Rhian E. Jones | Rebecca's Country

Rebecca’s Country is a new look at Welsh radical history. Many of us are familiar with the general outline of the Rebecca riots: farmers and labourers in 1840s south-west Wales, incensed by a new tax on road travel, dressed in carnivalesque costumes and massed behind the figure of ‘Rebecca’ to tear down the tollgates that barred their way, in a spectacular example of successful direct action. But the people who took part in this movement were opposing not just tollgates but high rents, evictions, workhouses and the privatisation of public land. Their movement included demands for financial support for unmarried mothers and children, workers’ rights, and national political reform. The ‘riots’ were, in fact, a well-organised umbrella movement that brought together farmers, labourers and industrial workers, as well as middle-class reformers and working-class radicals. The movement and responses to it were linked with the world outside it – not just…