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| Left to right foreground; Henry, Earl of March, King Richard III, and Richard, Duke of York (Robert East, Peter Cook, and Brian Blessed respectively) in season 1, episode 1 of Black Adder in 1983. |
History is written by the victors? Not necessarily. Sometimes, all it takes is a lie in a sympathetic novel, or a monument that fires the imagination.
The name "Tonypandy" is used over and over in Daughter of Time, being adopted by Allen Grant and his associates as shorthand for "historical myths many people consider to be facts". the name comes from the Tonypandy riots in Wales, where miners demanding better wages and safety regulations were confronted by police armed with "rolled-up Mackintoshes" (according to Tey, 104). After reading this, and the associated myth-turned-popular-fact that soldiers who were ordered into the area fired upon the rioters, I went looking for the source of the myth. What I found was Cwmardy, a "documentary novel" by Lewis Jones, a trade union leader contemporary to the riots. his book includes a completely fictional incident where 11 miners were gunned down by soldiers.
In the reading for today,Grant and Carradine discuss another bit of Tonypandy, the public image of the Covenanters. Grant received a letter from his friend Laura, which told him about a set of monuments in Scotland. These were dedicated to "two women martyrs, drowned for their faith" (Tey 130). It turned out not only were they convicted of treason in connection with an invasion from Holland (rather than for religious reasons) and were granted a reprieve instead of executed.
Laura's letter concludes by noting the reaction people have when told about such things. "it's an odd thing but when you tell someone the facts of a mythical tale, they are indignant not with the teller but with you" (131). The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance is one we are all distressingly familiar with these days. People will cling to what they believe, or to what supports their own position, regardless of facts.
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