‘You Can’t Stop Them Singing’: Welsh Experiences of Exodus and Exile in England, 1927-47.

This is an edited version of an article originally written for the Modern Wales Unit at the University of Wales, Cardiff in 1998, drawing on material in my unpublished PhD Thesis, presented in September 1988, The Re-Making of a Working-Class: Migration from the South Wales Coalfield to the New Industry Areas of the Midlands, c. 1920-40, of which there is a copy in the Arts & Humanities’ Faculty Library of the University of Wales, Cardiff.

When Aneurin Bevan came to Coventry to make an impassioned defence of the Labour Government‘s housing policy in the summer of 1947, challenging Anthony Eden to debate the issue, he was given a great reception from the people of Coventry, in particular from members of the Welsh Community, many of whom knew him in their native valleys (1). His choice of this ‘Blitzed’ city was an apt one since the city had become, like Bevan’s work itself, a symbol of a form of municipal socialism that was born out of the determination of leaders and led alike to attain better living conditions than many of them had been forced to endure for much of the inter-war period. These were new leaders and this was a re-made working class; the memory of the depression years had become, and remained, as powerful a motive force for social transformation throughout the new industrial areas of the Midlands and the South East of England as ‘the Spirit of the Blitz’. In Coventry itself, municipal socialism was already a decade old and the workers who cheered Bevan had re-made themselves and were determined to maintain their autonomy.

The scale of the demographic changes that the British people had experienced in the two decades between the wars had been confirmed by the Labour movement in 1943 when the Fabian Society published a report by Mark Abrams, who had shown that whereas between 1911 and 1929, a high level of net emigration from Britain had been maintained at fifty thousand per year, the world-wide depression and US immigration controls had rapidly closed the doors to migrants wishing to go overseas, so that between 1931 and 1939 Great Britain gained 525,000 by migration, almost cancelling out the losses of the previous decade. Besides the influx of immigrants from both parts of Ireland and the refugees from Germany and Central Europe, much of this ‘turn-around’ in the statistics was the result of Britain retaining its population increase through internal, long-distance migration to the Midlands and South-East of England from the north of England, Scotland and South Wales. Whilst in the 120 years to 1921 the population of these ‘old’ industrial areas increased seven-fold, from 1921 to 1938, 86% of the 3,343,000 total population growth was concentrated in the ‘new’ industry towns of the Midlands and the South of England, including those of ‘Greater London’ as it later became known. Abrams observed that these trends had been due largely to migration, rather than to any natural increase (2). However, to understand the nature and effect of this immigration into these towns and areas, it is essential to go behind the ice-cube precision of the statistics, important as such quantitative evidence is, to the many and varied real-life narratives of individuals, families and communities with their own ‘organic’ social networks.

Much has been written about the inter-war period, much of which portrays it as a ‘dark’ period in recent British history. In particular, the experience of ‘Migration’ has often been portrayed as an ‘anguished one’, synonymous with that of ‘Transference’ under schemes introduced by governments from the late twenties onwards (3). This is hardly surprising since these terms were frequently and often quite deliberately confused by contemporary Communists and, in the case of the South Wales Coalfield, propagandists of the nascent Welsh Nationalist Party. Although they did not produce their pamphlet, Transference Must Stop until 1943, already in 1938, with reference to the Czech Crisis, they had drawn a link between the policy and ‘appeasement’ by describing it as ‘just another Fascist way of murdering of a small, defenceless nation without going to war’, stating that ‘the majority of those who leave Wales for work in England do so under compulsion.’  Welsh MP’s and civil servants were denounced as collaborators and Aneurin Bevan attacked the complacency and defeatism of the self-appointed leadership of ‘the Welsh Nation’, by which he meant the still-powerful ‘old’ Liberal establishment, many of whom remained closely connected with officials in the Ministries of Health and Labour throughout the thirties. The officials were quite naturally concerned to show that the large volume of unassisted migration was closely related to their efforts to promote the transference policy as the main measure of relief for the distressed areas in South Wales (4). Social Service agencies were also concerned to demonstrate the need for their intervention in the migration processes by exaggerating and generalising from the worst experiences of transference, making only passing references to the role of an autonomous organisation in familial and community migration by the migrants themselves.

In allowing the Transference policy to continue into the early thirties, that old ‘Welsh Nation’ of liberal and Nonconformist Edwardian times was certainly motivated by the possibility that they would regain the political hegemony over the industrial valleys they had lost over the course of the previous decade. If only ‘English’ immigrant militants like A J Cook could be persuaded to leave the valleys, the true Welsh worker, they argued, cleansed of an alien ‘syndicalist’ ideology, would return to ‘the fold’ of paternalistic liberalism (5). Marxist propagandists also tended to confuse state-sponsored and voluntary migration, principally because they saw any large-scale movement of workers from one part of the country to another as a capitalist device aimed at the creation of a standing army of labourers, the dilution of labour and the undermining of trade union organisation. Their propagation of a negative image of the immigrant was again produced by a narrow focus on the worst experiences of young transferees (6). Thus, much of the contemporary literature is dominated by the view that migration was something done to the working classes in the ‘distressed areas’ like south Wales against their will. Recent studies relying exclusively on this literature, have tended to maintain this focus, thereby ignoring the broader and more positive perspectives on the processes and products of migration (7).

Even in purely quantitative terms, those officially transferred represented a small minority of the migration streams. The Ministry of Labour’s ‘General Review of the Industrial Transference Scheme’, conducted in 1938, showed that 72% of the men known to have migrated in 1936/1937 had done so on their own account (8). Although the scheme had begun in 1928, it was unable to operate effectively until 1933 and some labour exchanges, such as Oxford, did not begin participating in it until this date (9). Yet the movement out of south Wales had already begun in the early twenties, gaining momentum during and following the 1926 Lockout. Between 1920 and 1939, it is estimated that Wales lost a total of 442,000 people by migration, a figure equivalent to 17% of its 1920 population. The three ‘coalfield’ counties of Glamorgan, Monmouth and Brecon lost most of this; 391,000 or 20%. These figures disguise much heavier losses of as much as 30% by particular valley communities (10). Neither do these figures reflect the full extent of the Welsh exodus since they express net emigration only and so conceal the many thousands who left but returned by 1939. The Ministry of Labour admitted that there was a considerable ‘seepage’ back to the valleys, perhaps as much as one-quarter of those officially transferred. Even assuming that those who migrated voluntarily were more likely to remain in the new areas, it is apparent that exodus, if not permanent exile, was an experience more than half a million Welsh people shared (11). When the scheme was revamped in the mid-1930s, and despite the publicity given to it by a growing body of opposition, the majority of workers who left the depressed areas chose to ignore its provisions (12). Their choice was determined both by a complex of causes, catalysts and constraints in which ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors were equally significant, as well as by the processes of internal migration (13). Bevan’s exiled supporters in Coventry in 1947 had transposed much of what he had described in 1936 as ‘that social, institutional and communal life peculiar to Wales’ from their native valleys into the newer industrial areas of England (14).

This collective experience of migration to these areas also contrasted sharply with the atomised experiences of those who migrated, often under a greater degree of governmental constraint or direction, to ‘Greater London’. It was this latter group of young, single men which attracted most attention in the social service movement and its reports were critical of the London Welsh societies which it claimed were ‘concerned mainly in preserving in the Welsh colonies the Welsh language, culture and traditional interests’; most of the transferees from south Wales knew little or nothing of these. Their sense of isolation was intensified by the Ministry’s deliberate policy of mixing transferees from different home areas in order ‘to diminish the overpowering “home” affinities and thus increase the chances of assimilation in their new community.’ (15) This policy was undoubtedly counter-productive, working against the grain of Welsh migration traditions.

Transferees had to meet their friends in central London rather than being able to develop local friendship networks around the suburban neighbourhood of their lodgings. The local churches displayed an inability to provide an alternative focus for social activity except for those few among the transferees who held strong religious beliefs (16). Research into the new London Welsh, which formed the basis of a radio broadcast by Miles Davies, confirmed that among these young, single immigrants, there was a ‘feeling of being adrift, the feeling of foreignness, of being among strange people.’  One of the forty-five respondents wrote that ‘unless one has the sheet anchor in the form of a circle of friends or a home life, there is very little of lasting benefit in the type of existence one is practically forced into living in London.’ The responses generally contrasted the ‘bottling up’ of home life and the ‘latchkey’ existence in London with the ‘open door’ of the valleys. Of course, there were many established working-class districts in London in which more neighbourly contacts were the norm, but few Welsh people could find accommodation there (18).

A similar picture emerges from contemporary ‘social service’ surveys of Southall and Hayes where the Welsh were found ‘scattered and isolated’. A successful settlement was also more likely to occur where there was one major employer. In Luton, by 1937, there was a well-established Welsh community because the Vauxhall works had attracted large numbers of voluntary migrants in the earlier years of the Depression. The Welsh Society there was therefore strong enough to organise the migration itself, with the help of a Welsh Minister at one of the local churches. The local press carried a number of letters from migrants expressing their need for a social centre, a clear indication of growing self-confidence. The Ford works at Dagenham also provided employment for large numbers of people from south Wales, although the migrants had to live at some distance from the works at Ilford and Barking. Despite this, the Dagenham Welsh Society was said to be ‘flourishing’ with ‘an excellent programme’ and an average weekly attendance of over sixty (18).

The concentration of migrants at one large industrial concern was clearly of crucial significance for successful settlement. This was not the case at Slough, perhaps the best-known but least typical example of Welsh migration.  At least one-fifth of the town’s population of fifty thousand was said to be Welsh in origin, most of the immigrants being concentrated on the Farnham estate. The residents of this estate had their social needs met by a giant centre which Lady Astor, self-appointed Matron of the ‘Depressed Areas’ and ‘rich friend’ of Thomas Jones, Secretary to the Cabinet, claimed ‘was probably the only building of its type in the world.’ A J Lush wrote in his survey that he felt it could only be compared with the State Institutions in the Don Cossack area of Russia, and commented that it was ‘bound to give rise to some doubts in the minds of people nurtured in a more democratic condition’ in South Wales since it undermined the desire for an autonomous organisation (19).

This diversity of local conditions existing within the South-East Division of the Ministry of Labour-led to an equally diverse set of experiences and responses among the migrants themselves.  Migrants to the towns connected with major new industrial concerns were able to maintain a framework of social solidarity since these concerns attracted large volumes of labour with little or no reference to government schemes. The extent to which the social conditions of the coalfield could be reproduced in the new environment determined the success of the Welsh settlements. The two main features of this process were the independent and collective organisation of networks supplying information and support, and the retention of cultural traditions and institutions as a means of reinforcing a collective identity and of establishing a sense of stability and respectability. A large number of the unskilled vacancies, which occurred, were not notified to exchange offices, because employers preferred to engage that type of worker ‘at the gate’ or from recommendations from within the works. Help given by friends or relatives in this respect was therefore paramount in the successful migration of large numbers of individuals. This help consisted of a combination of offers of work and accommodation or assistance with both. As Captain Crawshay, of the Merthyr ironmasters, somewhat paternalistically commented in his l937 report as ‘Commissioner’ for the euphemistically re-named ‘Special Areas’, ‘Dai in the Midlands finds a job for Ianto at home.’ In the same year, a leading Cardiff Economist, H A Marquand, also noted in his three-volume industrial survey, that younger men were ‘subject to waves of feeling’ connected to the receipt of letters from friends who had already left Wales and concluded that a programme of training or transfer would only prove successful if it were employed through a policy of ‘group transfer.’ (20)

This ‘networking’ was a primary feature of voluntary migration, in contrast with government Transference programmes. It extended far beyond the bounds of kith and kin and became something of an institution in itself, operating between the valleys and the recipient towns and cities. Often it was a daughter or son who secured the first job and the strength of family solidarity would lead, eventually, to its reunification in the new area. Once a family had become established in the new area, a fresh impetus was given to the migration of additional relatives and friends, followed by casual acquaintances or even comparative strangers. In this way, a multiplier effect was created whereby large numbers of people migrated from a particular locality in South Wales to a particular area of the Midlands. For instance, one family from Cwmamman was responsible for the removal of a further thirty-six families from the village (21). In this way, small numbers of initial migrants determined the subsequent predominant direction of the migration from their localities, so that substantial pockets of people from particular coalfield communities were to be found in particular Midland cities by the end of the l930s. In general, there appears to have been a preponderance of Rhondda people among the migrants to Coventry, while Birmingham seems to have attracted a good number of workers from the Monmouthshire valleys, and Oxford, or more particularly Cowley, was the chosen destination for many from the ‘Bridgend valleys’.

The second major feature of the migration, cultural retention, was not only a product of the collective migration experience but also a paramount part of the process itself since the presence, or lack, of Welsh cultural institutions in the new areas, was a strong factor in determining the direction of the out-flow from the coalfield. These institutions acted as bonding agents in the lives of migrants, providing them with a badge of identity and helping them to convey a notion of respectability to those among whom they settled. The institutions were often, in part, the outward expression of the immigrants’ inner idealised image of the communities they had left behind.  To paraphrase Idris Davies’ 1930’s poem, they grew sentimental in Oxford over things that they had smiled at in Wales, and in Coventry, they saw the mining valleys more beautiful than they ever saw them with their eyes (22). It was these ‘imagined’ valleys that fired the imaginations of the Welsh working-class communities in the Midlands, empowering the exiles to circumnavigate the economic, social and cultural obstacles to their acceptance. Social solidarity reinforced by the re-enactment of this idealised image of ‘the valleys’ provided protection against a tangible atmosphere of precariousness and prejudice.

Nowhere were these features of migration more marked than in Cowley, a quiet Oxfordshire village before the Great War, which by 1926 was being transformed into an industrial district of Oxford by the Morris Motor Works and the giant American Pressed Steel factory. The Barnett House Survey of the eleven thousand foreign unemployment books exchanged in Oxford in l936 found a distinct tendency to ‘lumpiness’ in the migration streams, providing evidence of the influence of familial, ‘fraternal’ and community networking. This, they noted, militated against the Ministry’s plans for dispersal of manpower throughout the English Midlands and South-East in accordance with the shift in the demand for labour and the assimilation of the new elements of the population by the old (23). Of the two thousand Welsh workers in Oxford at this time, 215 had employment books, which originated in the Maesteg District (covering the Llynfi, Ogmore and Garw Valleys). An even more striking fact was that 150 of these were from the Pontycymmer Exchange, which served by far the smallest of these three, the Garw. This prompted the Barnett House enquirers to consult colleagues in South Wales, who advised them that the flow from the valley to Oxford started in l926 when a few men made the journey, found employment for themselves and subsequently for friends and relatives (24). From that point onwards, Oxford attracted a large percentage of those leaving the Garw. In the period l930 to l936, out of nearly two thousand people whose unemployment books were transferred out of the Pontycymmer Exchange, 270 (15%) went to Oxford and ‘local observers’ stated that the proportion in the late l920s was probably in the region of 25%. The contemporary sociologist, G H Daniel’s research lent further support to the thesis that considerable networking had taken place. Of the sixty immigrants interviewed by him, forty-six said that they had moved to Oxford rather than any other town because they had relatives living there (25).

These contemporary findings have given rise to comments and controversy among historians about the nature and role of the Welsh community in Oxford (26). This can only be adequately interpreted by focussing upon individual experiences described both in documentary and oral sources, as the author has done in more detail elsewhere. In addition, local newspaper sources reveal that both the scale and the nature of the migration were beginning to attract comment from local correspondents, such as the local miner and correspondent for the valley in The Glamorgan Gazette:

It is said that owing to the number of local men who have obtained work at the Cowley Motor Works, Oxford, a street in that town is about to be named Garw Road. Furthermore, now that one of their number includes a once-popular Garw chairman, it is intended to open a Garw Club there. Of course, we were all pleased to see home over the Christmas holidays, the “Cowley Wallers.”  

(27)

Oral evidence from a series of interviews conducted in the early 1980s by the author with the immigrants and those they came into contact with, confirms that a number of important Garw figures were among the to arrive in Cowley, then little more than a village (28). By the summer of l927, there was a gang of young ‘Garwites’ in Cowley, including a famous troupe of Garw gymnasts, which had become reunited in Cowley, establishing the Oxford Physical Culture Club with fifty-four members (29). Other Garw exiles joined the Headington Silver Band due to the influence of its bandmaster, who was also the foreman in the trucking department at Pressed Steel, a Welsh-American from Detroit When he was told of a “good man wanting a job”, Tudor Brooks would tell his compatriots to “bring the bugger up” from the Garw, which led to the migration of large parts of the Garw and Maesteg Salvation Army Bands (30). It was this growing presence of respected cultural organisers which gave greater stability to the young Garwites from an early stage in their exile, together with the reunification of well-known families, such as the Allports, who had been one of the few shop-keepers in the valley as well as organising concerts and ‘eisteddfodau’. Not only did they transfer their musical skills and organising abilities to their new environment, but they also provided many young, single men stayed with board and lodging on first arriving in Cowley, as well as helping to settle a large number of families by supplying information and advice. Their house, Pantygog, near what soon became known as ‘Welsh Corner’ acted as an unofficial advice bureau for recently arrived immigrants (31). By the autumn of l927, the Welsh community was well enough established for a Rugby Team to be formed within the Pressed Steel Works. In the first season, at least eleven of the sixteen players were Welsh, eight of whom were of Garw origin. The team’s success continued throughout the period and provided another ‘pull’ factor for many potential migrants; in some cases, it was said to be the major factor in their decision (32). In the 1937-8 season, seven team members were given county trials (33).

Certainly, the preponderance of ‘Garwites’ among the Welsh immigrants helped to give a sense of solidity at a very early stage and it was estimated that as many as two-thirds of the immigrants were from the Garw in early 1927 (34). One was even recruited from the valley primarily for his ‘organising abilities’ needed by the growing Cowley Congregational Games Club, his paid employment evidently being considered as purely secondary to his position on the Club’s Executive (35). The Congregational Church continued to play a major role in aiding the settlement of the newcomers, who were attracted to the church in large numbers during the late l920s and throughout much of the succeeding decade.  Many of them stated that they would have returned to Wales had it not been for the support received through the chapel (36). The number of worshippers had already grown from sixty to over three hundred in the late l920s so a new church had to be built. It has been estimated that half of those who packed the new church every Sunday were Welsh, which led to hymns regularly being sung partly in Welsh (37).

A further degree of stability was acquired early in l928 through the formation of a Glee Party with about a dozen members. Encouraged by the Conductor of the Congregational Church Choir, who was also the personnel manager at Pressed Steel, a meeting was called to address the major concern of many of the Welsh at the growing level of prejudice they were encountering in Oxford.   It was considered that a small male voice choir could do much to project a more positive and respectable image as well as provide a leisure-time focus for the large number of young, single men, who were arriving every day from Wales (38). The Glee Party, like the Physical Culture Club, the Rugby Club and the Games Club, soon became part of the migration network itself. “One of the best tenors we ever had in the Garw” was given employment at Pressed Steel on the condition that he remained a member of the Party and this was by no means the only case where influence at Pressed Steel was used to acquire new members of the choir. The personnel manager’s positive attitude towards the Welsh community, his insistence on engaging their members at the full rate and his leniency in re-engaging those who had been laid off eventually led to his American bosses discharging him (39). The Party grew from a dozen founding members to the point at which in 1931-32 it had a membership of forty-four and was able to compete at festivals in various parts of England, also coming second by one mark in the competition for exile choirs at the Cardiff National Eisteddfod. However, most of their work took the form of charity concerts in various churches and halls throughout Oxfordshire, by which they “succeeded in creating a better impression” than some of the ‘bad characters’ who got their names and nationality into the newspapers, so that the Welsh became ‘better understood by the Oxford people.’ (40)

The Glamorgan Gazette reported in April l931 how ‘a large colony of Welsh exiles’ in Oxford was adding to ‘the musical status of the great educational centre’  (41) The fact that the Party succeeded in filling the Town Hall and the extent of recognition it received seemed to symbolise the growing self-confidence and sense of responsibility felt by the Welsh community, despite the problems posed by the deepening trough of general economic recession. (42)  By the turn of the decade, the Cowley Welsh had already attracted the attention of the Welsh dons and students at Jesus College, famously beaten by the Pressed Steel workers on the Rugby fields. The academics called a meeting to establish a Welsh Society, which could span ‘town and gown’. However, as with the London Welsh societies, the working-class Welsh regarded those connected with the College as a ‘Welsh-speaking element’ and ‘a different type of people altogether’. (43)

A sociological survey of Oxford in the 1950s confirmed that the tendency for the immigrants to be more actively involved in autonomous and collective forms of working-class culture than their fellow Oxford workers continued to be a major feature of the city’s social and institutional life in the post-war period. Its author commented that whilst Oxford people might resent this domination by ‘foreigners’, they themselves did little to redress the imbalance (44). In the late twenties and early thirties, the Welsh had endured prejudicial remarks from Oxonian workers that they were ‘all reds’ or ‘nearly all communists.’ The stereotypical mirror image held by the immigrants of the natives was of workers who were ‘insular and prejudiced and politically dead…very reserved and independent’, conservative in politics and ‘apathetic towards trade unions.’ (45) In 1929, officials of the National Union of Vehicle Builders (NUVB) displayed some awareness of the fact that there were a large number of men from the Welsh coalfields at the Pressed Steel who might be more sympathetic to joining the Society than the Oxford ‘tradesmen’ they had found working there two years previously. However, their half-hearted attempts to make contact with the unskilled immigrants were thwarted by the problem of seasonal lay-offs.   An entry in the NUVB Journal highlights this problem and the condescending attitude of the official toward immigrant workers when it states:

‘ … our would-be helper had been discharged along with a number of others… and had departed for his native woods and fields, not to say colliery refuse heaps in South Wales’ .

(46)

Nevertheless, from the very beginning of the migration from the Garw to Cowley, there were a number of older men with significant experience in the Miners’ Federation as well as in the leadership of the cultural institutions of their communities.  While seasonal unemployment remained a problem at the works throughout the period, there is little difference in the figures for engagements and discharges at the works for l927 and l934 (47). In fact, there were stifled attempts to organise from within the works during this early period and it is possible to call upon oral evidence to fill some of the discernable, deliberate silences left by the lack of documentary sources. In the late twenties, the underground movement for a union in the works had at its centre important personalities among the Welsh community outside the works, though ‘there were no particular leaders’, perhaps because of the need to avoid the victimisation many had experienced after the 1926 lock-out, and which had driven many in the largely autonomous local lodges to leave the valleys. Even then, without the support of the proper shop-floor organisation, young migrants risked or in some cases lost their jobs to live up to the traditions of solidarity, which they had learned in their coalfield communities (48).

By l932, the underground organisation in the works had grown strong enough to produce a pamphlet which was distributed throughout the works at lunchtime, complaining that Pressed Steel workers were ‘being degraded to the coolie level.’  The pamphlet concluded that it was ‘absolutely essential’ that every worker should join the TGWU as soon as a branch could be set up and also set out a list of demands which found their echo in the successful l934 strike (49). The will for the organisation had existed long before l934; what was lacking was the means of organisation that could have been provided by the ‘craft’ unions, which already had a foothold, however precarious, in the works.  However, their typical reaction was “nothing doing, we don’t want unskilled in a skilled union” (50).  This lack of external interest and support made it difficult for the unofficial shop floor leadership of the unskilled workers to formalise itself and make itself known to the management. It was during the heatwave of July l934 that affairs came to a head within the factory when on the night of Friday 13th almost every man in the press shop considered that his wage had been arbitrarily cut by the management. The following Monday they walked out when the management refused to meet their elected deputation (51).

One of the leaders of this ‘deputation’ was Tom Harris, a crane operator in that shop. His personal narrative is worth telling because it reflected the earlier transatlantic experience of Welsh migration and its tidal impact on the British trade union movement both before and after the Great War. Born in Monmouthshire in the early l890s, he had emigrated to the Welsh-American town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in his early twenties. There he had worked as a miner and, significantly, had gained organising experience by assisting John L Lewis in building up the United Mineworkers (UMWA).  Returning to South Wales in the mid-l920s, possibly to Maesteg, he became active in the SWMF before arriving in Cowley shortly before the strike of l934, to work at the ‘American’ Pressed Steel Works, a connection that may not have been entirely coincidental (52). Harris and the other members of the unofficial deputation planned the strike action over the weekend following the wage cut, and one of their Welsh wives, joining in the lengthy discussion, suggested that the deputation should send representatives to ask for assistance from the local Communist Party, since “the Communist Party had provided invaluable help and assistance in organising the miner’s struggles in Wales” (53). This decision to involve the Communist Party was based on a reflexive response to immediate conditions emerging from a long-held desire of a largely immigrant workforce to retain and establish their trade union principles in their new industrial context.

The deputation soon became a ‘provisional strike committee’ consisting of eleven members, the majority of whom were immigrants from ‘the Distressed Areas’, known as ‘DA men’ by this time. Of these, two were from Scotland, two from the North East, and five from South Wales. Only one of the members was local, from Oxfordshire, the other hailing from Manchester, not officially classed as a ‘DA’ (54). The official Labour movement had failed to see the potential of the works for unionisation and was soon watching a situation that was getting more and more out of their control. A mass rally was held at St. Giles, and in scenes that must have been reminiscent of that ill-fated coalfield summer of 1926, a fete was organised in support of the strike. One Welsh striker was arrested on the picket line when a ‘blackleg’ car was overturned and spent the night in gaol (55). By the end of the strike, Harris had become Chairman of the Strike Committee and then Chairman and Secretary of the new 5/60 branch of the TGWU, which moved in quickly where the craft unions had failed to do so. Ernest Bevin, then General-Secretary of the T&GWU, became personally involved rather than risk the strike entering an even more militant phase. The branch accounted for 98% of the workforce at the works (56). Thereafter, despite the way in which the Glee Party had exploited its contacts and good relations with specific Pressed Steel Managers to secure employment for its members, it never accepted any form of sponsorship from the Company, fearing that to do so would weaken the negotiating power of the 5/60 branch (57). Although the management had agreed that there would be no victimisation, at least one worker who was elected to the Strike Committee claimed that he had lost his job because of these activities and had been forced to return to Wales for a short period (58).

The strike, led by ex-miners, represented an important landmark in the development of trade union organisation among semi-skilled engineering workers in the new industries throughout England and provided the spur for the growth of the Labour movement in Oxford itself. It was clear evidence of the general recovery of the British working classes following the recession of l929-33 (59). Pressed Steel soon became known as the ‘Red Factory’ because of the reputation of the 5/60 branch for militancy and unofficial action. Harris, perhaps in recognition of the catalytic role it had played, became a ‘secret’ member of the Communist Party locally, shortly after the strike, and by October l934 was a delegate to the Trades Council, winning its support for the United Front against fascism, and becoming its Vice-President in 1936. The following month the Council agreed to proceed with an organising campaign in the City, beginning with the motor industry, which Harris led (60). Another immigrant worker, who began work at Pressed Steel in l935 after moving to Cowley from Wigan, has argued strongly that the trade unionists from Pressed Steel were largely responsible for spreading the movement throughout the city (61).

By April l937, Ernest Bevin had appointed a full-time organiser in Oxford who helped Harris to keep the membership of the branch to over 90% of the workforce and a strike at the end of that year firmly established the branch’s strong position in all the departments at the works (62). Among the thirty shop stewards elected from every department, only six of them were ‘local’, despite the fact that 40% of Pressed Steel workers lived in the villages outside Oxford (63). The remainder were ‘DA’ men and in December l938, three new shop stewards were added to the list, one a native of Glasgow and the other two from South Wales (64). Despite this consolidation, at the end of l938, the branch suffered a serious setback when Tom Harris ignored warnings and was sacked for organising a meeting at his place of work. The ensuing strike did not lead to his reinstatement, however, and he left the works to set himself up as a coal merchant (65). This defeat needs to be put in the context of a long series of successful representation at the factory and to contrast that experience with the lack of an effective recognition at the nearby Morris Works, where the relatively few ‘DA’ men who led the underground movement were unable to make much progress (66).

It was not only the Welsh who saw the difference between the attitude of the largely Oxonion workforce at Morris Motors and themselves (67). A neutral social survey researcher, writing in l937, remarked that the distinction between the two workforces was widely acknowledged (68). There is thus a strong case to be made for the primacy of general social and cultural factors in the growth of trade unionism in Oxford; the sense of heritage and solidarity, or ‘clannishness’, among immigrant workers, provided a powerful motivation for union organisation in Pressed Steel and infused a quiescent trade union movement with militancy. Those who were thrust into the leadership of the trade union movement in the city also found themselves in leading positions in left-wing politics and, in becoming involved in the city’s political life, they reflected a growing sense of permanence and regenerated self-confidence among the immigrants to Cowley. The ‘twelve days that shook Oxford’ provided the springboard for the sudden elevation of working-class politics within the city, in which the ‘DA’ men also played a major role (69). The assertion of a leading Welsh immigrant – ‘we changed their outlook’ – reflects with considerable accuracy the reality of the immigrant contribution to the transformation of Oxford political life in the l930s to the point at which, on the outbreak of war, the previously unimaginable became thinkable – the possibility of the City being represented by a Labour MP (70).

The experience of Welsh migrants to Cowley was not dissimilar to the experiences of those who went to other Midland industrial centres in the period between 1926 and 1940.  It is impossible to assess in clear, quantitative terms whether or not a ‘Garw’ factor was at work among the 13% of foreign unemployment books exchanged in Coventry and North Warwickshire in l937, which came from Wales. However, evidence from church and civic records, combined with a range of more qualitative written, oral and anecdotal evidence, does tend to suggest that there was a preponderance of people from the Rhondda and Monmouthshire valleys among these migrants (71). The retention of kinship and friendship ties was made more difficult than in Cowley because both industry and housing were scattered throughout a city that was already, by the twenties, expanding rapidly along arterial roads, in all directions, to swallow up the surrounding Warwickshire villages, which were incorporated by the end of the decade. Most areas of Coventry were predominantly working-class; it was a city with a long tradition of engineering and textile manufacture, stretching back into the previous century and beyond, and therefore comprising several Cowleys.

In Coventry, there were many more factories to which Welsh labour was attracted, spread out around the city and later in the thirties, with the advent of the ‘shadow factories’, around its outskirts. These factors meant that the Welsh immigrants were not as concentrated in density or distribution as in Oxford, due to the more diverse domestic and industrial conditions prevailing in Coventry even before their arrival. Nevertheless, there were detectable pockets of Welsh immigrants (72). Also, familial and fraternal relationships were significant in the way labour was engaged at the factory gates, except that Coventry firms also actively recruited in the depressed areas by means of advertisements and ‘scouts’. This encouraged still further the tendency to network migration, and many men in well-paid jobs attracted relatives and friends for whom they had found definite openings. A sizeable number of these friends or relatives were already in employment or had only recently become unemployed. Others were ‘second stage’ migrants, attracted from their original destinations by the lure of the high wages in engineering, and the prospect of a more secure future among friends. As in Cowley, some felt ‘called’ to Coventry for musical or cultural reasons, and only looked for employment upon arrival (73).

Despite the lack of contemporary social surveys, and their research data, such as exists in Oxford, the importance of kinship and friendship networks in Coventry is revealed by the painstaking reconstruction of eighty-four ‘Welsh households’ on the new estates from public records. These include Church Rolls, Electoral Registers and ‘The Roll of the Fallen’, the record of those who died due to enemy action both in the armed services in the World War of 1939-45, and also at home, during the ‘Blitzes’ of the City in 1940 and 1941. With these combinations of records, it is possible to trace names and addresses in relation to ‘places of origin’ outside the City. Of these 84 ‘traceable’ Welsh households, 48 showed clear signs of sub-letting accommodation throughout the period and in many cases, it is obvious that the sub-tenants were either adult relatives or were of Welsh origin. In some cases, this could be confirmed through oral evidence from family members still living at the properties forty years later. Many of the immigrants appear to have stayed with friends or relatives for a long enough period for their names to have appeared on the Electoral Registers and for them to establish themselves in work and wages before moving into homes of their own (74). Prominent among these households were the Shepherds of Treherbert, a family who had much to do with the predominance of Rhondda people amongst the immigrants and with their successful settlement. Jehu Shepherd was among the earliest Rhondda immigrants and remained a powerful influence on Coventry Welsh life throughout the period and beyond. He was one of a family of nine, all of whom left Wales. Jehu himself was found a job at the Morris Works in Coventry by his brother-in-law and left the Rhondda just before the General Strike. The family in general and Jehu, in particular, appear to have given an early cohesion to the Welsh community, especially through the formation of the Coventry Welsh Glee Singers in l926 (75).

The Glee Party, as in Cowley, provided an important focal point for the Welsh immigrants to Coventry. In fact, since the Welsh were more disparate than in Cowley, it was even more important. It also became a means of encouraging social solidarity through the projection of an idealised image of a respectable, Nonconformist Wales. Jehu was also choirmaster at Queens Road Baptist Church from l926, but in l937 he decided that he had to give up this duty in favour of keeping the Gleemen together, because “most of them didn’t go to church, some of them liked to drink…and he felt he must keep them together” (76). In February of l926, they gave two concerts in one week, one to raise money in aid of the Mayor’s Fund for the Distressed Areas. This was well-attended and was presided over by Philip Handley, the Manager of Coventry Employment Exchange, who appealed to the audience on behalf of the distressed miners who, he said, ‘deserved heaven’s interest and sympathy.’  Engagements such as this, combined with his employment exchange and social service work, led Handley to champion the immigrant cause, often in the face of criticism from other civic leaders, trade unionists and employers.  He attempted to counter much of the negative propaganda with a positive vision of a progressive, cosmopolitan city in which the Welshman’s love of music and art would make the Coventrian of 25 years hence a better man in body and possibly in brain (77). This comment reveals a more positive, forward-looking attitude among the ‘host’ population than the more ‘hostile’ reaction experienced by the Cowley Welsh, as previously described, whose role in that City’s ‘progress’ seemed only to be recognised, in retrospect, by its left/liberal intelligentsia and newspaper media.

The class divide in Oxford between the town, gown and the new working classes, which prevented the formation of a citywide Welsh Society did not seem to be a problem in Coventry, where the Welsh working classes were obviously more dominant in music, culture and sport. The creation of a ‘Society’ helped to further fulfil the need for respectability. One evening every month a ‘social’ was held in a large room above Ellis’ Cafe in Broadgate, to which Welsh people came to play games and sing, from all over Coventry. Welsh was spoken, but the Society was obviously not dominated by academics, as in Oxford, and was able to meet a need for ‘gathering’ or ‘gymanfa’ among the wide variety of Coventry Welsh, which included nurses and school teachers as well as factory workers. This image of respectability had become well established by February l929 when the Society and the Gleemen combined to give a performance in aid of the Lord Mayor (of London’s) Fund for the Distressed Areas. The Midland Daily Telegraph praised the careful training given by Mr Shepherd to his singers during their weekly rehearsals. The exiles’ empathy with those they had left behind was portrayed to full effect, if in a somewhat bizarre fashion when Miss Chrissie Thomas played ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’ as an encore on her mandolin, ‘in reference to the Prince’s recent visit to the distressed areas.’  At the end of that month, the Coventry Welsh were able to give vent to ‘their intense national patriotism’ at the Welsh Society’s Annual Social (78). Events such as these were symbolic of a growing sense of solidity and self-confidence in the immigrant community.

As was the case in Cowley, the links with the homeland were not simply in the heart and mind of the immigrant. Holidays were an important part of the migration network. The Welsh in the Holbrooks area each paid fifteen shillings and hired a bus between them every Easter and August Bank Holiday (79). On the Whit holiday weekend, l939, The Midland Daily Telegraph reported that the number of buses leaving Pool Meadow for Wales was surprisingly large. One company had to use another company’s vehicles to accommodate the extra bookings, several of these vehicles being brought in from Nuneaton (80). Such holidays provided the opportunity for information about the quality of life in Coventry to be passed on to those considering migration. In particular, those already involved in sporting teams, choirs and musical societies were very keen that people ‘at home’ with abilities in these areas should join them.  Welsh members of the GEC Orchestra recruited members of the Cory Brothers’ Band and violinists who accompanied the silent pictures in Rhondda workmen’s halls. In these cases, musical ability was the qualification needed to get a job at the GEC (81).

The chapels also played a significant role in helping the immigrants to become settled, secure and self-assured, although their support for initiatives such as the Glee Party and for Welsh social and cultural activities was perhaps more important than their attempts at practical involvement in the after-care of the migrants and transferees. In 1936, the local Juvenile Employment Committee of the Ministry of Labour reported that ‘one denominational’ society had been supplied, at the request of its secretary, with the details of young people arriving in the city to take up employment, ‘the society’s aim being to offer friendly interest in their religious and social welfare’ (82). However, three years later Philip Handley wrote to Sir Wyndham Deedes of the National Council of Social Service that this experiment, which had developed into his passing the names of immigrants to the nearest church of the same denomination as that last attended, had ‘had no practical result’. He went on to comment that the churches had a hard task ahead of them ‘in a community so materially-minded as this’ (83). Whilst there can be little doubt that the majority of Welsh immigrants did not attend church regularly, both Queens Road Baptist and West Orchard Congregational had regular contact with a larger number of immigrants than their counterparts in London.  Many migrants were ambivalent in their attitudes towards chapel-going, feeling that they no longer needed to follow the stricter mores of ‘down home’, but also that the London chapels did not have the same ‘hwyl’ as they found in Coventry (84).

The attractiveness of chapels such as Queens Road and West Orchard to the immigrants was due, in no small part, to their inspirational Welsh ministers, Howard Ingli James and Ivor Reece. Ingli James grew up in Barry where his father was pastor of Bethel Baptist Church. Before his arrival in Coventry in 1931, James had had ‘powerful ministries’ in Accrington and at Pantygwydr, Swansea, during which ‘he saw that the working classes in this country were drifting from the churches and he set himself resolutely to stop the drift’. Whilst in Swansea, he played an important part in the life of the town, lectured in philosophy to WEA classes and took an active part in politics (85). Throughout the 1930s he provided strong leadership for the element among the Welsh who showed an interest in the chapel’s activities, and Queens Road thus became a central, stabilising influence on their lives, since there were already a great many Welsh members of the congregation, although few had transferred their church membership at this stage (86). He continually referred to the miners in his sermons and his unapologetic championing of working-class causes and politics frequently brought him into conflict with the established professional Coventrians both in the church and the city. In general terms, the impact of immigration upon the church and city was a major factor in determining the development and direction of his ministry as the article he wrote for the Midland Daily Telegraph in 1936 reveals:

Coventry is today faced with the difficult task of welding a host of newcomers into a community, in fact of making a city, which is not the same thing as a mere collection of streets, or conglomeration of people… Almost every week strangers appear in our congregation, often in such numbers that one has difficulty getting in touch with them. Many are young and trying their wings for the first time.  It is an important part of our work to meet their needs both spiritual and social, to provide them with a place where they may find friends and feel at home. 

(87)

Some of these newcomers were among the convinced and articulate group of Christian Socialists with strong pacifist convictions that Ingli James’ ministry produced in the late l930s and l940s (88). For them, as for Ingli James himself, the experience of the ‘two Britains’ of the inter-war period would resonate in their post-war visions. James articulated this impetus to reform in a book, Communism and the Christian Faith, published in l950, in which he acknowledged his indebtedness to the Queens Road congregation for the way they had given him…

… a new vision of what a Christian community in a busy industrial city might be and do. … those who wonder why ten thousand electors voted Communist in the Rhondda Valley in l945, should reflect on the plight of the valley during that period when thousands of eager youngsters were compelled to seek employment far from home.

(89)

Most importantly, Welsh working-class culture was able to locate itself within a broad, dominant working-class and immigrant culture in Coventry; such a culture was poorly developed in Oxford and was almost entirely absent in the ‘Greater London’ experience. Coventry was, from the beginning of the period, a working-class city, in which miners and immigrants were not strangers.   One among them contrasted his experience of Coventry with that of London by stating that in Coventry he felt that he was “back in his own sphere amongst the working class with everybody working at our level” and was “sharing similar characteristics” with former miners from the Durham coalfields (90). This was the type of environment in which the Welsh could establish and assert themselves, not perhaps as so distinctive a community as in Oxford, but with similar stimulating and stabilising effects both on the processes of migration and settlement and on the development of the city itself.

In terms of its long-term effect, perhaps the most significant contribution made by the Welsh in Coventry was, as in Oxford, the broad field of working-class sporting and leisure activities. In 1939, The Coventry Welsh Rugby Club came into being at a meeting in the Railway Hotel, Foleshill, and soon became the cradle for the City of Coventry Rugby Club in which many of the latter’s players were nurtured. The Welsh also played a significant role in building up the workingmen’s clubs. Holbrooks Workingmen’s Club was predominantly Welsh, and there were large numbers of Welsh in the Wyken, Coombe and Binley Clubs, partly because of the large numbers of Welsh miners who found their way into the pits in these areas. In Coombe and Binley, male voice choirs were formed, the one at Binley remaining strong for decades (91). It was perhaps, in part, this emphasis on club culture that earned the Welsh their reputation for drunkenness among Coventrians. In fact, cases of drunken and disorderly behaviour involving Welshmen were few and far between, though they received graphic and detailed coverage from the local press, under headlines such as A Violent Welshman… Miner Assaults Coventry Police Officers. These cases usually involved young men who had recently arrived in the city and had not found their way to clubs where their drinking might be controlled and institutionalised. They behaved in this way precisely because they “knew very well that they wouldn’t do it down home” (92).

In the factories, although some of the trade unions were concerned about dilution to the point of being slow to organise among the unskilled and semi-skilled immigrants, there is little doubt that by the end of the period these immigrants had settled well into the pattern of militant trade unionism which was already well established in the city at the beginning of the period. Despite the comparatively advanced level of trade union organisation, there were no strikes recorded in Coventry’s motor industry until l934, largely due to shop-floor manipulation of piecework through the ‘gang’ system. The Welsh immigrants appear to have fitted well into this system; when a Welsh shop steward gave evidence to a sub-committee of the Coventry District AEU set up to investigate complaints against a particularly uncooperative and belligerent member at the Humber Works. Defending himself, he stated that…

 “… they were not likely to have harmony in the shop when the other members were Welshmen but were only paying into the trade union for their own advantage”.

(93)

There were also Welsh shop stewards at the Standard Works who later helped to establish trade unionism at the GEC. However, most of the new leaders of militant trade unionism in the l930s came from other depressed areas with stronger engineering traditions in the north of England and Scotland, donating significantly larger numbers of workers to Coventry than they did to Oxford, in contrast with Welsh immigration (94).

In politics, the fortunes of the Labour Party were closely related to patterns of immigration.  In l926, the Labour group on the Council was reduced to only three members. However, following boundary changes in l928, which incorporated many of the new estates, and therefore added many of the immigrants to the electoral roll, eleven Labour members were elected. The Party continued to make headway in the local elections to the point where they actually took control of the Council in l937 (95). The Midland Daily Telegraph  advanced the argument that ‘the large influx of labour from socialist areas’ over the year preceding November l937 was ‘the major factor in the Labour victory.’  In a By-election of 1938, it was still possible for the Lib-Con Coalition Candidate to win his seat by playing upon the fears of ‘old Coventrians’ that their city was being run by ‘the sweepings of the nation’ (96).

However, in reality, the Welsh and other immigrants were not as well established in this sphere of leadership by the late l930s in Coventry as were the Welsh in Cowley and it was not until the post-war period that they began to play a significant, leading role in local politics, producing, as in Oxford, some real ‘Dick Whittingtons’ (97). Two Rhondda exiles became Lord Mayors and shared their motivation for their involvement in local politics with Councillor Elsie Jones, who wrote poignantly in l958 of how being born and reared in a mining area, she had realised the need for reforms very early in life (98).

Finally, the case of the Birmingham Welsh is worthy of some consideration, since it represents a similar example of autonomous immigrant organisation, to that already explored in Oxford. It is apparent that a significant proportion of those who settled in the Longbridge area of Birmingham during the period was from Monmouthshire mining villages such as Blaina, Nantyglo and Risca.  By the Autumn of l934, these immigrants were settled enough to combine with immigrants from Durham to form a self-help organisation known as the Birmingham Association for the Relief of Distressed Areas (BARDA), whose main aims were…

… to provide a welcome for people from distressed areas taking up work in Birmingham and put them in touch with social activities; to maintain a register of lodgings and houses available for families and individuals from distressed areas seeking employment in the Midlands; to help families who have already one or more members settled in Birmingham to remove their homes to this district and to collect and record information as to vacancies available for individuals out of employment.

(99)

Monthly meetings were held close to where the immigrant car-workers lived and worked, and it had a membership of about two hundred. During its first eighteen months, it effected the removal and resettlement of twenty-one families, all but one of whom remained in Birmingham, thus reuniting over a hundred individuals. It was successful not only in the autonomous organisation of migration but also in its representation of the migrants’ needs to both local and national government officials. In this, it was able to go further than the network in Cowley, because it acquired an official status due to its constitution. BARDA was the clearest expression that emerged, of the working classes accepting migration on their own terms and directing it within their own cultural framework (100). However, the conditions in other parts of Birmingham and the West Midlands, such as Handsworth, Soho and West Bromwich, were not as favourable to so advanced a level of autonomous organisation, so BARDA’s influence seems to have been restricted to southwest Birmingham. In Smethwick, an older town, Rhondda people were able to find homes in close proximity to each other and most were working in the Tangies Munitions Factory by l936-37. These two factors enabled them to find some social cohesion and they made good use of the local chapels, forming a male voice choir. Lush was told that ‘any South Walian’ was regarded as having a good voice and that membership in the choir was almost compulsory (101).

Whilst distinctive Welsh communities emerged in those parts of Birmingham and the neighbouring towns where housing and industrial conditions were conducive to the development of a sense of neighbourhood and the retention of distinctive forms of culture and organisation by the immigrants, attempts to provide institutional points of focus for the Welsh throughout the city were more limited in effect than in Coventry. This was partly due to the difference in scale, but also because the ‘Welsh causes’ which existed in Birmingham at this time had grown up in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods and their congregations were largely made up of professional, Welsh-speaking people from rural Wales, the language of the chapels also being Welsh. Those among the working class, largely English-speaking immigrants from the industrial south soon found that they had little in common with their country cousins. Nevertheless, Wheeler Street Congregational Church claimed 337 regular worshippers in l938, over half of whom were said to be ‘exiles from the depressed area.’  Numbers had increased considerably as a result of social activities and in l936 the Church began an organisation called ‘Urdd y Brodyr’ specifically to cater for the needs of young Welshmen coming to the City. Its chief purpose was to help them find work and accommodation, in addition to providing a more general link between the chapel and the wider society in which they lived and worked. A link with home was also provided through a newspaper library, comprising local weeklies from the Rhondda, Aberdare, Merthyr and other coalfield areas. Nevertheless, it is apparent that, as in London, the ‘Welsh causes’ and societies touched the lives of only a very small proportion of the exiles from the coalfield. The image of Wales, which was celebrated in their worship and social activities, was that of a rural, Liberal, Nonconformist Welsh-speaking society, their ministers and deacons lacking the experience and understanding of the industrial south so well displayed by Ingli James in Coventry (102).

These case studies of the Welsh working class inter-war experience of exodus and resettlement reveal that the contemporary, and sometimes historical, characterisation of migration as synonymous with enforced dispersal, implied by the indiscriminate use of the term ‘Transference’, does not match the diverse realities of that experience. Those who were moved under government schemes made up a small minority of those who left the coalfield. The experiences of atomisation, isolation and alienation endured by many transferees and migrants who entered employment in domestic service, the distributive trades and relief work in London and other parts of the south-east of England, were not shared by those who found employment for themselves in the developing centres of the new industries. In these centres, despite significant variations in local patterns of employment and housing, the processes of migration and settlement were conducted on a collective and largely autonomous basis, which reflected the traditions and institutional life of the coalfield communities. The careful cultivation of migration networks through a combination of marital, familial, fraternal and institutional relationships ensured that migrants were able to retain a collective identity and distinctive working-class culture in their new environment. Their concern for, and idealisation of, the communal life they had left was an essential stabilising and reinforcing element in their projection of a self-image of a hard-working and respectable immigrant community. Most importantly, their retention of the capacity for an autonomous organisation in all the stages of the migration process meant that, in these centres, they were able to act as self-assured, self-empowered agents in the formation and negotiation of a broader working-class culture that met the new industrial and social conditions of their chosen environment.

This, then, was no Babylonian captivity, and in their transportation of traditional values and institutions, the Welsh workers fashioned a ‘new covenant’ made up of various contributions to the economic, political, social, cultural and religious life of the new industrial centres. By these means, they also enabled and enhanced the recovery and reconstitution of working-class politics and culture in the l930s. Coming from ‘Proud Valleys’, they were determined to prove that no one could stop them from singing (103). In 1927 they may have felt like extras in an epic that ran out of backers, but by 1937 they were setting the scenery for a new post-war production in which one of their own, Aneurin Bevan was the ‘lead tenor’ and they were the chorus. The manner in which they overcame the prejudices they met over much of the inter-war period, demonstrates the importance of perspective in examining the true nature of migration and immigration in twentieth-century Britain. The locally-grown ‘model’ followed in Britain by ‘guest’ and ‘host’ communities alike, although sometimes painful in construction, has been one of integration, rather than one of assimilation.

©Andrew James Chandler

Kecskemét, Hungary

11th April 2022

Sources, Notes & References:

Published:

Mark Abrams (1946), The Condition of the British People, 1911–1945; A Fabian Society Pamphlet (London: Gollancz).

Key:

CSLS = Coventry Local Studies Library;  CRO = Coventry Record Office;

NCVO = National Council of Voluntary Organisations;

OCL = Oxford City Library and Archives;

PRO = Public Records Office;

RCL = Ruskin College Library.)

1. Coventry Tribune, 19 July 1947.
2. M. Abrams, The Condition of the British People, 1911-45: A Study Prepared for the Fabian Society (Gollancz, 1945), Preface by G D H Cole; chapters I & II, tables I & II.
3. Gwyn Thomas, The Subsidence Factor, Annual Gwyn Jones Lecture (University College Cardiff Press, 1979)
4. W. Samuel, Transference Must Stop, (J E Jones, 1943): N & D Davies, Can Wales Afford Self-Government? (Foyles Welsh Press, n.d.); The Welsh Nationalist, October 1937: On the ‘Liberal Establishment’, see my PhD thesis, ‘The Re-making of a Working Class: Migration from the South Wales Coalfield to the New Industry Areas of the Midlands, c.1920-1940’ (Cardiff,1988) chapter four; on the growth of Nationalism in Wales, see D. Hywel Davies, The Welsh Nationalist Party, 1925-1945; A Call to Nationhood (Cardiff,1983)
5. PRO Lab 23/102: ‘Report of a Conference on Transference, convened by South Wales and Monmouthshire Council of Social Service, 15-16 May 1936’.
6. W.Hannington, The Problem of the Distressed Areas (Gollancz,1937) chapter eight, especially p. 124.
7. K.O. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation (Oxford 1981) pp. 230-231.
8. PRO/Lab 8/218: Hunt & Scott’s report.
9. F.C. Bourdillon, A Survey of Social Services in the Oxford District  (Barnett House Survey, Oxford,1938) p.60; Bodleian Library/Butler Papers, box 40, a paper by S.P.R. Maud.
10. See my thesis, op. cit., chapter one & appendices.
11. G.H. Daniel, ‘Some Factors Affecting the Mobility of Labour’ in Oxford Economic Papers, (1940) p. 152.
12. The precise details of the scheme are given in the journal Planning, 24  March 1936.
13. See my thesis, chapters five and six for further details.
14. PRO Lab 23/102; Report of a Conference on Transference, loc. cit. , 1936
15. Ibid.; ‘note on Miss Hilda Jennings’ Investigation into Social Transference Problems’, August 1935, pp. 1-2.
16. NCVO/NCSS papers; ‘Migration to London from South Wales’  p. 7;
17. M. Davies, ‘Exiled in London’ in The Listener, 20 April 1938.
18. PRO/Lab 23/102; SWMCSS Committee on Transference; ‘Preliminary Report on Social Provision at the Reception End for Workers Transferred from South Wales’ by A.J. Lush, 2 April 1937 pp. 7-8.
19. Ibid., pp.9-10: Many of the newcomers had initially been brought to Slough to work in the Government Training Centre; see PRO/Lab 2/1396/ET 1275; Reid letter: On Lady Astor, see Peter Stead’s article on ‘The Voluntary Response to Mass Unemployment in South Wales’ in W. Minchinton (ed.), University of Exeter Papers in Social and Economic History, 1981.
20. G. Crawshay, ‘Survey and Prospects of the Position in the South Wales and Monmouthshire Special Area’ in The Special Areas Commissioner’s Fourth Report, November 1937, p.43ff. : H.A. Marquand, The Second Industrial Survey of South Wales (Cardiff,1937; National Industrial Development Council), Volume III, p. 28.
21. PRO/Lab 8/218; Hunt & Scott, op. cit., pp. 8,
22. Idris Davies, ‘London Welsh’ in Gwalia Deserta (London, 1938).
23. Bourdillon, op. cit., p. 58.
24. Ibid., pp. 58-60; appendix 1, p.290. See also PRO/PIN 7/172; extract from the typescript drafts of the Survey Report, pp. 20-21.
25. G.H. Daniel, Labour Migration and Age Composition & Labour Migration and Fertility in The Sociological Review, May & October 1939, especially p. 297; ‘Some Factors Affecting the Mobility of Labour’ in Oxford Economic Papers, 1940, esp. p. 157.
26. R.C. Whiting, ‘Oxford Between the Wars; Labour and the Motor Industry’ in Rowley (ed.) The Oxford Region, (n. d.) & his Oxford D. Phil. thesis, ‘The Working Class in the “New Industry” Towns Between the Wars; The Case of Oxford’ (1978); J. Zeitlin, ‘The Emergence of Shop Steward Organisation and Job Control in the British Car Industry; A Review Essay’ in History Workshop Journal (Autumn 1980); D. Lyddon’s ‘Critique’ & Zeitlin’s ‘Rejoinder’, both in  HWJ  (Spring & Autumn, 1983); P.D. John, ‘The Oxford Welsh in the 1930s; A Study in Class, Community and Political Influence’ in Llafur, Volume 5, Number 4, 1991; draw on my thesis, op. cit., chapter seven.
27. Interviews with T. Richards, D. Husk, Cowley, 1982, transcribed, loc. cit.
28. Glamorgan Gazette, 31 December 1926.
29. Interviews with Richards, Husk, C. Jones, loc. cit & F. Jeffery, Cowley, ’82, transcribed: Frank Jeffery was a deacon & Secretary in Temple Cowley Congregational (later URC)
30. Interview with D. Husk; Oxford Times, 20 March 1931; Glamorgan Gazette, 24 April 1931: Davies was the son of a Blaengarw miners’ agent.
31. Husk interview, loc. cit.
32. Glamorgan Gazette, 16 September 1927
33. Interviews with T. Richards, Vyall Allport & Mrs I. Price (née Allport), D. Husk; OCL/Pressed Steel Company, Social & Athletic Club; Rugby Football Club minute book, 3 October 1927; Pressings (Pressed  Steel Company magazine), January 1928: This contains a photograph of the first season’s team; names & places of origin of the players were supplied by Dai Husk, the former also appearing in the minutes.
34. OCL/Pressed Steel Co. Social & Athletic Club minute book; Secretary’s report for the 1936-37 season; Oxford Times, 25 June 1937;  September-December 1927; 27 July 1927; 23 April 1937; Glamorgan Gazette,13 & 27 July 1934; interview with the Wilcox family, Cowley, 1982, transcribed.
35. Interview with T. Jones, Cowley, 1982, loc. cit.
36. Glamorgan Gazette, 23 December 1927.
37. Interviews with F. Jeffery, T. Jones, T. Richards, loc. cit.
38. Oxford Times, 4 & 25 October 1929; Temple Cowley URC records, ‘Order of Service, November 27th, 1932’; interviews with F. Jeffery, T. Richards, loc. cit.
39. Interviews with T. Jones, T. Richards, loc. cit
40. Ibid.; interview with F. Jeffery, loc.cit., interviews with Haydn Evans, Cowley, 1982, transcribed: Interviews with T. Richards, T. Jones, loc. cit.
41. Glamorgan Gazette, 10 April 1931; Oxford Times, 3 April 1931; 20 March 1931; Oxford Welsh Glee Singers’ Attendance Register, 1931-39; Minutes 14/26 Jan, 2 Feb 1936.
42. Glamorgan Gazette, 13 July 1934; January-September 1937 (10 references); interviews with C. Jones, Wilcox family,  H. Evans, loc. cit.
43. Interview with T. Jones, loc. cit. Glamorgan Gazette; Oxford Times, 7 October 1960
44. J.M. Mogey, Family and Neighbourhood; Two Studies in Oxford, (Oxford, 1956)  p. 6
45. Daniel, op. cit., (1940), pp. 174-179.
46. NUVB Journal, November 1925, January 1929, January 1930; NUVB Oxford Branch Minute Books, August 1927.
47. See note 25 above; for unemployment and migration statistics, see my thesis, appendix ten.
48. Interviews with T. Richards, D. Husk, op. cit.
49. OCL/Howse Collection; pamphlet, 6 October 1932 and Company memorandum, 7 October 1932.
50. Interview with Jack Thomas, Cowley 1982, op. cit.
51. Interview with H.Evans, op. cit.; The Conveyor, September 1934, p. 2.
52. RCL/Abe Lazarus Collection; MSS 1/4; ‘note on Harris by J. Mahon’; also information from interviews with H. Evans, T. Richards, T. Jones, loc. cit.: On Welsh transatlantic migration to Scranton, Pennsylvania, US, see W D Jones (1993) Wales in America: Scranton and the Welsh 1860-1920. University of Wales Press.
53. Interview with J.Thomas; D.McEvoy, ‘From Firm Foundations: A Study of the Trade Union Recognition Strike at Cowley: July 13 to 28, 1934′, Dissertation for Cert.Ed., Oxford 1972 chapter five, passim.
54. The Conveyor, loc. cit., p. 2.
55. Oxford Times, Daily Worker, 27 July 1934; H. Evans interview, loc. cit.
56. The Conveyor, loc. cit, p. 5.
57. Glee Party Attendance Register; R. Bedwin, Fifty Years of Song; A Brief History of the Welsh Glee Singers,1928-78 (Oxford 1978) p. 10.
58. Daniel, op. cit., (1940) p. 178.
59. The Record, August & September 1934
60. RCL/Abe Lazarus Collection: Oxford Trades Council Minutes, Dec 1934 – March 1936; circular letter to members of the Oxford Local of the Communist Party; J. Thomas interview, loc. cit.
61. ‘Television History Workshop; Making Cars’ (video) (London,1985), pp. 24,33.
62. Interviews with J.Thomas & Arthur Exell, op. cit.
63.  OCL/Howse Collection; The Spark, March 1937.
64.  BL/Butler papers; Barnett House Survey of Trade Unions, 1937; OCL/Howse Collection; list of TGWU shop stewards, 28 April 1938; BL/Butler papers/Box 43;  letter from O. Moeller to Bourdillon, 1937; Howse Collection; memo. from Howse to Moeller, 6 December 1938.
65. Oxford Trade Council Minutes, November-December 1938; interviews with J. Thomas, T. Richards, T. Jones, H. Evans, loc. cit.
66. A. Exell, ‘The Politics of Production Line’, HWJ, 1981.
67. Interview with H.Evans: Interview with Wilcox family, op. cit; see my thesis, chapter five.
68. Butler papers/Box 43; letter to Plummer, 12 July 1937.
69. RCL/ACL/MSS 1/4, ‘A Long Climb Beyond Dreaming Monuments’ n.d.
70. For more information on the leading role of Welsh personalities in the Oxford Labour Movement, see;  Oxford Labour Party Minutes, 31 July & 4 September 1935, 1935-1939; Oxford Times, 3 January 1958; R. Crossman’s introduction to G.Hodgkinson, Sent to Coventry, (1970); Oxford Times, 23 April, 18 June, 24 September 1937, 3 January 1958; Oxford Mail, 25 June 1979; OCL/PAC Minutes, 13 December 1938; Oxford Times, 15 January 1937. The Gazette (Oxford T.U. paper), February 1938.
71. See my thesis, pp. 314-5 (notes 181-2) & p. 208ff.
72. Interview with H. Roberts, Coventry 1982, transcribed; letter to the author from Ifor Williams, 1978
73. CRO/Minutes of Coventry PAC, 6 May 1936; interview with H. Roberts, loc. cit;  on the length of unemployment before migration, see my thesis, chapter five.
74. See my thesis, op. cit., p. 316, and notes 191-2.
75. Interview with Mrs J. Shepherd, Coventry, 1982, transcribed.
76. Interviews with Mrs J. Shepherd, Mary Nicholas & Martha Jones, Coventry 1982; C. Binfield, Pastors and People; The Biography of a Baptist Church; Queens Road, Coventry (Coventry 1984), chapters 11-13.
77. Midland Daily Telegraph, 11 February 1929, 1 September 1937.
78. Interview with Mrs Shepherd, loc. cit; Midland Daily Telegraph, 6 & 11 January, 28 February 1929.
79. Interview with H. Roberts, loc. cit.
80. Midland Daily Telegraph, 27 May 1939.
81. Interview with H. Roberts, loc. cit.
82. CLSL/JEC Report, 1936.
83. NCVO/NCSS local files; letter from Handley to Deedes.
84. Interview with H. Roberts, loc. cit.
85. Baptist Times, 5 April 1956, obituary by Rev. W. Davies.
86. Interviews with Mary Nicholas & Martha Jones, loc. cit.; Binfield, loc.cit., wrote that Queens Road was known as “New South Wales“.
87. Midland Daily Telegraph, 1936; Mrs J. Shepherd, Mary Nicholas & Martha Jones gave information about his sermons, loc. cit; see also Binfield, loc. cit., p.215, re. the ‘How Green Was My Valley’ sermon.
88. CRO/708/Richardson papers; Rev. G.Hastings, ‘Queens Road Baptist Church, Coventry, in the Life of the City, February 1969.
89. Howard Ingli James (1950), Communism and the Christian Faith, pp. 5, 82-3, 172.
90. Interview with H. Roberts, loc. cit.
91. Ibid.; Midland Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1939.
92. Midland Daily Telegraph, 22 January 1929; H. Roberts interview, loc. cit.
93. Coventry AEU Minutes, 24 April 1939.
94. Interview with H. Roberts, loc. cit.; see my thesis, chapters five & seven.
95. J.A. Yates, Pioneers to Power  (Coventry,1950) pp.69-70, 73, 81-83; K. Richardson, Twentieth Century Coventry (1972) pp. 189-207.
96. Midland Daily Telegraph, 2 November 1937; 20 July 1938.
97.  Coventry Evening Telegraph, 2 May 1965; South Wales Daily News, 3 December 1926; Coventry Evening Telegraph’s Who’s Who, 1977. Coventry Who’s Who, 1985.
98. CLSL/Coventry Labour Party, ‘Reaching a Majority; Twenty-One Years of Labour Rule in Coventry’ (1958)
99. PRO/Lab 23/97, BARDA: General statement & Report to Feb. 1936.
100. See my thesis, pp. 298-301.
101.  A.J. Lush’s ‘Report’, op.cit.,p.4.
102. For more on the Welsh personalities in the Birmingham Labour Movement, see my thesis,  p.318 (notes 226-232);   plus N. Tiptaft, My Contemporaries (Birmingham, 1952) p. 40ff.; and see also R.P. Hastings, ‘The Labour Movement in Birmingham’, the University of Birmingham M.A. Thesis (1959) pp. 62-64.
103. Oxford Mail, ‘You can’t stop them singing’, reproduced by the OWGS as a postcard, copy in the choir’s archive, n.d.; used as part of a frontispiece to my thesis (p. ii). See the top of this article.

Related, posted in chandlerozconsultants.com:

What is Christian Socialism? Part Two. February 9, 2017, in “Britain”

‘These Tremendous Years’: A Chronicle of Britain in 1938: Chapter Two: Who Killed the Miner? October 6, 2013, in “Coventry”

Family Life, Labour and Leisure: The Forward March of Women In Britain, 1930-40 (Chapter Five). May 3, 2018 in “Assimilation”

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