The centenary of the Tonypandy Riots has just passed in the Rhondda Valleys, when 12,000 miners went out on strike to protest at the bullying attitudes of the massive Cambrian Combine chain of collieries, who locked out miners at the Ely colliery in Penygraig. The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, sent armed troops into the Valleys, an incident remembered in a folk song (to the tune of Clementine):

"Tonypandy, Tonypandy,
Tonypandy, don't forget;
Tonypandy, Tonypandy,
All the Welsh remember yet..."

When The Coal Comes From The Rhondda was a rallying-cry inspired by The Tonypandy Riots. And BBC-1 Wales showed Sophie Evans (runner-up in the theatre audition show Over The Rainbow) singing All The Nice Girls Love A Miner, a 100-year-old Rhondda Valleys parody to the tune of All The Nice Girls Love A Sailor, which was another song inspired by the Riots.

Churchill's reputation was blackened, as far as South Wales was concerned, by his actions in the Riots. As late as the 1960s, South Wales mothers scared their naughty children by telling them: "You be good, or else I'll send Churchill to get you!"