DANCING AND DISCORD

Evening Star, Issue 20440, 22 March 1930, Page 27

DANCING AND DISCORD

HAPPY HOMES BROKEN GRAZE IN SOUTH WALES DECLINE IN DRINKING. South Wales was recently stated to have gone dance mad. In the towns and villages young peplo and married folk congregated in hundreds and kept up the dances until the early hours of the morning. It was not an unusual thing for the dancing to break up at ■2, d, or 4 o’clock, and this was kept up night after night throughout the week. The local authorities endeavoured to regulate the hours and] conduct of dancing halls, but only in a few instances had they succeeded, because so many cheap dances were held in nonlicensed halls and lofts, sometimes above workshops and stables totally unsuitable for dancing. The Cardiff City Council sought to regulate matters by refusing to permit intoxicants at dances, and the magistrates in the Rhondda Valley endeavoured to control - the craze by restricting the hours of dance halls, but people engaged non-authorised and unsuitable halls, and so avoided control. “ BOON BECOMES CURSE.” “ It is distressing to see the results of late dances,” the Rev. John Thomas, secretary of the Forward Movement, said. “ It is a curse to families and to onr churches. What would hnvo been a great boon in our villages has been turned by its abuse into a deadly curse. I know many cases in which man and wife have boon

separated; I know of many happy homes broken up in the Rhondda and the other valleys in consequence of one of the other resorting to dance halls. Tho morals of our young people are being undermined. “ Steps to counteract this mad danco craze are being talon by the churches, particularly by the Forward Movement. We arc linking ourselves with the Workers’ Educational Association, tho National Council of Music, and the Welfare Association, in order to provide our young people with proper facilities and plenty of healthy recreation.” VIEWS OF MAGISTRATE. Dancing, and not drink, was stated to ho the curse of the Rhondda district when Mr D. Lleufer Thomas, stipendiary magistrate of Pontypridd and Rhondda gave evidence before tho Royal Commission on Licensing at Westminster. In his memorandum to tho commission Mr Thomas said a considerable change had taken place in tho habits of the people in South Wales. Among the things vdiiclfhad contributed very largely to. sober habits were motoring and motor cycling, better housing, and a systematic communal provision of those amenities which were Inciting previously, such as welfare institutes, recreation grounds, bowling greens, and playing fields. Mr Thomas put down a great deal of the crime committed in his area to drink. A higher percentage of attacks on women and children, ho said, were still committed when, people were under the influence of drink or in a semidrunken condition. OTHER SIDE OF PICTURE. On the whole, however, drink had ceased to ho the main cause of domestic infelicity, and as a sign of tho ■ improved morals of the inhabitants, Air

Thomas told the commission that during the whole week of _ the National Eisteddfod at Treorchy in 1928 there was an average daily attendance of 15,000 to 20,000, and yet not a single case of drunkenness or disorderly behaviour was reported. Mr Thomas stated that love of dancing was a cause of modern domestic discord. “In fact," he said, “dancing and its concomitants, and not drink, are the present-day curse of my district.”