BLOG # 6

What do you see ? Caps. Men with Caps ; Dia Caps, as they are known in South Wales.

Miners on strike. Not a space between them. Close. You may see it as close claustrophobic or your may see it as close solidarity. Maybe a rather apt description for the way these men live and the way they work. So close.

All men, no women. Another indicator of the divisions of this place. Just as the working man knows his place so the women know, and it’s not here in Dunravan Street, Tonapandy in 1910.

Caps and all the men. Caught in a moment by the camera of Levi Lad of Tonapandy. Here in an elevated position, was it a platform for a speaker denouncing the bosses, the owners of the Cambrian Combine ? Or just a suitable elevation ? Interestingly all appear to be looking at the camera, what’s happened ? Say cheese !

Let’s hold that thought and get back to the caps. Just look everyone has one , too many men to count as they fade and diminish in the distance. A crowd, a mass.

Three exceptions, each with a bowler hat. A social distance ?

The caps, for protection, South Wales rain can be persistent, seeping off the unprotected head and dripping unpleasantly down the back. The cap can be seen as a shield, a shelter against the unpredictable weather.

But, I suspect the cap wearing has as a more symbolic meaning, a meaning in a more unconscious manner. The cap acts as a symbol, not a symbol of style or fashion, though that I’m sure is important, rather it acts as an indicator of division, of class.

The ubiquitous moustaches also say something about the men’s fashion sense.

It is clear that the men’s perception of self, as bound together with others, in this case by caps, is a significant asset in class solidarity. A togetherness that allows the coal miners of Tonnapandy to strike for over a year in pursuit of their demands.

Interestingly this may be a perspective that is more advantageous to the properties class who seem so absent here . For them the caps so visually, and so easily, identify those others, not of us. Them. A simple piece of clothing that defines who you are, of the working class and forever so.

The caps would appear to reinforce the class divide, giving material form and a psychology, a deep set psychology, a sense of continuity. A sense of. . . this is how it is, and how it will always be. . . A pattern of permanence.

Gramsci, that fortune teller of capitalism, called this situation hegemony. Not an easy word, an ugly word. Let’s use instead a cultural predominance. A powerful kind of domination. A domination comprising not of a law, a court , a rifle or a baton. It is not even spoken about. A form of domination and consciousness within us all. Buried in the culture. A cap and everyone carries it.

These two forms of subordination are contrasted in two novels. George Orwell’s 1984 looks to a serious form of oppression. Visibly felt and calculating, with an obvious and strong form of hierarchy. The power is visible and clear. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World we see not an apparent force, rather patterns of rule that have been laid down by a culture of normalcy. A culture of the everyday blindness to the reality of domination.

Perhaps even this descriptions misses the point, it’s a culture of unquestioning.

Within us all. Unconscious.

Except when a distinct class consciousness breaks out.

This happened in 1910 in Tonapandy, so visible in the photograph. A vital and significant moment in the history of the South Wales Coalfield. There were almost 12,000 miners employed by the Cambrian Combine around Tonapandy. Out on strike on November 1st. 1910, in solidarity over a dispute about wages and working conditions. Within a week this human tsunami became a force that defeated the local Constabulary and became the Tonapandy Rioters. This moment is momentous.

Perhaps at this moment the strikers took off their caps, threw them in the air, en masse, in unison, and the spell was broken.

The photograph was taken in 1910 by Levi Lad, a well-known photographer in Tonypandy. It is held in a collection of the University of South Wales, along with many more of his photographs.