The Liberal MP who proposed a lawmaking Senedd in 1967

Martin Shipton

A Liberal politician who championed Home Rule for Wales deserves much greater recognition for his contribution to the national cause than he has received, according to a new biography.

Emlyn Hooson was the MP for Montgomeryshire from 1962 to 1979, later sitting in the House of Lords.

He was at various times his party’s spokesman in the Commons on defence, foreign and home affairs, legal matters, agriculture and Wales.

He died in 2012 at the age of 86, and was described as the “founding father of the Welsh Liberal Party”.

However, a new biography of Hooson by Nicholas Alderton aims to get him recognised as a significant figure in the making of Welsh devolution.

A barrister who became one of the youngest ever QCs at the age of 35, he was elected to Parliament at a by-election two years later.

In 1967, more than 30 years before the legislation that brought the then National Assembly into being, he introduced a Government of Wales Bill to the House of Commons that would have created a Welsh Parliament with significantly more powers that the Assembly initially had.

The main points in Hooson’s Bill were:

* The UK Parliament would retain certain powers including those relating to defence, international trade, currency, the Crown and criminal law;

* The Welsh Parliament would be single-chambered and titled The Senate / Y Senedd. It would be able to pass and enact laws, enforceable by penal sanctions. Also, any law enacted in Wales would have primacy over those of the UK Parliament, as long as they were not reserved powers, in which case the UK Parliament would have primacy;

* There would be 72 members of the Senedd, two from each constituency in Wales, elected via the alternative vote. Thirty-six MPs would still be sent to Westminster but would not vote on matters relating exclusively to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland:

* Executive power would remain vested in the monarch and would be exercised by a Governor of Wales;

* The Welsh language would have equal validity with the English language in the Parliament / Senedd;

* The Parliament / Senedd could make laws to raise taxes including the rates, purchase taxes, sale taxes and land taxes. All other taxes would be reserved to the UK Parliament;

* There were clauses for setting up a Welsh Exchequer and a Joint Exchequer Board;

* Any conflict in law would be subject to the interpretation of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords.

‘Radical’

Analysing the significance of the Bill, Alderton writes: “Although the Bill did not make it past the first reading, it was a radical addition to the debate and would be the preferred model of the Welsh Liberal Party (WLP). Its radicalism was in how it set out a coherent plan for the devolution of powers to a federal Welsh parliament.

“Although federalism had been the primary goal of the British Labour Party, the manifestos were not always consistent and often only urged the devolution of powers to a Welsh parliament. By presenting the Bill, Hooson was indirectly stating that the new WLP, the third party in Wales, was a nationalist party that believed in Wales as a nation and backed a degree of separateness.”

In introducing the Bill, Hooson told MPs: “As all hon. Members know, I am not an economic nationalist and I never shall be, but I believe that Wales, like Scotland and Northern Ireland, has the right to organise its own domestic affairs … I see the Parliament at Westminster as a federal Parliament concerned with foreign affairs, overseas trade, defence and the overall direction of the economy.”

Alderton points out that Hooson’s denial that he was an economic nationalist was not strictly true in that he was advocating the Welsh Parliament’s ability to collect certain taxes.

Gwynfor Evans

He also stated: “It would not have escaped the notice of the Labour government that one of the backers of the Bill was the Plaid Cymru president Gwynfor Evans [at the time the MP for Carmarthen]. Evans is likely to have backed the Bill as part of a long-term goal toward dominion status, and the idea of a Governor would have appealed to him. For the Labour government, the potential for both nationalist parties [the Liberals and Plaid Cymru] to work together, albeit with different goals, would have been taken as a warning. If the WLP were to achieve its goal of federalism, then a demonstration of a competent federal parliament could have serious implications for the unity of the UK.”

A dozen years later, Hooson’s Commons career came to an end following the crushing defeat of devolution in the 1979 referendum. Residents of his constituency, like those throughout Wales, were against the creation of an Assembly, even one with weaker powers than he had argued for more than a decade before.

Hooson was well ahead of his time.

Emlyn Hooson and the Welsh Liberal Party 1962-1979 is published by University of Wales Press at £24.99 and can be purchased here and at all good bookshops.