Glaslyn Morgan
An elected Communist councillor for Neath Borough and Neath Port Talbot County Councils for 20 years and for Coedffranc Parish and later Community Council for 40 years, Glas Morgan’s base was the village of Skewen (WelshSgiwen), in Glamorgan, South Wales. :
Skewen was once an industrial village. There were a number of collieries around the village and the Crown and Mines Royal Copper Works and the Cheadle and Neath Abbey Ironworks also provided employment. Morgan’s father was a miner during the General Strike and lock out of 1926 and Glas himself joined the Young Communist League in the late 1930s and then the Communist Party. He was developed as a Communist cadre by local Communists such as Alan Thomas of Neath Abbey. He was also close to Dai Francis (see separate entry), when he was lodge secretary at Onllwyn Number One Pit, where Glas worked as a very young man.
Like many Communists, he had a large Daily Worker round. A landlord once threw him out of a local pub for selling the Daily Worker over a dozen customers followed him out to buy a copy. He was involved in the massive rally to stop the British Union of Fascists holding a rally at the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea in 1936.
In 1946 Glas stood as a candidate for the Communist Party in the Skewen parish council election along with three other party members. He stood as a candidate at every election for the parish council and the community council that later replaced it thereafter.
His 1955 election leaflet declared:
“Without peace there can be no advance for the ordinary working people. No matter how many speeches are made and how many promises are forthcoming, the choice before everyone is:
- More houses or bombers
- More hospitals, health centres or barracks
- More playing fields or battlefields.
We cannot have both.”
Glas only stepped down as a local elected representative at the age of 85 and died on 22nd July 2009 at the age of 89.
Sources: Socialist Worker 22 April 2006; Morning Star August 10th 2009;
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