Eight years ago, the BBC website covered the event, and published photos of men dressed in female garb, and with blackened faces and white linen bonnets. That was fine, and was a pretty good representation of what went on in the Rebecca Riots and the Ceffyl Pren tradition that pre-dated the riots and continued for some time afterwards. It needs to be emphasised that the blackened faces had absolutely nothing to do with racism or racial stereotyping, and everything to do with hiding identities. All of the rioters must have been familiar with the idea that (like chimney sweeps) black-faced men emerging from the west Wales coal mines at the end of their shifts were none too easy to recognize -- and so the tradition of blackening faces went along with the costumes and the straw hair, the bonnets and the aprons to ensure that bystanders could not put names to faces. And it worked -- very few rioters were ever brought to justice.
I can fully understand why the word "nigger" has effectively been banned from the English language, and why people on radio and TV nowadays refer obliquely to "the n-word" instead. There is great sensitivity out there, and political correctness is everything -- while at the same time there is greater and greater tolerance of verbal obscenities, with swearing now so commonplace that it has become more than a little sickening........
Strange old world.
