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Opinion

Owning our futures by knowing our now

27 Oct 2024 9 minute read
Delegates at the conference

Cinzia Yates

I recently attended a short conference organised by the Scottish Independence Commission titled ‘Owning Our Futures’.

As an attendee the conference timetable was frustratingly packed and chaotic, but as an anthropologist, 14 nations trying to give an account of their movements for independence and greater autonomy in 6-minute speeches provided a fascinating insight.

It was incredibly varied, not only the ways in which various movements hope to achieve self-government, but the values and identifiers of nationhood on which their argument for autonomy relies. Trying to sum up why a place should be a nation or autonomous region in six minutes meant relying on very specific and key aspects of the people and history of that nation that may not otherwise be spoken so succinctly.

Conceptually, the conference itself showed the inherent difficulties in claiming and communicating nationhood. While titled ‘owning our futures’, the conference requested the stories of movements up to now; showing how owning our futures means recognising and understanding our pasts before we can begin to look ahead.

Problematic concept

Organised in collaboration with the International Commission for European Citizens (ICEC), an NGO based in Belgium and concerned with independence movements in Europe, the event entirely focussed on European organisations, but even this was an evidently problematic concept. If Europe meant the EU, then why would Scotland, Wales and  Northumbria have been included? But if it meant the continent of Europe, why include Greenland and the Faroes, who may be legislated by a nation in continental Europe but are not geographically European (which is kind of their point!).

Maybe in this case it was European citizens who are citizens of a continental European country against their will. Perhaps escaping a dominant European state is what brings us all together.

What makes a nation a nation?

The various movements all had very differing claims to nationhood and wildly different reasons for not being the nation they felt they should be. However, what was a common thread was the concept of nation in opposition. A people who are NOT what their state leaders are and therefore not what they were expected to be.

Greenland and the Faroes did not want to be Danish. They are clearly not Danish. The argument for them being Danish goes back centuries and is impossible to disentangle from huge swathes of history and administrative development. Greenland spoke to an ethnic identity, a history of ethnic cleansing carried out through means as abhorrent as forced sterilisation.

The people of Greenland wanted their identity as Inuit reclaimed. However, others had a far more recent and less violent story. South Tyrol was a region made part of Italy during the reorganisation of Europe after the second world war. Having German speakers in Italy does seem a bit peculiar, and it should be simple enough to recognise that that was an odd idea and therefore put it right. Flanders had an even less contentious argument that seemed mainly economic. Belgium is essentially split into two, predominantly by language, and the Flemish want to use their own money for Flanders. They are Flemish.

Spain sits somewhere between these two extremes. Having been made up of various kingdoms, the unification of Spain forced disparate cultures, with disparate languages and identities into a single unit with a purposeful attempt to create a single ‘Spain’ and a single ‘Spanishness’.

Franco purposefully plucked popular aspects of culture from across the nation to create an ersatz Spanishness that represents no one. And that Spanishness was forced on peoples whose nations did not adhere to administrative borders. While Galicia has an argument for nationhood based on the use of Gallego, a Celtic identity and a very distinct culture, The Basques are forced into Spanishness and Frenchness, causing a constant internal struggle despite being neither. And then of course there are the islands. Islands are wholes.

They may be cut off by the elements. So it seems obvious to have them have control of themselves. Sicily, the Faroes and Sardinia do not have to make much of an argument to claim nationhood. (As a Manxy having no land borders has made our arguments and claims to identity much easier. It’s either Manx or it’s in the sea.)

All of these arguments, these tensions, these oppositions; these historic and recent battles against larger dominant ‘others’ ran through the galloping presentations like a raging river. It dragged in aspects of identity and language and economics as it flowed into one great call for self-preservation and escape.

Except one.

The Welsh spokesperson, Gwern Gwynfil, a man not unknown to wax lyrical about the virtues of Wales, chose not to speak of otherness, but to speak of Welshness. He, somewhat unsurprisingly if you’ve heard him speak before, turned to Richard Price to speak for Wales. To speak of liberty through democracy and how that liberty, based on the beliefs of an 18th century Welshman from a small village, spread across the globe and became the central tenet of new nations. (Admittedly that new nation was America and that may not be going so well right now, but the point stood).

Gwern Gwynfil

While still focussing on a historical aspect of Welshness, this was an outward looking concept of why Wales is a nation. Not an argument in opposition. And, as an anthropologist at heart, at an event in which I’d normally be analysing music and costume, it led me to start thinking about ‘owning our future’ and how we express our right to nationhood by recognising and enacting our Welshness.

Can there be a Wales without Welshness in 2024?

And so I started to look around the room for the ‘-ness’ of the other delegations. The things we do to enact our identity every day. Only two of the delegates were wearing anything that would give away their national identity, and even then only if you knew a bit about national costume. Names were not an automatic indicator as many were named in the dominant language of their nation. Language was a biggy, although somewhat ironically the conference was held entirely in English with no little difficulty in dealing with non-English speakers and their names by the organisers.

Only one delegate chose to speak only in their native tongue, Gallego, with others choosing a few token sentences to bookend their speech. The chair, a Scottish indy activist and journalist, seemed to lament the lack of a Scottish language to unify the claim to Scottish independence, which, along with her difficulty in pronouncing names and organisations, caused a few to bristle. Networking discussions took place in common languages (Spanish, French, English) and it was clear that many delegates were unaware of other minority languages and their struggles.

As the hosts, the SIC made a small effort to enact their ‘-ness’. There was no Gaelic spoken, but there was a scratch ceili band playing celtic favourites while the delegates were offered haggis, neeps and tatties and a wee totty of whiskey. I’m still trying to work out how I feel about a piper playing the Proclaimers on Gaita and wearing an EU flag hat as we entered the event. But otherwise, there was no nod to culture or Scottishness. Even networking was arranged to take place in a sports bar.

I grew up with the Manx saying ‘gyn chengey, gyn cheer’ (no language, no country) and while I now recognise ‘language’ is far too strict a concept, I do believe that to claim and achieve nationhood you need a cultural distinctness to hang that claim on. In the late 19th century, that was costume and folk dancing and songs and language. But today it has to be more than a few words in your language, a bagpipe and some haggis.

What is our ‘ness?

I spoke to some of the delegates about this, and what their ‘-ness’ was and they began to become animated. Yes, it’s our history (ancient or recent, bloody or otherwise) but it’s all the small things we do that make us who we are. It’s the overlapping constellations of experience and expression that eventually become a whole. Its daps not plimsols; its knowing that whoever you speak to when learning Welsh you’ll get ‘milk’ wrong; its bristling when the far right try and use Muslims in Cardiff bay to sow division; its knowing that trains are pointless; its having to dress up in a cheap and slightly uncomfortable Welsh costume for St David’s Day at school; its supporting anyone but England in the rugby; its half ‘n half; it’s resigning yourself to your whole life always being ever so slightly damp; it’s inclusivity; it’s Italian cafes; it’s knowing about the miners strikes; it’s rissoles; it’s hating Ryan Reynolds while being secretly proud of Wrexham; it’s only listening to half of any announcement; it’s nodding politely while Americans talk about Tom Jones; it’s speaking Welsh; it’s not speaking Welsh; it’s not switching to Welsh in the pub when the English come in; it’s Penscynor and Dan yr Ogof; it’s knowing that Aberystwyth might as well be another planet if you can’t drive; its doing a tiny ‘yay’ when you see the ‘Welcome to Wales/Croeso i Gymru’ sign; it’s loving/hating Gavin & Stacey; it’s Goldie Lookin’ Chain; it’s Dafydd Iwan and it’s myriad other tiny things that make you feel you’re at home when someone else expresses them. It is all those things, all the values of freedom of expression, of language, of inclusivity, of workers rights that those things encompass that makes Wales a nation.

Wales is on the right track with showing that ‘liberty’ is part of Welshness. We cannot as a nation exist solely in opposition to a dominant other. We need to be the dominant us. But how do we capture it? How do we use it as a unifying concept to achieve nationhood and therefore better outcomes that are better suited to our Welshness?

How do we create a narrative of Welshness that we can display in six minutes? Until we have that, until we have some unified idea of what it is to be Welsh, some common concepts that are all about what we are and not what we are not, we cannot start to fully realise the argument for nationhood. But once we have that argument, once we know what we are, new ideas on how we manage that economically and politically will come easy.

We may be big enough, we may be rich enough, but are we Welsh enough?


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Annibendod
Annibendod
8 days ago

Feeling Welsh isn’t the problem. Fearing we can’t do without Westminster and its economic clout is the problem. Worse is our own self loathing, that damned inferiority complex. And we’re great at fighting. We fight amongst ourselves instead of fighting for ourselves. Untill we jettison the bs narratives surrounding our nation we’ll not succeed. Frightened to be us. That’s our problem.

Cinzia
Cinzia
7 days ago
Reply to  Annibendod

Obviously I think feeling Welsh is the problem. When we know who we are, we can see what we want and why Westminster can’t give it to us. Without Welshness we’re just common or garden British.

CapM
CapM
7 days ago
Reply to  Cinzia

There are lots of ways that people define their Welshness perhaps the only universal one is that we all know that we’re not English. Is constructing what would in effect be a sort of tick list of Welshness necessary or even desirable. Even if such a list could be agreed upon it would probably inevitably lead to the creation of a hierarchy of Welshness and the unhelpfulness that would bring. It seems like an extra hurdle we’d be putting in front of our route to independence. Why not put the effort into going directly into the formation of a tick… Read more »

Cinzia
Cinzia
7 days ago
Reply to  CapM

You have clearly missed the main thrust of the article. By a country mile.

CapM
CapM
7 days ago
Reply to  Cinzia

Missed by a country mile. Really? You make the point that Welshness can have numerous facets and you point out they can even contradict each other. A trivial example you gave was ‘;it’s loving/hating Gavin & Stacey’, but there are obviously ones that are much more significant. You posed the question- ‘How do we create a narrative of Welshness that we can display in six minutes?’ and concluded that ‘Until we have that, until we have some unified idea of what it is to be Welsh,…….we cannot start to fully realise the argument for nationhood.’ My point is that’s much… Read more »

Cinzia
Cinzia
7 days ago
Reply to  CapM

You seem to think I’m supporting some kind of government survey! The point is that it is overlapping constellations of concepts of what we are, not ten things on a tick list and not what we are not. Those constellations give shape to concepts like liberty, sharing, nurturing, collectivism… I don’t mean you have to have any one thing to be Welsh. Its how any group creates identity. England would do well to do the same!

CapM
CapM
6 days ago
Reply to  Cinzia

I haven’t made any reference or even alluded to ‘some kind of government survey’. Making our history from our perspectives accessible to all is probably the best way of making your question ‘are we Welsh enough?’ redundant.  People could take what they like from our history, but I think that overall it would also have a positive effect on the part of the ‘overlapping constellation of concepts’ that relates to independence.  Daps and rissoles etc are examples of ephemera which tends not to be particularly Welsh .To illustrate, the word daps most likely has an origin in the West Country… Read more »

Last edited 6 days ago by CapM
Idris
Idris
7 days ago
Reply to  Cinzia

A very ethno nationalist article from Dr Yates, straight out of the Trump, Farage and Orban guide books.

Cinzia
Cinzia
7 days ago
Reply to  Idris

I’m an ethnomusicologist, not an ethnonationalist. How you take ‘having views on Gavin & Stacy’ and get to Trump is some impressive mental gymnastics. The article suggest the direct opposite of an ethno nationalist view.

F-bvff
F-bvff
2 days ago
Reply to  Idris

Well said!

Annibendod
Annibendod
7 days ago
Reply to  Cinzia

I think you need to look at the influence of anglo-supremacy/exceptionalism on the Welsh cultural psyche. I’ve not seen a significant fraction of Welsh people denying that they are Welsh – I do see a significant portion with that “recieved wisdom” (a euphemism for bs?) that Wales is inadequate.

Cinzia
Cinzia
7 days ago
Reply to  Annibendod

But that would be Wales defining itself in opposition, which is what the article argues against. We need to be confident in what we are, not what we we’re not. Thats how to decouple thought from the BritNat propaganda… other countries exist perfectly happily without comparing themselves to anyone else. They just get on and do their thing.

Annibendod
Annibendod
6 days ago
Reply to  Cinzia

No, not in opposition. That’s the “As long as we beat the English” kind of cultural facet. That’s not what I’m getting at. I’m talking about those who are at ease with their Welshness as a national or cultural signifier but are emotionally attached to a swaddling anglo-British construct. I advocate a confident and constructive democratic Welsh nationhood alongside a pluralist British, European and World view. That’s the change I want to see. Not only do we need a positive transformation on our attitudes towards our Welshness but the whole of Britain needs to reconstruct what it means to be… Read more »

Last edited 6 days ago by Annibendod
Neil Anderson
Neil Anderson
8 days ago

The failure of the nation state is writ large cross the globe. Those nation states deny us our singular, regional, provincial and local identities. They make major wars possible but which we can not afford, legitimising the destruction of other people in other villages in other states. They damage our environments for purportedly overwhelming reasons of the national economy or the national interest or the national security or the national good or some other national nonsense. They attack the common law of personal rights and leave us only with responsibilities to the nation, meaning to them. They attempt to suborn… Read more »

Walter Hunt
Walter Hunt
6 days ago

There was a time when Welshness meant chapel-going, non-conformist, singing miners, voting Liberal and rural sheep farming. Of course, Wales was in reality much more diverse. To escape its doom-loop, Wales need to embrace change, not merely accept it. Wales must establish itself as place where people stay or come to to make a difference. Without Welsh Citizenship, wins are wins for “Team GB” and the lifting effect on the national psyche is diminished. Wales needs to set and see success in national rejuvenation projects.

John Ellis
John Ellis
5 days ago

‘How do we create a narrative of Welshness that we can display in six minutes? Until we have that, until we have some unified idea of what it is to be Welsh, some common concepts that are all about what we are and not what we are not, we cannot start to fully realise the argument for nationhood.’ As someone brought up in England’s north-west but having spent much of my life living and working in Wales, it’s long seemed to me that the hard realities of Wales’s physical geography have been and still remain a major obstacle when it… Read more »

Last edited 5 days ago by John Ellis
CapM
CapM
5 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

Cymru has no more a difficulty in developing, or to be correct maintaining a unified idea of what it is to be Welsh than England and Scotland have with being English or Scottish, It takes more time and is more difficult to get around the regions of England and Scotland. Quickest train journey from Hereford to Cromer takes six and a half hours with four changes Quickest train journey from Cardiff to Llandudno is four hours with one change or four and a quarter direct This argument that Cymru is ill matched to be unified because of it’s geography is… Read more »

Last edited 5 days ago by CapM
John Ellis
John Ellis
5 days ago
Reply to  CapM

I take your point to some degree, insofar as Scotland indeed doesn’t seem to manifest the ‘symptoms’ to which I’ve alluded to quite the same degree as seems – to me at least – to be the case in Wales. But even in Scotland certain of the same factors seem to be pertinent. I hesitate to even appear dogmatic about Scotland, given that my direct experience of that country is pretty much zilch and I don’t follow internal Scottish political trends with any particular closeness. But I have noticed some seemingly significant indications that their ‘northern isles’ furthest distant from… Read more »

Last edited 5 days ago by John Ellis
CapM
CapM
4 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

‘I hesitate to even appear dogmatic about Scotland, given that my direct experience of that country is pretty much zilch’ Yet your zilch direct experience of Scotland doesn’t cause you to hesitate for a moment before giving an account of your opinion of the state Scotland’s unity and how it compare’s to that of Cymru. You say that you have direct experience of living in Cymru though what you say doesn’t go any further than the usual conclusions drawn by many newcomers from England who are also often under the misapprehension that they’ve identified issues that the natives aren’t aware… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
4 days ago
Reply to  CapM

‘Yet your zilch direct experience of Scotland doesn’t cause you to hesitate for a moment before giving an account of your opinion of the state Scotland’s unity …’ No, it doesn’t; because I’m relying on at least two news/opinion items in the UK media which I’ve read across the last decade and a half – which appeared to have been written up by journalists ‘in the know’ – and which reported on the degree of detachment exhibited by a lot of average folk in Scotland’s northern isles in their attitude towards government from Holyrood. And since those far northern islands… Read more »

Last edited 4 days ago by John Ellis
CapM
CapM
4 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

‘I’m relying on at least two news/opinion items in the UK media which I’ve read across the last decade and a half ‘ An average of an item every seven and a half years then. Maybe as you’ve spent half your life in England you could give your opinion on how unified or not that country is, it’s English consciousness and what is it about the English that makes so many of them averse to England becoming an independent country. By comparing your experiences in both countries and any news/opinion pieces you’ve read perhaps you could opine on which country is… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
3 days ago
Reply to  CapM

‘Maybe as you’ve spent half your life in England you could give your opinion on how unified or not that country is.’ For sure I could – with the reservation that while I’ve lived in various diverse parts of Wales over the years during which I’ve been here, my direct experience of England is more limited – in that my entire time there was spent living a few miles south of Manchester. That’s where I grew up, and that’s where I returned in the mid-’80s to keep an eye on my very elderly dad, who had no living family other… Read more »

Last edited 3 days ago by John Ellis
CapM
CapM
3 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

So you have only direct experience of one part of the north of England.
Have you considered that your limited experience of the regions of England should limit your confidence of the soundness of your opinions on how identity etc in Cymru compares to England.
My guess is that you haven’t.

Regarding your opinion on how Cardiff is viewed by people north of Brecon. it looks to me that you know the Cymry far less well than you think you do.
To me your opinions look those of someone looking in from the position of an outsider regardless of location.

John Ellis
John Ellis
3 days ago
Reply to  CapM

Such confidence as I have about the political psyche of people in Wales – which I’ll readily admit is by no means wholly unbounded – derives from having lived and worked over the years in a wide variety of different parts of this country. But nonetheless it’s given me an impression.

Maybe you’d care to share detail as to how many different parts of Wales you’ve experienced, first hand? We might perhaps then find ourselves on an equal playing field.

CapM
CapM
2 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

Have you wondered that this impression might be one constrained by an expat mindset.

Last edited 2 days ago by CapM
John Ellis
John Ellis
1 day ago
Reply to  CapM

Always a possibility: I’ll never be ‘Welsh born and bred’, however long I live here.

On the other hand, back at the very end of June I abandoned my initial intention of voting Labour on 4th July specifically as a consequence of Jo Stevens’s seemingly brisk dismissal of the notion of further devolution to Wales, and I stuck with Plaid Cymru, as I’ve generally done in past years.

You’ll have to judge for yourself.

CapM
CapM
1 day ago
Reply to  John Ellis

It isn’t a case of how long you’ve lived here but as I said of mindset.

I’ll ‘judge’,if that’s the right term on what you said.
Voting Plaid was because Drakeford wouldn’t be first Minister and so there wouldn’t be someone who you thought could and would stand up to a UK Labour government.

Why you would think that Drakeford could or would act as an effective shield is another matter.

John Ellis
John Ellis
23 hours ago
Reply to  CapM

July 4th last was a Westminster election and, in that context, whether or not Mark Drakeford was or wasn’t first minister in Wales is wholly immaterial.

So I don’t see your point.

CapM
CapM
14 hours ago
Reply to  John Ellis

You’ve forgotten the point you made.

https://nation.cymru/news/shadow-welsh-secretary-criticised-after-patronising-and-contemptuous-s4c-interview/

Where you say

‘If Drakeford hadn’t stood down as first minister and in the light of the voting history of my local area,, I might well have voted for Labour simply in the belief that he was committed to devolution and wasn’t likely to be any sort of patsy to those, in his own party or outside of it, who would seek to chip away at the the devolution settlement.’

John Ellis
John Ellis
14 hours ago
Reply to  CapM

Not at all. Before July 4th dawned, Drakeford had gone and Jo Stevens had indicated that the further devolution of which he’d been a committed advocate wouldn’t be on the Starmer government’s agenda.

In those changed circumstances a vote for Labour seemed no longer an option.

CapM
CapM
10 hours ago
Reply to  John Ellis

Your comment in June ‘If Drakeford hadn’t stood down as first minister and in the light of the voting history of my local area,, I might well have voted for Labour simply in the belief that he was committed to devolution and wasn’t likely to be any sort of patsy to those, in his own party or outside of it, who would seek to chip away at the the devolution settlement.’ My commment yesterday- ‘you[ John Ellis} said. Voting Plaid was because Drakeford wouldn’t be first Minister and so there wouldn’t be someone who you thought could and would stand… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
1 hour ago
Reply to  CapM

Once Drakeford had opted to step down and was replaced, serially, by two successive Labour MS’s – first Gething and then Morgan – who appeared to be more in the mould of Labour apparatchiks less independently minded than he was; and then when Stevens, rather brusquely and de haut en bas, dismissed any idea of furthering Welsh devolution more along the lines of patterns already established in Scotland and Northern Ireland, there no longer seemed to me to be much to be said for lending my vote to Labour this time round.

Padi Phillips
Padi Phillips
4 days ago
Reply to  CapM

Hereford to Cromer is 321 miles while Cardiff to Llandudno is 185 miles. The rail journey to Llandudno is also all on mainline whereas a significant part of the journey to Cromer is on branch lines as Norwich declined connection to mainline services in the mid 19th century but in the 1870s decided it wanted connection to the railway network, and so the line was implemented and included connection to Cromer. So the comparison is not a good one. It’s also relevant that in order to travel between Cardiff and Llandudno a significant part of the journey has to take… Read more »

CapM
CapM
4 days ago
Reply to  Padi Phillips

It takes longer to get from one extreme of England to another than it does in Cymru.
It would be good to have better transport infrastructure within Cymru but the current situation as it is not the game breaker as so many anti Welsh independence and [anti Cymru as one country] would have it.

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