Scott Jones
The Rebecca Riots are little known outside of Wales, and even in the country itself, though the basics are known by most – men wearing women’s clothing smashing up tollbooths – the reasons, organisations and class struggle behind the movement are not.
This is what Rebecca’s Country, the second book on the movement by writer Rhian Jones, explores in a very comprehensive and entertaining way. It is also written from a distinctly Welsh perspective with the tale of a salmon swimming up the river Teifi a particularly lovely analogy which Rhian read at the book’s launch.
The Rebecca Riots has a great cast of characters, as you would expect, and Rhian starts by outlining them all, such as militant John Jones, known as ‘Shoni Sguborfawr’ – Johnny Big Barn. He was a notorious ‘troublemaker’ turned Rebecca rioter, a product of working-class Merthyr in the industrial Valleys.
His story highlights one of the key themes of the book and one of the most important aspects of the Rebecca Riots – the linking up between the rural rioters of West Wales and the industrial working class of the Valleys and east Wales. Workers in the Valleys, were building burgeoning trade unions and forming the Chartist movement, which culminated in the Newport Rising of 1839. The same year, ‘Rebeccaism’, as Rhian calls it, emerged when privately owned tollgates that had been set up started to be attacked, beginning at Efail-wen in Carmarthen.
The use of costume and the method of direct action were also very similar to the ‘Scotch Cattle’ that were used to intimidate scabs in mining towns.
The tollgates were a symbol of the increasing financial demands on rural labourers and small farmers who also had to contend with rising rents and falling pay and prices for goods. This precarious existence was exacerbated by brutal bosses, landlords and landowners, much like the struggle of the working-class iron and coal workers in other parts of Wales.
As Rhian outlines, links were made. The rural town of Llanidloes was occupied by Chartists protesting the collapse of the local textile industry and mass meetings with Chartists took place in fields around the region.
Meanwhile, the direct action of the Rebeccaites escalated and evokes images of another Wild West. In Narbeth, a crowd “led by an athletic female on horseback… rode off with a triumphant firing off of their guns.” This was in the context of unrest everywhere in Britain in the early 1840s. Following the armed uprising in Newport, half a million workers in mines, mills and factories had taken strike action over cuts to wages, rents and working hours, as well as Chartist demands. There were even two attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria in 1843. And Rebeccaism did win some demands over the tollgates, but others showed the scope of this highly organised movement went beyond this, such as calling for financial support for unmarried mothers and children, rural and industrial workers’ rights.
In some ways it was no surprise that the rural population in West Wales joined the fight, but it’s no less significant, as Rhian says: “Servants, labourers and industrial workers were now meeting and organising independently.” The Carmarthen Journal even said: “Labourers and farm servants have discovered that they have class interests distinct from their employers.”
So, at a time of strike waves and rural unrest, there are many lessons from Rebeccaism. Industrial workers in struggle were evoking Rebeccaism for decades afterwards, and Rebecca’s Country is a great introduction to the movement and brilliant analysis of it. As Rhian says: “Many problems familiar to our Victorian ancestors – poverty, high rents, unemployment, the privatisation of common space, the policing of protest – either have never gone away or are making a stark return.”
- Rebecca’s Country: A Welsh Story of Riot and Resistance can be purchased at uwp.co.uk/book/rebeccas-country
- For a review of Rhian’s first book on Rebeccaism search ‘Uncovering the class struggle behind the Rebecca Riots’ and for more on the Newport Rising and Chartism click here:
