Talk:Rhondda

Naming convention

I have switched Rhondda from a disambiguation page to the main page. This is due to Rhondda being classed as Rhondda in dictionarys (inc. Oxford), Ordnance Survey classifications and other Encyclopaedias (inc. The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales). Rhondda Valley, is now a redirect page, as is Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach. Have corrected links to this page.FruitMonkey (talk) 12:31, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Residents of Note

If we name everyone of importance this list will be longer than the article. I think two people in each field that show a spread of ability and location will suffice. Need more women though.FruitMonkey (talk) 23:05, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Infobox

An infobox needs to be added. Aaroncrick^{(Tassie talk)} 01:14, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Infobox added. FruitMonkey (talk) 17:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

"The mass influx of immigrants... was almost totally English and Welsh"

I was interested to read this reference - according to Jenkins (1992) A History of Modern Wales 1536-1990: "in 1911, only 58 per cent of Rhondda's people had been born in Glamorgan. The rest of Wales supplied 19 per cent, England 7 per cent. A sixth of the population was drawn from 'elsewhere', from Ireland and Scotland, but also Spain, Italy, and other lands" (p.240).Pondle (talk) 10:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Good call, but I think Jenkins has made an incorrect assumption with the statistics. The 1911 census was important as for the first time it asked people their country of birth. Of the 152,781 people registered in the population of the Rhondda, only 130,365 answered this question. 117,688 reported themselves as Welsh, 77% of the full population, 10,728 said English, 7% of the population and others were 1,949 (263 Scottish, 929 Irish, 34 Indian, 22 West Indies, 63 Australia and 638 "Rest of the World") only 1.28% of the population. What Jenkins has done is confused those that did not answer as being not Welsh or English, this can not be assumed. If we stretch the respondents to cover all 152,781 inhabitants we get Welsh 90.28%, English 8.23% and other 1.5% (of which 0.92% were Irish or Scottish). Now it could be argued that there was a higher number of non-British that may want to hide their ethnic background, but we can't assume the 22,416 who did not respond were all born abroad. Therefore 98.5% may not be "...almost totally", but it's close. On another point, many European workers did commute to the Rhondda from Cardiff on the TVR but are not included in the figures as they were not residents. FruitMonkey (talk) 11:19, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Size?

The infobox has the highest elevation, but not the size. Roughly how many sq. km. is it? --GentlemanGhost (talk) 01:16, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Addressed. FruitMonkey (talk) 10:30, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --GentlemanGhost (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Citations

I'm concerned about the lack of information attributed to reliable sources. Indeed, while a lot of the article appears well researched and cited to good quality books, some sections are mostly unsourced. GAs just don't pass anymore without that lack of inline citations. It's not just a question of "getting the blue numbers in", I like to find out what source is used for what facts, so I can check them and expand from them. Without that, I might well be reinventing the wheel, and gathering information that was researched correctly, but without a tag put in. I'd rather not take this to WP:GAR yet, as this is an article I would like to see remaining at GA status (if it wasn't there already, I'd work on it to get it there), but it needs to do so on its own merits. @FruitMonkey: - can you assist? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:35, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Rhondda

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

This 2009 listing contains significant uncited material, especially in the "Notable people" section, thus failing GA criterion 2b). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Political activism section

I've been working on expanding the "Political activism" section of the Rhondda article, but I'm starting to think this topic really deserves its own standalone article. The current section feels quite brief considering just how significant the Rhondda's political history has been, not just for Wales but for the wider British labour movement. There's so much material that could be developed here - from the early trade union struggles and the formation of the South Wales Miners' Federation after the 1898 strike, through to the Tonypandy riots that made headlines across Britain. Then you've got the whole syndicalist movement with "The Miners' Next Step", the fascinating story of Maerdy becoming known as "Little Moscow", and the remarkable fact that the Rhondda sent more volunteers to fight in the Spanish Civil War than all the English coalfields combined. Not to mention the hunger marches, post-war political developments, and all the notable political figures who emerged from the valleys.

I'm thinking of creating a new article called something like "Politics and activism in the Rhondda" or "Political history of the Rhondda", then replacing the current section with a brief summary and a link to the main article. This would let us give this historically important topic the detailed treatment it deserves, with proper academic sourcing and analysis of how the Rhondda influenced Welsh and British politics more broadly.

What do people think? Is this topic significant enough to warrant its own article, or would it be better to keep expanding it as a section within the main Rhondda article? I know the political history is one of the things the Rhondda is most famous for, so I'm inclined towards giving it standalone treatment, but I'd welcome other views.

Keironoshea (talk) 11:20, 13 August 2025 (UTC)