Tonypandy and truth

GUEST POST: Challenging accepted ideas of the past through fiction

Genre fiction is often dismissed as having little value and serving no purpose other than to while away a few leisure hours without too much effort or mental strain. However, this general and rather facile view forgets that value can be found in all types of fiction, where significance stems from the ability to share knowledge and understanding of our place in the world, be that through experiences, different types of people (even if drawn as stereotypes), and portrayals of human behaviours such as fear, prejudice, affection, and kindness.

Recently I picked up a detective novel, a genre which, yes, I admit, I tend to eschew in favour of literary fiction. This one appealed to me because the subject matter seemed very different to that which I would normally associate with the genre, dealing largely with the infamous villain Richard III, who has fascinated me from a young age. I am speaking of Daughter of Time, written by Josephine Tey in 1951. Tey was a remarkable author about whom very little personal information is known. What is evident, though, is that at a time when writers of more formulaic crime fiction, such as Agatha Christie, prevailed, Tey set out to challenge accepted patterns and conventions. The novel opens with detective Alan Grant of Scotland Yard (he appears in five other of Tey’s novels) in hospital, flat on his back and bored stiff. He decides to keep himself occupied by finding a case to work on, opting to look into history for a suitable subject. With the help of friends, hospital staff, and especially a young, eager American who does extensive research and archival investigation at the British Museum for him, he delves into the centuries-old story of how Richard III was a hunchbacked monster who killed the two princes – his nephews – in the Tower of London in order to clear the way to the throne for himself. Through detailed archival research and intelligent detective work, Grant is able to show that what we know of Richard III is nothing but Tonypandy.

This word – which admittedly has an almost comical sound – was adopted by Tey to refer to accepted general beliefs in historical myths. She took the name from the Welsh town of Tonypandy where a miners’ strike in 1910 has gone down in Welsh history as being the scene of a dreadful massacre of innocent miners by ruthless troops. But, as Tey writes, ‘The only bloodshed in the whole affair was a bloody nose or two… The point is that every single man who was there knows that the story is nonsense, and yet it has never been contradicted… It is a completely untrue story grown to legend while the men who knew it to be untrue looked on and said nothing.’[1] Michael A. Charles explains further that Tey views Tonypandy as ‘a falsified version of history that, thanks to propaganda or lazy reporting or romantic simplification, supplants the facts in the public consciousness.’[2]

Daughter of Time was an immediate success, and seventy years later continues to be in print, still included in lists of best crime fiction. Moreover, her careful research and detective work created debate and curiosity amongst her readers – what was the truth about Richard III? What and who should be believed? What else about the past should be called into question? Though Tey cannot take the bulk of the credit, she certainly contributed to the conversation, which has led to it now being established fact that Richard III was not the villain he had been made out to be; in fact, he was not even a hunchback. The terrible stories we have accepted about him are little more than Tudor propaganda, repeated over and over again through the centuries.

The ordinary person, going through the daily struggle of working, driving in traffic, dealing with loadshedding, children, pets, the cost of living, politics, doesn’t have time to delve into archives and dredge up material or sit around trying to figure out what to believe or disbelieve about the past. And while there are many hardworking academics and researchers who are making important findings, the average person does not know about these, not having access to academic articles or perhaps finding the language and format unappealing. That is why fiction is so important. People are more inclined to read something that speaks to them in a way that they can immediately understand.

I am hoping to achieve something similar with the novel I am writing as part of my role as writer-in-residence at LEAP at Stellenbosch University. I have been inspired by the research of Kate Ekama and her colleagues[3] related to the period of emancipation in the Cape Colony. While it is widely known that the slave trade came to an end in the early years of the nineteenth century, little is known of the details, such as the fact that slaves at the Cape were emancipated in 1834, but because it was believed that they were not ready to be civilised and independent members of society, they had to endure a further four years as apprentices (slaves in everything but name).

What is more, emancipation came with compensation money, but that did not go into the pockets of the formerly enslaved. It was paid by the British government to the former slave owners, reimbursing them for the valuable property they lost. This saw a large influx of capital into the Cape, boosting the economy and resulting in a growth in infrastructure, buildings, and businesses.

In other words, the accepted popular simplification of history has tended to be that Cape Town was built on slavery, and then slavery ended. Little further thought is given to the consequences. The truth is that, in many ways, emancipation was a money-making event which altered the economy and dynamics of the city.

This is something that should not be forgotten. In the face of growing global attempts to recognise and acknowledge the wrongs of our slave-owning pasts, let us not forget to take account of emancipation too, and what that event might have meant for our ancestors and their environs in various ways. It is when history becomes distorted or forgotten that we lose understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

‘Tonypandy and truth’ was first published on Our Long Walk. Support more such writing by signing up for a paid subscription. The image was created with Midjourney v5.2.

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[1] Josephine Tey. 2020. Daughter of Time. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited: p.86. Emphasis in original.

[2] Michael A. Charles. “Tonypandy”. Stuff I Done Wrote. October 29 2018. Tonypandy. | Stuff I Done Wrote - The Michael A. Charles Online Presence (wordpress.com)

[3] See for example: Kate Ekama (2021) “Bondsmen: Slave Collateral in the 19th-Century Cape Colony”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 47:3, 437-453, DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2021.1900467; Kate Ekama, Johan Fourie, Hans Heese, and Lisa-Cheree Martin (2021) “When Cape slavery ended: Introducing a new slave emancipation dataset” Explorations in Economic History, 81, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101390; Kate Ekama & Robert Ross (2021) “The Emancipation of the Enslaved in the Cape Colony: Historiography and Introduction”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 47:3, 405-416, DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2021.1907114; Robert Ross & Lisa-Cheree Martin (2021) “Accommodation and Resistance: The Housing of Cape Town’s Enslaved and Freed Population Before and After Emancipation”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 47:3, 417-435, DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2021.1904751