Recognising the challenge

Euros Lewis

To build, first you must bring down. To weave anew, first pull apart the old. To create a governance that is truly different first strip bare: throw off the age-old straightjacket; tear it apart and bury deep.

Change, so those who know say, is what the electorate wants. Change, so Rhun ap Iorwerth says, is what his government is offering. His ability to do that depends, first of all, on his ability to bring down, pull apart and strip bare. For, without an absolute determination it will not happen.

Without a commitment that is absolute, making a fundamental difference – a real difference – will be beyond the art of the possible.

In response to France’s historic revolution, the 18th century English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, instructed the British state to govern on the basis of the Greater Good.

His reasoning was based on the belief that an individual’s principal concern is individual well-being. This definition of democracy has proved central to Westminster governance from Bentham’s time to the present day, irrespective of the party in power.

To create a truly different governance in Wales the first challenge is to dismantle this individualistic mindset – the mindset that enabled yesterday’s state to clear and destroy the communities of Epynt and Tryweryn and that allows today’s Treasury to hold on to the Crown Estate and HS2 monies.

We all now enjoy singing ‘Yma o Hyd’. At the root of our very survival is the fact that Cymru is a community of communities. The essential dynamic is relationship – a real politic (often challenging) of inclusive discussion, aspiration, imagination and effort.

It can be summed up in two words: collaborative participation. In this nonconformist state democracy is based not on the Greater Good but on the Common Good. Not self-wellbeing but communal well-being. The good of one and all.

Governments of the Greater Good assiduously maintain a monopoly of thought and action.

Challenge

Rejecting and disabling such a monopoly is the challenge facing a government that wants to think and act in a truly different way. In a truly Welsh way.

In post-industrial communities in south and north Wales as well as the rural west, a collaborative and participatory democracy is already starting to elicit the real, tangible difference the Common Good can do when it is allowed to work in meaningful partnership with the representative democracy of county hall or Senedd.

The late Sel Williams provided a word for this innovative and collaborative way of developing a non-dependent future. He called it ‘cymunedoli’.

Another appropriate name is ‘devolution’. Proper, real de-centralisation.

And that’s the challenge.