Arthur Jenkins 

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Important as the Old Glyn Pits are in the history of local mining, within a few hundred yards of the Glyn Pits are the remains of another, smaller mine called 'Wern-Tillery' or locally 'Quarry Level', of which the manager then was one Joshua Hopkins. This mine, actually a 'Drift Mine', also has it's history, especially of the events during the 1926 general strike, in which the miners' agent, Arthur Jenkins, one of several working-class heroes of Pontypool and father of the late Roy, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead played an important part. A series of 'Lockouts' and confrontations took place at the Quarry Level involving the local police and miners, culminating on September 24th of that year, when some 800 men, both miners and other workmen, were involved in a confrontation with fifteen policemen. During this fracas, the man in command of the police contingent, Superintendent Spendlove, was knocked off his white horse by a piece of iron, actually, a rail fishplate said to have been thrown by one of the miners on the bank above the railway line near the screens, (an apparatus for separating small from large coal) This then occasioned a baton charge by the police, which resulted in the arrest of Arthur Jenkins and several other men. For this, Arthur Jenkins was imprisoned for several months. There were several men from the local tin and ironworks present at this so-called 'Riot against His Majesty the King', including a Japanese man, Nichita Ishigawa. From this, the reader will see that lockouts and baton charges Etc, and confrontation with the authorities, as in the 1984 miners strike, is nothing new in Britain. However, it should be said that this incident did very little harm to Mr.Arthur Jenkin's career at all, as he later became Alderman Arthur Jenkins, as well as both local Member of Parliament and the Private Secretary to the Prime Minister of the time.