ABSTRACT
Phases of expansion alternated with ones of contraction, and it has been remarked that iron was a ‘boom and slump industry par excellence’. The great strikes of 1816, 1822 and 1830 were followed by the Merthyr Rising of 1831, which metamorphosed from strike into riot and, briefly, into open rebellion. The early combinations were societies of fixed and limited membership, committed to the promotion of working-class causes. In the 1820s and 1830s conditions on the coalfield were still inimical to the development of a third sort of combination, the trade union, committed to the provision of strike benefits and therefore able to initiate and direct strikes. An attempt to establish such unions was made in mid-1831, when branches of the Friendly Society of Coal-Mining, affiliated to the National Association for the Protection of Labour, sprang up over the coalfield. The nineteenth century opened in south Wales with riots which spread from Merthyr to many other parts of the coalfield.
