A New Beginning The Story of Wales

In the first part of the 19th century,

Wales is convulsed by the coming of industry.

New technology transforms a land

that has hardly changed for centuries.

And then, in the 1840s, things really get going.

Railways arrive, and with them comes the modern age.

HOOTS TRAIN HORN

'By the end of the 19th century,'

Wales is heavily industrialised, densely populated in parts,

and known the world over for one particular product.

All around the world,

railway owners and shipping magnates can't get enough of this stuff.

It is Welsh steam coal.

It's the best you can get.

And in the space of 50 years,

this treasure transforms the Welsh economy.

It puts Wales right on the map.

TRAIN HORN HOOTS

In this chapter of The Story of Wales,

the country goes through its most dynamic period ever.

One Welsh product brings Wales global fame.

The world was turning on South Wales steam coal at that time.

What was being done here was truly important.

And another Welsh product, slate, creates even more wealth.

The sudden prosperity turns uninhabited valleys

into bustling communities, changing Wales forever.

It feels like a new dawn.

But storm clouds will gather before the day is through.

THUNDER RUMBLES

The new start that Wales gets in the middle of the 19th century

comes at a critical time.

It happens while the country is still reeling

from a series of government reports known as The Blue Books.

They are notoriously insulting documents -

'the products of a public inquiry into Welsh education

'that's bungled by those in charge.'

The Englishmen chosen to conduct this inquiry

are pretty clueless, really.

They have no knowledge of Wales,

they have no respect for Welsh culture.

They rely for advice on Anglican clergymen -

hardly an impartial source.

And the Welsh who emerge from these Blue Books are ignorant peasants.

They have lax morals.

They speak a useless language.

It's an all-out attack.

And the impact is immense.

Being written off as gormless yokels, and sinners to boot,

horrifies the Welsh.

They want to shake off the image. And they do.

By the end of 19th century, they're seen as honest, hardworking people,

thanks, in part, to the coal boom.

Surprisingly, perhaps,

the spark that ignites the boom is struck not in Wales itself...

..but in London.

In the late 1840s, scientists working for the Admiralty

carry out a series of tests on coal samples from all over Britain.

They want to find out which region's coal is best suited

to powering the steam-driven ships of Her Majesty's Navy.

After months of work, they come to a firm conclusion.

The coal that burns brightest and longest

is the coal that comes from South Wales.

In that region, the scientists' conclusion sets minds racing.

'The leafy valleys of north Glamorgan

'are known to harbour vast hidden coal reserves.

'Sharp-witted operators can't wait to get their hands on them.'

A "coal rush" begins.

It's led by one of Britain's richest men -

John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, the Second Marquess of Bute.

He owns much of the land where the undiscovered coal is thought to lie.

He throws himself into finding it.

The search takes longer than anyone expects.

Bute dies before it can succeed.

But succeed it finally does.

In 1851, three years after Bute's death,

his trustees locate a thick seam of high-grade steam coal

here in the Rhondda Fawr,

the larger of the two Rhondda valleys.

A few years later, the Bute Merthyr Colliery,

the first coal mine in the Rhondda, opens for business.

The miners who come to work in the new pit

churn out vast quantities of coal right from the start.

When others get wind of the profits that are being made,

they too start looking for "black gold".

A hard-nosed businessman from Mid Wales,

David Davies of Llandinam, leads the way.

He's grown rich by building railway lines.

But the Bute family's success persuades him to switch to coal.

'He rents some land in the Rhondda Fawr,

'and starts searching for a workable seam.

'His men dig and dig,

'but 15 months go by with no sign of success.'

The financial strain is appalling, even for a rich man like him.

The pressure's on.

And he cracks.

Davies can't avoid the truth any longer.

He's run out of money.

He'd like to go on digging, but he can't.

So he gathers his men together,

and basically pays them the wages that he owes them,

and appeals for a final chance.

He digs his hand into his pocket, takes out a single half crown coin,

about 50 pence today, and says,

"There you are. That's all I've got."

And someone in the crowd shouts, "We'll have that as well!"

So he throws the coin into the crowd,

and it is that gesture, that impulse, which impresses the men,

and they agree to go on working for another seven days without pay.

And on the seventh day, on this piece of land in Ton Pentre,

they find a massive seam of the best quality steam coal.

Everything changes.

Davies gets his first coal mine up and running in no time.

Then he opens more.

Others get lucky, too, and the South Wales coalfield starts to expand.

It grows steadily, over the next 30 years,

until it embraces a vast swathe of South Wales.

The two Rhondda valleys are joined by 14 others -

Carmarthenshire, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan.

The lure of steady work

makes people flock to these areas from other parts of Wales.

In no time at all, their appearance is transformed.

Terraced house and Nonconformist chapels spring up

where bare hillsides were before.

The Valleys take on the crammed and bustling look

that will define South Wales for decades to come.

While coal is bringing massive change

to the southern half of Wales,

another natural treasure is causing a similar upheaval in the north.

This is Penrhyn slate quarry near Bethesda, on the edge of Snowdonia.

Industry thrives here earlier than it does

in the valleys of the coalfield.

This amazing painting of the quarry dates from the 1830s.

Ant-like quarrymen swarm over huge terraces carved out of solid rock,

to get at the precious slate buried in the ground.

Some of the techniques quarrymen use at that time

are still in use today.

But there are big differences between then and now.

These days, the work quarrymen do

is well-supervised and properly paid.

In the 19th century, neither of those things is true.

Quarrymen, then, risk life and limb to drag the slate out of the ground,

and are given a pittance as a reward.

Those who own the quarries, on the other hand, do rather better.

If you want to get a sense

of just how lucrative quarry ownership could be,

all you have to do is visit Penrhyn Castle near Bangor.

'For much of the 19th century,

'this remarkable building is owned and occupied

'by Edward Gordon Douglas-Pennant, the first Baron Penrhyn.'

The owner of Penrhyn slate quarry during its most profitable years,

he becomes staggeringly rich.

'You can tell the extent of his wealth

'simply by looking at this reconstructed table setting.'

Few people in the long history of Wales

can ever have dined in greater luxury than this.

Amid all this astounding splendour,

let's try to be fair to the likes of Baron Penrhyn.

Because the fact is,

they don't keep all of this fabulous wealth to themselves.

A small percentage trickles down to the lower classes.

And the result is, in Penrhyn's case,

he leaves his mark, very visibly, on the entire North Wales region.

The money generated by the slate industry,

Penrhyn's part of it in particular, funds the growth of Bangor,

and gives north Wales as a whole a bit of a makeover.

Fine buildings spring up, as do impressive piers,

like the one at Llandudno.

They show the growth of self-confidence

that takes place throughout Wales during the reign of Queen Victoria.

It is a new Wales that emerges from the Victorian Age,

and I'm not just talking about the insatiable Victorian appetite

for building new things and for making grand statements.

This renewal is cultural and social as well -

a sense of Welshness becomes more clearly defined.

Quite simply, the Welsh want to make their mark.

And the urge to make a splash can be seen everywhere.

But it's especially noticeable in Cardiff.

The future capital of Wales

enjoys runaway growth during the 1840s and '50s,

thanks, mainly, to the international coal trade.

Cardiff is the nearest deep water port

to the coal valleys of north Glamorgan.

It grows rich by shipping the output all over the world,

and it secures the future at the end of the 1850s

by opening a new dock.

The East Dock, as it's called, goes on to become a huge success.

By the start of the 20th century,

a seemingly endless stream of coal-laden boats

flows in and out of it every day of the year.

Cardiff has become the biggest coal port in the world.

Hundreds of shipping companies are based here,

and their owners dispatch boatloads of coal

to the four corners of the earth.

They do massive business deals on a daily basis.

'Most of those deals are struck inside this historic building -

'the Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square.'

'David Jenkins, a noted expert on the South Wales coal trade,

'is going to tell me more about what went on here in its heyday.'

Well, it's a very impressive space, isn't it?

It is indeed a fantastic space.

It is an opulent building that reflected an opulent age.

The world was turning on South Wales steam coal at that time. What was being done here was truly important.

So what does a day's work here feel like? What's the experience?

The floor was open between 11:00am and 2:00pm everyday.

So at 11 o'clock in the morning,

"Ding, ding, ding..." - there'd be a big bell ringing,

and the principals would come here on the floor,

and the negotiations would start.

Long haggling over a ha'penny on the tonne of coal,

or a penny on the freight rate for a ship carrying coal from here to Port Said,

these were the sorts of arguments that went on on the floor here.

But it was very much "our word, our bond."

If you shook on a deal, that was sacred - you didn't need to write anything down.

That was it - you had a deal.

So what's a good day for them,

and how do they celebrate if it is a good day?

Well, just over there was the exchange restaurant, and if it was a good day, they'd go in there,

and you could have five, six-course lunches there, washed down with claret and champagne.

CORK POPS AND CHEERING

And then, so the story goes, if it had been a particularly good afternoon,

it wasn't unknown to play skittles with empty champagne bottles on the floor here.

THEY LAUGH

CHEERING

So City extravagance that we hear about today was actually alive and well then.

The Hooray Henrys of Cardiff in that time, yes.

CHEERING

The wealth that flows through the Coal Exchange

alters the face of Cardiff.

Grand buildings like this spring up on the back of the city's success.

And coal money also brings a new lease of life

to a certain local landmark.

Cardiff Castle has existed, in one form or another,

since the days of the Romans.

But the changes made to the building in Victorian times

'are what impress modern visitors the most.

'The changes are carried out'

on the orders of the Third Marquess of Bute -

the son of the man who struck coal in the Rhondda Valley.

'A scholarly and religious man, very different from his father,

'he dreams of creating a magnificent medieval palace.'

And with the aid of a brilliant architect called William Burges,

he does just that.

What they create is astounding, there's no doubt about that.

'But I'm rather more impressed by the remarkable achievements

'chalked up by nameless men and women

'all over Wales around the same time.'

One achievement that's definitely worth celebrating, in my view,

is the emergence, in mining communities like this,

of a unique and valuable chapel-going culture.

HYMN SINGING

It comes into existence

because most of the people who move to South Wales

in the middle of the 19th century to work in these mines

have a shared cultural heritage.

Now, many of these immigrants

have come in from West and North and Mid Wales.

They've brought with them their culture.

It's a Welsh language culture. It's Nonconformist.

And one of the first institutions that they build

in their new communities, as a way of adapting to an alien environment,

are their chapels.

# ..fyth yn iach... #

Within those chapels, there is singing,

because there was a tradition

of robust, Nonconformist singing in rural Wales,

and they bring that with them.

CHOIRMASTER: Could you do that with the bass and tenors?

Choral singing becomes the crowning achievement

of South Wales's Nonconformist culture.

In places like Treorchy, the home of this world famous choir,

people produce a sound that the wider world has never heard before.

There was a distinctive style of Welsh singing, which was dramatic,

which was emotionally intense, which was literally articulate.

It was partly to do with the pronunciation of words, of letters -

whether you sing in Welsh or in English,

you elongate your vowels, you emphasise your consonants.

And all this led to the fervour of the singing,

which involved not only the choristers,

but also those listening to them.

# Gwaed dy Groes Sy'n codi i fyny

# 'Reiddil yn goncwerwr mawr... #

The excellence of Welsh choral singing

doesn't remain a well-kept secret for long.

It comes to the attention of the outside world fairly early on,

thanks to a pioneering choirmaster from Aberdare,

who goes by the name of Caradog.

TRAIN HORN HOOTS

In the early 1870s,

he travels to London with 450 Welsh choristers,

to take part in two high profile singing contests

held in the famous Crystal Palace.

When the Welsh singers take to the stage,

during their first appearance at the venue,

they have a dramatic effect

on the orchestra members who accompany them.

When the choir came in, the first time,

they all looked up and almost lost their place on the scores

by the impact of this kind of vocal tsunami

which was engulfing them.

# Yn dy glwyfau Yn dy glwyfau... #

English audiences and musical correspondents

hadn't quite heard that kind of sound before.

# ..fyth yn iach. #

If you asked me to identify one particular event

which established Wales as the Land of Song -

and it was Caradog who invented that phrase -

I think it would be that double header, of 1872 and 1873,

when Y Cor Mawr, The Big Choir, stormed the city of London and won.

# Oh my country, so fair

# And so wretched...#

Welsh choirs often specialise in classical composers,

such as Handel and Verdi.

But they often start or end their recitals

with a certain patriotic song.

# Mae hen wlad fy nhadau

# Yn annwyl i mi... #

Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Land of my Fathers,

is a national anthem of the highest quality.

# ..enwogion o fri... #

Many people assume it's a traditional folk song.

It's not actually true.

It's composed in the 1850s in Pontypridd.

# ..gwladgarwyr tra mad

# Dros ryddid collasant... #

The song's authors are a father and son team, Evan and James James.

# Gwlad, gwlad... #

A grand memorial to them stands today

in Pontypridd's municipal park.

It's a fitting tribute to two men

who gave Wales a gift of lasting value.

What father and son achieve is a perfect fusion of words and music.

It conveys pride and passion, and above all, patriotism.

The son's powerful melody is pretty unbeatable,

the father's words never less than uplifting.

"Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri."

"A land of bards and musicians, and people of great distinction."

And who am I to disagree with that?

# ..barhau. #

While the great song of the Jameses is securing its place

in the affections of the Welsh people,

the town they live in goes through rapid change.

The coming of the railways and the growth of the coalfield

transform Pontypridd from a quiet market town

into a thrusting Welsh-speaking community, buzzing with ideas.

The town's inhabitants want to improve themselves and the world.

And they aren't the only ones who set themselves this goal.

The Welsh people as a whole

display a strong appetite for social improvement

throughout the Victorian era.

It gives rise to some exciting developments.

One of them takes place here, in Aberystwyth, in the early 1870s.

The place locals call Aber

is something of a backwater at this time.

But that changes forever

when a new educational establishment opens it doors.

Housed in this dramatic-looking building,

the institution is called "University College Wales".

It's the fulfilment of a very old dream.

That great Welshman Owain Glyndwr

wrote of his desire to establish a university on Welsh soil

at the start of the 15th century.

It takes more than 400 years

for the Welsh people to get what he wanted them to have.

But get it they do. And crucially, they get it for themselves.

This vision of a university of Wales inspires people,

working people, who demonstrate their commitment

in the most practical way - they give money.

Very often, money they can't afford to give.

And the result is the purchase of this splendid building.

And when, a few years later, the going gets tough,

the British government isn't keen to help out,

the Welsh people dig into their pockets yet again.

By making Glyndwr's dream come true,

the people of Wales prove that they can work together

to advance a common cause.

They drive the point home over the next few years

by launching many similar campaigns.

Education is always top of the agenda.

'The ancient goal of acquiring a university has been accomplished.

'Now the Welsh want decent secondary schools as well.

'They campaign for years to get them.

'And their persistence pays off.

'Towards the end of the 1880s,

'the British government caves in to Welsh demands,'

and sets up free secondary schools all over Wales.

It's a great step forward, no doubt about that.

But there's a downside, too.

TEACHER: 25 a share times the amount that you've bought.

And what about the language of the classroom?

Well, the Act is quite specific -

it says that all teaching will be in English.

There's no room for any teaching in Welsh.

You can imagine the psychological impact of that.

It tells people that Welsh is fine at home

or in the chapel or elsewhere.

But it's not an important language -

it's not the language of education and progress,

it's not the language of big ideas.

So the Act brings some huge benefits,

but it also causes some lasting damage.

'The same can be said, I think,

about another campaign the Victorian Welsh engage in -

a long-running battle to control the "demon drink."

The necessity of doing that is a central theme of Welsh life throughout this period.

And it's not hard to understand why.

LAUGHTER

Heavy drinking is rife in many parts of the country,

the industrialised areas especially.

And the consequences of that -

family breakdown, public disorder and so on - are dire.

The Welsh think that tougher licensing laws

will bring the problem under control.

They campaign long and hard to get them.

And, once again, they succeed.

In the early 1880s, Parliament passes a law

that forces Welsh publicans to shut their doors

on the holiest day of the week.

The Sunday Closing (Wales) Act is hailed as a great triumph.

But it's not as beneficial as it seems.

It fails to rid Wales of drunken behaviour,

and saddles the country with a bit of a killjoy image

that becomes a big embarrassment later on.

Not long after Sunday closing comes into force,

'an exciting development takes place on the coast of South Wales.

'It revolves around David Davies,

'the determined businessman who helped to kick start the coal boom.

'His Ocean Coal Company is going great guns by now,'

and its progress is being blocked by a problem in Cardiff Bay.

If ever there's a victim of its own success, it's the port of Cardiff.

It's heavily congested.

The new East Dock, the old West Dock, they're ram-jammed.

And the railway sidings, full of trucks, piled high with coal,

just waiting to be unloaded.

David Davies is having none of it.

He wants his coal off those trucks and out at sea as soon as possible.

And if Cardiff can't deliver,

well then, he'll build his own port to do the job.

And that's what he does a few miles away, here at Barry.

When Davies identifies it as the ideal place to build a new dock,

Barry is a small village with a few hundred inhabitants.

But that changes forever the year his dock opens for business.

The event turns the former village into a thriving town.

And the dock itself goes on

to become one of the busiest ports in Britain.

Small wonder that an imposing statue of David Davies

stands today outside the town's Dock Offices.

He is, in a very real sense, the man who built Barry.

David Davies may bring economic benefits to Barry,

but he and other coal bosses

often fail to show any sense of social responsibility.

And that causes serious trouble in South Wales from the 1880s on.

Widespread discontent springs up at that time

among the region's miners.

It stems above all

from the appalling conditions in which they're forced to work.

This is known as the bank...

'To get a better idea of what those conditions were like,

'I've arranged to meet former miner Ceri Thompson.'

How are you? Any cigarettes, matches, lighters?

-Nothing, no. Thank you very much.

-There you go, then.

-Thank you.

-OK.

'Having worked at the coalface for many years,

'Ceri is now a curator here at Big Pit,

'a working coal mine turned into a living museum

'on the eastern edge of the South Wales coalfield.'

It's going to get dark.

'He's going to show me around the old mine workings

'to give me a better idea of what life was like

'for the men and the boys who worked in places like this

'just over a century ago.'

-Hello, there.

-Hello, how are you?

-Good morning.

Good morning. I'm well, thanks.

-Thanks a lot.

-Cable coming off.

-Thank you very much.

-Straight down?

-Straight down.

So, we've been entering the mine, Ceri, but we're nowhere near the face, are we?

You could be a few miles before you actually get to where the men worked on the coalface.

-As long as that?

-As long as that. These are the motorways on the way in.

'Their long walk to work takes Victorian miners

'to the beating heart of the pit - the coalface itself.'

So round here, Ceri, is where the business happens.

This is the main part of the pit - this is where it all happens.

This is called a stall.

There's probably hundreds of these in the pits in South Wales.

So this is kind of a work area for one miner? How many miners?

Well, usually, a miner and a boy.

Now, the boy could be his son, it could be his nephew,

it could be a complete stranger.

-And what's the boy doing?

-The boy is actually loading the dram up.

A dram is a metal wagon used to transport coal.

The collier and his young workmate, or butty,

have to fill dozens of them to earn a decent day's pay.

This is called a curling box.

The young boy, could be 12, 14 years old,

he would fill the large lump, which the collier has cut,

put it into the curling box, and then drag it, or carry it,

back up the stall road.

So he's doing that dozens and dozens and dozens of times a day.

-And its heavy.

-And it's heavy, and he's a little boy.

-You know, it makes you think.

-It does make you think.

And I've heard people saying that they couldn't even reach

over the top of the dram, they were so short.

They had to put a block in to stand up, so they could actually get over the lid of the dram.

-So it's incredibly hard work.

-It is incredibly hard work.

'But hard work isn't the half of it.'

All the time he's underground,

the average miner is exposed to life-threatening hazards.

The worst thing he's going to face is the fact that the roof is going to come down if he's not careful,

and also, the sides is going to come in on him.

-What are the other risks? What are the other dangers they face?

-Well, it's gases.

Cos as soon as you start cutting coal, you start producing methane gas,

which we call fire damp underground, so that will cause an explosion.

The other main one, of course, is called after damp,

and it occurs, basically, after an explosion.

The oxygen has been burnt out of the air,

and you are left with a mixture of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide

and other gases again.

-How devastating is that?

-That's what kills most men after an explosion.

The actual blast itself might kill a few, you know?

But it's the actual after damp that kills them all.

Thousands of miners lose their lives during the Victorian era,

not just in South Wales,

but in the coalfield of North East Wales too.

The deaths help to create a mood of militancy among the men.

Towards the end of the 19th century, in the southern coalfield,

things come to a head.

The South Wales miners go on strike.

The strike turns into a lock-out.

It lasts six months, and ends badly from the miners' point of view.

They react by forming a new trade union,

the South Wales Miners' Federation, commonly known as the Fed.

For the next 50 years,

the Fed will play a prominent role in Welsh life,

giving leadership and support to people in the coalfield.

And it'll still be fondly remembered long after it's swallowed up

by the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945.

Having said all that,

the Fed isn't always as bold and as dynamic and as assertive

as some of its members would like it to be.

The union's leaders are afraid of seeming too radical.

And miners' working conditions fail to improve as a result.

The frustration builds up, and it will explode into violence later on.

'Well before that happens, major industrial unrest breaks out

'in what might seem, at first, like a very unlikely setting.'

What we see here today is a nature reserve.

It's nice and peaceful.

It's a very different story at the turn of the 20th century -

this place is full of noise, it's teeming with workers.

The lake isn't here - there's an immense hole in the ground,

because this is the site of the old Penrhyn slate quarry.

And it is here, in November of 1900, that we see the beginning

of one of the most brutal industrial disputes in British history.

The day the strike is called,

every one of the 2,000 men employed at the quarry

downs tools and walks off the job.

They don't realise it,

but they've been tricked into doing this by their employer,

the second Baron Penrhyn.

The baron is a man who hates trade unions,

and he's goaded his men into going on strike

because he thinks that will benefit him.

He expects the strike to collapse within a few weeks,

ridding the quarry of union "interference," as he calls it.

But it's not what happens.

Instead of ending quickly, as the baron expects it to,

the strike drags on and on.

'And it causes huge tension in the area.'

This row of houses in the village of Tregarth

is thrown up by Baron Penrhyn

to accommodate striking miners who've agreed to go back to work.

It becomes the site of angry scenes.

As the strike drags on,

local communities are poisoned by the anger and the resentment.

The names and addresses of men who return to work

are published in local newspapers.

They sometimes find their homes under attack.

And then, in nearby Bethesda,

these little notices start to appear in people's windows.

"Nid oes bradwr yn y ty hwn."

That is a very stark message -

"There are no traitors in this house."

The dispute lasts for three years,

and becomes known as the Great Strike.

It's the longest dispute in British industrial history.

And it has some terrible effects.

Towns like Bethesda are torn apart by the strike.

Scars are created that take decades to heal.

Even worse is the effect it has on the North Wales slate industry.

It makes it seem unreliable.

Orders dry up, and thousands of men are laid off.

It is a disaster for North Wales.

The region enters a prolonged economic slump.

Its people are stunned.

But as the 20th century gets into its stride,

they do, at least, have one thing to cheer about.

And that is the rise to the top of British politics

of that great North Wales Liberal, David Lloyd George.

Lloyd George is one of the most inspiring orators

Britain has ever produced,

a world-class statesman, and a personal hero of mine.

Raised in a cottage near Criccieth, he enters Parliament in 1890

as the MP for Caernarfon Boroughs.

But he doesn't hit his stride politically until 1908.

Herbert Asquith, who becomes Prime Minister that year,

spots his huge potential, and makes him Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Lloyd George throws himself into his new job.

And he has an immediate impact.

It takes Lloyd George just 12 months

to come up with one of the biggest reform programmes

ever seen here at Westminster.

It's called The People's Budget.

It's a raft of policies to help the poor,

paid for by the rich landowners who control the House of Lords.

Rather predictably, they block the budget.

There's a big showdown. Lloyd George wins.

And the impact of that victory is immense.

For the first time,

Britain has an Old Age Pension, National Insurance,

and much else besides.

It's the start of the Welfare State.

The reforms make Lloyd George a hero to people all over Wales,

and strengthen the hold which the Liberal party enjoys

over the hearts and minds of Welsh voters.

The party is dominant here in the South Wales valleys,

as it is everywhere else.

In other ways, though,

this part of Wales is moving further and further apart now

from the rest of the country.

Migration to the coalfield

has brought about a huge increase in the population.

Most of the newcomers have come from England.

And that has started to cause major change.

The census of 1911 points up what's been going on.

It reveals that, in places like Pontypridd,

the arrival of lots of English people

'has placed the Welsh language under serious threat.'

On one level, the language is in good health in 1911.

It is still spoken in homes and in places of worship throughout Wales.

But on another level, there are some worrying signs.

Some 40% of Welsh people don't understand the language.

And here, where it matters, on the streets, the shops and the pubs,

there's a noticeable decline.

By 1911, almost a million people speak Welsh - more than ever before.

But the presence, in towns like this,

of thousands of people who don't understand the language

has started to chip away

at the central role it plays in public life.

This will cause great concern in Wales later on.

But it doesn't create much anxiety at this time

in the coalfield itself.

Valleys people are swept along by the headlong rush of events.

And many of them are thrilled to be part of the new society

that's springing into life all around them.

A lively, bilingual community is emerging, with new pastimes,

and new heroes as well.

Preachers and choirmasters are still respected,

but so, too, are popular entertainers of all kinds.

In Treorchy's Park and Dare Theatre,

you can summon up the ghosts of some of the characters

'the people of the coalfield worship during the Edwardian era.'

BOXING RING BELL

Here, for instance, comes the great South Wales boxer, Freddie Welsh,

soon to become the Lightweight Champion of the World.

'And here's Dai "Tarw" Jones,'

a key member of the heroic rugby union side

that beats the All Blacks in Cardiff Arms Park in 1905.

CHEERING

Rugby, boxing and soccer are hugely popular in the coalfield,

as they are in the rest of Wales.

'But other forms of entertainment are well liked, too.'

Throughout the Edwardian era,

Valleys people lap up the work of opera singers...

OPERATIC SINGING

..and comedians...

Three Englishmen walk into a bar...

..and brass band musicians, not to mention lots of others.

They're all part of the rich cultural mix

that exists in South Wales in the run up to the First World War.

'But we mustn't let ourselves be blinded by nostalgia.

'Away from the theatres and the sports grounds,

'life remains incredibly tough for most people.'

Coal miners in particular.

Welsh coal is still popular worldwide,

but conditions down the mines remain as dreadful as ever,

and pay rates never seem to rise.

The anger this creates has to be released somehow.

It explodes, finally, in the form of civil unrest.

SHOUTING

The first place to erupt is Tonypandy in the Rhondda Fawr.

Serious rioting breaks out there in November 1910,

at the height of a bitter strike.

SHOUTING

Hundreds of people are injured and one man dies.

Police and soldiers pour into the town

on the orders of the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill.

Calm returns to South Wales as a result,

but only for a while.

In the long, hot summer of 1911, violence breaks out again

in various communities in or near the coalfield.

These new disturbances all involve extensive damage to property.

Some, notably the terrible riot

that breaks out in my hometown of Llanelli,

result in death and injury too.

'I want to understand why these events took place,

'and find out how important they are in the story of Wales.

'To do that, I met Professor Chris Williams,

'an expert on the politics of the coalfield.'

Chris, let's go back to 1910-11 - a violent time, a turbulent time.

What was going on?

I mean, economic factors are paramount, I would say.

Coal miners working at the coalface could be very well paid.

But what they're facing is downward pressure on their incomes -

prices are going up, wages are not keeping pace.

The negotiation and conciliation mechanisms don't work very well,

so people are getting very, very frustrated

with the failure to find some kind of commonly acceptable solution.

When you read accounts of the time, some of the unrest,

you see people saying,

"Oh, yes, there were lots of left wing troublemakers

"and agitators around." Is that true?

It is true that there were left-wing thinkers,

particularly in the coalfield, and out of that comes

perhaps the single most important publication of this period,

which is The Miners' Next Step.

And this is a little pamphlet that's...

-It's a manifesto, really, isn't it?

-It is.

It's a set of proposals to reorganise the South Wales Miners' Federation.

But, actually, it's much more ambitious than that.

They want the seven-hour day and they want a minimum wage.

But rather than seeing them as a trigger for these disputes,

I think they gain credence, they gain relevance, actually,

from these big clashes.

People see miners faced down by troops with fixed bayonets,

and they begin to think,

"Well, how do we alter the balance of power here?"

"Do we only go through the parliamentary route,

"or can we actually envisage, perhaps,

"a more revolutionary alternative?"

THUNDER RUMBLES

Not long after the events of 1910 and '11,

something happens to convince many more people

that a revolution might, indeed, be called for.

The event occurs in a small mining village called Senghenydd.

On October the 13th, 1913,

the village suffers one of the worst mining disasters

the world has ever seen.

439 miners employed at the Universal Colliery lose their lives

when the volatile gas known as fire damp causes a massive explosion,

and its toxic counterpart, after damp, spreads through the mine.

'It's impossible to exaggerate the suffering that's caused.'

What happens here at Senghenydd is the crushing of an entire community.

More than 500 children are left without a father.

More than 200 women are widowed.

And the official inquiry into the tragedy

identifies cost cutting and bad working practices

as the main causes.

But when the owners and the colliery manager are prosecuted,

they're not sent to jail, they're fined,

a grand total of £24.

The year after the Senghenydd disaster, the Great War,

the First World War, as it comes to be known,

breaks out in Europe.

The country is in turmoil, and all the while,

the mood of intense anger in the South Wales coalfield

keeps on building up.

Coal mining is classified as an essential activity.

And for that reason, most miners stay put and dig.

They make a vital contribution to the war effort.

But, in their eyes, at least, they're not being properly paid.

'The year after war breaks out,

'convinced that they could and should be getting a much better deal,

'the men lose patience and go on strike.

'It's a deeply controversial move.

'It brings them into conflict

with the most powerful people in the land.'

The strike, as far as the Cabinet is concerned,

is indefensible in wartime, and they demand an end to it.

The leader of the South Wales miners' union

offers to come to London to discuss the crisis.

But his men won't hear of it.

One of them says,

"You've been to that city of Philistines once too often."

"Why not let them come to South Wales?"

So the Cabinet deploys its biggest weapon.

And who should pop on to the next train to Cardiff,

but David Lloyd George?

The greatest Welshman of the age,

the Minister for Munitions by now in Britain's wartime government,

seems to be on a collision course with his fellow countrymen.

'Those who know him well expect a pitched battle.

'But not for the first time, Lloyd George takes everyone by surprise.'

When he meets the miners, inside the building that they have chosen

as the location for the talks, Lloyd George isn't confrontational at all.

He sits at the table with the men, listens to their concerns,

and agrees to most of their demands.

And before leaving for London,

he tells them that the agreement they've reached in this room

will be implemented throughout the coalfield.

The problem is, that doesn't happen.

Resentment over Lloyd George's failure in this instance

persists in many coalfield communities.

But there is pride in his other achievements.

And it's not hard to work out why.

In December 1916, the Welsh Wizard, as he's known,

becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,

the first, and so far the only Welshman to hold that post.

Some miners in South Wales trust the new Prime Minister

to bring about a real improvement in their pay and conditions.

Others, though, put their faith instead

in the revolutionary Communism

that will soon give birth to Soviet Russia.

In July 1917, three years into the Great War,

delegates from every part of the South Wales coalfield

gather for a special conference in Swansea.

They're considering revolutionary plans to set up Workers' Councils,

pretty much on the Soviet model.

Now, that meeting is broken up by soldiers and by armaments workers.

It tells you something about the strength of feeling on both sides.

And that whiff of revolution doesn't really go away.

But it's not anger that dominates life in Wales

over the next ten years - it's despair.

No fewer than 40,000 Welshmen lose their lives in the Great War.

The carnage touches practically every community in the land,

and creates a deep sadness that lasts for years.

As if that's not enough,

the post-war period sees a huge drop in the worldwide price of coal,

a development that has horrible consequences for South Wales.

Pit closures, wage cuts and compulsory redundancies

come thick and fast.

And then things get really tough.

In the spring of 1926,

following another collapse in the price of coal and more job losses,

the mine owners decide to take some rather brutal action.

They insist that their workers accept a massive pay cut,

and let's remember,

these are families already suffering great hardship.

What follows is one of the most harrowing,

but also one of the most heroic episodes

in the history of the South Wales coalfield.

The miners reject the employers' demands,

and workers all over the UK show their support

by joining them on strike.

Ruthlessly suppressed by the British Government,

this famous General Strike collapses after just nine days.

But the miners themselves refuse to back down.

They stay out on strike for several months,

inspired and pretty much led by the miners of South Wales.

The South Wales coalfield was the most militant coalfield.

It had... Along with their families,

we're talking about a quarter of a million people.

And they were determined to hold out.

The miners don't receive strike pay or state benefits of any kind.

They and their families are kept alive

by a highly effective programme of community action.

The miners were very, very organised, right from the start,

in terms of organising school feeding,

organising miners' kitchens.

In the soup kitchens, there would be flowers on the table,

there would be tablecloths, people were...

The waiters were nicely dressed,

and people were very courteous to each other.

So it was this feeling that, you know,

they were going to rise above the misery of it all.

But the miners don't act alone.

In valleys like this, all kinds of people,

from local councils to private individuals,

donate sums of money to keep them going.

The community was supporting the strikers.

So there was no doubt about that - it was a community decision.

And, of course, this made the government very angry, cos it meant that the strike could go on

much longer than it would have done.

The support they receive from their communities

enables the striking miners to hold out for seven long months.

But in the autumn of 1926,

hunger and weariness force them back to work.

They went back for longer hours, less money.

And the militants didn't go back at all, because they were blacklisted.

So the whole community is sunk into very grim times, really.

And the picture doesn't change much until the Second World War.

The full horror of what happens in the South Wales coalfield

during the 1930s is hard to take in even now.

Reduced in many cases to scrabbling around on slag heaps

for free fuel, men become deeply depressed and withdrawn.

Women submit to lives of drudgery and despair.

And children go hungry, not quite hungry enough to starve, perhaps,

but not far off it, either.

Some people are so badly nourished, they lose their teeth.

Disillusioned with Lloyd George and Liberalism, people turn for help to the Labour Party.

They vote for it in large numbers.

But Labour isn't as strong in the rest of Britain

as it is in South Wales, and there's little the party can do.

On a visit to South Wales in 1936,

King Edward VIII sees the appalling conditions that result.

'9,000 men lost their jobs when this works closed down.'

The king is visibly shocked.

"Something must be done," he says.

But very little is, in the short run at least.

As a result, many people give up hope.

They gather up their belongings and board a bus, or train,

bound for London, or Liverpool, or anywhere, in fact,

where a brighter future might just lie.

In just seven turbulent years,

a quarter of a million people leave Wales to live elsewhere,

mostly in England.

It tells you just how bad things are in this country at that time.

The 30s are a troubled decade.

But it's not all bad news.

People in North and West Wales suffer dreadfully too,

especially those who live in the coal mining areas of the North East.

But there are a few bright spots in the gloom.

Steel production helps Wrexham survive the collapse

of the coal industry,

while Flint is saved by the production of artificial textiles.

The many seaside resorts strung out along the north Wales coast

fare reasonably well, too,

buoyed up as they are by English holidaymakers.

And even in the hard-pressed coalfields,

people have things they can fall back on.

Cinema-going, for instance, proves a great means of escape.

Thousands of people find they can just get through the week

so long as they can spend Saturday night in the picture house

with Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich or some other Hollywood star.

'By such means, people survive.

'But when the 1930s draw to a close, it's clear to many in Wales

'that they've come to the end of a long road.'

Life in Wales is transformed

by the immense natural bounty of coal and slate.

Pre-industrial Wales is now modern Wales.

But the bounty is running out.

The forces of industry are being weakened,

and Wales faces a new challenge, an even more daunting challenge,

to reinvent itself,

as the nation is about to be plunged into a second world war.

The Open University has produced a free booklet

for you to learn more about the history of the people of Wales.

You can call or go to:

..and follow the links to the Open University.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd