Postmodernity and its malcontents: reflections on the Welsh independence referendum of 2007
Corresponding author: [Redacted]
Key-words: post-truth, referendum, factuality, Wales, Senedd
“You cannot live in the present, At least not in Wales”[1]
In recent years there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the apparent decline of honesty in public life, heralding the dawn of the “post-truth era”.
In much the same way that Captain Renault was shocked to learn that gambling was taking place at Rick’s Bar, many commentators have been appalled to discover that politicians sometimes adopt a creative approach to truth-telling.
Manipulation of information
Needless to say, none of this is new to students of political science. The manipulation of information is a practice as old as politics itself: from Caesar’s De Bello Gallico to David Cameron’s shed-begotten memoir, the idea of “controlling the narrative” has a long and rarely distinguished history.
Some authors still insist that Machiavelli can tell us all we need to know about political strategy, although frankly such clichés are best left to the airport bookshop, or indeed some of the less imaginative rap singers. [2]
Nevertheless, it would be churlish to deny that the internet age has thrown up new and sometimes surprising means of twisting facts to suit all manner of purposes.
Debord gave us society as spectacle,[3] Evans introduced us to the idea of constructed reality,[4] and Surkov has succeeded in transforming politics into the theatre of the absurd. Meanwhile, the kaleidoscopically-fragmented state of online discourse has opened up exciting new horizons for conspiracy theorists and associated dimwits.
In this respect the attacks of 11 September 2001 may be seen as representing a symbolic turning point. The proliferation of internet conspiracies has made “9/11” more than just a lightning rod for idiots and oddballs; it has become something akin to a maypole, a virtual space where they can congregate and celebrate the sacred communal rites of idiocy, clucking and gurning like mud-flecked peasants on a mead binge.
The millions swept up in this phenomenon have in common a vivid imagination and a stubborn indifference to empirical evidence, underpinned by the conviction that nothing is truly as it seems. Given the sheer tedium of so many modern lives, this is perhaps a case of wishful thinking more than anything else.
Nonetheless, the oxygen that social media have provided to endless (and endlessly tedious) conspiracy theories must surely rank among the most nefarious consequences of the world wide web.[5]
Notwithstanding the calamitous implications for the quality of political debate, and indeed for democracy in general, the distortion of reality has provided fertile ground for research of a psycho-social nature. It is not my intention here to summarise, nor to add to, the sizeable corpus of academic literature which has sprung up around conspiracy theories and their proponents.
Blathering
Perhaps there is indeed something to be learned from a rigorous study of online blathering about voting machines, or Bill Gates poisoning Covid vaccines, or whatever nonsense the Russians are currently promoting.
Alternatively, I would argue, there is no shame in deciding that one has better things to do than study the paranoid ramblings of delusional Americans and their manipulators in the international intelligence community.
Much more interesting, I would contend, are those events that truly occur but somehow fail to register in the collective consciousness.[6] One could cite any number of examples, but a few recent instances should suffice.
In January 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down near Tehran by trigger-happy elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
News media all over the world grimly predicted a military escalation, but within a few months the affair had been almost entirely forgotten by all but the families of the deceased.
More recently, in September 2022, a group of disgruntled army officers overturned the government of Burkina Faso. Those with no more than a passing interest in such events may have experienced a sense of déjà vu: rightly so, since the government they overturned had itself seized power in a military coup some eight months previously.
For those who like to keep count, there were no fewer than four successful military coups in Africa in 2021.[7]
It would be tempting to ascribe Western ignorance of these events to our general lack of interest in other parts of the world, or, more generously, to our preoccupation with the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. But there is a virtually endless supply of similar examples from different eras and different parts of the world, all of which should compel us to explore the fundamental questions implicit in our ignorance: What makes a historical fact? Who gets to decide? And what happens when an event is simply too far-reaching to be comfortably incorporated into the prevailing narrative?
The purpose of the present article is to address one particular event which represents, to my mind at least, the most intriguing and enduring example of a phenomenon which was simply too extraordinary for the general public to accept and assimilate.
An event of such magnitude, and with such profound ramifications, that a whole society was unable, or unwilling, to come to terms with it.
The event in question is the Welsh independence referendum of 2007.
Devolved
For readers not well-versed in the politics of the United Kingdom, some context may be of service.[8] By 2007, devolved government in Wales was an established reality. Nevertheless, the idea of Welsh politics remained a faintly exotic and entirely uninteresting prospect for almost everybody residing east of Offa’s Dyke (and a fair proportion of those on the westward side).
Even now the First Minister of Wales can walk down any high street in England without being recognised, a degree of anonymity which is one of the perks of a prime seat in the devolved legislature.
At the risk of vastly understating the matter, in the summer of 2007 Wales was not at the forefront of the UK’s political conversation.
Tony Blair had finally decided (more or less of his own volition) to make way for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and those political journalists not yet on holiday were busy speculating about the possibility of a snap election.
For Wales, this meant more of the neglect and indifference to which we as a nation have become accustomed. Despite holding 34 of Wales’s parliamentary seats, the Labour Party in London and the Labour Party in Cardiff continued to coexist somewhat uneasily.
Blair had reaffirmed his thorough disinterest in Welsh politics by appointing Peter Hain as Welsh Secretary, a post that Hain ostensibly retained even as he devoted all of his time to grappling with the manifold dysfunctions of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
And yet, although Westminster paid little heed, the Welsh political sphere was a veritable cauldron of intrigue in this period. The Assembly elections of May 2007 had seen Plaid Cymru gain seats at Labour’s expense, chiselling away the governing party’s majority to the point where some form of coalition was inevitable.
Despite undergoing heart surgery in July, First Minister Rhodri Morgan was determined to lead the negotiations in person.
Buoyed by those recent election gains, Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones was gleefully briefing journalists about the extravagant conditions his party would impose in return for propping up a minority Labour government in Cardiff.
Somewhere near the top of that list was a demand for a referendum on full independence for Wales. By his own subsequent admission, not even Wyn Jones himself believed that this was either a realistic or a desirable prospect[9]. Nevertheless, an independence referendum had been part of the Plaid manifesto for so long that they no longer thought to question it.
Anarchic past
Fatefully, it was this relic of the nationalists’ more anarchic past that inspired what Morgan believed would be his political masterstroke. Determined to maintain the upper hand over Plaid, Morgan decided to call their bluff: he would give them their referendum, it would prove to be an utter fiasco, and the independence “debate” would be settled for a generation at least.
He promptly called a press conference and, without notifying either Plaid or his Labour colleagues in advance, announced that a referendum would be held to decide the question: “I agree that Wales should be an independent country.”
Morgan’s intuition was that the nationalists would be woefully unprepared for a campaign on this scale, and that decades of burning holiday cottages and spray-painting Cofiwch Dryweryn on railway bridges would prove to be no substitute for actual political experience.
As a veteran of the 1997 devolution campaign, and of course the outright victor of the 2003 Assembly election, Morgan knew a thing or two about voter apathy.
In private he was utterly convinced that turnout would never meet the required 50%; the whole affair would be a damp squib, and Wyn Jones would be sent scuttling back to Anglesey with his tail between his legs.[10]
So confident was Morgan in this strategy that he set the date of the referendum for Thursday 13th September, paving the way for a triumphant appearance at the Millennium Stadium for the Wales – Australia Rugby World Cup tie on Saturday 15th, and a follow-up celebration to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the devolution referendum on September 18th.
With the benefit of hindsight, Morgan’s calculations now appear hopelessly naïve. But in July 2007, nobody could have predicted that the people of Wales would be even remotely interested in an independence referendum. The Senedd elections had been and gone without much fuss, and once again the voting public had showed no great inclination for Welsh politics.
Bovine TB
For weeks on end the country’s biggest talking point was whether or not Shambo the sacred bull should be put down to avoid the spread of bovine tuberculosis.[11]
Morgan’s strategy was predicated on the widely held assumption that most Welsh people were tacitly opposed to independence, and thus no real campaign was required. Of course events would soon prove otherwise, and the summer of 2007 did not provide the rest and relaxation that Rhodri Morgan’s doctors had advised.
Morgan’s surprise announcement left Welsh Labour in an uncomfortable position. A clear majority of Assembly members were opposed to leaving the union, but campaigning against independence for the country you purport to lead does appear to suggest a certain lack of both confidence and competence.
Morgan decided that the best available option was to allow AMs to vote “with their conscience”, with the expectation that senior Labour figures would weigh in to the debate at crucial moments in support of a “No” vote.
Meanwhile, the forces of opposition were gathering in a small office above a bookmaker’s shop on Cardiff’s Westgate Street. Launched with a budget that would make a shoestring seem enviably robust, the Yes Cymru campaign was led by a curious assortment of doughty Plaid veterans and enthusiastic student volunteers.
The latter provided some eye-catching ideas for attracting voters who might usually have given Welsh politics a wide berth: Yes! branded condoms, rowdy club nights, and of course a flurry of online activity centred upon Facebook. Their efforts were greatly supplemented by a raft of celebrity endorsements, ranging from Eddie Butler and Shane Williams to Bryn Terfel, Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church and two-thirds of the Manic Street Preachers.[12] The Yes movement also benefited from the support of some more seasoned political campaigners.
By now free of the constraints of the Labour party, Ron Davies relished the opportunity to further the cause of devolution. His speeches at rallies in former coal-mining communities were particularly well-received.
Caught off guard by the unexpected dynamism of the independentists, a No campaign had to be hastily assembled. This proved to be far more difficult than anticipated, despite the fact that, Plaid notwithstanding, almost nobody in Welsh politics wished to see the principality become an independent nation.
The Tories were unanimously opposed to independence, but also viscerally averse to the idea of agreeing with Labour, on any grounds whatsoever. Their preferred solution was to leave Morgan to sort out his own mess, retiring to their usual summer quarters in Provence, Tuscany and Fishguard.
More vocal in their support, alas, were a motley assortment of fascists, eccentrics and Liberal Democrats.
The Lib Dems, at least, were prevented from doing much damage by their stubborn anonymity. Less helpfully, the press took great delight in reporting every half-baked utterance of No campaigners such as Neil Hamilton and drink-addled squire Sir David “Dai” Llewellyn.[13]
After John Redwood made some typically condescending remarks in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Cardiff was soon awash with posters featuring Redwood’s likeness anointed with the elegantly simple caption “Bastard”.
One of the early surprises of the campaign was the extent to which the Welsh press threw its weight behind the Yes campaign. Opinion was split among the staff of the Western Mail, while the Echo largely chose to ignore the campaign until it entered its final days.
Y Cymro, as might have been expected, was highly supportive. Perhaps more surprisingly, the Argus was fully behind the Yes campaign, as was the Leader, which published a string of editorials worthy of Gildas in an especially solemn mood. Even Red Dragon Radio decided to give free advertising spots to pro-independence messages, voiced by Neville Southall.
Panic
By mid-August, Rhodri Morgan was beginning to panic. Carwyn Jones was ordered to cut short his walking holiday in Ireland and return to Cardiff post-haste. Jane Hutt was recalled from her cottage in Tresaith, while Andrew Davies was eventually located in Bangkok and ordered to hurry home.
Jane Davidson, on the other hand, flatly declined to get involved.[14]
After a lengthy and occasionally ill-tempered debate, the Welsh Labour grandees decided upon a strategy which was almost quietist in its simplicity. In short, they agreed that their best hope was simply to shut up and wait it out, pinning all their hopes on a low turn-out at the polls. A strictly confidential memo was issued from the First Minister’s office advising all government ministers, Assembly members and staff to stop talking about the referendum in public.
The final weeks of the campaign played out in this bizarrely lop-sided manner, with the Yes brigade doing everything they could think of to drum up public interest while those in power steadfastly refused to acknowledge the situation, often to the point of absurdity.[15]
The Welsh government had opened the door to the most momentous constitutional change since the Statute of Rhuddlan, then decided that they would rather not talk about it.
While visiting a county show in Denbighshire, Carwyn Jones was pressed repeatedly for a comment on the referendum by local journalists. Jones blithely ignored their questions for an excruciating half hour, culminating in a farcical scene where the minister posed for photos with a lamb while chants of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” rang out all around. A few days later, with just one week to go before the vote,
Welsh politics made one of its rare incursions into the national media. The producers of Newsnight had planned to include a ten-minute debate on the referendum towards the end of their programme, but the No campaign declined to send a representative. The panel thus consisted of an effervescent Ieuan Wyn Jones, a barely less excited Michael Sheen, and a cuddly toy sheep propped up on a chair to represent the absent unionists.[16] Jeremy Paxman’s eyebrows were arched to new heights that evening.
Good omen
In spite of these and other embarrassments, polling data and internal research allowed Rhodri Morgan’s inner circle to maintain their quiet optimism. Thursday 13th September 2007 was a warm and sunny day across much of Wales, a rare occurrence which Morgan was determined to interpret as a good omen.
With many schools closed for the vote, he hoped that a sizeable portion of the electorate would choose to spend the day enjoying the late summer sunshine.
Driving through the Vale of Glamorgan and observing the pub gardens doing brisk business that afternoon, Morgan began to feel increasingly confident. In keeping with Welsh Labour’s strategy of obfuscation, there was no official No campaign headquarters and no plans were made for a victory party. Morgan, Jones, Davies and a huddle of trusted advisors instead ensconced themselves in the First Minister’s office in Tŷ Hywel and awaited the exit polls.
The first peal of thunder rang out shortly after the polling stations closed that evening, when election officials declared the turn-out to be 50.22%. This announcement alone was enough to trigger an explosion of joy at Yes HQ, and indeed a swift foray to the nearby City Arms. Over at Tŷ Hywel nerves were beginning to fray, but these early jitters were assuaged as the first results began to roll in. By 11 o’clock a picture was already emerging, with No leading Yes by a steady margin of around 5%.
Ties were loosened and bottles stealthily uncorked, as the mood among the First Minister’s inner circle became more upbeat than it had been for many weeks.
The TV pundits were already calling a No victory by the time most people headed off to bed, but by midnight the tide had begun to turn. It soon became clear that many of the first polling stations to declare were located in the south-east, and only later in the evening did results begin to trickle in from the far corners of west and north Wales.
Slowly but inexorably, the two sides drew closer and closer until they were finally separated by a dramatic swing in the final hour. When Ceredigion declared at 1 o’clock, the numbers of the board were unequivocal: Yes 50.3% – No 49.7%.
There was stunned silence in the BBC studio, as a visibly exhausted Jamie Owen struggled to form a coherent sentence. A similar sense of shock and awe gripped the ill-prepared guests on S4C and ITV, while the producers desperately awaited images of the scenes on the ground in Cardiff.
It is impossible to say exactly what went on inside the FM’s offices that evening, as none of those present have ever accepted to speak about it publicly. Rhodri Morgan, of course, took his own version of events to the grave.
The BBC, ITV and S4C had all sent out small camera crews to get the initial reactions of the winning party, and all three had set up camp in Cardiff Bay to await Rhodri Morgan’s closing remarks.
When the bombshell finally dropped, Morgan refused to leave his office. Just as he had stubbornly attempted to ignore the chain of events he had set in motion, he now seemed determined to avoid their unthinkable realisation. By the time the outside broadcast vans made it up to Westgate Street, they were greeted by scenes of pandemonium.
The student volunteers erupted onto the streets of Cardiff, spraying beer into the night air and posing for photos with the statue of Nye Bevan. But even as Womanby Street resounded to the strains of ‘Men of Harlech’, the most prominent Yes campaigners were somehow unavailable for comment. In spite of their initial jubilation, it rapidly became clear that the independentists had not prepared for this outcome.
_____
The future dawns
Friday 14th September should have marked the dawn of an uncertain and unprecedented future for Wales. Sporadic celebrations erupted in Wrexham, Machynlleth and Carmarthen, but Cardiff remained eerily quiet. Journalists gathered outside the new Senedd building, but there was no Assembly business scheduled for that day and the place was almost entirely deserted.
Behind the scenes, however, the atmosphere was one of barely contained chaos. In a series of frantic meetings, civil servants and special advisers workshopped all manner of excuses, pretexts and ruses. The most widely backed solution was to declare that the referendum was not legally binding, since the government had never actually specified what independence would entail.
More radical elements set about concocting stories of voter fraud, sprinkled with allegations of interference by English entryists and the ever-dreaded second-homeowners.[17] Ultimately, these far-fetched excuses would go unused. Within a few days of the vote it had become clear that there was to be no Welsh Revolution after all.
The Rugby World Cup provided a welcome distraction on the Saturday, although Morgan himself felt it better to stay away, watching the match from the safety of his study with a bottle of Penderyn to hand. Carwyn Jones was sent to deputise, perhaps because of his proven ability to ignore questions while grinning steadfastly for the cameras.
The whereabouts of Ieuan Wyn Jones, however, remained a mystery.
By Monday, Morgan had still not shown his face in public and the government had declined even to acknowledge the referendum result. In this respect they remained true to their strategy of wilful ignorance, but much more surprising was the lack of media scrutiny or reaction.
Radio Cymru’s phone-ins were unusually busy over the weekend, but talk of the referendum rapidly made way for discussions of the rugby result and news from elsewhere. Oddly, Monday’s newspapers contained virtually no mention of the events of the previous Thursday.
Calm is called for
The Western Mail ran an opinion piece calling for calm and reflection, and the Argus contained a handful of readers’ letters on the subject, but that was the full extent of the press coverage.
Circumstances playing out beyond Wales’s borders undoubtedly played a role: over the weekend, long queues had been forming outside branches of Northern Rock as the first run on a British bank in 150 years rapidly gathered pace.
The tabloids, meanwhile, had no shortage of sports and celebrity gossip to occupy their pages, not to mention the latest ruthless speculation on the whereabouts of Madeleine McCann.
On Wednesday, Peter Hain visited Cardiff in the company of Baron Kinnock, ostensibly to mark the beginning of the academic year at the university. During a brief press conference the pair alluded several times to the referendum, apparently in anticipation of a flood of questions.
The thin scattering of journalists in attendance failed to take the bait, and Kinnock and Hain returned to Westminster perplexed but thoroughly relieved.
Throughout the days and weeks after September 13th, the senior leadership of Plaid Cymru were conspicuous by their absence from all events involving television cameras.
They also appeared to be observing some form of social media blackout, a silence which extended to the party’s rank and file membership. On the streets of Cardiff, even the Young Turks of the Yes Cymru campaign seemed to have melted away.
He may have miscalculated the rest, but Rhodri Morgan got one thing right: the independentists were not prepared for independence, not in the slightest.
Protest
On Thursday, a full week after the vote, Morgan returned to work as if nothing had happened. The First Minister spent the morning at the Senedd attending to parliamentary business, before visiting a yoghurt factory in Risca in the afternoon. Sporadic, isolated acts of protest would continue for a few weeks, but were mostly limited to handwritten Yes Cymru signs brandished in Morgan’s general vicinity as he returned to his usual round of public appearances.
The most striking exception, and incidentally one of the most stunningly incongruous events in the whole of Welsh history, came on Friday 28 September when a militant independentist self-immolated in front of the Senedd building. Unhappily for the young incendiary, he chose to make his ultimate sacrifice at 10 o’clock on a blustery autumn morning, and there were few witnesses.
No photographic record of the event has survived, but the few first-hand accounts available describe the heroic efforts of a passer-by to extinguish the flames with the only materials to hand, namely a can of Diet Coke and an M&S anorak. Alas, her efforts were in vain.
The man was later identified as Llewelyn Griffiths of Carmarthen; the body itself was charred beyond recognition, but police were able to identify Griffiths because his car was double parked nearby. He left a manifesto of sorts, but the colourful language employed throughout meant that it was effectively unpublishable.[18]
In some respects this human blaze marked the climax of the Yes movement, and also its effective conclusion. Much like the almost-historic moment he sought to salvage, the ultimate sacrifice of this deranged nationalist was rapidly consigned to the oblivion of collective disinterest. Fellow independentists affixed a plaque near the entrance to the Senedd commemorating Griffiths’ desperate act, but it has since been replaced with a sign bearing the more functional injunction “No Skateboarding”.
On Monday 1st October, Senedd sessions resumed as if nothing had happened. A few months later, the Assembly government quietly published legal advice stating that the referendum had never been approved by the Parliament in Westminster, and thus had no real value. In reality, this constitutional chicanery was far from necessary. By that time the people of Wales had already decided to indulge in a strange form of mass amnesia, and indeed most of them had forgotten that they had even voted, if indeed they had.
_____
Perhaps the dramatic death of Llewelyn Griffiths can help us to understand why even the nationalists were so keen to pretend that the referendum never happened. Despite years of campaigning for independence (half-heartedly, admittedly), they had failed to properly consider the consequences of a constitutional revolution on this scale.
The disconnect between a lifelong desire and the bitter disappointment of its realisation must have come as a brutal, disorienting shock to many. The cognitive dissonance of it all was too much for poor Griffiths, who appears to have lost his mind. Here was an event so seismic, so astonishing, that people were neither willing nor able to comprehend it. This was true of the public at large, but also of those closest to the cause. The idea of putting the referendum result into practice, of laying the foundations for an independent, sovereign Welsh nation, still seemed impossibly remote. Imagine the work involved! Much better to remain a country of dead heroes and dead saints.
[1] R.S. Thomas, ‘Welsh Landscape’.
[2] Readers with an unhealthy appetite for banalities of this ilk are referred to John Etheridge’s recent tome The Art of Strategy, which contains little else.
[3] Guy Debord, La Société du Spectacle.
[4] Eleri Evans, Damcaniaeth Adeiledd Cymdeithasol.
[5] Along with the explosion in both state and corporate surveillance, and of course the use of “influencer” as a noun, let alone a job description.
[6] Events which do not ascend to the realm of “political facts”, as Jacques Ellul would have it – cf. L’Illusion Politique.
[7] For a useful summary of the events leading up to the current crisis in Burkina Faso see S. Hearne’s Exile on Bassawarga Street. On a purely anecdotal level, it is interesting to note that S. Hearne was married to J. Etheridge from 2003 until around 2015, during which time she published nothing of worth. Coincidentally (or not), her contributions have been much more insightful and compelling since the divorce
[8] Within the limited confines of this article I am unable to explore the broader historical context of Welsh independence movements, but readers looking for a useful introduction to this subject could do worse than seek out Idris Sloper’s Chwyldro Cymru.
[9] Contrary to the assertions made by a semi-anonymous reviewer of my recent book Police and Polis, a radical history. Perhaps if the mysterious “JE” were not so busy drinking cheap wine and chasing graduate students he might have found the time to actually read the book, and perhaps even understand some of it.
[10] One small obstacle to Morgan’s referendum gambit was that he had neglected to consult Gordon Brown in advance. Brown was suitably furious, primarily because he had other plans and absolutely no intention of wasting his time on Welsh politics, but the First Minister succeeded in winning him over. For a first-hand account of their (somewhat animated) discussions see Z. Williams, Caerdydd/Llundain.
[11] There was to be no happy ending for poor Shambo, alas.
[12] Several members of the Super Furry Animals were believed to be in favour of independence, but their public remarks on the subject were broadly incomprehensible.
[13] For all his faults, Dai Llewellyn deserves at least some measure of respect for having successfully sued John Etheridge for libel in 2003.
[14] Davidson never quite recovered from the stress of the Shambo affair. The fact that the Yes campaign adopted Shambo as a mascot (T-shirts featuring his likeness were inescapable that summer) probably did not help.
[15] Readers are humbly referred to my own contemporary contribution, ‘Leighton Andrews has a cold’, published in the New Welsh Review (Vol XLII, No. 4). Despite some savage responses from certain quarters, I think the article holds up well.
[16] For several years afterwards, Carwyn Jones would be met with a chorus of “baaahs” whenever he was obliged to interact with the public in north Wales.
[17] Etheridge has suggested that some members of Welsh Labour welcomed the result and began to prepare a formal declaration of independence, a tale so improbable it merits a new entry in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index.
[18] Readers are advised to seek out this text in the original Welsh. The English translation published by L. Ramsay is of shockingly poor quality. And who supervised his doctoral thesis? You guessed it: John Etheridge. Just give up, John, that research fellowship is mine and you know it.
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‘At the risk of vastly understating the matter, in the summer of 2007 Wales was not at the forefront of the UK’s political conversation.’
And still isn’t in 2024.
I hate my country, I apologise for my silly little tantrums!