Putting Wales First: the Political Thought of Plaid Cymru, Volume 1 Richard Wyn Jones, 2024 (trans. Tom Ellis with Lowri Edwards and Richard Wyn Jones)
Desmond Clifford
In my counter factual narrative, Wales’ nationalist party was founded in the 1890s in Merthyr, or perhaps Llanelli, by trade unionists, teachers and industrial workers.
In reality Plaid Cymru was founded in Pwllheli in 1925 by academics and ministers of religion.
Its themes were the Welsh language and an otherworldly essence of ‘Welshness’, a form of cultural exceptionalism.
Preoccupied with Wales’s past, and reluctant or unable to define what sort of practical future for Wales it envisaged, Plaid took the rest of the 20th century to turn itself into a modern political party with something like a viable agenda.
Glacial journey
Richard Wyn Jones (RWJ) covers that glacial journey in this first volume. A second volume, in preparation, will focus on Plaid’s evolution in the 21st century in the devolution era.
The opening section describes the emergence of nationalism as the defining political unit of modern times.
As Europe emerged from pre-Reformation ‘Christendom’ and dynastic empires, the nation became the main basis for political identity and organisation.
England, driven by Protestantism and a national church, was among the early adopters of a modern concept of nationhood. Revolutionary France provided something of a template for European nations and Napoleon methodically imposed constitutional structure on many of the territories he touched.
RWJ notes that Welsh nationalism is one variety among many and has as much, or as little, legitimacy as the next. British and its cousin, English nationalism, are so hard-wired and casually worn that many fail even to recognise their existence.
Religious delirium
I used to attend Conservative Party conferences (as a journalist!) and was present in Blackpool for Margaret Thatcher’s final appearance on the party’s platform in the 1990s.
There was a sea of waving union jacks and something like religious delirium on the faces of the cheering faithful.
It was by far the most intensely nationalistic environment I have ever witnessed, and rather unsettling in its way.
The United Kingdom is a collection of nationalisms held together by a larger umbrella version, which works for some people and not for others.
In this context it would be strange if Wales didn’t have a national politics to match its evident sense of identity.
Unfortunately, one hundred years ago Plaid Cymru submitted itself to the domineering leadership of Saunders Lewis, with consequences from which the party still sometimes struggles to escape fully.
Quite why nationalists put themselves in thrall to this second-rate author (of unperformable plays, an unreadable novel and some modest poetry) and third-rate political thinker is inexplicable.
Generations of students have been encouraged to lionise this malevolent and bullying autocrat.
Even today his grim poltergeist hovers and you can lose friends by criticising him too harshly.
Unappealing
RWJ is clear-sighted in his analysis of Lewis’s deficiencies – that he rendered nationalism unappealing to most voters and Plaid Cymru unelectable; an impressive rap for a party leader – but even so, he feels the need to tread piously and nervously around the shrine.
Political parties depend, of course, on the people who turn up and do the legwork.
Lewis was succeeded by Gwynfor Evans who seemingly did the legwork of 10 people.
He was a more benign figure who, despite his otherworldliness and adherence to Lewis’s Welsh exceptionalism, nudged Plaid into more practical territory.
He made it literally electable by winning Plaid’s first parliamentary seat, famously, in 1966.
This was a remarkable step forward which RWJ acknowledges and then passes over oddly fleetingly.
I would like to have heard more about what ideas persuaded voters explicitly to support Plaid at this time after decades of indifference.
Gwynfor Evans absorbed much from Saunders Lewis and brought his own ideological quirks to the table too.
He wrote constantly and deployed history as a way of narrating his political outlook.
RWJ mounts a decent defence of Gwynfor’s dodgy histories arguing that there’s no such thing as objective history.
Evans remained leader for 36 years, a remarkable achievement which did Plaid no good at all.
His agenda was a touch eccentric, religiously motivated (a strong force in politics historically but largely timed-out by the post-war socialist steamroller) and rooted in the Welsh language, often in the manner of single-issue activism.
English speakers
Plaid at that time was sometimes a cold house for English speakers, an obvious defect for a national movement.
Plaid’s first electoral successes under Gwynfor Evans began pointing the party in a more credible direction but he remained leader too long and had too little grasp of a broad practical national policy agenda.
The rejection of devolution in 1979 was plainly a disaster for Plaid and Welsh national aspirations generally.
Nationalists might have organised another boat to Patagonia as the best way forward.
We enter the age of the two Dafydds, Wiggly and Elis-Thomas. Plaid was fortunate to have, at the time they were needed, two forward-thinking visionaries of high calibre, and important thinkers like Phil Williams.
Bruising
RWJ charts what was a bruising and divisive period as Plaid moved decisively from its eccentric ideological legacy to something like a modern European social democratic party with an offer capable of appealing to voters in all parts of Wales.
The two Dafydds were temperamentally at odds; one was a credible businessman and the other a free-thinking academic, and they occupied different territory on the left-centre spectrum.
In the long run, however, the conflict and contrast between the two released the energy from which the modern Plaid Cymru emerged: bilingual, left-leaning, feminist, green, European.
Plaid was initially anti-European Union and supported No in the 1975 referendum (and the Tories supported Yes; it’s a topsy-turvy world). Wigley pulled them out of that quagmire.
Plaid, and Elis-Thomas especially, worked hard to be visible and on the right side of the argument during the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5, gaining credibility in communities where they’d struggled to make headway.
On the ground Plaid supporters probably did more to deliver the 1997 referendum (what a squeak!) than any other group.
Ron Davis certainly benefited from strong support from Wigley as a counterweight to some of the faltering voices in his own party.
The referendum of 1997 left the party in good shape to fight the first devolved election in 1999 and this is where volume 2 will begin.
The current volume was published first in Welsh in 2007 and this translation is unrevised.
A good deal has happened since then, not least Plaid’s first participation in government nearly 100 years after its foundation.
Too few books are published on Welsh politics and this one adds usefully to the library. It is readable, well-researched, entertainingly contentious in parts and accessible to general readers interested in politics.
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Richard Wyn Jones’s book looks fascinating and I intend to purchase a copy. Alas, Desmond Clifford’s ad hominem attack on Saunders Lewis taints an otherwise decent review. Whatever his faults (and he had them, like the rest of us) to label him as a “third-rate political thinker” displays either a lack of knowledge about Lewis or a clear ideological bias on the reviewer’s behalf. Lewis advocated an alternative to industrialisation (and pollution) in the 1930’s, which obviously led to much opprobrium from the Labour Party – the party, ironically, who today wheel out green disciplines like Ed Miliband. Then there… Read more »
Desmond Clifford tells us in this article that he was once a journalist. I thought the first rule of journalism was to use simple words and short sentences. But so much of this article is a confusing mess that I have to ask—did Mr Clifford just rush it? Did he simply not have time to write something normal that actual people can understand? Nation.Cymru should not be a place for people who think they have huge brains to wave their cucumbers around and make the rest of us feel stupid. It gets public money, so it should publish stuff that… Read more »
I may have some issues with the review but not half as many as with this ridiculous piece of pedantry. What a dull world if we all wrote in the same style. Thank you for the review and to RWJ and all involved in the book’s publication.
Pedantry! *For the love of Ada*, what you trying to incinerate? What a squeak! This is nothing short of a counter-factual narrative, I say! Anyway, must dash—it’s Sunday, and after a spot of ruggers and a rousing Evening Song, Matron’s promised crumpets for tea! Simply spiffing!
Desmond Clifford often displays some very insightful political commentary: he does it in this piece, as well as in some recent tv contributions. But as a literary critic, oh dear!! His decapitation of Saunders Lewis derives, I think, from, a rather perverse throwaway comment by the late (and much lamented) Dafydd Elis-Thomas, not one of Dafydd’s most percipient or thoughtful utterings. Most people familiar with the range of twentieth-century Welsh literature would disagree. Best stick to politics (as narrowly defined), Desmond!