by Marilyn Francis
My father would have been ten years old in 1933
the year Mr Edgar Lewis JP arrived
in his Morris Oxford bullnose
to read the Riot Act.
The mutinous miners of the
Bedwas Navigation Colliery
refused to disperse
the men of the Monmouthshire Constabulary
were unleashed to smash heads and break bones.
There was much misery in the South Wales coalfield in 1933.
There were pay cuts, strikes, a lockout.
The Great Western Railway laid on special trains
to transport men from dole queues
to fill the vacant shifts.
These men were abused
spat at, doused in piss
and plastered
with feathers.
My father who was 10 at the time remembered none of this
or so he said. For him it was outsmarting PC Fox
and PC Fox’s Alsatian dog. It was daring raids
on coal trucks. It was thieving
from the opencast.
It was never getting caught.
He told it like it was a kind of Keystone Cops
comedy. A silver-screen slapstick escape from reality.
When the strike was over and the mine reopened
there were no jobs for strikers. Whole families left
for Slough and High Wycombe to work in factories
until the War found them other employment.
Bedwas Navigation Colliery closed in 1985
the ground is still contaminated
the site remains undeveloped.
My father lived to be 97.
He never went back.
The title is taken from Margaret Thatcher’s 1984 speech made to the 1922 Committee during the 19th week of the Miners’ Strike.
