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THE SOUTH WALES RACE RIOTS OF 1919 NEIL EVANS Coleg Harlech THE NINETEENTH CENTURY growth of the south-east Wales ports of Cardiff, Newport and Barry was founded upon the coal trade. Cardiff-the major port-became famous for the coal it exported-so famous that in the late nineteenth century, a story went round the town that a visitor from the north-east of England had said that the old saying about carrying coals to Newcastle would have to be amended in Cardiff's favour.1 Local pride was based on hard economic fact. By the turn of the century Cardiff exported more coal than any other port in the world; was second only to London in the total tonnage of cargo it cleared in Britain and the largest tramp shipping port in Britain.2 Its explosive growth was the direct result of the phenomenal expansion of the south Wales coalfield after 1850, and Cardiff's fortunes remained closely tied to those of the coalfield. John Cory, the pioneer of Cardiff's bunkering trade, came to symbolize its growth and conventional Liberalism. The decline of the coalfield in the interwar period eroded the optimism of Cardiff's bourgeoisie and the relentless city-boosting which had been one of its major characteristics. Twentieth century Cardiff has attracted the attention of the outside world because of the multi-racial community that gathered around its docks. Journalists in search of exotic copy and photogenic "quaintness" were followed by social anthropologists, film-makers and (at a respectful distance) historians. 3 At the point of transition between these two images of Cardiff, the Cardiff of 'King Coal' and the Cardiff of ethnic mixture, the Cardiff of John Cory and the Cardiff of Shirley Bassey, was one of the most vicious outbreaks of racial violence that has yet occurred in Britain. Well remembered for a generation afterwards and playing a major role in defining the social relationships between the black and white communities in Cardiff, it is now being distorted or forgotten. The fading memories of participants are supplemented by the original errors of historians.4 More gross is the error of the South Wales Police in their view of the past. In 1972, in a sudden rush of enthusiasm for the lessons of history, the Select Committee on Race and Immigration visited Cardiff to hear the experiences of a long-established multi-racial community. In the glare of this spot- light of publicity the Cardiff Police offered the following observation: "There is no record of any serious disturbance involving the indigenous and immigrant population".5 This is in fact an expression of a local myth of which further examples could be given. Of course, it depends on one's definition of seriousness, but the tension and conflict of those hot June days of 1919 left three men dead, dozens injured, caused damage to property which cost the City Council over three thousand pounds to repair, and most important it left a scar on the race relations of the city which took more than a generation to heal. It is the contention of this article that the disturbances must be understood as a symptom of Cardiff's social and economic transition t6 the post war world, and that they must be understood in their full context if we are to make any realistic appraisal of the dynamics of race relations in British society. Comfortable myths of harmonious race