Welsh Journals

FROM GRAND SLAM TO GREAT SLUMP: ECONOMY, SOCIETY AND RUGBY FOOTBALL IN WALES DURING THE DEPRESSION* 'WHATEVER indicator we turn to the 1880s and the quarter century that followed them appear as a watershed." Those words, written a propos the modernising process that turned peasants into Frenchmen between 1870 and 1914, are equally applicable to the history of modern Wales. Dr. Kenneth O. Morgan's widely-acclaimed volume in the Oxford History of Wales takes 1880 as the year from which 'the rebirth of a nation' can be traced. Dr. Morgan convinc- ingly reaffirms-his indicators being political self-confidence, massive industrial and urban growth, and cultural vitality-that the years from 1880 to 1914 in the history of Wales have a unity of their own. Within that period, it is the Edwardian era from 1905 to 1914 that, with a Gibbonian flourish, he portrays as 'Wales's Antonine Age when economic prosperity, national awareness and political creativity were most effectively deployed'.2 As a further indicator of this 'buoyant national confidence', Dr. Morgan does not hesitate to invoke the famous victory registered by the Welsh rugby team, captained by Gwyn Nicholls, over the (otherwise) all-conquering New Zealand All Blacks at the Cardiff Arms Park on 16 December 1905, their only defeat in thirty-two games played the length and breadth of Britain. This epic victory was recorded within a mere ten days of Lloyd George becoming the first Welshman to attain high office since the reign of Charles II, when he was appointed President of the Board of Trade in Campbell-Bannerman's Liberal cabinet. Only two months before that-albeit a cheap vote-catching device in intention-Cardiff, the funnel of the greatest coal export region in the world, had been formally granted city status by letters patent of the great seal. The rebirth of the Welsh nation had been signed by Lloyd George, sealed by the king of England, and delivered by Gwyn Nicholls. Rightly dismissive of the highly dubious Darwinian and biological arguments that were drummed up in pseudo-intellectual confirmation of that victory, Dr. Morgan is surely to be complimented on his This article is the revised text of a lecture originally given at a Llafur/Wales T.U.C./W.E.A. History Weekend Conference at the Polytechnic of Wales, Treforest, m April 1981. The conference theme was 'Wales out of Work'. 1 Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: the modernization of rural France, 1870-1914 (London, 1977), p. 40.1981). 1 Kenneth O. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880-1980 (Oxford and Cardiff, 1981).