Author: HanesCymru

I teach history at Swansea University.

Historical research: voyages of discovery

I spent some time today talking to second-year students about the dissertations they will be doing next year. I don’t know about the students but I enjoyed the session. I did, however, sense a degree of apprehension in the audience.

Setting out on a new historical project is always daunting. You worry about whether there will be enough sources, whether they will tell you anything interesting, whether you will be able to understand them at all. You wonder whether anyone will care about what you are doing. For students the apprehension is worse because a dissertation is a new experience.

But there is also the excitement of challenging old ideas, of finding out new things, of being one of a select few to handle an old document. There’s also a sense of exploration and discovery in historical research.

The reality, however, is that most historical research doesn’t discover anything astounding. Historians tend to explain the world, rather than change it. And even the bits they explain tend to be rather small. The value of historical research is in its totality rather than in its individual components.

I don’t want to discourage students from studying big events and important people. There are, after all, plenty of good things that can be done with the careers of kings and queens and the courses of wars and rebellions .  But I also want them to remember that the best dissertations are often very specific studies of things that on the surface might not seem that important.

It’s in studying the ordinary, mundane and the obscure that knowledge can really be extended and challenged. It’s by looking at the events, places, peoples and behaviours that aren’t normally remembered that even student dissertations can be voyages of discovery.

“History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.”

From Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011).

Two voices of reason from football’s past

A letter from a Cardiff City fan to the South Wales Echo (3 Dec. 1927) that the club’s present ownership would do well to think about.

“The true position with the City at the moment has nothing to do with the players but concerns the management, and I’m afraid that unless they consider a little more of the wishes of the supporters they will kill the bird that lays the golden egg.  If the directors would mingle with the crowd, instead of being perched like tin gods in their reserved stands, they would find that what I say is true.”

A letter to the South Wales Echo (23 Feb. 1922) that the owners of all clubs would do well to think about.

“If the City is to maintain the good feeling of its supporters, it would be wise to give all classes an opportunity to see the match, because, after all, the working man is the backbone and stay of the club. It is a pity that the directors should confuse and misconstrue sport for greed, and remember the story of the magical goose.  If the directors cater only for the rich they will find that class deserting them in times of trouble.”

The first major trophy?

There is currently some criticism of the fact that both the media and Swansea fans are calling the League Cup Swansea’s first major trophy. This is being taken as an insult to the Welsh Cup, a trophy Swansea first won in 1913. However, as this extract from my book Soccer & Society: South Wales 1900-39 argues, between the wars the Welsh Cup was simply not regarded as an important competition by the football community in south Wales.

 

Despite its national consciousness and patriotic celebrations, inter-war soccer in south Wales was essentially bound to the wider English club scene and it paid little regard to all-Wales competitions such as the Welsh Cup and League.  Before 1914, the emerging soccer fraternity in the south had seen the Welsh Cup as an important route to establishing its credentials but, after the war, with local teams now playing in the higher standard and more prestigious Football League, the competition lost its appeal.  Cardiff City et al. rarely fielded their first teams in the cup and even the date of the final was often fitted around southern clubs’ league fixtures.  Matches were generally not well attended and the local press rarely made any effort to hype the games.  The venue of the 1920 Welsh Cup final was moved from Cardiff to Wrexham because it was felt that the latter town’s team would not attract a large crowd in the south where crowds were used to watching the higher standard Southern League soccer.  For the clubs from the south, becoming champions of Wales held no appeal compared with the possibility of success on the English stage that the Football League and FA Cup offered; prestige was about recognition from outside Wales, not from the politically, culturally and economically distant north.

In contrast, clubs from the north were eager to use the Welsh Cup to proclaim their equality and there was a sense of regret about the south’s apathetic attitude.  This attitude may have been different had north Wales possessed enough clubs of a sufficient standard to challenge consistently for the trophy.  However, between 1920 and 1939, the trophy was only won five times by teams from the north.  In the hope of raising the competition’s status, the FAW invited English clubs to enter in the 1930s.  Yet that failed to raise interest in the south.  The English teams that entered were mostly small clubs from the counties that bordered north and mid Wales and meant little to the inhabitants of south Wales.  The only result was embarrassment for the FAW as the trophy left Wales on seven occasions during the 1930s.  The FAW appealed for stronger efforts to bring the cup back to Wales but the calls fell on deaf ears amongst south Wales clubs whose eyes were focused on the more prestigious English competitions.

Victorian toilets

There’s a set of Victorian underground public toilets in the middle of Cardiff. They can be a bit smelly and you probably wouldn’t want to linger in there too long.  But the steep stairs, posh antique ceramics and faint aroma mean there are very few places in Britain with such character to relieve yourself.

Picture reproduced from http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/52545766/ under the Creative Commons licence (non-commercial use).

The local authority plans to close it down. They’ve got no cash and don’t want to raise council tax. It’s a thankless task running a council – whatever choices you make, there’s someone who will object.  And while I don’t have any suggestions for other ways to save the £92,000 the Victorian ‘public conveniences’ in the Hayes apparently costs a year, closing them just isn’t a good idea.

I don’t say this as a historian who objects to the destruction of all historic monuments. Not everything needs preserving. Sometimes you have to move on. The Victorians understood that. They believed in progress.  But this isn’t about progress. The toilets are not going to be replaced with anything, modern or otherwise.

The Victorians also believed in civic pride and building public infrastructure like these toilets was not just about providing facilities; it was about building a community to be proud of.

Modern cities aren’t always big on character. Central shopping areas rather lack in the eccentric or anything much which makes them different from their commercial rivals. However, the Hayes toilets are part of what makes Cardiff memorable. They are much as a part of its city centre as the castle and the statue of Nye Bevan. For visitors they’re something to remember and for locals they’re something to cherish and be proud of.  Few other cities can boast facilities that make people remember taking a pee.

Cardiff is increasingly marketing itself as a distinctive city. It’s been quite successful as a venue for weekends away. Of course, the visitors are tempted by sport, shopping, drinking and Dr Who, not the prospect of a visit to a Victorian toilet. But still, closing one of the things that makes the city distinctive seems shortsighted.

So much of the character of Cardiff was built by Victorians proud of where they lived. They created a modern city.  The city’s council has done much in the last 30 years to build on and take forward that Victorian civic pride. Cardiff has reinvented itself into a modern city but what has enabled that reinvention to be successful is the way it has utilised the city’s past to make the Welsh capital distinctive.

The Hayes toilets are part of the city’s heritage.  They are not being closed in the name of progress but in the name of saving money. Yet sometimes heritage has an immeasurable economic value in itself, even when it sometimes smells a bit.

You can sign the petition to save the Hayes toilets here: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/cardiff-council-to-save-the-hayes-victorian-toilets

There are some photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/roath_park_mark/sets/72057594052332359/

Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!

 

1950-lion-witch-wardrobe“The White Witch? Who is she?”

“Why, it is she that has got all  Narnia under her thumb. It’s   she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”

CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950).

 

Kenneth Williams on the Rhondda & Afan valleys (1950)

Monday, 4 September 1950

Went with Glyn by car all over the Rhondda and Afan Valleys. Mist shrouded everything – purple heather, black slag heaps, disused pits, grim wet stone houses, uniform rows of drab streets. Occasional water-falls cascading with pure music down the mountainsides. Rain dripping steadily off of leaves bent with the pain of it. A brooding sadness.

 From the brilliant but tragic, Russell Davies (ed.), The Kenneth Williams Diaries (London: HarperCollins, 1994).

Christmas in Wales 1900

The Victorians reinvented the idea of Christmas. Although they were drawing upon and reinvigorating older traditions of festivity and generosity, by the late nineteenth century Christmas had become a celebration focused on home and family and its now-familiar trappings – cards, trees, turkey, and Father Christmas – were all well established. Indeed, sending Christmas cards was so popular by 1900 that there were repeated deliveries of mail by hardworking postal staff in Cardiff throughout Christmas Day.

Taking note of the moral of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol (1843), the Victorians were determined to make merry. This was as true of Wales as of England.  Although the Boer War, the price of coal and wet weather were all causing concern, the Western Mail felt able to proclaim that Christmas 1900 would be as ‘if one great wave of joy were sweeping over the face of the land, invigorating our emotions, tickling us into smiles, making our limbs dance and our whole being thrill in an epidemic of gladness.’

Central to such joy was the establishment of Christmas as a time for family.  This was not always straightforward.  The migration of men to the coalfields of south Wales and girls to towns for domestic service and shopwork meant that families were not always living in the same place.  Christmas was thus a time for reuniting families, something helped by the provision of a fairly comprehensive rail service on Christmas Day itself.  There were, however, complaints that limited Christmas services to rural west Wales were preventing some young men and women from returning home for the festivities.

At the heart of family gatherings was Christmas lunch.  Roasted turkey, goose or beef, accompanied by vegetables and followed by plum pudding had become the expected Christmas meal but this was beyond the means of all.  There were even claims in London that some Welsh people ate mutton at Christmas but pretended it was beef and supplemented it with roasted blackbird.  This was angrily denied by the Western Mail but poverty was very real.  State pensions were nine years away and some old people relied on local donations of Christmas food.  Many poor children’s only proper festive meal came courtesy of a charitable dinner at their school on Christmas Day itself.

That local dignitaries and churches funded such events was clear evidence that the religious and charitable ethos of Christmas was strong.  Llandaff Cathedral held Christmas services at 7am, 10am, 11am and midday. Churches were adorned with greenery for the day but chapels were more puritan.  Not only were they not decorated, some did not even hold Christmas Day services.

It was not just religious bodies that held public appeals for the poor and ill.  In Swansea, for example, the Cambrian newspaper organized the distribution of 2,000 toys to children in charitable institutions in the town. Even the inmates of the workhouses were given special dinners courtesy of the Poor Law Guardians and other donors.  In Cardiff, this consisted of roast beef, plum pudding and a pint of beer for the men and half a pint for the women.  There were, however, limits to Christmas charity.  In Denbigh, there were Christmas complaints that poor relief had been given to people brought up like hooligans and who lived liked fighting cocks.

Christmas had also begun to develop its commercial overtones thanks to the growing tradition of gift giving. Shops were brightly decorated and busy advertising presents for children and adults.  To increase sales after Christmas advertisements began to talk of New Year’s gifts.  The most common presents were fancy goods and toys, clothes and bedding, and food and drink.  But for the better off there was photographic equipment, bronze work, cutlery and clocks.  A store in Swansea was even advertising ‘Useful and Artistic Furniture suitable for Christmas presents’.

Christmas Day was also a time for entertainment and people traveled to towns to take part.  Most shops were shut and the pubs had short hours but eisteddfodau were held across Wales and senior football and rugby matches were played.

In theatres and music halls, there were few performances on Christmas Day itself but Boxing Day in Cardiff held plenty of treats from Aladdin at the Theatre Royal (which promised ‘pretty music, pretty dresses, pretty dances, pretty songs, and pretty girls’) to the Dowlais Male Voice Party at the Park Hall. At the Philharmonic Hall on St Mary Street, there was a pantomime called ‘The Christmas Dream’.  An advertisement described it as an elaborate production in twenty scenes portraying a Christmas of ‘Ye Goode Olden Tymes’. If that was not enough, the theatre also had roller-skating and a waxwork exhibition.

There was less cheer in the Rhondda where local magistrates rejected an application for the pubs to stay open to 11.45pm rather than 11pm on Christmas Eve.  In the same area, a 73-year-old partially-crippled peddler was arrested on Christmas morning after his wife was discovered having been beaten to death.  They had apparently argued over his drinking.  In Cardiff, however, police and magistrates reported a quiet and sober Christmas week, with not a single case of cutting and wounding or violent assault.  Yet the fact that this was a matter for comment at all shows the danger of imagining that all Christmases past were simply a matter of peace and goodwill to all men.

I Am The Secret Footballer review

I Am The Secret Footballer: Lifting the Lid on the Beautiful Game (2012)

This is both a gripping and a deeply frustrating book.

In terms of its aim of lifting the lid on the hidden world of football it’s very good and better probably than every Premier League autobiography. It’s far most honest and open than is the case with almost everything else written from within football. There’s much here on the shenanigans, the money, the mindset of players, their relationships with people outside football and about the playing of the game itself. Every fan will learn something from it.

But, in terms of trying to understand the secret footballer himself, the book is deeply frustrating. It’s not so much the fact that he’s anonymous but that so much of the detail is left out.

He talks a lot about money and about figures but at the same time is vague enough that you don’t really understand whether he’s very rich from his investments or broke from his tax bill (or both). Understanding the trajectory and nature of his career is impossible because he, understandably, doesn’t give too much away in order to protect his anonymity. This means understanding quite where he’s coming from is very difficult, as is understanding why he suffers from depression.

Indeed, building up some sympathy for the writer is almost impossible. He comes over as rather arrogant but I guess that’s inevitable with any highly-paid, high-profile elite athlete. He seems to see himself as both an insider and an outsider within football culture but how that affects his relationship with his teammates is never as explicit as it might have been. His wife is virtually absent from the book, despite the talk about the impact of home life on performances. You get the sense that while he might not want fans to know who he is, his identity within the game isn’t a secret. For all the discussion of his wages and his depression, he’s holding back.

This is shame because there was the potential here for the best book ever written about football. The writer is clearly intelligent, reflective and insightful. He could have written a very open autobiography that told us about his personality, his life, his career and the game itself. That was never going to happen though because he’s still playing and wants to stay in the game.

What he’s given us is very good but it leaves the reader with as many questions as answers. He’s just had to leave too much out in order to protect his identity and, presumably, his reputation within the game.

Mountains, Welsh Culture and a bit of Science Fiction

I recently finished a 1977 novel called Survivors: Genesis of a Hero. It’s a tale of Britain a few years after a catastrophe that has wiped out of most of the human race. A violent and oppressive government has sprung up to govern what’s left of England.

Wales, however, holds out against this new militaristic regime.  Communities there realize that the English revolution is based on using the guns, food and technology of a civilization that is now over. Instead, they try and build a (Welsh-speaking) society that is not only fairer but more sustainable and self-sufficient. What enables them to do that, and hold off the advances of the English revolution, is retreating to the mountains and fighting a guerrilla war. It’s a military tactic that was familiar to medieval Welsh princes.

The geography of Wales has shaped its history.  Indeed, the opening line of Owen M. Edwards’ influential 1901 history of the nation was ‘Wales is a land of mountains’. The mountains divided north and south, undermining a sense of national unity. But they also kept out not only invaders but migrants too. Only slowly did tourists, industrialists and railways open up north Wales to Anglicizing influences. Mountains were key to why Wales survived into the modern world.

But modern technology and wealth undermined that, as people by the 1950s were only too aware.  In 1961, the nationalist writer Iswlyn Ffowc Elis complained (in Welsh):

Wales is no longer a haven beyond the mountains, but an open playground for hordes of motorists and cyclists and hikers, and an experimental field for the Government’s technology.  The teeth of her defensive mountains have been drawn, her valleys drowned by the English, and the innards of her rural society ripped out.  She now stands naked before the world.

Ironically, mountains are now seen as important to the future of Wales precisely because they bring in the spending power of tourists.

That’s surely a good thing. Wanting to close our border and deny outside influences can only harm Wales, both economically and culturally. Welsh identity survived in the post-war period because it embraced the modern world rather than rejected it. Once ‘the teeth of the defensive mountains’ were drawn, Wales reinvented itself as nation built on the present rather than the past.  Thus while a few opposed the building of the Severn Bridge in the 1960s because it would open Wales up to the world, far more embraced it for exactly the same reason.  Wales was a redefined from a land of hymns and pubs that were shut on a Sunday to one of pop music and personal freedom.

In Survivors the new Welsh society is welcoming of refugees from oppression in England. Those refugees have to agree to live by the ways of the new society but it’s also recognized that the incomers can bring new ideas and news ways of doing things. The best way to protect a culture is to ensure it does not stand still.

Survivors: Genesis of a Hero is out of print but there are pirated pdfs online.  There’s a review of the book here.