ABSTRACT
For over eighteen months prior to the outbreak at the mid-Rhondda collieries of the Cambrian Colliery Combine, a severe contest for supremacy had been waged between the younger and the older leaders of the South Wales Miners’ Federation. The scale of events that night in Tonypandy was certainly much less formidable than what had been taking place up the valley. The summing up of that disturbance, which took place by the bridge end in Tonypandy may be given in an account of casualties. There in the Westminster Palace Hotel just opposite the Wren-restored end of Westminster Abbey there was a conference of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. There had been a dissolution of parliament, a general election which lasted from January 14th to February 9th, followed for many days by all the time-honoured and time-consuming ceremonies to inaugurate the Twenty-ninth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
