Walter Conway

The 1881 census documents that Conway’s father had become a single parent, living with his two young sons in Tredegar, in the next valley.

[5] During the winter of 1920–1921, Conway, Bevan and other friends formed the Query Club, which was a radical debating society.

[6] A photograph of a class of the Church Sunday School seen in Tredegar Museum shows him in the centre, doubtless as the teacher.

It was financed by contributions that were deducted at source from the earnings of its employees and administered by a committee which comprised members from each of the Company's coal mines.

Some of his colleagues on the Board of Guardians were members of the new Independent Labour Party (ILP), which had been established in Bradford in 1893.

In April 1915, while employed as a haulier in a local colliery, Conway was elected chairman of Bedwellty Board of Guardians.

The following year, in addition to undertaking this role, he gave classes on social science under the auspices of the London-based Central Labour College (CLC), which had been established in 1909 with the financial help of the South Wales Miners' Federation.

Conway was also a prominent trade union leader and occupied important positions in workmen's organisations.

: 36) also commented about Conway's latter role: 'His extensive knowledge of Assessment Law enabled him to "hold his own" with the leading acknowledged experts in this field.

[12] By 1925, The Society purchased the redundant Palace cinema which they converted into an additional surgery as well as establishing space for their own dental mechanic.

The Society employed A. J. Cronin, a Scottish doctor who later became a novelist, and who depicted it in his 1937 novel The Citadel (novel)[14] and in his 1952 fictionalised autobiography Adventures in Two Worlds.

Its success was in large measure due to Walter Conway, of Tredegar, who, as secretary, with a committee of about thirty members, controlled and administered the Society's affairs.'

'[16] At one stage the Society employed five doctors, two dentists with a mechanic each, pharmacy dispensers and assistants and a nurse.

The doctors were allowed to undertake private work which again was a model followed within the National Health Service when it was established just over a decade after Conway died.

A photograph of the lengthy funeral procession shows the mourners making their way on foot from the town up the hill to the cemetery.

Jeremy Miles MS, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care of the Welsh Government, and Julie Watkin and Allison Nutland, his great granddaughters, unveiled a blue plaque on 1 Rawlinson Terrace in the town, his marital home.