ABSTRACT
There were particular tensions associated with the new societies and the industrial towns, but often, the disorder must be seen in the context of much older radical traditions. The chapter describes the long influence of radical puritanism around Hay and the Upper Wye country. For a parallel in industrial Wales, a place that authorities had associated with riot and dissent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This hostility would also be evident from the history of the trade union movement. The employers had a clear group self-interest in opposing unionisation, but we frequently find hostility to mass labour movements in Liberal and 'Radical' sections of Welsh opinion, and from sections of nonconformity. This was Henry Richard, a leader in the radical Welsh strain of nonconformist liberalism that would soon sweep the country. The town chose Keir Hardie from the newly formed Labour Party. Merthyr was one of the only constituencies to have an independent foreign policy.
