The Peoples King Read online

  'By your stooping to us,' she added, 'you have gained what no other King has ever had, the deepest love and trust of his people ... we down here in Wales are grateful. I wanted you to know.'34

  The people of the Welsh valleys had a long tradition of welcoming outsiders who were genuine friends. One such outsider between the wars was Paul Robeson, the Black American singer and actor. While in London in 1929, he had come across a group of unemployed miners from South Wales who had walked all the way from the Rhondda Valley to petition the Government for help. They were singing for money to feed themselves, and Robeson joined the group to sing with them. Afterwards he bought them tickets back home on a goods train, as well as food and clothing for their families. He visited South Wales many times after this, singing with male choirs to support the Welsh Miners' Relief Fund and other causes. He believed there was a parallel between the exploitation of Black people in the USA and the conditions of coal miners in South Wales.35 In 1936, the year in which Edward became King, Robeson was again in London, winning accolades in the role of Othello. But he still managed to visit South Wales and publicly to support the miners' cause.

  King Edward's own warmth and concern for the poor marked him out as different from previous monarchs. He had first visited South Wales in 1919, after the end of the war, when he had spent four days visiting slum areas and had gone down a pit. This was the first of his numerous tours as Prince of Wales to the industrial and impoverished parts of Britain. King Edward VII, Edward's grandfather, had shown little interest in the ordinary people of Britain. 'He'd just sit in the open landau, receive an address, snip a ribbon and declare something open', observed Edward many years later, returning 'to dine with his girl friends. He didn't even leave that landau.'36 David Lloyd George had considered King George V, King Edward VIII's father, to be obtuse about working-class grievances. 'He is a very very small man and all his sympathy is with the rich - very little pity for the poor', he wrote to his wife from Balmoral in 1911, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. 'The King is hostile to the bone to all who are working to lift the workmen out of the mire.'37

  'You seem to us to be about the only reigning monarch who is worth anything at all', wrote a Chester woman to Edward VIII. 'We like you for the concern you have for the welfare of the poorest and most unfortunate of your subjects. No other King has gone among them as you have done, or shown signs of appreciating their distress in the way you do.'18 A man who had spent forty-five years in the coal mines of South Wales and was now living in Brighton as a 'navvy washer up on washing steps', told Edward that 'No King in History has lived amongst the People as you have.' He himself, he added, was 'one of the Common People and The Commonest of Them'.39 A woman in Sheffield wrote to thank him for some practical help. 'You once did me a great kindness I shall never forget', she said gratefully. 'You helped me a great deal when you sent the lady the money towards my teeth. It was and is a thing I shall thank you for all my life.'40

  Edward's ready sympathy for the sufferings of ordinary people was encouraged by his mother, Queen Mary. The Queen showed a genuine interest in the sufferings of the unemployed, and tried to help individuals and welfare organizations. Under her influence, Edward's brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York, had initiated the Duke of York's Camps in 1921. These were annual events where 200 boys from public schools joined 200 working-class boys at a summer camp for two weeks. The camps gave the different classes an opportunity to meet and mix with each other in an informal atmosphere, and Albert always spent one day with the boys.41

  George V was kind-hearted, like his wife, but with 'strict views as to the correct conduct of children', recalled Edward many years later.42 Alec Hardinge, whose post as a retainer to King George required him to live in close quarters with the royal family, felt sorry at times for the sons when they were young. 'At lunch today,' he wrote to his wife in 1925, 'we had one of the King's tirades against the younger generation. My sympathy with his sons increases daily!'43 Mabell, Countess of Airlie, who was lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, commented that although King George V and Queen Mary were often depicted as stern, unloving parents, this was not the case. It was her belief that they were more conscientious and more truly devoted to their children than were the majority of parents in that era. 'The tragedy', she thought, 'was that neither had any understanding of a child's mind.' George V, she observed, 'was fond of his sons but his manner to them alternated between an awkward jocularity of the kind which makes a sensitive child squirm from self-consciousness, and a severity bordering on harshness.'44

  Queen Mary was keen to support Edward's efforts on behalf of the less fortunate people of Britain, and before he set off on his train journey to Wales in November 1936, she wished him luck for the tour. The first day of visits to the towns and centres of the valleys was completed by five o'clock, when Edward joined the royal train at Mountain Ash station and was taken to Usk, a quiet rural town. It was here that he and his party spent the night. A special cable had been laid to the King's apartment on the train, reported the South Wales Argus, because he wanted to make a telephone call; it was assumed that he wanted to communicate with Buckingham Palace.

  Edward had a bad cold and wanted a hot bath. His equerry, Lambe, had to telegraph the local station-master to buy a hip bath in the village, and it was filled with hot water in his sleeper. The local people were delighted that the King had 'a dip in a tin bath such as miners use!'45 Had the King been willing to travel to Wales in the 'proper royal train', which was fitted out with every kind of amenity, this would not have been necessary - but he had preferred to travel on an ordinary sleeper.46 As Prince of Wales and then as King, he always resisted special treatment. When on one occasion the royal car was driven onto a station platform, abreast of the train that Edward was about to board, he was furious. 'Why must they do this?' he complained. 'Do they think I can't walk 20 yards like an ordinary person? Oh God! they've got barriers up to keep the crowd back. Who on earth arranged this?'47 He insisted that when he was travelling through traffic to royal events, policemen should not clear the way for him.

  After his bath, the King gave a dinner party on the royal train. It was a formal occasion - short coat and black tie.48 As well as his ministers and courtiers, he invited representatives of the key Welsh government departments: John Rowland from the Welsh Board of Health and Captain Geoffrey Crawshay, the Commissioner for South Wales. Also invited was Sir George Gillett, the Special Areas Commissioner for England and Wales, whose job - as directed by the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act of 1934 - was to alleviate the worst effects of unemployment through regional development in health, housing, social improvement and industry. A more surprising guest at Edward's dinner was Malcolm Stewart, the outgoing Special Areas Commissioner, Gillett's predecessor. He had resigned his post just four days before. His reason, it was said officially, was poor health; but there were grounds to suspect that he had simply despaired of his job. He had published a blistering report a few days before his resignation, which argued that none of the measures provided for by the Special Areas Act made any real difference to the long-term unemployed. It supported hospitals, clinics, sewage disposal, allotments, and schemes such as children's school camps, physical culture and cookery classes. But it did not provide jobs, complained Stewart, which was the most fundamental need of the unemployed.49 This was a major difference between the aims of the Special Areas Act and those of the 'New Deal' legislation passed in the USA in 1933, which also addressed the problems of unemployment created by the Depression.

  Next morning, King Edward set out on another fifty-mile leg of the tour, this time through the mining towns and villages of the Monmouthshire valleys. The countryside was bleak and bare. Everywhere, observed the Pathe Gazette newsreel, 'It's a repetition of yesterday's scenes: roads lined by cheering crowds, narrow village streets packed tight with welcoming faces.,50 In the bitter cold, bunting fluttered over cottages and arched the streets of the route, and streamers bade the King welcome in Englis
h and in Welsh. At Brynmawr, a painted streamer strung across the main road read, 'Brynmawr Welcomes Your Majesty and We Need Your Help'.51

  The royal train took the King to Cwmbran. Crowds were waiting at the station, and as the royal train steamed in they sang 'Mae Hen Wlad fy Nhadau' - 'Land of My Fathers' - and then the National Anthem. Here the King met a group of twenty-five workless men, several of whom had taken part in a national march of the unemployed to London the previous month. They had trudged from the valleys to Cardiff, then to Newport, Bristol, Bath, Chippenham and Swindon before reaching Reading, Slough and finally London. Like many of the frequent marches of the unemployed to London, this one had achieved nothing. In despair, the unemployed of Cwmbran presented the King with a petition asking for his help to start a sewerage scheme and a plant for the extraction of oil from coal. 'We believe you can accomplish much for the depressed areas by your influence with these recommendations', declared the petition. The closing of various works in Cwmbran, it added,

  has rendered 2,250 men unemployed. We, the unemployed of Cwmbran, have been looking forward to your Majesty's visit with the hope that some tangible benefit and improvement will be the direct result . . . Our women grow prematurely old and many are broken in the unequal fight against the consequences of unending penury . . . The bodies of our children are stunted and frail.52

  The royal car picked up the King at Cwmbran and took him to Llanfrecha Grange, an old mansion converted into a domestic training centre for boys. It was described in the official programme of the royal tour as an experimental venture to 'meet the demand for house and kitchen boys' that had resulted from 'the continued difficulty in obtaining girl domestic servants. South Wales was selected for such a centre because Welsh boys were regarded as particularly suitable for work of this kind'.53 All the roads to the Grange were crowded with spectators, and the long drive to the mansion was lined with Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, dressed in uniform. The King joked for a while with the trainees and posed for a photograph with them. Then he was driven up the valley to Blaenavon, on the hillside, where over a third of the men were unemployed. The King was officially received near the Workmen's Hall, and the bells of St Peter's Church rang out a peal of welcome. 'It was more like a family party than a Royal visit', said one spectator. Edward shared some of his thoughts on the condition of the valleys with the people of Blaenavon. To an unemployed shop assistant, he said that, 'Something will be done for Wales in general'.54

  The sprawling hilly town of Pontypool was the next stop. Here, Edward inspected a rally of Welsh Guards Old Comrades and ambulance men. As they chatted, one of them reminded him that they had met previously on the Somme in 1916. As Edward took a salute from the massed groups, he turned and raised his hat, standing to attention. The crowds cheered wildly. It was then time to go with Sir Kingsley Wood to the new Penygarn housing estate, which was part of Pontypool Council's slum clearance housing programme. Housing was a particular interest of the King: he had rehoused many of the Duchy of Cornwall's tenants in Kennington, London, and had improved farm workers' houses on Duchy estates in the West Country.55 Shocked by the grim conditions of the slums he visited during his industrial tours as Prince of Wales, he had organized a dinner in London to address the issue of poor housing. To this meeting he invited not only experts and philanthropists, but also Ramsay MacDonald, who was then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Minister of Health. Edward later observed that this was very likely the first debate on housing that ever took place under the auspices of the Prince of Wales.56

  'Terrible! Terrible!' exclaimed the King, when he was told that over a third of the tenants on the Penygarn estate had no job. 'You may be sure that I will do all I can. We certainly want better times brought to these Valleys.'57 The King was taken to houses that had been carefully chosen by the organizers of the tour: it had been decided in London that the party would 'drive slowly round the Estate stopping perhaps at one or two selected houses which The King might enter. These would of course need to be chosen with some discretion,'58 This conflicted with the King's own and clearly expressed wish - that he wanted to see some working-class houses, but 'not only the good ones!', as Hardinge had explained to the civil servant who was drawing up the King's itinerary at the Ministry of Labour.59 But Edward was not to be fobbed off. He duly visited the selected houses, asking with interest whether there was electricity in the district and if it was going to be installed on this estate. And he then went to a house that had not been specially chosen. According to the local press, it was occupied by a family who had lived there for nine years, for seven of which the man of the house had been unemployed. The King knocked at the door and, when it was opened, asked if it might be possible for him to come in. He was welcomed and ushered in, where he shook hands warmly with the family and chatted with them about their daily lives.60

  Edward had been visiting the industrial areas of Britain ever since the start of the economic depression in 1929. On all these visits, commented the New Statesman, he had 'always shown a welcome desire to look beneath the surface.'61 In the spring of 1936 he had visited the slums of Glasgow, after a ceremony to launch the new ship, the Queen Mary. 'Visiting the slums, HM was really at his best', wrote Hilda Runciman, the wife of Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, in her diary. She added,

  He understands how to do that perfectly. Eg. He knocked at a door and when the woman opened it he said 'I'm the King, may I come in'? And then he asked all the right questions about washing cooking etc. He had told W[alter] that he had seen worse slums in Durham and also that he and his brothers had picked up vermin when doing their slum visiting.62

  From Pontypool, Edward went to the Snatchwood Junior Instruction Centre, where girls and boys were being given 'useful occupation and instruction during the enforced leisure produced by unemployment' - woodwork for boys, and basketwork and weaving for girls. For several minutes he watched the daughter of an unemployed collier making a brooch in 'petal' work, and was then delighted to be given it as a gift. Noticing that the glass between the girls' workroom and that of the boys was frosted, he asked for the reason - and was told that it was to stop the boys looking through at the girls. 'I see. You want to keep their minds on their work', laughed the King.63

  Ernest Brown, the Minister of Labour, kept close beside the King throughout the tour.64 His presence on the royal visit had been objected to by Aneurin Bevan, and he was 'inclined to arouse boos', noted Lambe, the royal equerry.65 This was because Brown represented the labour policies of the National Government, which was widely criticized for doing little to address the problem of long-term unemployment. The Government was called 'National' because it was a coalition and its cabinet was made up of ministers from all three major parties. But most of these ministers were Conservatives, and by 1936 the policies of the National Government were dominated by the influence of the Conservative Party.

  At one unemployment centre, recorded Lambe,

  the King, E. Brown and I went into the cellar where men were repairing boots. The King left E. Brown talking and, no sooner had he gone, than the whole party crowded round Mr B, talking rather threateningly.

  'I've a wife & 5 kiddies and all I gets is so and so - 'ow d'you expect me to live?'

  He let them have their say & then said 'Now look here you fellows - for the last 4 months I've been working till 3 & 4 in the morning on your behalf. Will you please believe I'm doing all I can?'61'

  The men pulled back, presumably out of respect for the King. Let Brown try going to South Wales 'without the shelter of the royal purple!' mocked Aneurin Bevan/' It was certainly unusual for government ministers to walk among the people, as Brown was required to do on this royal tour. 'The Ministers are emphatically unable to voice the opinion of the people', it was observed in a letter to the King, because 'they never come in contact with them, when they constantly drive about in cars.'68

  At Nantyglo and Blaina, where three-quarters of the populati
on were unemployed, cheering crowds congregated behind barricades on the coal tips and pavements. It was bitterly cold - the village was 1,400 feet above sea level. When the King arrived at the Miners' Welfare Institute at Garn-yr-Erw, he was smoking a cigarette and appeared thoughtful. After meeting local officials, he lingered on to talk with ex-servicemen. He met an old Welsh Guardsman, a miner, who had been unemployed since 192.9. He was appalled when told that although the Cwmtillery and Six Bells collieries on the outskirts of the town were at work, the three pits in the centre of the town were now closed. One miner who had been working for forty years and unemployed for nine, said he prayed that the royal tour would bring improved conditions. 'I hope so', answered the King.69

  The next stop was Abertillery. Through a maze of short streets, the King's car was driven to Rhiw Park where an unsightly slag heap had been converted into a grassy recreation ground for children. Noticing the former president of the South Wales Miners' Federation among the spectators, the King immediately crossed over for a chat. The royal party then went to the club room, which was being used as a children's feeding centre. Here, the King would not allow his arrival to interrupt the meal of stew and pudding. When the children saw him and scrambled to stand up quickly at their wooden benches, he told them at once to 'Sit down and get on with your meal!' He was informed that the menu varied from day to day. A child might have boiled beef, potatoes and haricot beans for dinner one day, with bread, butter, jam and fresh milk for tea; then boiled fish, mashed potatoes and suet pudding for dinner the next day, with bread and butter, banana sandwiches and fresh milk for tea. This was a godsend to the mothers.70 The final stage of Edward's tour of Wales was the long run to Rhymney. The old shops of the Rhymney Iron Company by the railway station had been converted into a social centre for the unemployed, to which about two hundred men and women belonged. The men repaired boots and did carpentry and woodwork; they also took part in physical training, sang, listened to broadcast talks, debated, and heard lectures and concerts. Here the King met an old man at work with a saw and, trying it himself, exclaimed, 'You are very lucky if you can use it!' The women did sewing, knitting and crochet. Edward spoke to the men who were responsible for the working of the outcrop scheme, by which unemployed men were able to obtain their coal for tuppence a week. He then joined in the singing of Welsh songs and the classic hymn 'Cwm Rhondda'.71