Republican protest in Merthyr On Saturday March 1st at 11.50 a.m. hundreds gathered in the newly-laid Dic Penderyn Square (Red Square?) in Merthyr Tudful to witness Keir Hardie deliver a speech pledging nothing short of a 'revolution'. He stood on the balcony of the Hen Neuadd Yr Dref dressed in flat cap, not his characteristic deerstalker and appeared to have lost most of his Scottish accent.
He spoke eloquently about the Labour Party and how great changes were on the way to alter the plight of working people. He vowed to campaign for women's suffrage and, as a committed pacifist, to resist all wars.
Somehow, he conveniently forgot to say how he would make a stand against the First World War as a conscientious objector and , significantly, avoided dealing with his avowed belief that a republic was the only way forward.
Needless to say, his solidarity with Irish republican socialist James Connolly (executed by the British Gov. in 1916)was totally neglected.
When he'd finished everyone clapped our MP from 1900 - 1915, or at least the air-brushed version of him.
Local hero and actor Richard Harrington then took over to start up the clock on the tower of the Old Town Hall, rebranded as Redhouse.
An historic moment for Merthyr and genuine hope for the future and he assured us that this would be no place for the 'crachach'.
Yet, the day before the very epitome of that 'crachach' Carlo Windsor had officially opened the building, unveiling curtains on a very red plaque.
Already a venture sponsored by the likes of Miller Argent - multi-national plunderers of our land with their destructive opencast mining - had become something of a contradiction.
As a place of creativity for Merthyr Sixth Form College and the community it could well be a driving force in the town ; as a symbol of our times, it has already insulted our proud history.
In the Commons in the 1890s Keir Hardie delivered a speech highly critical of the monarchy, railing against Carlo's ancestors. Pertinently, he later commented that ' the life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value to the British nation than the whole Royal Crowd put together.'
If the spirit of Hardie was anywhere last Friday it wasn't with the sycophants in the Redhouse ( 'red as in dragon / red as in flag/ red as in fire'.... so the website explains).
Outside, our protest consisted of the usual sloganeering,but also some megaphone poems from Red Poets myself, Tim Richards and Patrick Jones.
It's interesting that there has been no mention of the protest on the media, even though ITV did cover the event.
Charles Windsor is a greedy landlord who is quite happy to rake in money in the form of benefits handed out to his hard-up tenants. He owns the vast Duchy of Cornwall (worth £847 million), yet pays no taxes on these assets.
He claims to be an environmentalist yet, like his mother, stands to make millions from the fracking which will be carried out on the Crown Estate.
He claims to care about endangered species, yet freely murders deer, wild boar, foxes and wild bears in the name of blood sports.
Labour AM Huw Lewis happily welcomed this symbol of wealth and privilege to our poor and struggling town.
This really does show how the Labour Party have altered so profoundly since the days of Hardie and how one of our greatest ever citizens Prof. Gwyn A. Williams was right when he argued that, for the working class to progress, that political party needs to be buried forever.
I really do hope that the Redhouse (why not Ty Coch, by the way?) defies my nagging sense of doubt.
Who will be allowed to create a work of art there which questions Miller Argent and their ludicrous fossil fuel future, when they are one of the main backers?
Who will be able to question the role of an antiquated and anti-democratic monarchy in a modern Cymru, when there's a prominent plaque saying 'Opened by HRH Prince of Wales' ?
Gwyn Alf Williams once delivered a memorable speech in Merthyr calling on people to set up their alternatives, what he called 'shadow-communes'.
The work that has been done to restore the building and its possibilities are very exciting, yet it must not be full of cubby-holes and comfort zones.
We have so much talent in this town it would be a tragedy to waste it on a censored or edited version of reality.
KEIR HARDIE RETURNED
The day Keir Hardie returned
and strutted down High Street
from Pontmorlais Circus
and everything so derelict
he thought there'd been a war,
thought someone had shelled
the Old Dole, the YMCA
the day he wore his deerstalker
(called a common flat cap man
in the Commons, despite his tweed)
and greeted folk in a voice
gruff from the dust
breathed in so young,
with his Karl Marx beard
and granite forehead
to the Old Town Hall
(befuddled by its name)
where a limousine stopped
and the Prince ushered out
grinning wide, till Hardie accosted him,
where crowds once cheered
his vision and theirs shared
'You and your kind still here
in this town of so many poor,
still oppressing, still demanding
your subjects bow low......'
then hauled away like a bag of coal
as police asked his name, scoffing
' Oh yeah, and I'm Robert Peel!'
He spoke eloquently about the Labour Party and how great changes were on the way to alter the plight of working people. He vowed to campaign for women's suffrage and, as a committed pacifist, to resist all wars.
Somehow, he conveniently forgot to say how he would make a stand against the First World War as a conscientious objector and , significantly, avoided dealing with his avowed belief that a republic was the only way forward.
Needless to say, his solidarity with Irish republican socialist James Connolly (executed by the British Gov. in 1916)was totally neglected.
When he'd finished everyone clapped our MP from 1900 - 1915, or at least the air-brushed version of him.
Local hero and actor Richard Harrington then took over to start up the clock on the tower of the Old Town Hall, rebranded as Redhouse.
An historic moment for Merthyr and genuine hope for the future and he assured us that this would be no place for the 'crachach'.
Yet, the day before the very epitome of that 'crachach' Carlo Windsor had officially opened the building, unveiling curtains on a very red plaque.
Already a venture sponsored by the likes of Miller Argent - multi-national plunderers of our land with their destructive opencast mining - had become something of a contradiction.
As a place of creativity for Merthyr Sixth Form College and the community it could well be a driving force in the town ; as a symbol of our times, it has already insulted our proud history.
In the Commons in the 1890s Keir Hardie delivered a speech highly critical of the monarchy, railing against Carlo's ancestors. Pertinently, he later commented that ' the life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value to the British nation than the whole Royal Crowd put together.'
If the spirit of Hardie was anywhere last Friday it wasn't with the sycophants in the Redhouse ( 'red as in dragon / red as in flag/ red as in fire'.... so the website explains).
Outside, our protest consisted of the usual sloganeering,but also some megaphone poems from Red Poets myself, Tim Richards and Patrick Jones.
It's interesting that there has been no mention of the protest on the media, even though ITV did cover the event.
Charles Windsor is a greedy landlord who is quite happy to rake in money in the form of benefits handed out to his hard-up tenants. He owns the vast Duchy of Cornwall (worth £847 million), yet pays no taxes on these assets.
He claims to be an environmentalist yet, like his mother, stands to make millions from the fracking which will be carried out on the Crown Estate.
He claims to care about endangered species, yet freely murders deer, wild boar, foxes and wild bears in the name of blood sports.
Labour AM Huw Lewis happily welcomed this symbol of wealth and privilege to our poor and struggling town.
This really does show how the Labour Party have altered so profoundly since the days of Hardie and how one of our greatest ever citizens Prof. Gwyn A. Williams was right when he argued that, for the working class to progress, that political party needs to be buried forever.
I really do hope that the Redhouse (why not Ty Coch, by the way?) defies my nagging sense of doubt.
Who will be allowed to create a work of art there which questions Miller Argent and their ludicrous fossil fuel future, when they are one of the main backers?
Who will be able to question the role of an antiquated and anti-democratic monarchy in a modern Cymru, when there's a prominent plaque saying 'Opened by HRH Prince of Wales' ?
Gwyn Alf Williams once delivered a memorable speech in Merthyr calling on people to set up their alternatives, what he called 'shadow-communes'.
The work that has been done to restore the building and its possibilities are very exciting, yet it must not be full of cubby-holes and comfort zones.
We have so much talent in this town it would be a tragedy to waste it on a censored or edited version of reality.
KEIR HARDIE RETURNED
The day Keir Hardie returned
and strutted down High Street
from Pontmorlais Circus
and everything so derelict
he thought there'd been a war,
thought someone had shelled
the Old Dole, the YMCA
the day he wore his deerstalker
(called a common flat cap man
in the Commons, despite his tweed)
and greeted folk in a voice
gruff from the dust
breathed in so young,
with his Karl Marx beard
and granite forehead
to the Old Town Hall
(befuddled by its name)
where a limousine stopped
and the Prince ushered out
grinning wide, till Hardie accosted him,
where crowds once cheered
his vision and theirs shared
'You and your kind still here
in this town of so many poor,
still oppressing, still demanding
your subjects bow low......'
then hauled away like a bag of coal
as police asked his name, scoffing
' Oh yeah, and I'm Robert Peel!'
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