On 23 May, dozens of miners and puddlers known for political organising were given wage cuts, and 84 were sacked. That was it. The workers were out on the streets protesting most nights, burning effigies of Tories and smashing up businesses. Enough.

The Rising
On 30 May, 2,000 leaderless protesters assembled on Waun Common*, Dowlais (just north east of Merthyr), and came up with four demands, accounts vary but they go something like:

1. Abolish the Court of Requests
2. Abolish debt imprisonment and the workhouse
3. End price gouging
4. No hiring of new labour on lower wages

On 31 May 1831, bailiffs attempted to seize goods from the home of Lewis Lewis (Lewsyn yr Heliwr) at Penderyn, near Merthyr. However, Lewis and his neighbours stood their ground and fought them off. The magistrate of the Court of Requests (a type of small claims court established to deprive debtors of their possessions) showed up with more men and he agreed to let them remove a trunk.

The next day, a crowd led by Lewis marched to the home of a shopkeeper now in possession of his trunk and took it back by force. They then began a march to Merthyr. Along the way, the crowd went from house to house, seizing goods the Court of Requests had taken and returning them to their original owners. They also raided the homes of a particularly nasty bailiff, a hated moneylender, and a few others sorely in need of a bit of rough justice.

On the same day, miner and reformer Thomas Llewellyn called for a rally at Hirwaun Common. The moderates bumped into a more radical lot who took their white reform flag and dipped it in calf’s blood. This was the birth of the Red Flag.**

On top of the staffs used as flagpoles, they impaled a symbolic loaf of bread. The chant went up: Bara neu Waed ("Bread or Blood"). They also chanted Caws a bara ("Cheese and bread") and I lawr â’r Brenin ("Down with the King") as they ransacked the debtors’ court and shared out the goods, returning them to their rightful owners. They marched with intent once more and burned the debtors’ ledger. As they did this soldiers from Cardiff and Brecon descended upon them.

On 2 June, the soldiers met with the local bosses, Lewis and others rocked up outside the Castle Inn where they were holding their meeting and demanded a response. The demands were simple.The bosses didn't care. Things got heated and even the reformists among them couldn’t appease the crowd. It kicked off. Soldiers shot three in the first volley of a 20-minute ruck, a score were dead and hundreds more were injured.

Afterwords the army and bosses bailed from the town and held up in a nearby mansion, Penydarren House. The workers had taken their town in an insurrectionary moment and quickly established blockades to limit the military's ability to regroup. Crawshay - boss first, reformer second - helped the army organise themselves, get numbers, and gather munitions. (Assimilationists and liberal appeasers take note.)

By the 6 June they were armed with melee weapons and rifles obtained by ambushing the Swansea Yeomanry (who were then forced to march back to Swansea to re-arm—a fair old walk). The word had spread, and workers from nearby towns - some 12,000 strong - were gathering. Before they could organise, they were ambushed by cavalry, who managed to break up the assembly with brandished sabres and an earnest intent to kill.

The following night came the raids, as leaders were rounded up.
The workers defeated returned to their jobs.

What comes after moments of liberty
The uprising lasted a week.
Twenty-four were dead; twenty-eight faced court sentences of transportation and imprisonment.

Two were sentenced to be hanged: Lewis and Dic Penderyn (Richard Lewis. They were cousins, before you ask), accused of stabbing a soldier in the leg.

The soldier couldn't identify them. They didn’t do it. Everyone knew they didn’t do it. People knew they weren’t even there.

Lewis had his sentence reduced to transportation, as he had tried to protect some police officers during the ruck (and you don't want to go about executing rebel leaders now, amateur move).

Dic Penderyn was not so fortunate. Despite the fact he was barely involved and certainly no organiser and wasn't even at the location of the stabbing at the time, someone had to be made an example of. There were protests, a 11,000-strong petition, heart felt please from respectable members fo the community. They murdered him on 13 August 1831.

It would later be revealed that Lord Melbourne, Home Secretary at the time, had forced one of the witnesses to give false testimony. Another man gave a deathbed confession some 40 years later.

Dic Penderyn, miner and Welsh working-class martyr, is buried in a simple grave in Port Talbot. A small plaque donated by the NUM in 1980 marks the spot where the oubliette of the country Gaol sat in Cardiff and where he spent his last days. Rest in Power.

Melbourne, child abuser, toff, tyrant, and active oppressor of the working class, would later become Prime Minister (Thrice) and have a city named after him. He is buried in the church next to the monstrosity that is Hatfield House and has a memorial in St. Paul’s. Rest in Piss.

The following year, the government would appease the middle class by passing the Reform Act. The working class remained disenfranchised, but at least the liberal elite were alright, eh? It would be another 35 years before the working class got the vote in 1867, though it remained limited to the financially secure until 1884/5, when poorer workers were finally allow to vote.

Women would finally get the vote after various bombings and riots in 1918, alongside men who didn’t own property, though only if they were over 30. Full suffrage wouldn’t come until 1928 (after several more direct actions)...

All of which happened because people gave them hell, but we somehow forget that, and accept the assertion that it was due to the benevolence of our betters and a few specific individuals (usually wealthy, of course), who get the statues, just don't go do what they did!

Meanwhile, we are keenly encouraged forget the scores of leaderless working-class people who fought and died for liberty (albeit a false hope that choosing a new master every four years) and for their communities, who fought brutal oppression at the hands of distant authority and local aristocracy all while being actively undermined by liberals, moderates, appeasers, and capitulators.

Read Two much more robust accounts here: https://libcom.org/article/1831-merthyr-tydfil-uprising

* Waun Common, I see this repeated... Waun is Welsh for Common/Moor, do they mean Merthyr Common or is this a Bread Bread thing with English speakers getting confused... I can't see a “Waun Common” on old maps... I think they mean Twyn y Waun? Contact us and set me straight!

** Most likely—or at least, it's the moment later socialists would point to as the genesis of the Red Flag, It would also be raised during the Insurrection in Paris the following year, The June Rebellion, yes the one from Les Mis, no it wasn't the Commune, that was 1871 when French revolutionaries hoisted the Red Flag in revolution over the Hotel de Ville or the The French Revolution of 1848, where red was also flown and also the year the communist manifesto was published back before two lads had a falling out and we split the movement in half, tho their flags were replaced by the nationalist Tricolor and they had to make do with the red rosette.