Dowlais Educational Settlement and the Quaker John Dennithorne, by Christine Trevett

Author: Christine Trevett. Review by David Harries

Merthyr Tydfil has a long, colourful history. The valley is made up of many distinctive communities, including Treharris (with its Fox, Fell and Penn Streets), through Quakers Yard (with Friends’ burial ground), and on to Aberfan and Dowlais. The area was once famous for iron works and coal mines, but by the 1930s there was huge unemployment and poverty, alongside some bad housing.

Merthyr was one of the distressed communities where Friends in Britain carried out relief work. Friends’ intervention was based on enabling self-help and the dignity of the unemployed. Projects included education, music, drama, sewing and even house building.

Friends had to prove the value of their contribution to local people; largely, they were conspicuously outsiders from England, relatively privileged. Trades unions wanted volunteers to be paid union rates; elected representatives sought democratic control; other commentators saw the schemes as ways of avoiding the recruitment of the unemployed into militancy and communism. By and large, the pitfalls of controversy were avoided.

This book by South Wales Friend Christine Trevett is extensively annotated with references, articles and photographs, and documents and tape recordings left by John Dennithorne himself. It is both academic and eminently readable. It could be seen as a companion to Barrie Naylor’s Quakers in the Rhondda 1926-1986.

The test for the historian is to balance the impact of social and political movements (and technological change) with that of individuals who make a difference. Christine carefully spends the first two thirds of her book setting the scene, covering, but not overstating, the involvement of Friends. She then describes the varied career of Friend John Dennithorne (1895-1984). He was born and brought up in London and spent time in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy; he went to Russia to do relief work; he even trained as a sculptor. In 1929 he moved to Dowlais, and became warden and tutor at the Dowlais Settlement, where he stayed till his death. There was always work to do, John felt. He was a Quaker, a Gandhian (he met Gandhi), a vegetarian, a pacifist, a promoter of CND, and a protestor (he spent time in gaol). He had organisational abilities and never retired from his life’s work. Everybody in Dowlais knew him, or knew about him. The local council named a street after him: John Dennithorne Close – Clos John Dennithorne.

Christine’s account is fascinating. It appeals to locals because of its wealth of history; it appeals to Friends as it shows what can be done to relieve distress. I take other lessons from it: firstly, each of us should write our autobiography (to make life easier for our successors); secondly, we should consider how we can apply (and modify) the lessons of the 1930s to present-day Britain, where unemployment is low but where poverty is rife.

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Comments

S Wales Young Friends met at John’s Settlement several times in the 1940’s - 50’s. John will remain for me the model Quaker which I would hope to become.

By john0708 on 28th April 2022 - 14:54

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