Welsh Journals

Miners' Cinemas in South Wales in the 1920's and 1930's Bert Hogenkamp 'Then there were commercial, public cinemas run by the miners in some mining villages. These were among our best customers.1 Ivor Montagu, leader of the Progressive Film Institute in the 1930's 'we made a lot of money for a while, the cinema was in its heyday you know. So the cinema dominated, but all the time the money from that, from my gang's point of view, our chaps, was for the library, and it merely replaced the miners' contribution. 2 Archie Lush, Committee member of the Tredegar Workmen's Institute in the 1930's 'We make our way to the cinema at the end of our street. It is called "The Laugh and the Scratch", or simply "The Dog" from the way people have of itching after a few minutes inside it.3 Gwyn Thomas in A Frost on my Frolic (1953) Over the last decade a score of important studies on the unique political culture of the South Wales coalfields in the 1920's and 1930's has emerged4. All these have acknowledged the central part played by the Workmen's Halls or Miners' Institutes in the life of the mining communities. In their rich libraries miners could find the books and newspapers they needed for self-education. In their rooms or lesser halls the National Council of Labour Colleges could present a wide-ranging programme of evening classes. But these bastions of working-class education also offered recreational facilities like billiards, stage or cinema shows, in other words entertainment. This seems difficult to reconcile with the aura of education surrounding the Halls and Institutes. But did these notions exclude each other? Were film shows simply held to pay for the library, as Archie Lush claims? In the following article I would like to examine the cinema activities of the Workmen's Halls and Miners' Institutes in South Wales, particularly those in Mardy and Tredegar. In doing so, it is necessary to add another category, politics, to those of entertainment and education. In the 1930's the Labour movement made efforts to avail itself of the cinema as a means of propaganda, either by producing its own films or by making available progressive or left pictures which furthered the cause of Labour. Ivor Montagu's Progressive Film Institute (PFI) played an important part in the production and/or distribution of such films. Recent research has shed light on the national history of left film organisations in Great Britain5. This allows a revaluation of the cinema activities of the Workmen's Halls and Miners' Institutes in South Wales.