Inside History: Protest. Revolt & Reform

When studying the role of protest in British history, people
invariably look to the 19th Century, to the Luddites and the
Chartists, to Peterloo and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. But at the
same time in rural Wales there was a very different type of
protest going on.
It was the summer of 1839 when three tollgates were
attacked at Efailwen near Saint Clears in Carmarthenshire.
These attacks were carried out by gangs of men dressed in
women’s clothing with blackened faces, who came to be
known as Rebecca and her daughters, or Merched Beca in
the native Welsh language.
This moniker was probably a reference to the chapter of
Genesis in the Bible – ‘And they blessed Rebekah and said
unto her, Let thy seed possess the gates of those that hate
thee’ – however, some theorise a much more practical reason
for this name. Local lore says the leader of these initial riots, a
farm labourer called Twm Carnabwth, was so well built he
could only borrow petticoats from one particularly large lady
in the area, and her name happened to be Rebecca.
But why had the inhabitants of South West Wales started
protesting in such a fashion? For the large part, they were
protesting for the same reasons as the Chartists. From 1837
onwards, Britain experienced an economic depression.
Unemployment was high, as were food prices, and wages
were low. In West Wales the situation was exacerbated by
dramatic population increases in some local areas, which in
turn increased competition for land and jobs. The Whig
Government fell in 1841, partly due to their failure to handle
the serious economic situation, and it was no coincidence
that the activity of the Rebecca Riots peaked only a year later.
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was also a significant
motivator to both Rebecca and the Chartists alike. As well as
the resulting rise in poor law rates in rural areas, the new law
meant that the able-bodied poor would be forced to live in
the dreaded workhouse with its harsh conditions. In
Carmarthen this hatred of the dreaded institution eventually
crystallised in June 1843 when a crowd of 2000 people
destroyed the local workhouse.
Turning to more localised factors, tolls were a big expense for
small farmers in rural Wales. They had to travel distances to
take their goods to market, but also to collect lime, which was
essential for improving the quality of the soil in
Carmarthenshire.
The vast majority of roads came under the control of various
turnpike companies, leading to a fragmented road network
with multiple tollhouses. There were twelve turnpike trusts
and over 100 toll gates in Carmarthenshire alone. Many
unscrupulous people took advantage of the loophole that,
while tolls were limited by statute, there was no legal limit to
the number of tollgates that could be set up. It did not help
that many trusts chose not to spend their income on
maintaining the roads, and the state of the road network was
generally deemed as abysmal.
Combined with a succession of bad harvests and a poor
agricultural market, it soon became one toll too many for the
local farmers. Hatred of the tollgates meant they became the
focus of the attacks. They were a convenient and tangible
symbol of the many grievances of the suffering working class,
and there were plenty of them around for farmers to get their
hands on.
These attacks and the Rebecca Riots must be considered in
the context of the ceffyl pren (wooden horse) tradition, which
was commonplace in rural Wales at the time. This was a
ritual-heavy communal method of enforcement and policing,
where someone who had offended the community’s values
was frightened or punished by ‘the mob’. For the protestors,
the riots were simply an extension of their self-policing
activity.
After a gap of a few years, attacks restarted in October 1842,
again in the St Clears area. Activity soon spread throughout
the county of Carmarthenshire and into other parts of rural
Wales. The attacks generally seemed leaderless, which
frustrated authorities in their attempts to stop the
movement. As well as the geographical coverage of the riots
increasing, the scope of the attacks increased too. In Mid
Wales at Rhayader, where there were seven roads and nine
gates, Rebecca made regular appearances, and illegitimate
children known to belong to prominent men in the
community found themselves returned to their fathers.
Rebecca and her daughters also targeted Anglican clergyman,
in protest at a predominately Non-Conformist population
having to pay tithes to the Church – another grievance that
was quite distinct to Wales.
By the summer of 1843, the riots were getting out of control,
and after repeated requests the military was dispatched to
West Wales. On the 7th of September the young female
keeper of the tollgate at Hendy near Pontarddulais was killed,
and the following month three rioters were exiled to Van
Diemen’s Land. Local enthusiasm for the attacks started to
peter out, and the last events associated with Rebecca were
probably those in the Rhayader area on September 13th
1844.
As well as deploying troops, the government was seen by
many as acting constructively. In October 1843 a commission
to inquire into the causes of the Rebecca Riots was
established. The report of the commission, published in
March 1844, led to The Turnpike Act (also known as Lord
Cawdor’s Act) which received royal assent in August of the
same year. The act established boards in each of the
counties of South Wales to oversee the management of the
turnpike roads, and the situation greatly improved.
With the passing of the Act Rebecca and her daughters had
won an important victory, but historians still debate how
much impact this victory had on the everyday lives of people,
as the tollhouses were just one part of a much larger
problem for the ordinary man. Even though the Rebecca
Riots were not borne of politics, if you view it through a
political lens it becomes a story about a leaderless uprising of
a much-put-upon working class that fought to obtain justice –
and won. It is for that reason that the riots have become an
important event in Welsh history, one that still pervades our
popular culture to this day, and Merched Beca is still a term
synonymous with protest in the Land Of My Fathers.
INSIDE HISTORY 11