The Rebecca Riots

THE REBECCA RIOTS

KEY STAGE 4

The 1830s and 1840s were years of social unrest in Wales when popular movements for change swept the country. 1831 saw violent protest in Merthyr Tydﬁl (‘The Merthyr Rising’). From the 1820s some workers joined the Chartist Movement, a campaign for reforming parliament and obtaining a vote for every adult man. In 1839 Chartist protests in Newport and other Welsh towns led to deaths. There was violence in the countryside too, known as ‘The Rebecca Riots’.

While the Industrial Revolution was transforming towns, life in rural Wales was changing also. In the 1820s and 1830s tenant farmers faced increased demands for money: rents, tithes and tolls.

RENTS : Most farmers were tenants on land owned by someone else and had to pay rent to the landowner. If the landowner raised the rent the tenant had to pay or the land would be given to someone else. Though the farmers’ income shrank in this period, landowners did not reduce the rents. Many farmers were thrown off their farms as a result.

TITHES : A tithe was a ﬁnancial contribution the Church of England was allowed to demand even from people who were not Church members. Many tenant farmers in Wales were Nonconformist Christians, not members of the Church of England. They still had to pay tithes and they felt this was unjust.

TOLLS : Many roads in England and Wales were maintained by Turnpike Trusts which were usually run by local gentlemen, Church of England clergymen and businessmen. The Trusts charged people to use their roads. Fees were collected at tollgates. Dishonest Trusts over- charged farmers who needed to move their livestock by road and this caused a lot of grief and hardship.

The government made the Poor Laws stricter. These laws provided aid for needy people, and this aid was reduced. Living-quarters provided for poor people who needed help – the ‘workhouses’, where the poor worked to pay towards their upkeep - were grim and demeaning. Many people felt that no one in power was interested in their problems.

In 1837 and 1838 terrible weather caused especially bad harvests in south-west Wales. Many farming communities were reduced to near-starvation. In January 1839 there was an attempt to burn the new workhouse at Narberth, and communities in west Wales were using the ceffyl pren (wooden horse). This was an ancient way a community could show its disapproval of a person or its dislike for someone in power. At night they would parade a dummy of the powerful person tied to a wooden pole or ladder and the men involved blackened their faces and often wore women’s clothing.

In 1839 the Whitland Turnpike Trust in Carmarthenshire decided to put up four new tollgates. On 13th May a group of men set the new tollhouse at Efail Wen on ﬁre and destroyed the gate. The Trust repaired it but on 6th June up to 400 men smashed the gate and destroyed the tollhouse. Some were dressed as women, with blackened faces. Perhaps dressing like this was a version of the ancient practice of disapproval or prehaps such a disguise made it hard for the authorities to identify them.

On 17th July the leader of another riot at Efail Wen was addressed as ‘Becca’, perhaps because of a phrase in the Bible where the children of a woman called Rebecca are told they will capture the gates of their enemies. From then on the disturbances became known as ‘The Rebecca Riots’. In July, local magistrates forced the Whitland Turnpike Trust to abandon the four hated gates.

In 1842 and 1843 Rebecca rioters attacked tollgates again but gradually these protesters opted for orderly protest meetings rather than violence, because the government sent increased numbers of soldiers to deal with protesters and because criminals took advantage of the disturbances. The government reformed the Turnpike trusts in 1844.

The Rebecca Riots were a signiﬁcant demonstration of popular determination to ﬁght injustice and they inspired later shows of strength by working people in Wales.