Wyn Owen from Neath, near Port Talbot is expected to live a life of significance. His father and grandfather were prominient in the Welsh Revival in the early 20th century and thought to change the world, or at least their part of it. In doing so they rubbed shoulders with many great and prominent men of their day. Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses from genreactions past, Wyn Owen now walks.
Wyn, a natural but reluctant leader, perfers to fly below life's radar and finds it hard enough to change his world, let alone anyone else's. He sees himself as so far not having lived up to the great traditions of his forebears. Not yet, anyway.
Wyn Owen strode up the Scunthorpe High Street unaccompanied. It was shortly after seven o’clock on a Thursday evening. He generally tried to avoid town around this hour. Someone spilling out of a pub, fuelled by liquid courage may easily try to confront him. The street had a distinct Wild West feel to it of late. Many of the pubs were quite raucous, strip clubs were springing up here and there. If someone were to try and confront him, it would have to be someone who did not know him - those who knew him generally liked and respected him, and even those few who neither liked nor respected him knew well enough not to go against the wishes of those who did.
The last thing he would want on an evening such as this was to become embroiled in any kind of unseemly fracas. A church elder, after all, should not be given to drunkenness, should not lack self-control, nor be greedy, nor violent. The members of his small Baptist church were more than confident that he fulfilled all the above criteria. Wyn, however, thought himself to fall at the last hurdle. It, therefore, begged the question: if the epistles to Timothy and Titus stated specifically that one must not be a brawler, what constituted one? Did it mean an incorrigible man who continuously engaged in violence or one who may perhaps have a propensity to lose control from time to time, but was determined to refrain? Those of his congregation with whom he had discussed this had told him it was the former, not the latter. But is not an alcoholic resolute to never drink, he had replied, up to the point until he or she does so? Surely, the principle was the same when one’s weakness was violence. To this, he received the answer that even the Apostle Peter had been no shrinking violet from time to time.
To those of the congregation with whom he had conversed about this matter, the very fact he asked these questions so earnestly of himself showed that he was a good man, the very man they needed for the role as an elder. They also knew that working on the steelworks was no picnic. Moreover, the meekness required of Wyn was not synonymous with weakness, they said, but restrained strength.
Originally from Neath, South Wales, Wyn was part of the influx of skilled workers brought in to staff the Scunthorpe plant in the forties and fifties. Generations of experience such as his, gained from working at Port Talbot steelworks, was of great value to a booming steel town starved of manpower.
He and his wife had decided to answer the call for workers from the valleys to move to the Industrial North of England. They had both worried about leaving the picturesque, accessible beauty of the valleys for the agricultural blandness of Lincolnshire. Generally knowledgeable of history, the only fact he knew of Lincolnshire was that it was ‘the most brute and beastly shire of the whole realm’. A long-deceased monarch had coined the term, he vaguely recalled. In mitigation to this was that he and his family would be moving near the birthplace of the John and Charles Wesley, regarded by Wyn and his congregation as heroes of the faith.
Wyn’s own grandfather had been a leading light of the Welsh Revival at the beginning of the twentieth century. Likewise, his father had been integrally involved with a man called Rees Howells, famous in his time for his intercessory prayer ministry. Wyn Senior had not thought it unusual to rub shoulders with men like the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who visited Swansea in the mid-thirties. Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, Wyn Owen walked.
Wyn Owen was not expected to live a life of insignificance. A man who is skilled with his hands, said Wyn Senior, may stand before kings. Wyn had replied that he had no skill or trade to boast of as such, so what king would he ever stand before? You have one, son, his father had replied, but it may take you some time to find out what it is, to find the area in which you excel above and beyond your peers.
Over many years Wyn had discovered his talent – he was a natural, but reluctant, leader. He voiced this frustration to his father. Ever the man for a scripture or an allegory or both, Wyn senior simply told him one man may chase a thousand, but two may chase ten thousand – a single person may achieve great things, but several unified may achieve exponentially more. Wyn had the ability to bring people together, said Wyn Senior, and that was not to be gainsaid.
Still, leadership, whether sought or imposed, was invariably lonely and isolating. Therefore, over the years Wyn did his level best not to seek promotion in any field of endeavour. So, on the steelworks he was a charge-hand instead of a foreman, in church he was an elder rather than a pastor.
Prominence should not be his chief concern, his father counselled. True leadership was in doing the right thing, no matter how unpopular, and eventually bringing people along with him. That was Wyn’s unique gift, his father said.
Midway down the High Street, Wyn caught the bus that took him onto the Frodingham works. After he alighted, he walked the remaining distance to the South Ironworks.
