‘Like all Celts they are Socialists by instinct’. So wrote Keir Hardie of the Welsh in the Labour Leader during the six-months coal strike (or perhaps lock-out) in the South Wales valleys in 1898. His view has perhaps been confirmed by the dominance of the Labour Party in Wales throughout the twentieth century since the end of the first world war. Even today it is the one part of Britain where Labour is in power. But Wales was a slow developer. Until the mid-1880s it was only a limited convert to the call of class solidarity promoted by labour and socialist evangelists even in the southern coalfield. To early propagandists like Bruce Glasier it was ‘an unknown land’, remote, marooned in its mountains, cut off from the rest of the country by the prevalence of its unintelligible native language. In Cardiff, Sam Hobson of the ILP felt himself to be ‘an outsider’. The Welsh themselves, dominated by chapel-going Liberalism, were slow to respond to the new socialism. There seemed no accessible Welsh word for it. Sosialaeth sounded totally alien. The more natural Cymdeithasiaeth was seldom used. And then, in a series of dramatic changes in social culture between the mid-1880s and the first world war, a massive transformation occurred. By 1914 radical patriots could speak confidently of uniting ‘the red dragon and the red flag’. It is this transformation that forms the theme of Martin Wright's fascinating monograph, the work of an Englishman who has learnt Welsh and chairs Llafur, the social history society. It is the latest in the excellent, long-running series ‘Studies in Welsh History’ published by the University of Wales Press. (The present reviewer should declare an interest as one of the founding editors, many moons ago).

As elsewhere in Britain, the socialist invasion took many forms. The Marxist Social Democratic Federation, wedded to class-war ideas, the most hostile to Welsh particularism, was the least successful. On a more philosophical note, Fabians struck roots in Cardiff and even amongst students and staff in the university colleges of Bangor and Aberystwyth deep in Le Pays de Galles profond. But the most successful socialists were the Independent Labour Party (ILP) whose commitment to local democracy, community and an ethical appeal made an impact amongst the nonconformist chapels. They made important converts in Welsh-speaking areas, such as the admirable Ebenezer Rees from Ystalyfera who founded Llais Llafur (voice of labour) the first Welsh-language newspaper, and also launched the Marquand dynasty. The great coal stoppage of 1898 added hugely to the ILP's appeal as did, even more, the presence of the mighty Keir Hardie, elected MP for Merthyr Tydfil in 1900 where his basically Christian appeal on behalf of the idea of ethical socialism had enormous impact.

In the early twentieth century, the influence of socialists grew steadily, mostly in south Wales as in local government (a theme of which the author might have said much more) But they also pioneered new ground in the rural North and mid-Wales, especially after the brutality with which the long strike of the Penrhyn slate-quarrymen of Bethesda, were suppressed by police and the military, made a nationwide impact. Converts came in from the chapels and sympathetic ministers stirred by the ‘new theology’ while women in Wales became politicised for the first time. New ideological links were created between the essentially agrarian radicalism of the Liberal nonconformist hinterland and the class doctrines of the socialists. ‘Who was their Saviour but a Labour man?’ asked one. The traditional ideal of y werin, essentially the common people of the countryside, was effectively applied to industrial and urban communities too. Long before 1914, Wales was a crucible pot for socialist doctrines and policies, the nation of Taff and Tonypandy, the cradle of a new culture of protest.

Martin Wright has many interesting things to say about how and why this happened. He is full of fascinating detail on the growth of socialist groups in local communities from Anglesey to Newport. A particular novelty is his material on the little-known progress of the cause in Welsh-speaking areas in the north and west, and the particular contributions of pioneers like the land nationalizer the Revd. Evan Pan Jones, the Mancunian Welsh author R.J. Derfel, the cultural nationalist David Thomas, and the minister-bard and unlicensed dentist, Revd. T.E. Nicholas, ‘Niclas y Glais’ whom I knew myself. Even such unlikely titles as ‘Merrie England’ and the song ‘England Arise’ were useful in the conversion process. Wright explores efforts to fuse their ideas with the national culture, in literature and music and the folk world of the eisteddfod. In 1909 the Mountain Ash ILP held an eisteddfod where the prize-winning strict-metre verse celebrated the life of Keir Hardie. The wider process of harmonising a socialist culture with Welsh traditions, history and sense of national identity is valuably explored.

There are, however, gaps, perhaps inevitably so. This is mainly a study of socio-political, not of industrial, socialism. Little is said of the violent conflicts in the valleys in the period 1910–14. Astonishingly syndicalism, The Miners Step, Noah Ablett's Unofficial Reform Committee and the Central Labour College are crammed into just one breathless sentence on page 206. This makes the analysis strangely truncated. The sociological impact of religion surprisingly neglects the religious revival, which had such a profound moral impact on young idealists like A.J. Cook, Arthur Horner, Ness Edwards and Jim Griffiths. The complex links with Liberalism, intelligently discussed, could add crucial themes such as the labour inclinations of Cymru Fydd (Young Wales) nationalists like Tom Ellis and D.R. Daniel, while the challenge and contrasts with Lloyd George's brand of collectivising radicalism in government are also important. While the links with wider English and Scottish socialism are well explored, contacts beyond the shores of Britain should be mentioned – the radicalising effect of the South African War, the Socialist International, and, more sinister, the prone-ness of Welsh socialists to lapse into nationalist jingoism on the eve of war in 1914. The last showed itself alarmingly in the by-election in Merthyr on Hardie's death in 1915, a tragic legacy for Labour's Grand Old Man.

This book, however, is a most valuable addition to the study of the early socialist movement with implications far beyond Wales. It explores the intellectual and cultural relationships between a worldwide creed of social liberation and local traditions of national and linguistic identity, socialism not as bureaucratic centralism but as a tolerant pluralism. It tells one much of Labour's travails today. It also contrasts the noble and humane traditions of Wales’ earlier socialist past with the introspective people taking solace in the racist appeal of UKIP today.