The importance of firm foundations
Evan Thomas
Is Wales a country?
It depends, really.
Legally, no.
After our conquest in 1283, the Acts of Union in 1535 and 1542 absorbed Wales into England, and our land remains a component of the state of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland to this day.
More technically, as our government doesn’t conduct its own foreign relations, we would fail under the Montevideo Convention’s criteria for statehood in international law.
Socially and culturally, yes.
We are our own separate people (the word “Welsh” derives from the Anglo-Saxon word for “foreigners”), we speak our own language and we possess our own history and traditions.
We compete with our own teams in international football and rugby and our country’s borders are well defined.
Most importantly, to varying intensities, many of us feel Welsh – it is often inextricably fused with our identity.
Here, we arrive at the difference between a state and a nation. The former is an organised political unit, which functions as as its own country and is recognised as such by the international community.
The latter is the product of a unified people who inhabit a particular territory.
Foundation
But why does this matter to us? Because it is the foundation of our existence. This answer is constructed upon two lines of reasoning.
Its first prong is patriotic in nature – our systems of government should reflect our perception of Wales.
The patriot believes in a Wales that is an independent state because they are Welsh. They believe that we are a distinct people, and they demand that we are able to govern ourselves consistently with this belief.
The second element focuses on our material wellbeing – it is becoming increasingly evident that under the control of a foreign government, our needs will never be fulfilled if their achievement were to conflict with other priorities.
The solution in response would be to control all political power in order to govern ourselves in the best possible manner.
Legislation
The Senedd and Welsh Government’s ability to operate effectively is directly tied to Wales’ structural foundations; all policy, legislation and action flow from the powers granted by Westminster via the Welsh devolution settlement.
We must therefore scrutinise our constitutional set-up as a matter of primary concern. Currently, too little attention is given to debates regarding the extent of our legislative competence and possible independence.
Welsh devolution is the most restricted of its kind in the UK.
Among the plethora of “reserved areas” found in the devolution settlement, where only Westminster can decide policy direction, are social security schemes.
In this space, there exists a two-child limit on universal credit and tax credits payments. This means that low-income families cannot claim additional money for their third, fourth or fifth (etc) child.
Controversially, Labour, staying true to their general election manifesto, have decided not to scrap the two-child cap, stating that the public purse could not fund it.
Instead, Labour have introduced the Child Wellbeing Bill, which will mandate free breakfast clubs at every primary school and limit the amount of branded items schools can require.
Inadequacy
This response highlights the importance, and inadequacy, of our foundations.
The Welsh Government’s Free Breakfast in Primary Schools scheme has been up and running for almost 20 years. Wales has even gone a step further and is aiming to provide free school meals to all primary school pupils by September 2024 under the Universal Primary Free School Meals initiative.
Devolution’s reserved model has placed a concrete ceiling on Wales’ ability to act in response to relative income poverty. Our Government and Senedd have reached their legal limit and they cannot pursue the systemic changes that are needed to confront one of our society’s most pervasive issues.
If we are adamant about lowering Welsh poverty levels, our foundations must be strengthened.
Assume that social security schemes were devolved, or that we were independent – Wales could provide £3,235 per year per child to the families of the 65,000 children under the effects of the the two-child benefits cap by simply removing it.
The impact of such reform cannot be understated. With this substantial sum of money, families can feed themselves, which improves their nutritional health, pay bills and rent, offer their children opportunities to join local sports teams, and much, much more.
Even if Wales chose not to lift the two-child welfare limit, it would be able to adapt its current social security schemes and introduce new provisions that target Welsh relative income poverty specifically.
Social security schemes are only one of the numerous reserved areas where the priorities, interests and beliefs of Westminster supersede that of Wales.
The revenues of the Crown Estate, Airport Passenger Duty (which is higher in Cardiff than Bristol merely to protect the English market), justice and energy are some of the other reserved areas that are essential to solving Wales’ challenges, yet remain out of our reach.
Application
Our foundations in devolution are weak.
Wales requires a more robust constitutional structure with authority over all policy areas in order to govern for the benefit of its people effectively. Independence and statehood are therefore not only the demands of the patriot, but also the Welsh citizen who desires a prosperous, functional and optimistic society.
Imagine that our Government and Senedd were a builder. They would need the correct materials to be able to do their job right, and the more substances that were available to them, the better the outcome of their work will be.
Would it be wise to give the builder sand to fill in the base? Is it the fair to prohibit them from using concrete? It would be foolish to describe the builder as having done a bad job in these circumstances.
Now, up the stakes. The welfare of the Welsh people depends on our constitutional makeup. Let’s give ourselves the right materials and build ourselves a country.
Evan is a recent LLB Law graduate from the LSE and an incoming LLM Devolution and Governance student at Cardiff University
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I don’t at all dissent from the general thrust of this opinion piece, but I hesitate at the writer’s assertion that ‘… our country’s borders are well defined’. Why? Because I live just about a mile west of one mute but still very well-defined demarcation of where, long ago, a ruler who back then had the power to do so reckoned the boundary between the Welsh and the English should be drawn: and that’s Clawdd Offa. However, as a consequence of the changes and chances which happened in subsequent centuries, the contemporary border between England and Wales now in a… Read more »
If you think that Wales and England have problems, you need to take a look at Belgium, or some other European countries! Borders also often change, so just because the current border doesn’t conform to a border created a millennium ago doesn’t establish that older border as the ‘real’ border. Irridentism is a dubious basis upon which to base any claim to territory, and in most modern contexts it’s probably wise to leave well alone. Wales’ current border was only defined in 1972 with the Local Government Act of that year. Previous to this, the situation of Monmouthshire was ambiguous.… Read more »
This is why we need responsible and competent governments in Cymru and England to negotiate a proper settlement on our path to be a fully independent country. Both sides must realise that good relations between all countries and their people is best for the social and economic wellbeing of all peoples and allow for free trade and movement throughout the whole of the European Economic Area. This current constitutional arrangement is not good for either of the countries of the British Isles. The current ‘Welsh’ Labour government’s idea of 2 governments working together must be clearly towards decentralising power from… Read more »
I did actually think of a possible analogy between the English/Welsh border and the odd centuries-old border anomalies near the Rhine estuary between the Netherlands and Belgium which were only finally rationalized just a few years back. Until I read the news story about the agreed border rationalization there, I’d had no idea that in that part of the world there’d for centuries been tiny bits of Belgium entirely surrounded by Dutch territory and vice versa. But I thought that the comparison was insufficiently exact, because people living along that border had known nothing else, probably since the days when… Read more »
Was the conquest in 1283 legal military action, or was it an illegal invasion?
Does it really matter? In any case, the terms of engagement in ancient times were somewhat different to today, and no-one in the late 13th century would have understood the modern concept of nationhood, which, as we understand it, is a late 18th century phenomenon.
We’re much better off just considering the situation today, and working from that, rather than worrying our heads over what a couple of opposing tyrants fighting over whose version of toxic feudalism they were going to impose on anyone who didn’t happen to be them.
Tbf. As much as Independence is about creating solutions to tackling the barriers that prevent us fixing our problems… those historical events also play a part in our concept of identity today whether we’re consciously aware of that or not.
Fact that land was stolen by the Crown – land which finds itself within Crown Estates may well turn out to be quite pertinent in bringing the establishment to the table.
The mediaeval mind – at least the more educated examples of it! – was extremely keen on law and lawfulness. But nevertheless the normal strategy of rulers as far back as that was to assemble a phalanx of lawyers who would build a case for doing whatever the ruler had determined that he was going to do. So, inevitably,. they’d say that it was ‘legal military action’!
I don’t care much and you can be certain that 99.9% of English people care a lot less than that.
Didn’t know you needed to annex something that already belonged to you, wouldn’t Wales already have belonged to England on the Tudor ascendancy? Oops, have I found a plot hole!.
Illegal invasion of what? Wales did not exist then – separate, independent principlaities…
Rubbish, at the time of the Death of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth in 1240 Llywelyn extended his rule from Gwynedd to the rest of Cymru other than the anglo Norman settlements of Pembroke,Gower and Vale of Glamorgan.
What I don’t understand is why so many people respect Llywelyn ab Iorwerth’s conquest of land to the south, but form a diametrically opposed opinion of Henry III’s conquest of land to the west.
Double standards. Llywelyn ab Iorwerth was just another feudal landgrabber, much like Henry III.
The various Lywelyns are often very popular with our won home grown Blood & Soil fraternity.
Some really good points Evan. I raised the Cardiff-Bristol Air Passenger Duty disparity a few years back, and the response from Tories was that we are not separate jurisdictions but, in this instance at least, merely EnglandandWales (and we all know who benefits from that arrangement). I have long thought that rather than our schoolchildren being drilled in the ways of the Nazis or told another yarn about some moribund Plantagenet King, they should be asked to construct a Welsh Constitution, for their and our mutual benefit. I recently reread this and thought that it could be a good starter… Read more »
Why is it that the writer of this article doubts Wales right to call itself a country where in the same breath doesn’t apply the same argument to England, Scotland & Northern Ireland who also don’t conduct their own foreign policy too , or even have their own official government in England, well not in name anyway, although we all know they do. It’s called Westminster. Yes, Wales was officially invaded in 1283 by the Anglo Norman invasion under Edward 1st, but in reality the rot started when the Saxons entered our island the 380s. Our border is an artificial… Read more »
It’s good to see an article laying out some of the potential benefits of independence. No one says independence would be easy but control of our destiny would be completely in our own hands. The Senedd has achieved many progressive aims – free school meals for primary school children is just one area. Imagine how we could move our country forward with full, unrestricted power. I am looking forward to the day when independence is a reality and we can finally address major issues, such as our chronic child poverty levels and the injustice of the Crown Estates.
The fact that Wales is a Country in its own right was officially recognized by the influential United Nations
“International Organisation for Standardisation” in December 2011.
That fact should be good enough for any doubters.
1.There is a thin line between defining a country as ‘a distinct people’ and racism. Perhaps the author can comment on how he distinguishes the two. 2.It is interesting how much of this article is spent discussing child benefit. Independence would indeed give us the ability to increase welfare spending, but it would also remove the ability to expect the English tax-payer to contribute to our welfare spending. 3.Can the author please explain his assertion that APD is higher in Cardiff than Bristol? My understanding is that they are the same and the Welsh Government has argued for this to… Read more »
Wales was conquered in 1282? Did someone tell the Tudors?! Cause surely they wouldn’t have needed to annex it had Wales been conquered!!! They would have already inherited it on their ascendancy to the English throne.
Massive plot hole in the – England conquered Wales Narrative. Had they done so, wouldn’t Wales have already belonged to England on the ascendancy of the Tudors?!, if it had, annexation would be pointless. So what happened between 1282 and 1536 that would force the Tudors to have to annex it? Any takers? If you were to say Owain Glyndwr, we’ll done!!!!
As a fellow LLB. (Hons.) graduate, I’m sure M’Learned Friend is awarte that the so-called ‘Acts of Union’ 1535-1542 have been repealed. See, Schedule 2 of the Welsh Language Act 1993. This means then that we are no longer in ‘union’ with England.
The provision for any legislation referencing England to automatically include Wales was repealed much earlier – in 1967 in fact, under the first Welsh Language Act.
Harri 8fed decided annexation was necessary because he wanted to unify his kingdom under the same laws. Prior to that there had been a mismash of Welsh Law and English Law being applied in different cases. It was about him consolidating power. Not sure what Glyndwr has to do with the acts of union which came a great deal later. There are some getting hot under the collar about our history (and getting details wrong). There’s this narrative that the nasty English did this to us all. Well, genetics show us that the English are for the most part descended… Read more »
I think you’ll have upset quite a few people with your deconstruction of the ‘nasty English person’ myth who always seems to be blamed for all things bad in Wales. I also think there will be some who will struggle with the notion that some Cymry can be narrow-minded bigots too.
But hear hear! It’s good to see some sense about Welsh history written for a change, rather than the usual drivel that is so full of holes that it’s difficult to know where to start and always leaves one wishing the subject was properly taught in schools.
Storm in a teacup. Does anyone believe that increased devolution or a referendum on independence will ever happen in the forseeable future? I don’t. The Westminster Government which thought of going that way would be destroyed in a UK election – and the amount of Welsh seats are so few it would not matter. The SNP has shown the problem…
Correct. The SNP has shown that obsessing with independence instead of focusing on running Scotland has led to a decline in public services. Doing this against the will of the people has created unnecessary division. These two factors combined with its unpopular far-left agenda has destroyed the SNP as well as harming the interests of Scotland and the Scots. I would suggest this isn’t the best model for Wales to follow.
Oh FFS grow up, and stop coming out with utter bilge about the SNP being ‘far-left’. At it’s very worst the SNP can be accused of being social democrat in nature. Granted, they have taken their eye off the ball somewhat and prioritised independence over other more pressing issues, but it has also been in a bit of a cleft stick situation in that the only way of ensuring long term improvements to the lives of Scottish citizens is through independence. While the Scottish Government enjoys more leeway in how it runs Scotland, like Wales it is still hidebound by… Read more »
I don’t agree. I’ve had many positive conversations with English folk who agree that the UK is dysfunctional and needs replacing. Our problem lies with the party politics as they stand. It makes it difficult to break the Westminster consensus. In fact, sustaining Plaid/SNP majorities over time is the best way to break that consensus. SNP have not taken sufficient advantage of their electoral successes. Too much time spent trying to ask nicely.
Just ask how many people in England who are open to the idea of English Independence and you will be surprised at the amount that would be in favour.
Yes we need foundations. We don’t have them. So ET is right: we need to build them. How? Work towards a Constitutional Convention. Got a draft Nia James? Lets go!