Farmer, Soldier and Politician

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Roedd Owen Thomas, ffermwr ac asiant tir o Lanbadrig, Ynys Môn, yn gymeriad enigmatig. Daeth i amlygrwydd fel milwr ac ymgynghorydd amaethyddol yn Affrica, ac fel aelod Llafur arloesol yn y senedd.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Owen Thomas, farmer and land agent from Llanbadrig, Anglesey, was an enigmatic character throughout his life. He is best remembered as the man responsible for the formation of Lloyd George's 'Welsh Army Corps', raised in response to Kitchener's appeal for volunteers at the outbreak of the Great War.

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Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

This absorbing biography, by an expert author (and well-known retired history teacher), is an expansion of a rather more slim Welsh language biography of the same person entitled Rhyfelwr Môn and published by Gwasg Gee in 1989. For the present offering, the author has gone back to the original sources, quarrying private archives and official papers and reports, a rich array of newspaper columns, and many secondary works. His research is admirably complete and painstaking. The resultant volume rescues from possible oblivion an important figure in the history of Anglesey and Wales. Pretty carefully traces his subject’s Anglesey roots, his education and his role as the tenant farmer of Neuadd following the premature death of his father Owen Thomas in 1876, and his services to the local community there, not least as a conviction Gladstonian Liberal. Local aspects of the burgeoning land question of the late nineteenth century are carefully elucidated. Thomas was, we are told, a pioneer of innovative farming practices and an accomplished manager of the land. Thereafter Thomas’s role in the Anglo-Boer War is examined, together with an account of his extensive travels and business interests in South Africa, a part of the world with which he developed a particular affinity. When World War One broke out in August 1914, Owen Thomas was especially prominent in the recruiting drive in Caernarfonshire, where a notable reluctance to enlist was striking – undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of his entire life. His contribution to the war effort was considerable, but he suffered the immensely cruel fate of seeing no fewer than three of his sons killed on active service – between January 1916 and July 1918 – before the end of the hostilities. These events are here depicted with compassion and due pathos. After the Great War, Thomas pursued a new career as the independent quasi-Labour MP for his native Anglesey – a true pioneer in that respect who defeated the entrenched sitting Liberal MP Sir Ellis Jones Ellis-Griffith. As he was no orator himself, his success derived from the backing of the agricultural trades unions on the remote island constituency which ensured – against the political odds – his re-election to parliament in November 1922 following the fall of the Lloyd George coalition government. Very sadly, Owen Thomas died in a London hospital at the age of 64 the following March. The text is lucidly written and meticulously researched throughout, setting its subject firmly in the context of his turbulent times. The volume is exquisitely produced and enlivened by an array of well-chosen and genuinely interesting photographs which admirably complement the text.