The Black Parade by Chairman Mao
The Black Parade No, this isn’t a review of some music album by some over-rated rock band from New Jersey but recognition of one of the two Jack Jones books that are based in and around Merthyr Tydfil. Jack Jones was born in Merthyr Tydfil, the eldest of nine surviving siblings. He was a miner from the age of 12 years and later a trade unionist for his fellow mineworkers during the general strike of 1926. Jack was a political chameleon, he started as a communist, and moved from Labour through to Oswald Mosley’s New Party via the Liberals (he stood for them in the Neath constituency having been attracted by Lloyd-George and his policies for coal and power). The Black Parade was published in 1935 and was his breakthrough novel in which creates a superbly riotous, clear and unsentimental picture of Merthyr life through the viewpoint of Saran as her home-town ploughs headlong into the twentieth century. As one of Merthyr’s Victorian brickyard girls, Saran watches the world parade ...