Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  Still, whatever he was or had been, the nigger played Hamlet with him that very night. Before they went into the ring Billy Samuels had both the men, one on his right and the other on his left, on the raised platform outside the booth, where he exhibited them under the gory, glazed, crudely painted ring-fight scenes with which the front of the booth was covered.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Billy Samuels was saying as Saran’s eldest boy, who was nursing Saran’s youngest of seven capably, hurried towards the crowd gathered before the booth. ‘Tonight I am proud to be able to inform you that I have managed to arrange a six-round boxing contest for a purse of ten pounds, with side-stakes of ten pound a side, between the redoubtable Joe Wills, better known as the black panther of Patagonia, and one of the best and gamest lads this town has ever bred, Harry…’ (cheers for the local lad cut him off) ‘… and I myself have consented to take charge of this important contest, so you can rely on everything being carried on in a sportsmanlike manner. In this of mine I have from time to time presented in turn all the present champions of Great Britain at their respective weights; and I think I am justified in claiming that the present holder of the middle-weight title learnt all he knows he’s far from being the only one.’ Here he paused and rapidly calculated what the number of men in the crowd before him at sixpence a head would amount to. Yes, he decided, they’ll about make it. ‘But that’s well known to most of you,’ he continued. ‘Gentlemen, whatever contests you may have can promise you that nothing you have previously witnessed will bear comparison with what you will have the pleasure of witnessing this evening. Look at them – just look at them. Two remarkable specimens of manhood, gentlemen. On my left, Joe Wills, the black panther of Patagonia. On my right – but you know this lad and his record as well as I do. They are now going inside to get themselves ready for a bout which will be long remembered in this town of yours; and the price of admission is only sixpence. Take your time, gentlemen, please. Oblige that lady at the entrance by having your money ready as you come up. Thank you, gentlemen.’

  Billy went on barking until the booth was crowded. Then he went inside and climbed into the ring, where he at once called the smiling negro and the scowling Harry from their corners to give them the final word.

  ‘Marquis of Queensberry rules, remember. Time.’

  ‘I’ll knock that bloody smile off your chops,’ muttered Harry as he went for the nigger bald-headed. But when he got to where the nigger had been a split second before the nigger wasn’t there. But he soon learnt where he was when a stinging left came from somewhere to almost flatten his nose. ‘Damn you,’ he muttered, turning and charging in the direction the blow had come from, only to receive a stinger from another direction. And so it went on throughout the round, a round during which Harry saw but little of the coloured man who smiled, and who looked like an ash-grey ghost when outside the circle of light from the naphtha-flare lamp hanging from the wooden crossbar under the Pavilion’s canvas roof.

  At the end of round one Harry went to his corner bleeding from the nose and from an old wound above his left eye, and mad with rage because he had not once during the round got within striking distance of the negro who was now smiling across at him from the other corner. Harry blew his nose into his right glove and waited impatiently for the call of ‘Time’.

  ‘Let him have it this time, Harry,’ roared the crowd, and Harry went all out to oblige. The negro slipped him, then hit – hard; sidestepped and hit – harder; ducked, then delivered rocking uppercuts; countered, then brought smashing rights across.

  ‘Science, that is,’ murmured Billy Samuels proudly as the smiling untouched negro returned to his corner at the end of the second round, by which time Harry was in a very bad way indeed. The old wound above his right eye was now gashed open, and his lower lip was split enough to hang to below the gum. ‘Give it best, Harry,’ Steppwr whispered loudly from where he stood outside the ropes below and behind Harry’s corner. But Harry heard not, for there was a sound as of the sea in his ears, and mad rage blinded him to all else but the smiling negro at whom he glared with damaged peepers. From his heaving chest there issued a horrible sound that reminded Steppwr of the snore of a water pump when in action. ‘Why don’t he chuck it?’ moaned Steppwr. Time.

  Still groggy, Harry went for the nigger gamely, only to meet with the same treatment as before, treatment quite in accordance with the Marquis of Queensberry’s rules. No one present other than Billy Samuels had ever dreamt that one man could do to another what the nigger did to Harry by the end of the third round. A terrible state he was in, yet he hadn’t been knocked down once. At the end of the third round he wouldn’t go to his corner to receive the attention he was so badly in need of, but remained swaying in the centre of the ring with blood streaming from his face on to his heaving chest and from there to the floor of the arena. And as he stood there he kept on saying, or rather groaning: ‘Fight me – toe to toe – you black – bastard, you. Here – I am – toe to…’ Before he could say any more he fell senseless.

  He was carried to his corner, where he was washed and brought to his senses, and after that was done Billy Samuels shook him by the hand and said that never had he seen a gamer chap than Harry had that night proved himself, and the negro boxer also shook Harry by the hand and said that he was the stiffest proposition he had met in any part of the United States of America or here in this country, and Billy Samuels after giving him his pound and his own white handkerchief out of his breast pocket to bandage the wounds over his eyes took the hat around so that the crowd could show its appreciation of the gamest chap Billy Samuels had ever known. The collection amounted to eight shillings and sevenpence ha’penny, so Harry had in all one pound eight shillings and sevenpence ha’penny in his pocket when Steppwr led him out of the boxing booth and down to the Morlais Castle pub to have a drink. Harry did not go back to the Rhondda after that, neither did Steppwr. They stayed in their home town, but in the worst part of it, down the Iron Bridge district in a common lodging house, and Harry carried on something awful, and Steppwr went round the pubs playing…. Ay, a pretty pair.

  ‘I thought I was getting on too well,’ sighed Saran as she stood in the little front garden of the cottage she had recently moved into, and from where she watched the thousands of men coming away from the mass meeting. She had got on, no doubt about that. Her eldest boy was by this time working with his dad in the pit, and her second boy was being got ready to go to the pit the following Monday. And she had at last managed to find another and bigger cottage to live in, a cottage with a back door, a tiny back yard, and a strip of garden in front. Better still, a closet which she and her family shared only with the family living next door, a closet which she and her children could expect to find empty and ready for use nearly every time they required the use of it. And there, in her roomy – compared with the one she had moved out of – cottage high up on the rise above the town and far away from the stinking brook and the rats, she was settling down nicely when, all of sudden, it happened.

  There had been rumblings, but what with the Jubilee, and moving, and another baby, she had no time to listen to the talk that was flying about, or to bother her head about the meetings that were called from time to time. Glyn, but only when under the influence of drink, had talked about what the new miners’ union was going to do for the miners, and Saran comforted herself with the thought that it was only the drink talking. But when the talk of a ‘big strike’ began to grow she began making tentative enquiries of her eldest boy, Benny, knowing that if she asked Glyn any questions she would only be told to mind her own business.

  So it was Benny that told her about the huge gathering at which the decision to strike was unanimous. The meeting was held in the huge, bowl-shaped hollow where Harry had fought Flannery in the days now long gone. There must have been thousands at the meeting; Benny told his mother that there were ‘millions’ there. From all over the district they came. Dowlais, Merthyr, Pentrebach, Abercanaid, Troedyrhiw and from other o
utlying places they came to hear the great Mabon, MP, and other miners’ leaders speak. Mabon spoke first, in Welsh, and he had not spoken for more than a minute, Benny told his mother, before somebody in the crowd shouted: ‘Let’s have it in English, Mabon,’ and this looked like starting a row, for the natives were not partial to the English who had come from everywhere into the district, where by now they were strong enough to crowd, on Sundays, the Church of England edifices and the three chapels inside which no Welsh was spoken.

  Mabon saved the situation by replying in English to the English section of the audience. ‘At least two of the speakers who are to follow me will address you in English, so with your kind permission I’ll conclude what I have to say in my native tongue,’ and the Welsh majority cheered this, and the English minority had to wait in patience until Billy Brace started talking in English. Before the end of the meeting there was enough talking in both English and Welsh to satisfy the veriest glutton. Even Mabon, MP, and the other moderate leaders said that things had reached a stage when it was no longer possible for men to put up with what they had had to put up with from the owners for so long, and that unless the owners showed signs of a more just spirit than they had up to then shown, then it would be necessary to consider…

  Consider, consider, consider, sneered the younger miners’ leaders. The time for consideration was ended, the time for action had arrived. When had the South Wales owners showed signs that they were prepared to concede to the miners what they were entitled to? At no time in the history of the coalfield. Then why this talk of consideration? It was high time for Mabon, with all due respect to him, to realise…

  The South Wales miners are organised as they never before have been, so why waste time talking and talking whilst the owners are preparing? I say let’s put the question to the vote. And after the vote is taken – and there’s not the slightest doubt in my mind as to how you’ll vote – let the Executive get down to a discussion of ways and means of carrying on the struggle in a way that will ensure victory for our cause. Whilst we are dilly-dallying, the owners…

  Benny told his mother that Mabon, MP, warned all present to behave themselves whilst on strike, and then led them in the singing of a hymn before dismissing them. Saran listened to all Benny had to say, and afterwards asked him: ‘Did Mabon say anything about us having strike pay?’

  ‘I didn’t hear him say anything about strike pay, p’raps dad can tell you about that.’

  So that night she asked Glyn: ‘Will we get any strike pay?’

  ‘A bit, maybe. But our Federation haven’t got much to give as yet.’

  Saran sighed. ‘Well, we’ll want something from somewhere if it lasts any time, for there’s ten of us to be fed and…’

  ‘You talk as though you’d like us to go on working for nothing.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. All the same, I don’t see why things can’t be settled without knocking us flat like this. What’s the use of all the schoolin’ people are getting these days if they don’t learn enough to settle things?’

  ‘What’s schoolin’ got to do with it, woman?’

  ‘Not much, by the look of things, for if it did we shouldn’t be having these strikes and lockouts…’

  ‘Oh, shut up, for God’s sake,’ said Glyn, as he went out.

  The weather was glorious, so for a week or two it was like being on holiday. Plenty to eat, a tidy drop of drink for the men, and a bit of excitement most days when blacklegs were waylaid, had white shirts put on them and with them on were marched through the streets to be ducked in the canal. But there were very few blacklegs. The holiday feeling died down before the end of the fourth week of the stoppage, for there was but little money coming in to help feed the miners and their families. True, the English miners were sending all they could, and a man who was afterwards elected to Parliament organised the first of the male choirs to go singing through Britain in order to raise funds to support the miners in their struggle.

  Saran’s Glyn, and his brother Dai, whose childless wife had died on the Monday of the third week of the stoppage, went out with the first choir, with which they were away from home a month, a month during which Saran was forced to beg for food to keep herself and the children alive. And to get it she had to go outside the district where she lived to towns in which steelworks were working on coal from the English coalfields. Three days a week she went begging accompanied by one, sometimes two, of the eldest of her eight children. She carried the food she begged on her head in a clothes basket over mountain roads from distant places, and the boy or boys with her carried smaller supplies of food, sometimes old clothes or boots that could be made to do, in parcels under their arms. And whilst she and the ‘chosen’ one or two boys were away on begging expeditions the biggest of the boys left at home had to see to the baby and scrat a little coal from the nearest pit-refuse mountain to sell to Morgan’s the butcher for a bit of meat, the article of food most difficult to beg. So they managed to keep things going; and she was away begging the day Glyn returned home after his month on tour with the choir.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked nine-year-old Jane, their only girl, who was nursing the baby and looking after the house whilst the boys were away scratting for coal.

  ‘Away after food,’ replied the child. ‘She didn’t think you’d…’

  ‘Gone to the shop, is she?’

  ‘No, dad, to Rhymney she’s gone today.’

  ‘Here, are you daft? Gone to Rhymney, seven miles away, to buy…’

  ‘No, not to buy, dad, but to go round the houses asking. And some days she goes farther than Rhymney, too. To Blaenavon and…’

  ‘Bloody well begging,’ muttered Glyn. ‘Well, tell her when you see her that I’m home…. But I’ll tell her.’ Then he went out again.

  It was late that night, after all the children had gone to bed, when he went back home to find Saran waiting for him with the air of one who has cleared the decks for action.

  ‘You’re a nice one, you are,’ he shouted as soon as he saw her.

  ‘Why, what have I done?’

  ‘What have you… no sooner do I turn my back and go roughing it up England way with the choir to get money to send home to you…’

  ‘What home are you talking about? It’s little money I’ve had.’

  ‘You’ve had your share same as every other woman, I expect. But that’s not the point. Oh, I’ll never be able to lift my head for shame,’ he cried melodramatically. ‘Hell, woman, you’re as bad as that Steppwr, if not worse. Begging from door to door like a common…’

  ‘Do you want any supper before I go to bed?’ interrupted Saran.

  ‘Some of the food you’ve mooched? No, I’d starve first.’ She began clearing the food off the table. ‘To think that a wife of mine…’

  She turned on him with a butter-dish in one hand and a newly started loaf in the other. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut up. You and your fine talk… all right, being as you’re talking so big after enjoying yourself up and down the country for a month, p’raps you’ll give me the money to buy food, so as I won’t have to go tramping over the mountains to get it. Come on, let’s have the money.’

  ‘You know damned well that all the money we got by singing was sent to the fund, and that you’ve had your share of it same as others.’

  ‘I’ve had one five shillings – a fat lot on which to keep myself and eight children for a month, isn’t it? I think I’ll go away singing next month and leave you to look after ’em; then we’ll see how you’ll go about it to fill their bellies. You make me sick when you stand there up to the neck in beer and…’

  ‘I’ve had three pints whilst waiting for you to come home.’

  ‘Then you’ve had three pints more than I’ve had. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed; and don’t waste your breath talking as you have been, for I shall be taking one of the boys with me and going off somewhere to look for food in the morning again. Ashamed, indeed. No; but I would be if one of ’em had gone
to bed hungry tonight.’

  ‘Saran, as sure as God’s in heaven, if you go out begging tomorrow again, I’ll go straight back to where I came from today, and you’ll…’

  ‘Oh, go where the hell you like.’ She went to her bed. Glyn sat at the table, scowling down on the piece of greasy and crumb-strewed newspaper which had served as tablecloth, and something caught his eye, for he blew the crumbs away and bent over to read:

  ‘… and with South Wales and Monmouthshire at a standstill owing to this regrettable and disastrous dispute, the men will be well advised to consider this latest and, in our opinion, generous offer of the owners without regard to anything that their short-sighted socialist leaders may recommend. It is high time for the miners of South Wales and Monmouthshire to realise how much the welfare and future of our great and growing Empire depends on them. Our supremacy at sea also largely depends on them, for without a constant and plentiful supply of Welsh coal, our Navy is handicapped to the nation’s detriment. Has the word patriotism no longer any meaning? We continue firm in our belief that it has, and that the word socialism will not now or ever obscure the meaning of patriotism in the minds of the miners of South Wales and Monmouthshire. To repeat what we stressed in yesterday’s leading article, coal is our nation’s only sure foundation, and if…’

  Glyn snorted as he rose to his feet to blow out the lamp before going up to bed.

  Although Saran was as good as her word and went off begging with young Benny next morning, Glyn did not go straight back to where he had come from as he had threatened to the night previous. No, he got out of bed late in the day, and after he had eaten what little Jane placed before him he went with about two thousand other men to the mass meeting, where he heard one of the leaders putting it in a nutshell: ‘I am as much for peace as the next man – but not peace at any price. I love my wife and children, I’d die for them if need be, but I’d see them eat grass before I would recommend acceptance of such terms. Men, stand firm. And if only you will, then the owners will soon see the advisability of offering much better terms than these which I have just explained to you. We’ve got public opinion behind us; and the English and Scottish miners are rallying to our aid, by levying themselves to support us in this fight, a fight which is as much theirs as it is ours. For, make no mistake about it, if we are defeated now…’