NEWPORT RISING 185 YEARS ON
Thousands of people gathered in Newport’s Belle Vue Park on November 2, to remember the Newport Rising and march in the footsteps of protestors who were calling for the vote for workers, Keith Hatch writes.
The Newport Rising is also called the Chartist Uprising of 1839, and this year marked 185 years since Chartists took to the streets to demand the vote. People gathered in the park to listen to music, speakers and watch fire dancers before lighting torches and marching together down Stow Hill towards Westgate Square, the site of the deadly clash between Chartists and troops.
On November 4, 1839, Welsh radical and Chartist leader John Frost led more than five thousand workers, many from the fields and mines in the South Wales Valleys around Newport, along the same route.
They were marching to release comrades arrested and held in the Westgate Hotel, but when they arrived they were met by hundreds of special constables and armed troops who opened fire, killing 22 protestors. This was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in Britain.
This year’s torch-lit march was led by a symbolic “Charter” along with a skeleton and marching band.
LAST GREAT WORLD
World Soil Day, December 5, was celebrated by Unite’s own soil scientist Dr Charlie Clutterbuck, by launching a new website on the history of soil, called Soilstory online.
“The site not only brings soil to life in a completely new way,” he says, “it also explains how that soil life got here – for the first time ever.” Charlie continues, “I started thinking about soil evolution over 50 years ago, while counting half million soil animals, most of which I always thought were ‘pretty primitive’, making me realise they could not have all arrived together.”
Eventually, Charlie realised he would have to not only work out the evolutionary puzzle himself but write the book himself. When the book “was tried on a few interested friends it fell like a cubic metre of soil – which weighs about 1.5 tons in biomass! Instead I’ve been making it more accessible in this web site.”
FIND OUT MORE
As Charlie says, “type in
soilstory.online to see the last great world yet to be discovered…” • Plus see page 26
8 uniteLANDWORKER Winter 2024
Eoghan Mortell, chair of the festival committee, said, “The turnout this year has been amazing. People across Newport and South Wales are really embracing their Chartist heritage and recognising how important this city is in the story of how the vote was won for ordinary working people.”
The march is now part of the Newport Rising Festival, organised by community group, Our Chartist Heritage.
www.oldukphotos.com
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