by Mary Owen
Gwyn Alfred Williams was born on September 30th, 1925 in Lower Row, Penywern, Dowlais. His parents, Thomas John and Gwladys, were schoolteachers. The family attended Gwernllwyn Independent Chapel, where they worshipped in Welsh and where young Gwyn and his friends, the ‘Gwernllwyn Chapel Gang’, absorbed the scriptures and played a lively part in social activities. He was educated in Cyfarthfa Castle Grammar School, where he enjoyed school life and many successes, becoming Head Boy and winning a David Davies Open Scholarship to study History at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Sadly, he was unable to begin these studies immediately because, as Geraint H. Jenkins wrote in his 18-page tribute to Gwyn on behalf of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies 1996, ‘the demands of war took him instead to the battlefields of Europe where he learnt a great deal about human suffering. Indeed, the experience of wartime service stayed with him for the rest of his days. Having witnessed the liberation of Paris and stood amongst the ruins of Berlin, he was then persuaded that he should help to build a better world in Yugoslavia, where he joined gangs of labourers who built a road linking Zagreb and Belgrade.’
His belated studies began ‘at the feet of Francis Treharne, Professor of History since the 1930s and a fellow native of Merthyr’ who veered Gwyn to specialise in medievalism. He graduated with an ‘outstanding first-class honours in 1950 and ‘was showered with prizes.’ A master’s degree and a doctorate followed and in 1954 Gwyn was appointed to teach Welsh History at the College. Jenkins states, ‘It is entirely appropriate that we in Aberystwyth should pay tribute to Gwyn for it was here that he served his apprenticeship as a historian and made his reputation as a scintillating lecturer. His senior colleagues ‘were rather staid, undemonstrative and solemn lecturers… lacking improvisation and lightness of touch…It was all clearly too dull and complacent for the young ball of fire from Dowlais. In his classes Gwyn was erudite and entertaining and his penchant for irreverent statements meant that the classroom where he delivered lectures to first year students was always filled to the brim.’
The strong views and quick wit of Gwyn’s early lecturing days had been evident in his 1940s school days and honed to perfection when I once heard him recall, in a Prize-giving event in the 1970s at Cyfarthfa High School, when he told us of the day when Miss Davenport, Head of the Girls’ Section, based upstairs, where the boys were not allowed to tread, asked him (then the Head Boy) to come to see her.
‘Mr Williams’, she said, ‘There are boys hanging about upstairs. I want you to do something about it.’ His reply to her complaint was:
‘Miss Davenport, what do you want me to do about it? Cut them down?’
His early research as a keen medieval historian widened and Jenkins relates, ‘he became obsessively interested in the French Revolution and in the Atlantic world. Nor was the early history of Merthyr Tydfil, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in Wales, ever far from his mind. Indeed, the first articles of Welsh history -published in 1959-61 were devoted to the Merthyr Riots of 1831.’ All helped to make this historian ‘the people’s remembrancer’ he wished to be.
Gwyn’s fame spread and in 1963 he was invited to become Reader in History at the new University of York ‘a major turning-point in his career.’ Two years later he was awarded a Chair and for the next eleven years, the swinging sixties! the young professor enjoyed furthering his career with his own exhilarating, modern style of teaching, delighted by classes, again ‘filled to the brim’.
In 1974 he returned to Wales to become Professor of History at Cardiff University. It was a sea- change: his aim to liven up and modernise the study of Welsh History was met with indifference by senior colleagues, who did not share his left-wing values and enthusiasm for the need to focus on the evils of capitalism and the struggles of the exploited working-class of 19th and 20th century industrial South Wales. His new post brought friction and bitter disappointment to the ambitious 49-year- old Welshman. His health suffered and, after battling against the odds for five years, he was persuaded to retire.
Nevertheless, there was life after academia, and he was saved by his need to research, write and to impart his views and his knowledge via active political work and then through radio and television. In 1979 his book, The Merthyr Rising of 1831 was an outstanding success, displaying his scholarship and masterly command of language and written in his fast and furious style. It still has a place on many a bookshelf in Merthyr Tydfil and elsewhere. Revolutions, riots and risings in France, Italy and Spain became favoured topics of his writings. Gwyn, who had already relearnt his Welsh, was a gifted linguist, reading and translating from original documents, often studied in those foreign countries. He won great success as a broadcaster too. His passionate performance in the 1988 TV series, The Dragon has Two Tongues, (A History of the Welsh) proved that the ‘ball of fire from Dowlais’ was still blazing.
He died of cancer on November 16, 1995.
