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Slate strike's scars - 100 years on |
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Unlike the coal-mining areas of South Wales which were expanding throughout the same period, the slate quarrying areas did not attract labour from outside Wales to any great extent, but rather from the surrounding rural areas of north-west Wales.
The result was a network of communities which were overwhelmingly Welsh-speaking, as they largely remain to this day. They were also nonconformist in religion and radical in politics. In those communities, peoples’ scanty spare money – counted in pennies - went to build chapels and to fund communal education, most notably helping establish the University of Wales.
Those values were in stark contrast to those of the quarry owners, who were largely conservative, English-speaking and Anglican. Their plentiful spare money – counted in the millions – went on foreign investments or on personal projects such as the fantasy Penrhyn castle built on the outskirts of Bangor, and now a striking National Trust property.
Lord Penrhyn’s equally lucrative Welsh slate and Caribbean sugar investments led him to nickname his daughters Emma and Juliana, “Sugar” and “Slate”.
Jerusalem Chapel, Bethesda
A memorial was put up here in 2001 to commemorate those who withstood Lord Penrhyn in the "Lock Out" during the strike.
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There were exceptions to the rule, of course. Plenty of quarrymen preferred to spend their money in the pub rather than on chapels, and not all quarry owners were devoid of philanthropic impulses.
But the fault lines between the two parties were as deep as in any geological strata, and they only needed a small disturbance to crack them wide open.
Words: Grahame Davies
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