Magazine article about Winston Churchill and Tonypandy, 15 March 1984

Description

This photocopied article from BBC's The Listener magazine was written by Patrick Hannan MBE, a well-known Welsh journalist and presenter. Hannan writes about the wrangling over the legacy of Winston Churchill's involvement, as Home Secretary, in the 1910 Tonypandy riots. As the article notes, it is unclear why Tonypandy, where one man was killed and no shots were fired, became permanently associated with Churchill and the excessive use of force by the government against rioters.

The small and relatively short-lived Tonypandy Hebrew Congregation was established in the 1890s and disappeared in the 1930s. The congregation was never big enough to warrant a purpose-built synagogue and it worshipped instead at rented houses in several different locations. At its heyday in the 1920s, the congregation had around 180 members.

Sources:
'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones (http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);
JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/community/val2_tonypandy/index.htm).

Depository: Glamorgan Archives.