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The Chartists
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Contacts :-
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Radio Times Article June 1981 To be posted shortly, when the Beeb approve the use of! (But they are DREADFULLY SLOW in replying to my request for permission!). So, after a year of waiting here's the article. I never did get a reply; if they ask I'll remove the following content!
Folk Charter
The feelings of the 5,000 militant colliers as they marched on Newport on a fateful day in November 1839 are echoed in their descendants' more than a century on, stirred by the words and music of a folk group bonded together unexpectedly by what they have created. Wynford Jones was awakened to the fervour of the day through reading local history. As he travelled on the bus through Tredegar in Gwent, near his home, his mind's eye saw the men marching down to Newport, ' I was really moved and thought it would be good to write something,' he recalled. ' I never realised for one moment what would happen.' The Chartist movement followed the creation of the People's Charter in May 1838. It was the outline of an Act of Parliament drawn up by the committee of the London Workingmen's Association and six MPs embracing six points of radical reform; universal (male) suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by ballot, equal electoral districts, payment of MPs and abolition of property qualifications for MPs. In South Wales the
movement seemed to mean almost everything to every workingman and when Parliament rejected the Chartist
National Petition by 235 votes to 46 in July of 1839, the militant side
of the movement came to
the fore. In September plans were made for a national rising, but something went very wrong and there was only token support for the men of South Wales. But no one could halt the demonstration of the angry colliers and foundry men.
Three
columns met outside Newport, but as
they marched to the Westgate Hotel
the-soldiers were waiting for them. Many
of the marchers were killed; many more lay
injured. The leaders, John Frost, Zephaniah
Williams
and William
Jones, were arrested, then
tried for high treason and
sentenced to death, although,
after public outcry, the sentence was altered
and they were transported. Wynford
took
his idea
to a friend,
Geoff Cripps, organiser of the Islwyn
Folk Club, at the Ynysddu Hotel near
Newport. Geoff, the operator of a mobile bookshop for the Welsh Arts Council,
had lectured on the Chartists for the Welsh Education Association and he seized
on it with enthusiasm. In
came other singers from the folk club Geri Thomas, a special
education teacher; Remo Lusardi, a cafe proprietor: Russell Jones; and
John Mann, a
fireman, later
replaced by Laurence Eddy.
They worked on the idea as a
project for the folk club for a
special performance near the
anniversary of the rising in 1979 with an invitation to the public, and local MP
Neil Kinnock. Wynford
wrote five songs, Geri wrote another,
and a poem by Chartist leader
Ernest Jones was set to
music. The performance was linked
together with narrative to
convey the
colour, the excitement, the
optimism of the
men as they marched.
Then came the big night. People just went bananas over it. Neil Kinnock
raved about the performance and we just felt stunned, said
Geri. 'I think we knew then we weren't going to finish with it.' They
call themselves The Chartists and dress up to look authentic; although
their intention is not to act
the characters, the mood tends to
take them over. This summer they will be appearing at several folk festivals in
the area and their ambition is to bring out
a record of
their performance. The
live act, with
beautiful, haunting
melodies and strong, rousing
songs provided by a variety of
instruments - guitars of all kinds,
concertinas, whistles, mandolins, autoharp, synthesizer, glockenspiel -
has lost none of its spontaneity and bonds
the men involved with an unseen link. Like the Chartist movement itself, the act they have created means different things to each one, or all things to all of them. To Wynford and Geoff it's the history; to Russell, Lawrence and Remo it's the music and the aura; and to Geri it's political and ancestral because, as he will proudly tell you, on 4 November 1839, his great-great grandfather, Isaac Thomas, lay wounded in the Westgate Hotel after marching down the valley; with his fellow Chartists.
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