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 past her house on the banks of the stinking and rat-infested Morlais Brook - the revellers, earnest chapelgoers, and the funeral processions. Saran also never misses a trip to the town’s wooden theatres, despite the 5am works’ hooter that rules her life, and the pit strikes, politics, and war that threaten to take away her children.

Her husband Glyn will work a treble shift for beer money which he spends in many of the public houses that would still be recognisable to those of us who drink in the town today; her brother Harry is the district’s most notorious drinker and fighter until he becomes a born-again Christian. The town changes and grows, but Saran remains the cornerstone for Glyn, for Harry, and more importantly for her children and grandchildren.

The picture of Merthyr Tydfil presented in the Black Parade is still familiar to us and this novel should be provided to every secondary school pupil in the borough as part of their education in how our town was forged over many generations of the same family.

Our own club even gets a mention as a local pub landlord bemoans the bankruptcy of the original Merthyr Town whose absence on a Saturday afternoon considerably reducing his sales of alcohol.

The other classic Merthyr novel by the same author is Bidden to the Feast which covers an earlier period of our history, beginning in the crucible of the industrial revolution.

I bought my copy of the book from Storyville Books in Pontypridd which is an independent bookstore that stocks a lot of classic Welsh literature in both of our languages. The shop is worth a visit but also has a decent website for online sales too. It was greatly affected by the recent flooding along the Taff so they would certainly benefit from a few more customers.

In short, the Black Parade is a brilliant, gritty, honest portrayal of working- class life across the turn of the twentieth century in our town. Highly recommended.

Chairman Mao