ON SATURDAY, in the shadow of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon, an audience packed into an old industrial workshop in Llanberis to hear historian Professor Merfyn Jones tell the stirring tale of the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union. Exactly 150 years after the union’s foundation, his talk outlined the heroic story of its formation and struggles.

The event was held at the National Slate Museum, the workshops of the former Dinorwig Quarry, which now celebrates the slate industry and the communities which created it. 

Around it the scarred rockfaces, recently granted World Heritage Status, looked down on the location. But this striking landscape was also one which had taken the health and lives of countless workmen through industrial accidents and disease.

In 1874 the union was formed after frustration and anger about conditions and pay came to boiling point in the slate quarries at Dinorwig and Penrhyn. Merfyn Jones explained that almost immediately the quarry owners moved to destroy the union, “Malu’r wy cyn iddo ddeor” (“Smash the egg before it hatched”). 

The Dinorwig men were initially locked out. But it was not long before the owner of the Penrhyn quarry also moved against their colleagues in Bethesda for collecting a fighting fund for their striking comrades. 

However, major union victories resulted, especially the Pennant Lloyd Agreement which ensured representation for the workers as well as pay increases. The owners had been resoundingly defeated and the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union went from strength to strength.

The quarry owners, however, bridled at giving so much power over the system of production to the workforce. And with the 1900-3 lockout at Bethesda, they defeated the union after a bitter three-year dispute regarded as the longest in British trade union history. 

The story of this brutal industrial conflict is etched into the pages of Welsh history, particularly in the words of a poster of the time displayed in the windows of striking families in the Ogwen Valley, “Nid Oes Bradwr yn y ty hwn!” (“No Scabs in this House”).

This was an industry whose workforce was nearly entirely Welsh-speaking for almost this entire period. 

And as an old rhyme says: 

Rhaid cael Cymry i dorri’r garreg
Nid yw’r graig yn deall Saseneg.

(Welsh speakers are needed to split the slate,
The rock does not understand English.)
 
And the union historically operated in the Welsh language. An area in which the Wales TUC is itself currently working to make improvements.

This industry, which at its height had “roofed the world,” by the first world war was already in decline. And in 1922 the NWQU joined the Transport and General Workers Union, allowing it to maintain its autonomy while receiving the advantages of the support of a larger body.

Dr Jones spoke of the inspiration that those Quarrymen’s historic actions passed down to their Unite union descendants during the vicious Friction Dynamics dispute of 2001-3 with a US employer in Caernarfon over working practices and representation.

He closed his remarks by warning of the current dire funding threats to Welsh museums and libraries which curate the essential industrial and political heritage of the country.

After the lecture a banner especially created by local communities and schools was carried by the audience, led by children in period costume, round Llyn Peris lake. The march concluded at Craig yr Undeb, the striking rock formation where union members traditionally met to discuss working practices, pass political resolutions and sing hymns. Just outside the Dinorwig Quarry owners’ land, here they were free to express their opinions. As the saying went, “Ni piau Craig yr Undeb!” (“Union Rock belongs to us!”)

Here, at what the historian Dr David Gwyn described as “the Olympus of the Quarrymen,” he reminded those present that “in these current times of irresponsible politicians and dangerous social-influencers we must protect our right to assembly and freedom of speech.”