The correspondence to the Editor was as follows: 

'Knowing that it would be futile to expect the Mail to insert a contradiction, may I call attention to their report of the great demonstration on the Franchise Bill which took place at Tredegar on Tuesday?

It stated that the Tredegar Brass Band, which headed the Tredegar contingent, was 'less musical but a more noisy band than the one which led the Rhymney contingent'.

Not satisfied with willful misrepresentations, not only regarding the Tredegar demonstration, but also every other Liberal meeting, they must needs make an insidious attack upon the band which has distinguished itself by taking prizes at brass band competitions at Wrexham and other places.

To show their utter recklessness for friend and foe, they were in gross ignorance of the fact that some of the most prominent members of the band are Conservatives.

They also state that there were between 3,000 and 4,000 present, whereas 10,000 would be nearer the mark, and nine out of every ten were working-men, who sacrificed a day's work to assert their rights and to protest against the arbitrary and despotic conduct of Lord Salisbury.

I beg to thank you for your faithful account of the meeting, only that I think that your estimate of those present is under the mark.

ONE OF THE AUDIENCE

Tredegar, Aug. 20, 1884

Later report

A later report in the Weekly Mail newspaper of the 23rd August 1884 also repeated the inaccuracy, stating that there had been a ‘political picnic at Tredegar’ of what they called the disenfranchised residents of Tredegar, Ebbw Vale, and Rhymney.

It also went on to say it was '...noticeable for the large attendance of women and children, reiterated clap-trap and exaggeration about the action of the House of Lords, and unlimited adulation of the Grand Old Man.

The Tredegar Radicals and their families, like their Rhymney brethren, mustered in strong force, so that when the three contingents had gathered together in the Circle, accompanied by the aforesaid Rhymney Band, and another less musical but more noisy band, hired by the local wirepullers, they presented a pretty imposing front. 

From the Circle they processioned the streets to Georgetown Hill, which had been placed at their disposal by Mr. Colquhoun, the manager of the Tredegar Coal, Iron, and Steel Company.”