Christopher M Hight

ALT Image description: a green background with a red bar at the bottom. The right side of the image is a black and white image of Gwyn Alf Williams, smiling with his arm raised like he’s resting on something. In the top right, there is a quote (text is below), and at the bottom there is a headline written in white, with the years 1925 and 1995 on either side. Text reads: quote: “I WAS 18, A PASSIONATE YOUNG COMMUNIST AND A PASSIONATE WELSH PATRIOT. TO ME THEN, THE TWO WERE IDENTICAL" 1925 Dathlu GWYN ALF WILLIAMS 1995

ALT Text reads: THE WELSH MARXIST HISTORIAN "History is more than a page in a book. History is the buckle that bites back, history is the sweat you can't keep out of your eyes, history is the the fear crawling in your belly." The Dragon Has Two Tongues Gwyn Alf Williams, a Marxist, a historian, a trade unionist, a comrade. On this day, 29 years ago, the titan of Welsh history passed away. His presence today is still felt through the inspiration of a new generation of Welsh communists to look into the past, the history of Wales and the working class, and understand where we came from. He taught us that history is not a static, unchanging thing, it is a history of interconnected things, of constant change, driven forward by r-r-r-ruptures!

ALT Text reads: WORKING CLASS HISTORY The Dragon Has Two Tongues, a groundbreaking TV show from 1985, pitting the working-class Marxist history of Gwyn Alf Williams against the romantic, middle-class history of Wynford Vaughn-Thomas. Williams showed how history can be a weapon of the working class, placing us at the centre of it, moving it forwards. He rejected the romantic ideas that we were shaped by singular acts of singular Welsh princes, and placed the greatest of society, those who laboured, at the centre of the story. The working class was born through great advances in industry, and in turn our labour transformed and advanced industry, at the cost of our lives and health. To Williams, the Merthyr Rising of 1831 is the point where the Welsh working class began as we know it today. "In Merthyr in 1831, the prehistory of the Welsh working class ended. It's history began" The Merthyr Rising

ALT Text reads: THE DRAGON HAS TWO TONGUES When our socialist republican movement began 5 years ago, one of the first things we did was declare that 'The Dragon Has Two Tongues should be available to all people, not hoarded by those who want to make money out of it. Go to the Welsh Underground Networks website, and you will find all episodes of it there to watch, for free, along with more of Gwyn Alf Williams' work. Today, honour his memory, and watch an episode of The Diagon Has Two Tongues https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/the-dragon-has-two-tongues/