Welsh Journals

Subsistence Production in the Eastern Valley of Mon- mouthshire. An Industrial Experiment, 1935 to 1939. Henry Ecroyd Having graduated at Manchester in English Language and Literature, and having little zest for teaching, I presently found myself associated with C. H. Grinling, an idealist of independent means who had indentified himself with the Borough of Woolwich nearly 40 years earlier and had played a part, often a dominating part, in a wide range of welfare, educational and political activities in the town. After seven years with him, in 1936 I joined the staff of Peter Scott, an idealist of the same stamp as C. H. Grinling, but working in South Wales. His headquarters were then at Hereford. My work as assistant to the chief accountant included the supervision of the book-keeping at the two factories at Brynmawr (furniture making and boot making), at Brynmawr's Community House and at the two Subsistence Production Societies in South Wales and Wigan respectively. These societies were experimental and were coping with the administrative problems of rapidly expanding projects. The headquarters later moved to Brynmawr, where I lived with wife and child for three years. The outbreak of war brought most of the work to an end. One by one the administrative staff left and responsibil- ity for all the remaining book-keeping and accountancy work passed into my hands. Reg- istering as a conscientious objector in 1941 and appearing before Judge Frank Davies and the Cardiff tribunal in September, I was, surprising- ly, given unconditional exemption from military service. I continued in charge of Peter Scott's accounts for a further two years and then went back to Hereford to work as an audit clerk there. The landscape of rural Monmouthshire assumes a bleaker aspect as it merges with the South Wales coalfield. Several narrow valleys run from north to south within the boundaries of the former county. In the easternmost of these, the Afon Lwyd flows from the high moorland above Blaenavon to join the Usk at Caerleon, just above Newport. Coal mining and steel production had been the principal industries until the depression of the 1920's, agriculture assuming greater importance in the lower parts south of Pontypool. A Subsistence Production Society operated there for four years, enrolling at its peak nearly 400 members, some 9% of the total registered as unemployed at the Blaenavon and Pontypool Exchanges. The members worked in groups in several scattered locations in a project that combined agricultural and industrial production. No wages were paid and the wide range of goods produced were issued to members at prices designed to cover only the cost of materials plus a percentage for overhead costs. Within the context of a Utopian vision, the organisers set themselves three specific objectives; to raise the standard of living of the families participating by the provision of high quality foodstuffs and other necessities at prices within the means of unemployed men; to provide older unemployed men, rejected by industry, with a functional status within the community that they could accept with dignity, and to train them in new skills; and finally to explore the viability of a system of production