democracy.history.heritage

Deference in Dowlais?

Deference in Dowlais? Lady Charlotte Guest and the Chartists | A Public Lecture by Professor Angela V. John | Merthyr Tydfil Central Library, 15 Oct 2008 | Organised by THE MERTHYR CHARTIST FORUM and the Dic Penderyn Society

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Lecture summary | Deference in Dowlais? Lady Charlotte Guest and the Chartists

The following summary is based upon the lecture notes.

In this talk Professor Angela John drew upon the research she undertook on Merthyr Chartism some years ago and her biographical work on Lady Charlotte Guest. She thus brought together History from Below and History from Above in exploring working class radicalism in Dowlais in the 1830s-50s alongside the ideas and actions of the ironmaster’s wife who later ran the vast Dowlais Iron and Coal Company.

Angela John’s major concern was to consider how Lady Charlotte viewed the local Chartist ‘threat’ and how realistic she was in her assessment. In other words, she asked whether Dowlais ‘did’ deference, raising questions about the loyalty of the workforce and how the political temperature at Dowlais may have differed from elsewhere. In considering such questions, she drew on recent work on Chartism by, for example, Malcolm Chase and Joe England but her main source was the diaries of Lady Charlotte Guest, now in the National Library, and available for the public to consult. These voluminous and wonderfully observant diaries are a useful way of seeing how Lady Charlotte’s attitudes shifted over time.

Professor John stressed that Lady Charlotte’s aristocratic background, her romantic spirit and sense of a heroic Welsh past - enhanced by the considerable time she spent translating the medieval Welsh tales she called ‘The Mabinogion’- encouraged her to view popular movements as romantic and exciting. She was less alarmed and alarmist than many of her contemporaries, even though she sometimes imbibed the language of ‘The Times’ newspaper. She also retained an innate belief in the Dowlais workforce. Deference was, to somebody from her background, expected and placed her in a very different position from her husband whose family had been ‘self-made’. Her views were not identical with those of Sir John Guest. He appears to have shifted in the early 1830s to a more radical position than he had taken earlier but then to become tougher in dealing with Chartism and trades unionism. Conversely, Lady Charlotte’s views seem to have become more liberal as the confrontational politics (so evident generally in 1839 and 1842) receded. Influenced in part by her cousin Henry Layard and her own determination to be involved in the works, she sought from the late 1840s to make provision for ‘rational recreation’ and education for the workforce and to help the unemployed. Yet, when confronted by a strike in the works in 1853, she became a tough negotiator yet, ironically, earned the praise of former Chartists, notably William Gould, who stressed how different she was from her fellow employers.

The talk ended with the observation that Lady Charlotte shared something with her workforce: the right to vote. It was also pointed out that, despite her commitment to Dowlais up to the mid-1850s, her second marriage and the development of a highly successful new ‘career’ in collecting ceramics on the continent saw her largely turn her back on Dowlais and Merthyr.

(Posted by - John Wilson)