead and Benjamin Hanbury was wounded.

So, the four men were carried from the railway embankment -

just beyond those trees - and brought into this garden.

This is the garden of number six High Street.

They discovered that the bullet that killed Jack John

had also injured Ben Hanbury. And how's this for a twist of fate?

One of the owners of number six today is a Hanbury.

My name is Janet Williams. My maiden name is Hanbury.

My grandfather was Ivor Hanbury and his younger brother was Ben.

When we bought the house about 20 years ago, we had no idea of the history behind it at all.

Neighbours told us of a few details as the years went by

and then I put two and two together

and then I remembered a childhood story that my great uncle had been shot.

To think that two men died in my garden and were pronounced dead on my living room floor is quite haunting.

It's not something I like to think about a lot.

Here we are, a century on from what happened.

The shootings happened just a few yards away.

-What are your thoughts today?

-The British forces killed two innocent people

and there's never been any apology or explanation or anything as to why they did it.

It's all been kept very, very quiet.

It's a crucial point, isn't it? 100 years on, do you think an apology would be appropriate?

Well, something needs to be done. If it happened in this day and age,

there'd be court cases, appeals, goodness knows what.

Jack John was laid to rest here at Llanelli public cemetery.

Leonard Worsell is buried just a few yards away.

I have to say, it is a shocking thing when you read the wording on the gravestone.

The graphic detail of his death at the age 21.

If it's shocking for us, imagine what it is for the John family who are still living in Llanelli today.

My name is Carole Slade, my maiden name was John.

Jack was my father's older brother,

so Jack John was my uncle.

The family never spoke about it.

I never heard my father mention it at all.

The first I remember hearing about it was when my eldest daughter was in school

and they were doing some local history.

I know he was 21 years of age and he was a tin-plate worker.

I also know that he was quite a talented rugby player

because he was due to visit Canada with a rugby team in September.

The September after he was killed.

There is a view in some quarters that they were rioters, they had to be dealt with.

Is that how you see it?

No, I don't think they were rioters.

It was your average 21 year-old, more interested, probably, in rugby than politics.

This was an act that should not have happened. It was wrong.

If Jack John was an innocent victim, then so was Leonard Worsell.

Leonard Worsell is clearly an innocent bystander.

Had he been standing there with a sign round his neck saying, "innocent bystander,"

it could not have been clearer.

He was from London, he was suffering from tuberculosis,

he was in a sanatorium outside Llanelli

and was on his weekend leave.

He was in the middle of shaving in the kitchen

and he had walked out into the back garden to see what was going on

when he was struck by the bullet.

But if the victims were innocent,

if they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,

then were the troops and their commanding officer the guilty ones?

This was an unusual set of circumstances in a very hot climate

in a politically charged atmosphere

and the troops arguably just lost control of the situation.

They were obviously, as soldiers, strongly disciplined and they had to carry out their orders.

The only way they could do that in the end was to open fire.

The train had been stopped, the troops went out,

they shoot dead two people and injure others

and then they retreat back to the railway station.

They'd abandoned the train and now the soldiers more or less abandoned the town,

leaving the local people free to vent their anger.

Back here at the eastern approach to the station,

they came and set fire to dozens and dozens of wagons and carriages.

What is surprising is that people were not driven off the streets,

they were not cowed after those deaths.

The whole of the working class districts in Llanelli rose up in anger.

A large number of people found a train in the sidings with the equipment of the troops in it

and that was fair game as far as they were concerned.

Others went to the railway sidings and there was looting,

people dressed up in some clothes they found,

children were clad in clothes they had never had before.

Then, at 11:30 at night...

EXPLOSION

There was a truck there containing explosives for an ironmonger in Llanelli

and because of the flames, probably, or the heat of the fires, it blew up.

The explosion took the number of dead from two to six

now including William Harris, Alfred Morris, Joseph Plant

and Margaret Fisher - all of them local people.

One was a lady of about 30 who was pregnant at the time.

So that again was a tragedy and this gives us the dilemma

in Llanelli of how do we separate the looting from the shooting.

The town explodes, the property of the Great Western Railway Company is ransacked,

shops of the magistrates are looted.

The town was completely out of control

until further troops were sent in and then there was a confrontation throughout the night.

Marcus Street had a lot of injuries because when the soldiers attacked there,

they attacked with bayonets again and the police with truncheons.

And there were lots of injuries in what was called the Battle of Marcus Street.

There were many people injured who are not reported in history books

because people were afraid to go to hospital.

If they went to hospital, they would be arrested.

So, the actual numbers of people who were injured, we will never know.

Eventually, everything is clear, of course, by about 2:00 in the morning

and it's all over, that's the end of it.

That's the strike and the riots all over in two-and-a-half days.

It had taken no fewer than 800 troops to deal with the Llanelli riots.

But to add to the sense of bitterness and frustration,

news came through that the strike had in fact been settled a few hours before the explosion happened.

David Lloyd George, in his view at least, had saved the day.

We know from the account of the Secretary Of State For War at that time,

he'd immediately burst into the War Secretary's office and said,

"A bottle of champagne! I've done it! The strike is settled!"

He then phoned up the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill.

Churchill's reaction was, "I'm very sorry to hear that,

"I would have preferred to have gone on and given these men a good thrashing."

In the days that followed, there were heated exchanges in Parliament

and back in Llanelli, there were funerals.

Thousands came to pay their respects to Jack John and Leonard Worsell.

Exactly a week after the funerals, came the inquest.

The verdict is interesting.

Lawful killing in the way of justifiable homicide.

The coroner informs the jury that is the verdict they are to bring in.

They do bring in the verdict but also add a rider.

The rider is that,

"We regret that Major Stuart didn't find other means than shooting to disperse the crowd."

Really, from reading the press reports of the subsequent inquest,

the soldiers were exonerated and congratulated for what they did by the army authorities.

That rider actually negates the verdict.

In fact, the coroner allows Stuart to get away literally with murder.

Another perceived whitewash involved the deserter, Private Harold Spiers,

who claimed to have refused Brownlow Stuart's order to fire on the crowd.

Spiers refuses to fire,

is arrested, escapes...

apparently hikes to the English border, living on berries and nuts

and is then arrested but he is charged with going absent without leave.

He's not charged with desertion.

In fact, he wasn't one of the soldiers who had been ordered to shoot.

He went absent subsequently.

He claimed that he went because he couldn't bear the thought of firing on the local people

but he wasn't one of those who was ordered to open fire.

Despite the fact that clearly he was on duty and clearly he had deserted

and almost certainly had refused to fire, the charges were reduced.

Churchill had asked that the whole case could be downgraded,

downplayed, so that there would not be any more sensational publicity about a man who refused to fire.

Both Spiers and Brownlow Stuart went on to serve in the First World War.

The latter, promoted to Brigadier General.

His progress is recorded in the regimental archive

but there is no mention of the deaths in Llanelli in the official battalion record.

So, it seems the air brushing had already started.

But not in Llanelli.

Here we are, on Bigyn Hill, within sight of the railway station.

Two weeks after the events of August 19th, the pupils of Bigyn School decided to stage their own uprising,

in effect, the first strike by school children.

One day, early on in the term in September, they left the playground and went out onto the streets.

It was probably the fact that some of them had been caned rather severely.

They took action.

They said, we've seen what our parents have done, can we try the same trick?

So, off they went around town, making speeches, actually, here and there on corners

and contacted three other schools - New Dock School, Lakefield School and Old Road School -

and brought them out as well.

What I have here is a very valuable document.

It is the original logbook for Bigyn School from 1911,

which has survived to this day.

It's crucial evidence and the headmaster explains that he was absent on the day

because he was suffering from a cold.

But he does give us his official account of what went on.

He reveals, by the way, that some Bigyn boys were marching and singing with workers on September 5th

and then on the Tuesday morning he says,

32 boys absented themselves between 11:00 and 12:15.

With a few exceptions, he says, they all returned in the afternoon and they were punished.

"The above," says GJ Harris, "is a true account

"of what has been boomed in the press as a schools strike in Llanelli.

"The whole incident," says the headmaster, "has been grossly exaggerated."

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

The important thing was that it was copied in cities all over the UK.

In places like London, Birmingham, Manchester, even as far as Glasgow,

there were school strikes but it all started here in Llanelli.

So, for a moment in time, the town of Llanelli was the focus of parliamentary and press attention

and yet in the decades that followed,

while the Tonypandy riots of 1910 were seared in the public memory,

the rather deadlier uprising in Llanelli was forgotten.

I think there was a sense of amnesia about the Llanelli riots

which is very different from what happened in Tonypandy.

The difference is about the character of the two places.

Tonypandy is a community which is very much centred on the mine,

very much centred on the industry in which everybody works.

Llanelli isn't. Most of the people taking part have no connection with the railway.

And to some extent, nobody could quite explain what happened.

As a result, people tended to say, "Well, maybe it never did."

Only now, a century later, does the town properly remember.

There's even talk of petitioning the government for an official apology.

Getting away from the guilt,

the cloud of shame that the chapels said descended upon the town,

that cloud of shame is still with us.

I think the town of Llanelli

and especially the families of those people who were killed,

deserve an apology at least.

I suspect the time for public recantation,

an apology to the people of Llanelli, is probably past.

All sorts of events that happened in the past have been dragged up and people want apologies.

Whether the Ministry Of Defence would do that over what is a relatively small incident, I don't know.

But I don't think it would be a reflection on the regiment.

Too often now, in Llanelli, we see it as a place of high unemployment,

social problems, drug problems et cetera.

It is time we recognised the courage of people in Llanelli

and the valour that they had.

And I won't call it a riot - it was an uprising.

It was a people's uprising against killings by the state.

Black Saturday - the worst day, probably, in all history of Llanelli.

What happened here in Llanelli a century ago was an outrage

and it caused a sense of pain and anger that has lasted 100 years.

And that's why it is so important for us to retell the story today,

to spell things out as we see them.

In that way, we can honour the memory of the innocent victims of the Llanelli riots

and make sure that they're never forgotten.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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