Dafydd Elis Thomas, an appreciation

Desmond Clifford

Dafydd Elis Thomas (DET) had been in Westminster for five years already when Wales rejected devolution by a massive majority in 1979.

The future looked bleak for nationalists but few foresaw 18 years of uninterrupted Tory rule despite their never being close to a majority of seats in Wales.

Many had assumed that the power ping-pong between Labour and Conservatives of the 1960s and 70s would go on indefinitely.

By 1997 a chastened Welsh electorate was prepared to look at devolution again. DET was among those who kept the torch lit during those arid decades.

When devolution eventually came, he was a founding member of the National Assembly. He served three terms as its Llywydd/ Presiding Officer and finished his political career as Culture Minister in the Welsh Government.

Few among his contemporaries were more consequential to Welsh politics.

Post-nationalist

DET was a politician on his own terms. He was by turns a nationalist, a Marxist, a kind of Welsh Sandinista and a post-nationalist – a term he introduced to Welsh politics.

For Dafydd, politics was about ideas, permeable and shifting over time, sometimes inconsistently and occasionally inexplicably.

He was the anti-populist. When the chorus achieved harmony he was inclined to wander off in search of dissonant chords. Even his greatest admirers could find him frustrating, and you felt that he saw this as an accolade.

The spirit of precocious contrarian which propelled him early to the top rank of politics never quite left him.

Like Lloyd George, he was lavishly of his community but unwilling to be bound by it. He was an intellectual and, were it not for politics, could have had a scintillating academic career.

He was a cosmopolitan, even a touch self-consciously so. At one stage he affected the dress of a country squire, complete with Prince of Wales tweed, comprehensively at odds with the anti-fashion ethos of 1980s Plaid Cymru and radical activism in general.

At 27 he carried the lustre and expectation as Westminster’s youngest MP.

Alongside Dafydd Wigley he pushed Plaid Cymru forward from the long Gwynfor Evans era and together they built a sense of nationalism-as-practical-politics rather than a set of otherworldly aspirations.

It was Plaid’s good fortune to be served by the two talented Dafydds through the difficult decades at the end of the 20th century.

Two Dafydds

Theirs was a complementary though complex relationship. Alike only in name, the two Dafydds circled each other warily, two big fish in a small pond.

They perched at opposite ends of a wide spectrum: DET radical left, contrarian, intellectual, individualist; Wigley, centrist, business friendly, competent, clubbable.

Between them a wide tent was stretched across Wales drawing support from different shades of politics – nationalism couldn’t progress on any other basis.

The two Dafydds defined Plaid for a generation.

DET was among the first to realise that Plaid simply replacing the Liberals in rural Wales was a political dead end. The real fight must be with Labour.

Only by dislodging Labour could Plaid progress and Wales change.

I first saw Dafydd in Aberystwyth at a rally supporting the miners strike in 1984. He shared the platform with Ann Clwyd and Des Dutfield of the NUM.

Dutfield was the best orator that day. Dafydd was a proficient rather than stirring public speaker. His gift was for subtlety and occasion, like one of those schoolteachers who exude authority without raising their voice.

But his presence on the platform during Wales’ last great industrial struggle was the significant factor.

It recognised that Plaid Cymru could be a significant support for the miners and part of Wales’ left leaning alliance, not a given 40 years ago in the party created by Saunders Lewis. DET helped to shift the dial of Welsh politics.

During the long years of Conservative rule through the 1980s and 90s Dafydd found Westminster a theatre of diminishing returns.

Sophistication

He left the Commons for Civvy St before election to the National Assembly for Wales in 1999. He was chosen by members as the first Llywydd/Presiding Officer and, during three successive terms, filled the post with independence, aplomb and a measure of sophistication otherwise largely absent in Cardiff Bay.

He kicked against the barmy diktat of the first Government of Wales Act which decreed that the National Assembly should function as a “body corporate” with government, presiding officer and committees all in the control of the civil service.

As Llywydd, Dafydd refused to comply. He held out against the bureaucracy and insisted that the Llywydd’s office be made independent with its own staff and source of legal advice.

He won the battle of wills and created sensible de facto constitutional reform within weeks of taking office. De jure reform caught up with reality some years later.

Devolution is short on dramatic parliamentary moments but Dafydd provided one of them when Alun Michael’s brief tenure as First Minister drew to an end in 2000.

Alun’s political position was impossible, but when he tried to resign on the floor of the Assembly to pre-empt a vote of confidence, Dafydd refused to accept it and insisted on the vote which ended Alun’s tenure.

Had Dafydd not insisted on the independence of his office, it’s not clear that he could have pulled this off in the face of civil service advice.

When Dafydd spotted a pigeonhole he would drop a detonator on it and fly somewhere else.

He migrated from the Presbyterian chapels of his youth to the Church in Wales, at Llandaff Cathedral, as high church as you can get without going full Roman.

He exuded good manners and charm around royalty where populism in Plaid Cymru would have cheered boorishness and disdain.

He could wax lyrically on seeing Wales’ future in the context of the Tudor settlement which determined its past, though it’s unlikely this would have passed muster in the pubs of Meirionydd.

House of Lords

He accepted a seat in the House of Lords at a time when Plaid felt angsty about it; very likely that’s why he accepted it. He left Plaid altogether in 2016 frustrated at the leadership of Leanne Wood.

As an Independent he helped sustain Carwyn Jones and Mark Drakeford in office, eventually joining the Welsh Government as Culture Minister, by far the most qualified person ever to hold that post.

I got to know Dafydd quite well over the years. He was affectionate, stimulating and had a generous spirit.

On form he was a brilliant conversationalist and long train journeys were shortened by his wit and erudition. His charm was natural rather than affected, and not reserved exclusively for the great and good, though perhaps he deployed it sometimes as a veil to keep the world at bay.

He was a bon viveur and a lover of the now unfashionable long lunch; he had no use for mineral water.

At five in the morning following the 1997 devolution referendum he bought Ron Davies (for whom I worked) and me a drink at the Park Hotel in Cardiff, our first and only drink on that auspicious night.

Maverick

Instant obituaries were quick to label Dafydd a “maverick” who became “part of the establishment”. In fact, he was neither.

He was a serious politician who believed powerfully in Welsh independence and worked towards this end his entire life.

He also believed it was the duty of politicians to choose and exercise power when it was available. He had little patience with opposition for its own sake and the politics of supposed moral purity.

As Culture Minister he founded Creative Wales, an agency which supports creative industries. When budgets were trimmed, he used his position to protect culture spending; today, in a single party government, no such protection is available. “Choose power” was his motto. He did, and Wales was better for it