I agree with the sentiments expressed on your Letters page (18 August) regarding the way in which deliberate attempts are made to erase terrible injustices, such as the Peterloo massacre, from our history. Even less attention is paid to similar outrages that occurred in the south Wales coalfield, such as the Merthyr rising in 1831, Tonypandy in 1910 and Llanelli in 1911.

Merthyr has been described as “the most ferocious and bloody event in the history of industrialised Britain”. It has to be seen against the background of agitation for parliamentary reform. When Crawshay, owner of the Cyfarthfa ironworks, decided to reduce workers’ wages, it was the spark that lit the conflagration. A crowd took over the town and when troops were called in, between 20 and 24 people were shot dead and over 70 wounded. The anger of Merthyr citizens was such that they disarmed the yeomanry sent from Swansea and the red flag was raised, possibly for the first time in British history.

Two men were subsequently tried: Lewis Lewis, leader of the rising and Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn), a young miner, for allegedly wounding a soldier. Found guilty, they were due to hang. Sentence on the former was commuted to exile for life, but in spite of a petition and appeals for clemency, Penderyn was hanged. He became Wales’s first working-class martyr. Years later another man confessed to the crime.

In the wake of the rising, the new colliers’ union found support across south Wales, precipitating a bitter civil conflict and mobilising the working class. It was only broken by a merciless lockout and unlawful denial of poor relief, starving them into submission.

No doubt, the establishment interferes with the history curricula because it finds appalling events like Peterloo and Merthyr an embarrassment to be ignored.

Alan Madge

Slough, Berkshire

• Maxine Peake foresees a repeat of Peterloo should we fail to “remember our history” (Don’t think Peterloo can’t happen again, 20 August). If she is really interested in highlighting instances of British state massacres of unarmed civilians she need look no farther than Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, where 14 people died, and Ballymurphy six months earlier when 11 were shot dead by members of the same Parachute Regiment. Two examples out of many of the use of lethal force by British troops against a civilian population.

It may be that these atrocities don’t count as massacres in some people’s estimation, or perhaps where Britain’s long history of repression in Ireland is concerned she is taking advantage of Nelson’s “right to be blind sometimes”.

Michael O’Sullivan

London

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