Stephen Crabb talks to David Cornock

& David Marquand Jasmine Donahaye Adam Price Beti George Leighton Andrews

www.iwa.org.uk | Autumn/Winter 2015 | No. 55 | £4.95 Cover Photo: David Wilson The Institute of Welsh Affairs gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Waterloo Foundation. The following organisations are corporate members:

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S4C suffered a 24% cut in its central funding The boiling frog and ITV Wales now only produces 90 minutes of English language television a week on top of its news output - in sharp contrast to the independently-owned ITV service in Scotland (STV) which has actually increased its output. It may not withstand scientific scrutiny but the There’s not only less broadcasting about anecdote of the frog placed in boiling water Wales available for people in Wales, but, could well be a metaphor for the state of the inevitably, the range is also much narrower. media in Wales. The frog dropped into hot Genres such as light entertainment, the arts and water will immediately jump to save its life, but drama are minimally represented or, in some Editors: the frog placed in cold water, which is being years, not at all. Jessica Blair and Dylan Moore gradually heated, will not react as it is slowly The decline in the press meanwhile has Editorial Board: boiled to death. been dramatic, Circulation of the Western Mail Clare Critchley, Geraint Talfan Davies, Gerry Holtham, Marcus has fallen by 53%. It now officially sells just 17,815 Longley, Rhea Stevens, Lee Waters The difference in the data presented in the IWA’s copies a day, fewer than the South Wales Echo Additional Editing: Rhys David new Media Audit with that in the IWA’s last audit (18,408 - a 60% drop), the Daily Post (24,485 in 2008 leaves one reaching for the thermometer. - a 33% drop), and the Evening Post (27,589 - a Cover Photographer: David Wilson Seven years ago it was clear that the media 46% drop). Moreover, the number of journalists Political Cartoonist: Mal Humphries (Mumph) landscape in Wales was significantly sparser employed in south Wales has fallen from almost than in either Scotland or Northern Ireland. The 700 in 1999 to just 108 in 2013. Design: [email protected] 2008 Audit concluded: “Of the three, Wales But, all is not lost. Online journalism has the weakest print environment, the weakest seems to be flourishing. Wales Online has an To advertise, tel: 02920 484 387 commercial radio sector, is the only country impressive daily audience of 257,813 unique The publisher acknowledges the where none of its commercial radio stations is users and patches of ‘hyperlocal’ reporting give financial support of the Welsh indigenously owned, is the only one of the three some grounds for optimism. Can analytics led Books Council. whose ITV franchise holder was absorbed into journalism serve the needs of a nation with a Institute of Welsh Affairs ITV plc, and the country where the BBC is most weak civic society (as Rebecca Rumbul describes 56 James Street, Cardiff Bay, dominant in both radio and television.” in her piece in this issues), and a static political Cardiff, CF10 5EZ While the availability of digital communications culture (as Adam Price discusses)? Tel: 02920 484 387 has, for the most part, significantly improved, the There’s no doubt that there are challenging Charity number: 1078435 position regarding content for audiences in Wales is commercial, technological and political pressures The IWA is an independent think considerably worse. on the media landscape. The individuals on the tank and charity dedicated to The total spend by BBC and ITV on English front line are doing their best to adapt, but the promoting the economic, social, language television output for Wales has declined IWA’s Media Audit seeks to set out the bigger environmental and cultural well- being of Wales. consistently. The amount of money spent by the picture and provokes us at to reflect and respond. BBC on programmes for Wales in English has fallen To become a member and receive by 25% in the last decade, as has the number of benefits such as copies of the welsh agenda, discounts on hours of television it produces. Lee Waters, Director, IWA events, weekly newsletters and free publications, for just £45 a year, please call Jess Blair on 02920 484 387.

Branches Can you help us make Wales flourish? North Wales Secretariat c/o Andrew Parry, The Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA) is looking for new trustees to support our small team Glyndwˆr University, Mold Road, in making Wales better. Wrexham LL11 2AW We are looking for trustees with the following skillsets: Cardigan Bay Secretariat c/o Meilyr Ceredig > Experience of marketing, membership organisations and in particular fundraising 4 Science Park Aberystwyth > An understanding of charitable foundations and how they operate SY23 3AH Tel: 01970 636412 > A broad network to support the Board’s role in helping to identify appropriate Swansea Bay Secretariat experts and researchers to assist on policy projects c/o Delith Thorpe 38 Southlands Drive, Swansea, The closing date for expressions of interest is the 6th November 2015 at 5pm. SA3 5RA To register your interest please email Laura Knight at [email protected], Tel: 01792 404315 who will also be able to help with any queries you may have. 42 55 contents 4 Crabb’s Journey 10 A ‘National’ 19 Competitiveness and 28 The One-And-A-Half- David Cornock talks to the Health Service? policy autonomy: What Party state Welsh Secretary about his Shane Doheny looks at can Wales learn from Adam Price gives a pre- route from Pembrokeshire the different paths being the Basque Country? election rallying cry that to Parliament, his view on followed by the NHS in James Wilson outlines reverberates far beyond the word ‘Principality’ and England and Wales what Wales could learn the confines of his own what the future may hold from one of Europe’s party 12 Bigger isn’t success stories 6 Jez we will? always better 31 A New Union Mentality Roger Scully considers Simon Parker argues 21 The Centre-Periphery Leighton Andrews makes what the recent polling for ‘small’ not to be Game an impassioned plea for a might tell us about ‘the forgotten within the ‘big’ David Anderson wonders constitutional convention Corbyn effect’ on politics of local government how long Wales will be in Wales reorganisation content at the periphery 34 Return of the Native of BBC arts and culture David Marquand revisits 8 Public service 14 Dealing with Dementia coverage his Welsh roots and broadcasting – who Beti George gave this celebrates having come needs it now? year’s IWA Eisteddfod 23 The makeup of the home to an unsettled As the IWA launches its Lecture, Taclo Dementia: next Assembly political community Wales Media Audit at Allwn ni ddim fforddio Gareth Hughes profiles the an event in Cardiff on peidio - Tackling Dementia: seats to watch at the 2016 37 Putting the patient November 11th, Glyn we can’t afford not to; here Assembly elections experience first Mathias considers where she outlines the challenges Jess Blair outlines the broadcasting in Wales may from her perspective as 26 The Manifesto Makers findings of the IWA’s Let’s be heading her husband’s carer Behind closed doors, it’s talk cancer project the busiest time of the 16 IWA Energy Roundtable political year; manifesto 38 Can Wales get its In June the IWA convened makers are meeting to ‘fair share’ of a roundtable to discuss our decide on policy proposals research funding? proposal to make Wales a and parties are putting Peter W Halligan net exporter of renewable together their election energy. The seminar, strategies. Liz Silversmith 40 Student Finance: sponsored by RWE Innogy gives an insight time for a rethink? UK, brought together Ken Richards challenges leading figures from politics, the anomalies, academia and industry. inconsistencies and Tom Bodden reports costliness of the student finance system and outlines areas for potential reform #55 Autumn/Winter 15

2 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 42 Zombie Nation: 50 A colonial fantasy 60 Good Food: 65 Gifts indeed Wales Resuscitated, Jasmine Donahaye A quiet revolution Susie Wild By Samuel Taylor examines nineteenth- Kevin Morgan makes the Coleridge century plans to establish a case for Wales to actively 66 Short stories showcase Dylan Moore meets Welsh colony in Palestine embrace the good food Lewis Davies classical singer and movement facilitator Richard Parry, 52 The trouble with civil 66 An accomplished debut and catches a glimpse of a society in Wales 62 Culture Section John Lavin society that could yet be Rebecca Rumbul calls for Reviews greater distance between Local lads, distant vistas 67 Beyond murder-mystery 45 The Bigger Picture: government in Wales and Toby Thacker John Lavin Lessons for the Early the third sector Years 63 A labour of love Mary Powell-Chandler 55 The South American Dylan Moore 68 Last word and Chris Taylor look Connection #RefugeesWelcome beyond Donaldson for Jon Gower looks back on 64 An unstated rebuke Dylan Moore solutions to the early years another year of cultural Aled Eirug attainment gap commemoration

48 A Justice for Wales 58 Nudging people out Paul Silk makes the case of their cars for a Welsh Justice on the Jane Lorimer outlines the Supreme Court success of a programme All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, providing people with mechanical, recorded or otherwise without the permission of the publisher, transport choices the Institute of Welsh Affairs. ISSN 1464-7613

Political Profile

Photo: David Wilson

Thirty-six years later, he finds their homes and the hurdles that people himself sitting around David Cameron’s would have to clear to be able to buy cabinet table after an apprenticeship their homes. Crabb’s served in the whips’ office in both ‘It just so happened that my mum opposition and government. We meet in wasn’t in a position [to take advantage his ministerial office, reached by several of right-to-buy]. She was raising us on Journey flights of stairs deep inside the Palace of her own, me and my two brothers. Westminster. It is small but well located, She was never in a position to buy her next-door-but-one to Michael Gove’s. home through that route but it made a David Cornock talks to the Welsh The shelves contain a mix of family huge impact on me. Visually the street Secretary about his route from and cabinet photographs, a model of a I grew up in changed as soon as these Pembrokeshire to Parliament, his (Pembrokeshire) Mansel Davies & Son purchases started getting made.’ view on the word ‘Principality’ and truck and his ITV Wales Politician of the Crabb is an enthusiast for what the future may hold Year award. welfare reform. But doesn’t his Crabb grew up in the 1980s; he is mother’s experience show the system one of Thatcher’s children. His political works? ‘For me, looking back, what I awareness grew during his teenage years, remember is the welfare system for us not just because of the political drama of was about providing a genuine safety Stephen Crabb’s first political memory Kinnock versus Thatcher but because of net at a time of crisis and severe need is a hazy but historic one: the 1979 what was happening in the street he lived for my mother and her family, but what general election that brought Margaret in: the right-to-buy. ‘For the families living it didn’t do was lock us as a family Thatcher to power. He insists he wasn’t there, that was a big deal actually. I can or a household into worklessness. I a precocious political anorak but remember lots of discussions going on had a mother who, as we got older, remembers his mother voting because amongst neighbours, informal gatherings moved progressively from a position she took her sons to visit Haverfordwest at each other’s houses about what kind of complete welfare dependency to Castle that day. of discounts people were getting on being fully economically independent,

4 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Debate working full-time. And that has to He is keen on another P-word too: he wants the be the model of the way the welfare National Assembly to become a parliament and the system should work.’ Crabb went to Bristol University next piece of Welsh legislation will allow it to do so. and attained a First in Politics but his sole experience of student politics lasted just ten minutes. ‘I felt completely of the United Kingdom is too important want the other parties in the Assembly out of place if I’m honest with you.’ He to leave to the English.’ to think in different ways about how to only joined the Party after graduation For all the talk of Welsh achieve a non-Labour alternative.’ when he was living in the ‘unwinnable, nationhood, he doesn’t object to the Stephen Crabb is the eleventh no-hope’ seat of Southwark and P-word. ‘I don’t have any qualms about Secretary of State for Wales during North Bermondsey. The defeated Tory calling it a principality and neither my 27 years in pursuit of Welsh angles candidate in the 1997 Blair landslide, does our national rugby stadium. I was at Westminster. He shares some Grant Shapps (Tory chairman in the quite surprised when that controversy characteristics with his predecessors: 2015 election), and Crabb have been got raised. It is controversial in some the pragmatism of David Hunt, the ‘good mates ever since.’ quarters to use the word “principality” humble background and faith of Paul By 2001, he was a candidate back but we have a Prince of Wales so I Murphy, the media-savvy of Peter Hain home in Pembrokeshire, winning the don’t see any qualms if people want to and the ambition of William Hague. seat from Labour in 2005. Two years call it a principality from time to time Crabb’s ambition has not gone later, long after the Assembly group had but that doesn’t detract in any way, unnoticed in Downing Street. Hosting embraced devolution, Crabb wrote shape or form from recognising the a St David’s Day reception earlier this an article for the Conservative Home reality of Welsh nationhood.’ year, David Cameron traced his own website in which he declared he was still He is keen on another P-word Welsh roots to a tinplate worker Llewelyn a ‘devo-sceptic’ and warned about the too: he wants the National Assembly Llewelyn before joking: ‘This does not ‘constitutional vandalism’ of a settlement to become a parliament and the next mean I want to be Welsh Secretary in leading to ‘socialism and separatism.’ piece of Welsh legislation will allow it your government, Stephen...’ I ask when he gave up being a to do so. ‘This is what the Assembly is So, Crabb for leader? ‘I don’t devo-sceptic. ‘Good question,’ is the destined to become and it’s destined think I have an ambition to become initial response. He admits he was ‘slower to become that because the people of leader, really. It doesn’t feel that long than some’ to recognise that devolution Wales have willed it so. [In] the 2011 ago in my life that the thought of wasn’t going to go away. ‘I wouldn’t referendum they voted for the assembly becoming an MP seemed outlandish use that term [devo-sceptic] any more, to have full law-making powers. and unrealistic, so to find myself a no. And I wouldn’t subscribe to some ‘What I think we were all surprised few years ahead sitting at the cabinet of the sentiments in that article any by was the margin of difference. I was table doing a job for Wales, I just feel more. I think the phrase “constitutional slightly wrong-footed by this. I didn’t incredibly blessed with that really. vandalism” [was not] right. I was crudely anticipate that people in Pembrokeshire ‘Of course there are other jobs expressing concerns and risks as I felt it were going to vote for full law-making in government that have UK-wide around devolution. But in terms of where powers for the Assembly in quite the implications. Would I want a shot at the turning point came, certainly by 2007 way they did and what that says is there doing something UK-wide? Sure I would, I was recognising that devolution was has been a major shift in Welsh public yeah, so long as I have the opportunity here to stay. sentiment about devolution since that to bring my own values to bear and my ‘I guess in terms of what’s warmed very first referendum.’ own thinking, that’s what I love about the me up to it is... after the 2010 election Crabb’s political wishlist for the job of being Secretary of State for Wales.’ I took a bit of time to go back and read coming year is topped by a desire to Friends say Transport or Work and a load of books about Welsh history force Labour from power in Cardiff Bay. Pensions would appeal. Not that Crabb which I’d never read when I was doing ‘I don’t think you’re going to see the says he spends much time plotting his history at school.’ His ‘remedial work’ spectacular collapse that we’ve seen in next job. ‘The kind of people who do included John Davies’ History of Wales Scotland, but I think some of the same spent a lot of time thinking about their and Gerald of Wales, among others. conditions are there... so I’m optimistic careers around here are the ones who ‘Waving your flag and beating your that change is possible. We are living in sit on the backbenches, unfortunately.’ chest at Six Nations matches, wearing an age when the frequency of political Mr Crabb has no plan to change his a daffodil on March 1st, is not strong earthquakes seems to be increasing: seating arrangements any time soon. enough. The reality of Welsh nationhood Scotland, Corbyn. In the absence of goes way back beyond the foundations that major seismic event that will propel of the United Kingdom, back before the one party to a majority we need to be David Cornock is the BBC’s English actually, which is why the future Parliamentary Correspondent thinking about the C-word - coalition. I for Wales

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 5 Jez We Will? Roger Scully considers what the recent polling might tell us about ‘the Corbyn effect’ on politics in Wales

What many would have thought impossible a few months ago has happened – and how! But now that Jeremy Corbyn is Leader of the Labour party, thoughts must begin to turn to the consequences of his becoming leader. With the party in Wales facing a potentially tricky Assembly election here next year, what difference might Mr Corbyn make to Labour’s electoral prospects in Wales in May 2016? After his landslide victory in the party leadership contest, Jeremy Corbyn was allowed little time to settle into his new of data on voting behaviour in 2011 showed appear to be related to evaluations of job. Both his Conservative opponents and that attitudes to UK party leaders, and to the Labour’s performance in government. Many much of the media went straight onto a full- performance of the UK government, were people in Wales remain pretty hazy about frontal attack. Perhaps in part because of substantially more closely related to voting what responsibilities are held by devolved this, Britain-wide opinion polls have thus far choices in the Welsh Assembly election than government. But there is a general sense shown little positive impact of Mr Corbyn in the simultaneous election to the Scottish of rather moderate performance – broad on his party’s ratings. The ‘honeymoon’ Parliament. Wales remains more fully part public evaluations of the performance of period granted to most opposition leaders of the British political and media space than government and major public services in has been conspicuously absent. However, Scotland is these days. So there is therefore Wales are not very strong or positive. We the first Welsh Political Barometer poll certainly considerable potential for attitudes can see this, for example, in polling that since his assent, published in September, towards Labour’s UK leader to have an Lord Ashcroft did on health some months did seem to show at least some ‘Corbyn impact on Welsh Labour’s electoral fortunes. prior to the general election. Across a bounce’ for Labour. It also showed the Second, and notwithstanding the range of different indicators there was new leader himself enjoying quite strong September Welsh Barometer poll, the a consistent pattern: public evaluations personal ratings from the Welsh public. general trend in Labour support in Wales of NHS performance were the most So what is Jeremy Corbyn’s potential since 2012 has been clearly, and quite positive in Scotland, less so in England, impact in May? A few points seem pertinent. substantially, downwards. True, the trend and consistently the worst in Wales. First, research does suggest that in Labour’s support everywhere has been Labour’s opponents will doubtless spend British-wide politics tends to have a greater downwards. But the line has been sloping much of the Assembly election campaign impact on devolved elections in Wales than down more drastically in Wales than energetically reminding people of who has in Scotland. For instance, a direct comparison England. In part, Labour’s troubles here been in charge of the NHS in Wales for the

6 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org last few years. So the Labour party here We need to avoid over-interpretation for a Corbyn-led Labour party to win back could do with any boost it can get. of the latest Barometer poll. It is only the more socially conservative elements of Third, whatever its troubles, Labour one poll, and one taken not long after Labour’s traditional working-class base that in Wales does have some significant things Mr Corbyn’s election. Although he have in recent times shifted to UKIP. The running in its favour. The most obvious and doesn’t appear to have been given much continuing prominence of the refugee crises, probably most important is the lack of a of a honeymoon, Mr Corbyn will still be which exacerbates public concerns about single, strong challenger. The opposition benefitting from the ‘benefit of the doubt’ migration, also does much to shore up UKIP to them is split – in a way which certainly that many voters give to new leaders at the support amongst such voters. makes it difficult to envisage a non-Labour start. So while he seems to have made a After an extraordinary campaign government in the Assembly after the decent start with the Welsh public, more that, against all expectations, delivered election, but which may also lessen the difficult days probably lie ahead. Only him the Labour leadership, Jeremy Corbyn impact of that opposition in the election itself. the very best opposition leaders see their now faces some very new and unexpected Welsh Labour at present faces no political support trending upwards over even the challenges. He has shown that he can force fighting against it that is remotely medium-term. generate enthusiasm within the Labour comparable to the SNP. A second, and not Other evidence, from British-wide polls, party. But winning elections requires a insignificant advantage for Welsh Labour is show that the public perceive Jeremy Corbyn political leader to extend an appeal much the popularity of their own leader, Carwyn to be well to the left of centre. This perception more broadly. The first polling evidence Jones. Although the First Minister’s public could help Mr Corbyn with some elements of here suggests that Wales may offer some profile remains lower than you might expect the traditional working-class Labour support more promising territory for Labour under for someone who has been in his job for in Wales that did not respond well to Ed Corbyn. But he, and his party, would be nearly six years, those who do know who he is Miliband. But the far left – which, fairly or not, wise to expect even tougher times ahead. tend to have quite a favourable view of him. is where the average voter places Mr Corbyn However, given the continuing impact – is not generally the place where elections Roger Scully is Professor of of British-wide politics on Wales, Jeremy are won. Moreover, such perceptions, as Political Science in the Wales Corbyn is likely to have some impact on well as the attacks on his patriotism he has Governance Centre at Cardiff next May’s election. already suffered, will also make it very difficult University. Public service broadcasting – who needs it now?

As the IWA launches its Wales Media Audit at an event in Cardiff on November 11th, Glyn Mathias considers where broadcasting in Wales may be heading.

For many people in Wales, the concept of watching audio-visual content on other the BBC, funding from the licence fee. In public service broadcasting no longer means screens (Ofcom Communications Market exchange they commit to providing services much. There is such a range of choice these Report for Wales 2015). that give a benefit to the public. It is that days. On free-to-air television, you can get Does public service broadcasting still concept of the public benefit which I would almost 100 channels; you can subscribe to have any relevance within this plethora of argue remains crucial across the UK - and Sky or BT and get hundreds more. With the digital choice? It was, after all, a concept especially here in Wales. spread of faster broadband services, you invented in the days when there was just It is not just the news and current can subscribe to new services provided by one television channel - the BBC, whose affairs programmes which seek to inform new entrants such as Netflix and Amazon Reithian objective was to inform, educate citizens about their society; it is also the Prime. You don’t even have to possess a TV and entertain. The current five public drama, the entertainment, the cultural set these days – a growing number of people service broadcasters across UK television programmes which seek to reflect a society are watching on a variety of devices, from receive benefits such as guaranteed access to itself. Netflix or Amazon Prime, for all their tablets to smartphones. to the airwaves, prominence on electronic inroads into the market, are not remotely It is not surprising that the younger programme guides and, in the case of concerned about such matters – merely generation is leading the take-up of these new modes of watching what is not really television any more. There has been a marked decline in the numbers of 16-34 year olds who watch a traditional TV set. It is not surprising that the younger Research by Ofcom in 2014 estimated that generation is leading the take-up of these more than a quarter of the UK population were using tablets and mobile devices to new modes of watching what is not really watch programme content. And it is no television any more. There has been a different in Wales. In just one year, there was a 40% increase in the numbers of marked decline in the numbers of 16-34 people watching catch-up and on-demand year olds who watch a traditional TV set. services, and a 25% increase in those

8 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org The universality of access to the The Cardiff Media Summit is being held on November 11th 2015 at the Wales Millennium public service broadcasters is Centre in Cardiff. Hosted by the Institute of Welsh under threat from the rapid growth Affairs and supported by the BBC, the event will discuss the findings of the IWA’s Media Audit that of on-demand services, which will be launched ahead of the conference. increasingly do not provide content The Audit is a major survey of the media in Wales originated on PSB. – across print, broadcast and online and in Welsh and English – carried out by the IWA’s media seeking a global market for their business. And which of the policy group and academics, and will include data multitude of channels is concerned to reflect (in varying degrees) and commentary on the state of the Welsh media. the society of Wales, with its very young democratic institutions? The IWA has published the draft Audit online at Answer: only the public service broadcasters, BBC Wales, ITV clickonwales.org to allow for feedback before its Wales and S4C. final publication at the summit. This is not meant to be a lament for times past. It is an argument for ensuring that the concept of public service BBC Director of Strategy, the former Culture broadcasting is redefined and developed to match the digital age. Secretary, James Purnell, will be delivering the This is going to be a challenge: how do the policy makers maintain keynote address on the challenges facing the BBC the rules that guarantee access to public service content? The ahead of Charter Renewal and the future of the prominence granted to the public service broadcasters on the licence fee. electronic programme guide is already being submerged by other content on smart TVs. The universality of access to the public service broadcasters is under threat from the rapid growth of on-demand services, which increasingly do not provide content originated on PSB. And online, the discoverability of British (or Welsh) public service content is at the mercy of multinational corporations based abroad. The challenge for the public service broadcasters in Wales is particularly acute. The BBC at UK level may, thanks to its worldwide reputation, be able to hold its head above the online water, but how does BBC Wales maintain a distinct and separate presence? The proposal for a new interactive online BBC service for Wales, with a separate news-site, may go some way to meeting that challenge. In the world of video on demand, BBC Wales must upgrade its offering on iPlayer, if necessary creating a separate service for Wales – perhaps linked to the main BBC iPlayer. ITV Wales will also have to further upgrade its service for the world of on-demand viewing. Broadcasting remains a non-devolved matter, so it is down to Parliament at Westminster, as well as the regulator, Ofcom, to be far more proactive in redrawing the rules to ensure that public service broadcasting can remain as universally available as possible in the digital age. Nobody can be sure about the pace of future change away from traditional viewing of linear TV, but it is better to be ahead of the curve. The principle of public benefit needs to be maintained - and this is not an issue that will wait.

Glyn Mathias is former Political Editor for ITN and BBC Wales; he is a member of OFCOM’s Advisory Committee for Wales > The NHS in England A Famously, in 2010, the Chief Executive of ‘National’ the NHS in England said that the Coalition Government’s reforms involved ‘such a big change management, you could probably Health Service? see it from space.’ The subsequent Health and Social Care Act 2012 fundamentally changed the way the NHS in England is organised and operates. This Act abolished Primary Care Trusts, Strategic Shane Doheny looks at the different Health Authorities and the NHS Executive. paths being followed by the NHS in In their place, the Act created GP led England and Wales Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), overseen by a national commissioning board (NHS England), and expanded the role of Monitor in the regulation of the internal market. There has been a lot of comment on how well the NHS in Wales Commissioning was a central compares with its English counterpart. While there are good part of the system inherited by the reasons for making comparisons, many people point to the Coalition Government in 2010, but NHS difficulties of comparing these organisations. The most obvious commissioning was criticised as weak. differences are that the NHS in Wales serves a vastly smaller The government sought to address this population than the NHS in England, and that people living in by creating GP led CCGs. The idea is England are, on average, wealthier, younger and healthier than that through CCGs, GPs can use the people in Wales. But that is not all. The NHS in England and knowledge they gain from guiding their Wales are now remarkably different organisations. But just how patients through the healthcare system, to different are these organisations, and what difference do these commission care on behalf of patients. differences make? Alongside changes to Talking about the divergence between NHS in England commissioning, the Coalition Government and Wales suggests that there was a time when the NHS was also reorganised healthcare providers. the same in each country. But even under the old Welsh Office, The rules governing community the NHS in England and Wales were different. For instance, health care were liberalised so that because of the culture and geography in Wales, the market any willing provider could enter this reforms introduced by the Conservative Governments of the market. In secondary care, the Coalition 1980s were not implemented in Wales (or Scotland) to the Government’s aim was that all NHS Trusts same extent that they were in England. would become Foundation Trusts by April Since devolution, each healthcare system have been 2014. This meant moving secondary moving in very different directions. Whereas UK Governments care providers away from their financial have worked to develop and expand the role of the market in the accountability to government, and towards NHS in England, Welsh Governments have worked to reduce the Foundation model where they would and eliminate market mechanisms from the NHS in Wales. These become free (within certain limits) to differences have become more striking since the UK Coalition make their own financial decisions. Government passed the Health and Social Care Act 2012. For patients, the Coalition Government increased the patient’s choice and control over which provider administered their treatment. To support this increase in patient choice, the sector regulator’s role was expanded

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By organising the NHS around planning processes, the Welsh Government introduced a very different to become an economic regulator. This > The NHS in Wales regulator, Monitor, is there to ensure the The contrast with the NHS in Wales is really organisational culture health sector provides a quality service quite striking. While commissioning was in Wales. by ensuring that Foundation Trusts are used in Wales following reforms introduced properly managed and that essential in 2002, in 2009 the Welsh Government managers to account for their actions. services continue to be provided when replaced this system with a simpler structure So what difference do these there is serious difficulty. that unifies the planning and delivery of differences make? primary, secondary and tertiary care. In some ways these different The 2009 reforms in Wales merged 22 arrangements suit their different places Local Health Boards (LHBs) with seven NHS and cultures. Healthcare markets seem Trusts, to form seven LHBs that both plan and suited to the largely metropolitan areas provide hospital and community services, of southern England, while Wales’ Commissioning was a and commission primary care. Specialist bureaucratic system suits its more central part of the system services are commissioned both by LHBs and challenging and dispersed geography. by national boards (mainly the Wales Health But the difference has more inherited by the Coalition Specialised Services Committee). Following fundamental implications. The UK Government in 2010, but these changes, three NHS Trusts provide Government’s reforms have led some NHS commissioning was specialist and all-Wales healthcare functions: commentators to conclude that the NHS criticised as weak. providing ambulance services, cancer care, in England is now little more than a funding and public health services. stream and a logo. The separation between In many ways, these organisational the Minister and the health service, the use changes reflected an even bigger change of an economic regulator, and the expansion introduced in 2009, which was the of commissioning means that the healthcare decision to remove commissioning and system in England is no longer subject to rely on planning. Instead of a having to ministerial oversight and is open to far a buyer (or commissioner) purchase more involvement from private companies. services from market based providers, Any problems that arise are a matter for providers work with professionals and commissioners and providers to sort out, as service users to decide on the extent and the minister no longer has a duty to provide Perhaps the biggest change range of services that would be provided. or secure comprehensive health care. introduced by the Health and Social By organising the NHS around planning In Wales, the 2009 reforms Care Act was establishment of a division processes, the Welsh Government introduced strengthened the Minister’s control over between the roles of NHS organisations a very different organisational culture in healthcare provision, while simplifying the and ministers. Following the Act, the Wales. Removing the split within the NHS provision of healthcare by using integrated Secretary of State has no involvement in between purchasers and providers meant organisations. In theory, the chain of the day to day running of the NHS. The removing money as the main currency that accountability through these organisations Minister’s involvement is limited to an signals problems with, or preferences for, is simpler and clearer. Accountability annual mandate issued by the Department particular services. Instead the NHS has to extends from the frontline all the way of Health to NHS England focusing on rely on communication and power. On the to the Minister who can be called to outcomes. The NHS in England has, one hand, planners have to work closely account to the public in the Senedd and therefore, been restructured so that the with patients, residents, social services, local by the Assembly’s Health and Social Care system operates much more like a market, authorities and the government to develop Committee. The NHS in Wales still belongs with its own economic regulator, and little effective plans. But ultimately, the Minister for to the people of Wales, in a way that can no ministerial involvement. Health and Social Services is responsible for longer be said for the NHS in England. the provision of health care services in Wales, and so can be called to account for any Dr Shane Doheny is a Research problems or failures. This means it remains Associate at the Institute of Medical important for the Minister to be able to call Genetics, Cardiff University

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 11 Bigger isn’t always better

mattered, was written at a moment of local governance structures. Wales is Simon Parker argues for ‘small’ not public sector gigantism. He himself already carpeted in town and parish to be forgotten within the ‘big’ of worked for the Coal Board and had seen councils which provide the first tier of local government reorganisation firsthand the way that huge bureaucracies decision making for local people. Their which were supposed to secure social quality varies considerably, but with the justice could actually trample over the right support they can become vibrant needs of the individual and community. local organisations. Some larger parishes But he was not a simple-minded localist. are taking on responsibility and revenues Instead, he argued for a better balance from assets like car parks and arts centres The late E.F. Schumacher famously wrote between the big and the small. His answer to fund the development of their towns. that ‘small is beautiful’, but in today’s to the question of scale is encapsulated in English parishes have started to develop debate about Welsh local government it his idea of ‘smallness in bigness’. How do their own improvement regime to increase appears that the opposite is true. Leighton we create organisations and governance their capacity. By encouraging parishes Andrews plans to create fewer, bigger on a large enough canvas to provide – perhaps even giving them a formal role councils. The current 22 local authorities economies of scale for those things that in consultations and planning – the new could be reduced to as few as eight. With need to be big, providing the right support megacouncils can ensure that grassroots Welsh councils starting to feel the pinch of to local people to take control of their lives democracy is not neglected. austerity, creating fewer, larger authorities is a move that could free up money to maintain frontline public services. Perhaps the most exciting option for matching Experience east of the border tells us that this sort of reorganisation can work. smallness with bigness comes from a set of It is possible to save money by reducing ideas I have called ‘the democracy of doing’. the number of senior officers, cutting back office staff and reducing duplication. The savings are seldom game changing, usually smaller than expected, and they often take a while to come through, but they are real. But local government is and communities? Assuming Leighton But there is much more to not just about efficiency; democracy and has his way, this will be the challenge that democracy than parishing. The bigger identity matter too and it is all too easy austerity poses both to him and to the new councils get, the more they need to focus to lose sight of this fact in the quest for megacouncils. their efforts on local consultation and the productivity. There are three broad ways to creation of local forums. Wiltshire County Schumacher’s book, Small is address the challenge of smallness in Council, which moved from its old two tier Beautiful: a study of economics as if people bigness. The first is to create formalised structure into unitary status towards the

12 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Denbighshire Flintshire The most democratic Isle of thing a council Anglesey can do in this environment is to Conwy support local people to solve their own Gwynedd problems. Wrexham

end of the last decade, has built a strong tier of areas boards to ensure local people remain involved. These bring a cabinet member together with local people, ward Ceredigion Powys councillors and local service providers such as the NHS and police. The goal is to find locally-based solutions to problems like litter, road repairs and facilities for young people. Blaenau Perhaps the most exciting option Gwent for matching smallness with bigness Pembrokeshire Merthyr Carmarthenshire comes from a set of ideas I have called Rhondda Tydfil Cynon Taf ‘the democracy of doing’. This reflects Monmouthshire the idea that in the 21st century, the most important way that individuals can contribute to a stronger civil society is Swansea not by talking, but by acting. Britain is currently buzzing with new forms of social Neath Cardiff activity – look at the explosion in the Port Talbot Torfaen One of the proposed options for the Vale of number of co-ops over the past five years, Glamorgan Caerphilly reconfiguration of councils across Wales. Bridgend Newport or the success of social enterprises. The The proposed councils are highlighted by most democratic thing a council can do in the different colours this environment is to support local people to solve their own problems. What does that mean in practice? on a local high street, it attracted 300 should want the best of both: a world in It suggests that the new megacouncils local members and helped them start up which large organisations provide the need to pay a huge amount of attention projects they cared about – these include infrastructure to support the small, the and a decent slug of money to investing a trade school where people barter for local, the human-scale. Bigger can be in building social capital and mutual aid, lessons and a communal cookery club. better, as long as it enables people to take leading to the creation of new community These thing sound small, but they provide more control of the places where they live. groups and businesses that can care a sort of anarchist infrastructure for for green spaces and bring neighbours community self-organisation. together to provide low level care to one Smallness and bigness sound like Simon Parker is Director of the another. Lambeth’s Open Works project opposites, but Fritz Schumacher’s great New Local Government Network provides a key example. Set up as a shop insight was that any sensible person

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 13 Image: Warren Orchard

the state £11bn pounds, the Alzheimer’s Society tells us. Voluntary bodies - such as Dealing with Dementia the Alzheimer’s Society and Age Cymru - provide support. But carers have to spend time and effort to find whatever help there is. Time and effort are precisely what we Beti George gave this year’s IWA keep their distance because they cannot cannot afford, as we need them for caring. Eisteddfod Lecture, Taclo Dementia: cope. One or two call but will spend the In Scotland the government has Allwn ni ddim fforddio peidio - time talking to me not him. Some share guaranteed that everyone diagnosed with Tackling Dementia : we can’t afford his fondness for books and are ready to go the illness will receive a year’s support from not to; here she outlines the challenges through one or two of the hundreds piled a link-worker. They also help to plan for the from her perspective as her long term up on the bookshelves, some written by future, including financial issues. partner’s carer David himself. He has completely forgotten Recently, Welsh Health Minister that he wrote about 15 books, mainly on Mark Drakeford announced £800,000 rugby, and that he was once a successful would be available to appoint 32 support David was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s commentator on the game. People ask workers who will offer advice and face- six years ago. Since then it has been a whether he recognises me - which he to-face assistance. But they will have to voyage of learning and discovery, highs does - and also whether he can be left on help at least 45,000 individuals living with and lows, laughter and disappointment. He his own. Again the answer is Yes; and No, dementia in Wales. Nobody has come sometimes sits with his eyes betraying his he does not wander. Those represent the to our aid. Our GP is not sure how their troubled thoughts. Like the other 50 million cliched recognition of the disease. practice will benefit. According to the people worldwide living with dementia he is Help is sparse. The individual is Alzheimer’s Society, one in five of those still able to think! diagnosed. He or she is sent home and if with dementia and their carers complain Since David received the diagnosis, there is a carer - wife or husband, daughter about a lack of support and services. awareness of the disease has risen. or son - from then onwards these carers are There needs to be a revolution in Newspapers are full of mentions these days on their own. Sufferers who have nobody dementia care because the traditional way and social media, too, sometimes carries to turn to, however, are truly on their own. of caring for the frail, unhealthy, elderly the latest ‘breakthroughs’, though oftener Hundreds if not thousands in Wales will have person is not ideal for the completely than not these merely raise false hopes. to give up their homes to live in the unfamiliar different needs of dementia patients. A Opinion polls show that those over 50 now surroundings of a residential care place. Were social prescription could be more beneficial fear such a diagnosis more than cancer. it not for my caring for him, this would also be than a medicinal prescription: writers, But understanding has changed little. David’s fate - and that scares me. poets, artists, musicians to stimulate the ‘Dementia’ has replaced the words ‘losing Governments speak of care in the mind and the brain. David responded memory’, but people refuse to have their community. It’s easy to see why. It is far well to an hour spent with John Killick, memories assessed: the headed notepaper cheaper for them as they depend on unpaid a poet who specialises in this area, and inviting them to go for the test will often have carers - family members. There are almost spoke about it for days. Weekly sessions been sent from a centre for mental health. 700,000 unpaid carers looking after of physiotherapy and keep fit should be Many of David’s erstwhile friends people with dementia in the UK, saving deemed an essential part of the care

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There needs to be a revolution in dementia care knit communities. Chapels - those that still exist - are important social centres. Schools because the traditional way of caring for the can take part. Various societies, such as frail, unhealthy, elderly person is not ideal for the Merched y Wawr, the Women’s Institute, and Round Table, could rally around. completely different needs of dementia patients. As the Alzheimer’s Society revealed in a report a year ago, in the UK, people with dementia and their carers are left package and are also essential to hold at be distributed according to greatest need. footing a £5.8bn social care bill. Families bay problems with walking owing to the And, the people providing the care to work provide £1.3bn worth of unpaid care. I am under-use of leg muscles. closely together. one of the 43% of carers who receive no The problem is the division of ‘care’ and What is stopping us in Wales from help in our role. ‘need’ into social and health categories. If you delivering this kind of care? A reduction Dementia friends or dementia have brain cancer, care is free under the NHS in the number of local authorities would supportive communities can not lessen that at the point of delivery. If you have dementia, lessen conflict – just seven local councils to burden. With the scale of this disease and where the brain is diseased, just as in cancer, work with the seven health authorities. That the cost soaring, and to remove the inequity services have to be paid for. Most of those could lead eventually to elimination of the and unfairness, the State must play a bigger affected by dementia live in the community present division between the two sectors, part in the caring role, just as they do for but hidden away, and the condition is dealt and pave the way for all the care to be those with cancer and heart disease. with (or not dealt with!) by financially-pressed delivered by one service. Very importantly, too, Wales is social services departments. There are some In the meantime, every one in the at the forefront of research into the allowances but they are limited. David gets public, voluntary and private sector needs to disease. At Cardiff University School of an attendance allowance, which will pay half work together, and offer greater consistency Medicine, invaluable research is being the cost of a domicillary carer who will come in the strategy and the provision of dementia done and Professor Julie Williams’ work in while I’m away. I am also grateful to David’s care throughout the country. Provision must on Alzheimer’s is recognised worldwide. children and friends who provide caring at be available everywhere, too, for those who Professor Bob Woods, leading a team in the other times when I cannot do so. speak Welsh. psychology department of the University Dementia costs Wales £1.4bn pounds It is time, too, that the NHS employed of Bangor, has been given international a year: almost a quarter of the total health Admiral nurses in Wales. In England Admiral recognition for his work in this field. So too and social care costs our goverment has to nurses already offer excellent care - similar has a Caerphilly project that followed the face every year. But those with dementia to the service offered by Macmillan nurses lives of a significant number of men in the and their families have to bear two thirds of for cancer patients. An NHS pilot scheme in area, showing that leading healthy lives that cost: £298m on private care and the Norfolk saved £44,000 in its first ten months. decreases the risk of developing dementia. equivalent of £622m of unpaid care. Social There are already nurses specialising in Let Wales show we are capable of care needs a more generous share of the Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis too. dealing with a disease that will affect the pot of money available for health care and Dementia-friendly or supportive majority of us within a few years, unless we this would eventually lead to savings for the communities are now being encouraged. tackle it now. We cannot afford not to do so. health sector. This is to be welcomed, and they seem to ‘I’m dead’, I once heard David say, Finding a way of unifying services is be successful in many areas where there are and there are, indeed, people who use essential, however. The UK Government dedicated people leading campaigns. For the term ‘living dead’ about people with has itself admitted as much, pointing out those with dementia who are independent dementia. It is not like that at all. The next on one of its websites that the provision and can still enjoy visiting shopping centres minute he was opening the door of my of care by several different health and or cafes or post offices, knowing they have walk-in wardrobe and proclaiming, ‘Wow - social care professionals, across different the support of the community makes life Amazing!’ That proves he is still David and providers, results in health and social care easier for them. very much alive. And I want to make sure services that are fragmented, difficult to Countless reviews on dementia and that he will continue to be so. And with access and not based around their (or dementia care are commissioned but it is greater support, I’m sure I would succeed. their carers’) needs. It acknowledges that difficult to gather and collate data that will good integrated care can reduce confusion, give us a true picture. Clearly, however, repetition, delay, duplication and gaps in we cannot rely completely on the state for Beti George is a broadcaster service delivery, and people getting lost in support any more and this is why Wales and journalist. The full lecture will the system. So, combining health and care should be at the forefront of dementia care. be available to download from our budgets makes sense. One pot of money to We have traditionally been a nation of close- website soon: www.iwa.org.uk

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 15 IWA Energy Roundtable

In June the IWA convened a roundtable to discuss our proposal to make Wales a net exporter of renewable energy. The seminar, sponsored by RWE Innogy UK, brought together leading figures from politics, academia and industry. Tom Bodden reports.

Wales has a potentially significant advantage less we will have to adapt, but we have to entailed. People can often see the ‘visual in the quest to move away from fossil fuels adapt,’ he said. ‘There’s no coherent energy impact’ but not the cost benefit of a project. towards renewable energy with a raft of strategy for Wales.’ Wales needs a demand ‘There needs to be a thorough understanding resources both onshore and offshore. But management strategy, an energy savings of the choice a community has. Where I want big questions remain over the ability to use strategy, a look at generation linked with politicians to move to is to force developers to those renewable resources to re-energise the storage and smart, localised grids as well as do some of this stuff. What developers should economy and communities across Wales. overcoming the challenges posed by special have is an incentive to really think about this, Any strategy has to contain a big programme interest groups and the lack of involvement deliver community action.’ of energy savings at its heart, with a target of of communities and individuals. The Welsh Government had spent a 35% decrease in total energy use. tens of millions of pounds on planning Engaging communities and consultants and inquiries in recent years Ambitious targets changing perceptions battling to get large schemes through the Prof Gareth Wyn Jones, a former Professor of Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru AM for North system, said Alun Davies AM. The former biological and agricultural and forest sciences Wales and shadow minister for sustainable Minister for Natural Resources argued at University of Wales Bangor, set out the communities, energy and food, argued that there was a lack of coherence in recommendations on energy from the IWA that having a direct ownership element in government. ‘At the moment we’ve got the Economy Report. He noted that many of the communities was key. He suggested one brochures but we haven’t got the content,’ potential resources in Wales were small- way to tackle this was a ‘solar schools’ he said. The priority was a clear policy, scale and dispersed: often a dis-incentive for approach where local people came together which reduced the risk for investors and took large developers. ‘An energy strategy has to to install solar on school buildings, which down barriers. Setting a target to create a have energy saving at its heart. We should often led to questions about whether this ‘renewable Wales’ was far too vague. be aiming at 35% decrease in total energy could be done at home too. The Assembly Economist and IWA Trustee Gerald use,’ he said, a figure that is ‘attainable’ environment committee had visited Baden Holtham addressed the issue of how but ‘a long way off at the moment’. To get Wurttemberg recently to see a huge shift in schemes that would not make a profit for there, an ‘integrated mindset’ is required energy policy in the Lander. ‘They used to communities could be paid for. ‘You can’t say of government, with consideration of the have the big four companies there. Now in to people we will put the wind farm nearby energy implications of all policies. Making the Germany they have over a million entities, but we will give you a share of the profit change happen requires a number of barriers individual’s homes, football stadia, small because unless the thing is subsidised there to be overcome: public perception, financing, businesses. That’s where we want to get to.’ isn’t any profit anyway.’ The Swansea Bay planning and the speedy reaction RWE Innogy’s Mike Parker said that Tidal Lagoon project encouraged local people of governments. there was a lack of transparency about to become shareholders, noted Heather

‘The sooner we mitigate [for CO2], the what numerous types of renewable projects Stevens, founder and chair of The Waterloo

16 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Foundation. ‘People can be involved and going to be charged £6m for a connection how things were delivered. Gerald Holtham that’s a step in the right direction,’ she said. to the grid. ‘This is something the Welsh suggested government could borrow a ‘shed ‘But so much comes down to planning Government should be nailing the DNOs load of money’ and say ‘we are coming with delays at every stage.’ Llyr Gruffydd gave (Distribution Network Operator Companies) you and you get the first X% of the return, the positive example in Wrexham where the over.’ RWE’s head of Onshore Wind, Mike that’s a loss leader investment. If you think it local authority decided all council houses Parker, said that larger developers could take is going to trigger other economic advantages would have solar panels and ‘all of a sudden the brunt of those costs: ‘If we are there or other benefits, you may be prepared to everyone else on the estate was saying, ‘I’ll first we can create the infrastructure that’s lose money on a particular investment’. have one of those’ and that’s the type of needed, but that infrastructure should have Heather Stevens called for more debate about cultural buy-in you need from communities.’ additional capacity to then allow community individuals ‘turning off the light bulbs’. Alun Much progress depends on political schemes to bolt on at a lower cost.’ Investors Davies suggested an Energy and Climate leadership, which Plaid Cymru’s spokesman need to be incentivised to build community Change Department created within the on energy said has been ‘woeful’ in Wales. support, he stressed: force them to do Welsh Government that would bring people Rita Singh, director of policy at Cynnal community investment through policy and together in with a clear agenda for both Cymru, said that the government didn’t planning but then reward them for it through energy efficiency and energy generation. seem to see the energy potential in its the decision-making process. economic policy: ‘In many ways Wales is IWA Director Lee Waters asked what Additional tools? subsidising renewable energy in Scotland and practical measures could be called for to bring Alun Davies highlighted the need for a focus England because we don’t have enough in down barriers. Some contributors put some on energy ahead of next year’s Assembly Wales.’ Holtham questioned whether public faith in the new Planning Bill but others were election, adding: ‘We’ve spent too long investment, as a loss leader, into something more sceptical. Llyr Gruffydd said if there grizzling about powers available to us and like a pilot of a super smart grid could allow was to be a national planning framework, not sufficiently about using the powers that communities to make a profit by linking into to never again should there be a situation where we do have.’ Gareth Wyn Jones said that ‘the the large network. ‘You have got to be looking a TAN 8 (area designated for wind energy physical reality is we have to de-carbonise’, for that way of generating a surplus,’ he argued. developments) is identified without provision the essential problem being how to marry for ensuring the infrastructure is in place to this imperative with the economic reality that Overcoming barriers to delivery deliver. The framework within the Wellbeing renewables do not, yet, always pay. Gerald The bureaucracy faced by community groups of Future Generations Act should overcome Holtham said one place to generate a surplus aiming to set up as producers is daunting. some of those planning issues, involving is in energy saving. The Welsh Government Llyr Gruffydd said that in Wales people at the very beginning of the process, controlled two big taxes: council tax and the process involved reams and reams Rita Singh said. business rates. ‘There is no reason why there of paperwork, whereas in Germany it is a But Llyr Gruffydd was critical of the couldn’t be incentives via those taxes for three-page document. But Gareth Wyn Jones Act. ‘It’s about a healthier, wealthier, greener energy efficiency.’ An energy efficient house highlighted a successful small hydro scheme in Wales which everyone agrees with, but if you could be worth more, with the additional Abergwyngregyn in in the Snowdonia National really want legislation that changes culture benefit of a slightly lower council tax. ‘So get Park. That has worked because it has some then pass legislation that says no public on with it and stop whinging.’ people who are extremely experienced, senior building will be built in Wales if it increases university staff, helping to get it off the ground. our carbon footprint.’ Mike Parker argued that Tom Bodden was Daily Post The biggest problem for many small policy and planning was fine but ultimately Welsh Affairs correspondent hydro schemes is the connection fee; one was useless if you had no fiscal control over from 1992-2014.

All pictures by Natasha Hirst.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 17

Competitiveness and policy autonomy: What can Wales learn from the Basque Country?

James Wilson moved to the The Basques arguably enjoy greater policy too in many areas, in particular around the Basque Country in 2007 to autonomy than any other sub-national development of the three main Basque cities, work for Orkestra, the newly- region in Europe. Apart from defence, foreign Bilbao, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Donostia-San established Basque Institute of policy, customs, economic regulation, social Sebastian. Competitiveness. The Basque security and some large infrastructure This complexity of policy-making experience offers much food- projects, which are centralised in Madrid, the levels requires considerable coordination for-thought for other regions and Basque Autonomous Community exercises and has necessitated innovative governance nations operating with a significant control over all areas. Yet as in most places solutions that are not without their degree of political autonomy within the story is not a simple one, and the problems. Yet that the Basque Country a State. Here he outlines what reality is that Basque policy-making takes is seen as a long-term success case in Wales could learn from one of place in an extremely complex multi-level economic development within this context Europe’s success stories. scenario. Three sub-regional provinces have suggests that there are interesting lessons tax-raising powers, alongside considerable to be learned. In particular, policy has been policy competences of their own, and instrumental in driving a transformation of the funding for regional government the economy: from the industrial decline activities is transferred from the provincial and high unemployment of the late-1970s governments. A transfer also goes to the and early-1980s to industrial renaissance Spanish government to support the areas in the 1990s and from there to the where they retain policy competences, and consolidation of a diversity of industries local municipal authorities play a key role that form the base for today’s innovation-

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 19 While a whole range of policy tools across health, education, culture, employment, environment and other domains have combined to foster a strong Basque economy and society, it is the policies supporting the transformation of Basque industry that have drawn most attention internationally.

oriented policies. It is in this context that be drawn from these experiences, and from guided by certain visionary policies (cluster the Basque economy has proved far more which Wales might learn? For me, three policy, for example) and supported by strong resilient to the present economic downturn stand out. institutions. Private-public partnership, and than other Spanish regions. Firstly, the boundaries between which in particular the presence of government While a whole range of policy policies work best at different levels are by leaders capable of engaging business and tools across health, education, culture, no means clear-cut. Finding the right mix is building networks, has been critical. Moreover employment, environment and other a practical question that is highly context this has clearly been helped by the economic domains have combined to foster a strong specific, but one that also can not easily be development of the Basque Country being Basque economy and society, it is the policies separated from the emotional attachment seen as part of a wider cultural project supporting the transformation of Basque to territory that lies behind a desire for of identity, with much of the multi-agent industry that have drawn most attention greater autonomy. Science and technology commitment being built around Basqueness. internationally. A cornerstone was the early policy provides a good illustration. Regional Finally, perhaps what the Basque commitment of the newly autonomous autonomy has contributed to dynamism experience demonstrates above all is government to support an ‘industrial and agility in the development of innovative that effective economic competitiveness reconversion’, at a time in the 1980s when policies that have supported clear regional policy goes hand-in-hand with a it was unfashionable to talk about industrial priorities, in part because different agents coherent strategy. Policy supporting the policy. While much of the finance for the have pulled together behind the ‘project’ of competitiveness upgrading of the Basque reconversion came from central government, the territory. Yet there are scale issues too economy has been developed in the it was regional government leaders who that make certain regional priorities difficult framework of a long-term and flexible worked closely with Basque business leaders to sustain in times of crisis and imply that strategy, which has evolved over time and to ensure a real commitment to change that certain infrastructure-intensive projects continues to do so. Moreover, the role of would lead to other cornerstones being laid are more suited to national or European leadership in such strategy, emerging in that together would support the progressive support. The exploitation of synergies parallel from different sectors of society - upgrading of the competitiveness of Basque across places is also a key consideration, government, business, education and so industry. For example, as pioneers of cluster especially if ‘lock-in’ is to be avoided. This on - illustrates again the importance of policy in the 1990s, a culture of strong means that it is not just a case of having the often-forgotten human element in our public-private partnership was fostered to policy autonomy at regional level, but also understanding of what makes for successful address specific areas of weakness and to of how this policy is coordinated with that economic development. build on strengths. This was coupled with a of other regions; an area where there is targeted and evolving science, technology considerable room for improvement. This article is based on a presentation made and innovation policy, built initially around Secondly, the desirable level of policy to a Learned Society of Wales international technology centres and later around a wider autonomy cannot be divorced from the symposium in Portmeirion in April. range of institutions that today form the level of policy capability (including quality of Basque science, technology and innovation institutions and stability), or from the desire network. Throughout, there has also been to exercise that autonomy (which is strongly strong concern with internationalisation, related to socio-cultural identity). In this and in particular with supporting the export respect, the Basque Country has counted on James Wilson is Senior activity of Basque firms and encouraging in- political stability, on strong leaders, and on Researcher at Orkestra-Basque flows of talent. capable people in government, which has Institute of Competitiveness, So, what are the key lessons that can enabled a long term strategy to be followed, Deusto University.

20 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org The Centre-Periphery Game

The story is told of an elderly woman in David Anderson North Wales who, when asked if she had wonders how long Wales been to London, said, ‘Oh, no. It is so far will be content at the from everywhere’. periphery of BBC arts Last year, BBC Director General Tony and culture coverage Hall came to Cardiff, and spoke at the Pier Head Building. He was refreshingly frank in admitting some of the deficiencies of BBC coverage in Wales. ‘We must acknowledge that English language programming from and for Wales has been in decline for almost a decade,’ he said, adding that, ‘comedy, entertainment and culture are not sufficiently captured through our English language output.’ He then invited us to ‘Just imagine for a moment Wales without the BBC. Where would a nation find its voice in both languages? Where would it be able to explore its identity, its geography, its people? How would a nation come together to share its common heritage? Or debate its shared challenges? Or celebrate its national successes?’ In effect, Tony Hall neatly put the onus on us, his audience. Rather than offering us a clear and frank analysis of the reasons why ‘Bard Attitude’, a piece by Bedwyr Williams Network BBC has failed Wales in so many (courtesy Artes Mundi) important ways, and outlining a plan for change, he made monopolistic claims for the identities, long before the BBC. We might variable quality of the works that had been BBC’s current contribution to national life. In have asked him, in turn, to imagine a BBC selected. One evening, I joined a tour of effect, he was saying we should be grateful without the Celtic nations. We might have the installations across the city, led by a for what London chooses to give us, and not challenged him to conceive of a BBC that representative of the City of Culture, over complain. is not dominated by a London-centric from London. During the tour, when asked It would be unfair to suggest that perception of the world, and that better about the local community’s response, she this went without challenge. The Welsh reflects Wales’ arts and cultures, and its said, ‘Of course, these people have never Assembly’s Presiding Officer, Rosemary values and debates. And we might have seen anything like this before.’ Butler, demanded that the media, including reminded him that there is more to the arts Do ‘these people’ in Northern Ireland the BBC, address the democratic deficit in its in Wales than the Hay Festival, where buses really not see, or create, contemporary art of coverage of public policy in Wales. But, by are mostly timed to meet the London trains. quality and significance? Or did the prejudices and large, we in the audience (and I include In 2013, Derry/Londonderry was host and assumptions of the London organisers myself in this) let Tony Hall off without the to the UK City of Culture. The programme blind them to the talent that lay beyond their critique his considered speech deserved. brought a deserved and much needed profile own cultural and artistic horizons? We might have pointed out to him to the city, but was criticised for including It is worth comparing the BBC’s that Wales existed, with its languages and so few Northern Irish artists, and for the coverage of Artes Mundi and the Turner

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 21 Prize. For some years Artes Mundi - an well as arts and cultural institutions, these Perhaps this is not an accident. At the international competition that engages with include the print and broadcasting media, time of the 2015 General Election, when social concerns - has been recognised by the Lotteries and other public and private the scale of the SNP landslide in Scotland international contemporary art critics as a funders, the education sector, the tourism became apparent, two of my acquaintances far more significant event than the Turner industry and - last but not least - the creative - one a Scottish nationalist, the other a Prize. In 2014, the Artes Mundi winner was industries and creative professionals. leading Tory publicist - texted the words Theaster Gates, a Chicago-based artist with Wales has very great resources of ‘Win, win’ to each other. a global reputation. Yet the BBC’s arts editor creative talent. Despite deep cuts in funding It is into this political pool that the BBC Will Gompertz (who previously worked at as a result of austerity, the last few years has recently lobbed its thinking on its future, the Tate) again gave blanket coverage over have seen an extraordinary renaissance of in a document entitled, ‘BBC: British, Bold, several months to the Turner Prize, and many of Wales’ national performing arts Creative’. This commits to providing the public made only one short report on Artes Mundi. companies and cultural institutions. with ‘the best of British ideas and culture’ These are not isolated examples. I Yet Wales does not get its fair share of but proposes nothing specific to address the could have given many more from my own resources. Funding of the arts, employment deficiencies in Network BBC’s representation personal experience since I arrived in Wales in the arts, public access and participation of Wales. Without additional funding, it says, from London in 2010. I suspect that almost in the arts, and control of the arts in the the BBC cannot increase net expenditure in the anyone working in the arts in Wales could United Kingdom are scandalously unequal. Nations. So nothing will change. do the same. Research by Arts and Business has shown Is this a deliberate choice, based on Where do these attitudes come from? that 71% of arts and cultural funding from a cold analysis that the BBC’s interests Who are those who decide what is culture UK trusts and foundations, corporate donors during the negotiations on the renewal and what it is not? The Sutton Trust has and private individuals goes to institutions in of its Charter lie with Westminster, not mapped the backgrounds of people in the the English capital, mostly located in just a Cardiff, Edinburgh or Belfast? If so, it may be top jobs in the media, the UK parliament, the few central London boroughs. miscalculation. In a hostile neoliberal world, law and other professions, and has identified We are in the second decade of the BBC needs friends wherever it can find the extreme and still growing advantage the 21st century, but we still operate with them. Instead it has alienated many in the that parental influence and education at the a highly centralised, nineteenth century, Nations who would otherwise have been wealthiest public schools and universities semi-colonial model for the arts - one which amongst its strongest supporters. ensures. The nine circles of privilege ripple assumes that London is synonymous with The United Kingdom is now a state out from the Docklands, Westminster, excellence, and that to fund London is to in a condition of profound dis-ease. On Islington, and White City. serve Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and 20 September 2014, immediately after Of course, some who achieve the regions of England. It is as if the music the Scottish Referendum, Irvine Welsh senior positions do not have privileged stopped in 1910. excoriated ‘Britain’s tired and out-of-touch backgrounds but, if they want to succeed, As the Artes Mundi example elites’ who are responsible for “ripping apart they are forced to become part of the demonstrates, the arts in Wales do not get . . . the big, inclusive postwar building blocks dominant networks or be marginalised. As the coverage from the UK media that their of the welfare state and the NHS”. He spoke Ian Pindar writes in his poem, The Spiders: quality deserves. This lack of recognition for many in Scotland. He might have added and publicity from the London-based the BBC to the list. They tell us how lucky we are newspapers and broadcasters - with the The unreformed BBC, like the Britain to be ruled over by spiders credibility that comes with it - makes it still it purports to represent, is dysfunctional and how our enemies harder for us to attract the private funding and apparently incapable of adapting to the are envious. . . . we so badly need. changing civic landscape around it. Who is We don’t like spiders We in Wales should give full credit the more provincial - the old lady from North But we are resigned to becoming spiders. to the BBC for its significant investment Wales who had never been to London, or in Roath Lock and its drama productions, Tony Hall? It is now nearly two decades since Wales which have given a great boost to our Why then are we so polite? Why do voted for devolution, including the transfer creative economy. But BBC Wales - unlike its the arts organisations in Wales not unite to of responsibility for culture to the Welsh equivalents in England and Scotland - does demand better? And for how much longer will Government. The BBC could have played a not have a Centre of Excellence in the arts. Wales be content to play the role of Periphery, constructive role in this change. Instead, its This is another reason why coverage in the age old Centre-Periphery game? attitude to Wales demonstrates how limited of the richness of our arts - even within and ill-considered that transfer of power and Wales - is so very limited, and on BBC decision-making has been. Network is almost non-existent. This reality David Anderson is Director General The cultural infrastructure of any undermines the principle, embedded in law, of Amgueddfa Cymru and former nation is an ecosystem, made up of a that culture is a devolved responsibility. We Director of Learning at the Victoria number of mutually dependent parts. As lack the voice that Tony Hall claims we have. & Albert Museum, London.

22 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org The makeup of the next Assembly

Gareth Hughes profiles the seats to watch at the 2016 Assembly elections.

The graphic shows every Assembly Member since 1999. The section closest to the middle shows the first Assembly from 1999 to 2003 and then moves outwards in time. Start at the top with Leighton Andrews; he’s been a Labour AM since 2003. Then it’s Mick Antoniw, who only joined the fourth Assembly, from 2011. (Graphic courtesy of Deryn, www.deryn.co.uk)

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 23 With one election done and dusted, to throw in their hand with Labour. the occasional deal to get their budget another is on the horizon. Next May Wales For the political anorak here are the through but apart from that the Labour goes to the polls to elect its fifth assembly. results for all the Assembly elections: ship of state sailed serenely on. The only Elections in Wales are more akin In 1999 Labour had 27 constituency change was in the ranks of the Opposition: to the old Soviet Union than a Western seats and 1 list seat, which led to them here the Tories replaced Plaid Cymru as democracy – there’s not much doubt as to forming a coalition with the Liberal the Official Opposition. who will govern, the only question mark is Democrats. So that’s the history, now for the over whether they will do it alone or have Four years later in 2003 Labour won crystal ball. What’s going to happen next? to rely on a little help from another party. 30 of the 60 seats, all in constituencies. Mystic Gar makes the following prediction: Yes, I’m talking about the most successful This allowed the party to form a Labour in government. electoral machine in modern Welsh history government on its own. Granted, it doesn’t require a degree in – the Labour party. 2007 was the nearest Labour political science to make such a prediction. As a party they have returned a came to being kicked out of office. They It would take a very foolish punter to put majority of Members to the UK parliament were down to 26 seats, 24 constituency money on any other outcome. since 1935, albeit with a declining share of representatives and 2 from the regions. Now the crystal ball doesn’t predict the popular vote. But it is devolution that After much wrangling, the ‘One Wales’ that Labour won’t lose seats, but it’s unlikely has given them real power. Labour have run deal was reached with Plaid Cymru and the that there will be a rout that sees them lose the Welsh roost since 1999. second coalition in Assembly history was their perennial position as the Assembly’s But never has the party achieved birthed. Rhodri Morgan was First Minister largest party. an overall majority; the Assembly’s and Ieuan Wyn Jones from Plaid Cymru In which seats are Labour vulnerable? proportional system mitigates against this. became Deputy First Minister. The starting point is to look at seats held Labour has been blessed with having The last election, in 2011, saw Labour at Westminster by parties other than a fragmented opposition that can never back in the driving seat, ruling on their Labour. Clearly, if the punters have elected agree a programme of government. The own. They had 30 Assembly Members, another party to represent a seat in the UK nearest the three anti-Labour parties came 28 in seats elected by the first past the parliament, then the Labour AM in that very to such was in 2007 when a ‘rainbow post system and two elected from the same seat will be feeling a little uncertain. coalition’ was almost agreed. Eventually it proportional regional list. So which are the seats with the came to nothing and Plaid Cymru decided Carwyn Jones’ administration cut fickle voters?

In which seats are Labour vulnerable? The starting point is to look at seats held at Westminster by parties other than Labour. Clearly, if the punters have elected another party to represent a seat in the UK parliament, then the Labour AM in that very same seat will be feeling a little uncertain.

24 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Cardiff North Vale of Clwyd Unlikely, but definitely a seat to watch. Until 1997, Cardiff North was always regarded The Vale of Clwyd was again a surprise Two other seats with different MPs as a safe Conservative seat until it fell to defeat for Labour last May. No one saw to AMs are Ceredigion and Ynys Mon - but Labour’s Julie Morgan in the Blair landslide. it coming, but with hindsight it seems here the two Plaid Cymru AMs concerned, The Tories suffered a double whammy two understandable. The reason – health. More Elin Jones and Rhun Ap Iorwerth, should years later in the first Assembly elections. specifically, the inadequacies of provision hold their seats. Sue Essex won the seat for Labour. On her in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd have caused much retirement, the seat turned blue once again public protest. Voters wanted to punish Llanelli under Jonathan Morgan. He served one term. Labour and they did. Chris Ruane lost his Other seats that Labour have lost and held Julie Morgan gained back the seat having in seat to Conservative GP James Davies. since the Assembly was established are the previous Westminster general election The diligent and hardworking Assembly Rhondda, Islwyn, Preseli Pembrokeshire, been given her P45 by the electors. Member Ann Jones will have a real fight on Carmarthen West and Llanelli. Of these it’s At the last Westminster election it her hands if she is to hold the seat. the Llanelli seat that’s the most volatile. was one of Labour’s key target seats. A key The controversies surrounding the Although Llanelli has been a safe seat indicator of the overall result, they failed Betsi Cadwaladr health board may affect for Labour in Westminster, the seat has to win it back; indeed the Tories increased the Labour vote in other North Wales changed hands between Labour and Plaid their majority. seats, such as Delyn and Clwyd South so Cymru at every Assembly election since For the Assembly election the there may even be more shock results on 1999, earning it a reputation as the most Conservatives have chosen a popular local election night - although there is potential volatile of the 40 constituency seats in the councillor, Jane Cowan, to challenge Julie consolation to Labour: if they lose one or Assembly. Plaid won the seat in 1999 with Morgan. A popular councillor taking on the more seats in the constituency section in a majority of 688 over Labour; Labour took stalwart politician makes for an intriguing North Wales they are likely to gain a seat it at the 2003 election with a majority of contest. It will be close, but the Tories have on the regional list. just 21. Plaid retook the seat in 2007 with a very effective machine in the constituency a majority of 3,884, and finally Labour and could pull off an upset here. Vale of Glamorgan snatched it back from Plaid in 2011 with a Conservative Alun Cairns has represented majority of just 80 votes. Gower the Vale of Glamorgan Westminster seat Where it will go at the next Assembly In May, Labour lost the Gower since 2010. But Labour cabinet minister elections is anyone’s guess. The Plaid AM constituency for the first time in its 109- Jane Hutt has held on to the seat for Labour for the 1999-2003 and 2007-2011 sittings year history. Byron Davies won the seat since the Assembly’s inception in 1999 was Helen Mary Jones and she stands with the barest of majorities: 27 votes. (albeit with sometimes thin majorities: 926 again. Labour AMs were Catherine Thomas Hard work and the changing nature of the in 1999 and 83 in 2007). Will next May be for the 2003-2007 whilst the incumbent seat saw Labour toppled. when the Tories finally win the prize? is Keith Davies, who is standing down. To But will the Conservatives carry the In large tracts of the area, you might stand against Helen Mary Jones, Labour success through until next May? Edwina be forgiven for thinking that you were in a has chosen a certain Lee Waters - a person Hart, the current Assembly Member, is seat in Southern England But it has a very familiar to the readers of the Welsh agenda. standing down, so fresh faces will fight for working class area in the former coal port of The latest Welsh Political poll shows it the seat. Barry. Labour depends on the Barry voters moving back to Plaid Cymru. To borrow a footballing cliché, this turning out on election day. Perhaps here In an uncertain world, clearly the is very much a seat of two halves. The is an example of a seat where the election Welsh voter likes the predictability of one north-eastern section, which covers the of Jeremy Corbyn as leader might help, by party rule. Whether there is drama during more industrial towns of Pontarddulais, motivating the Labour vote. the election is uncertain but there will be Gorseinion and Clydach, has a declining plenty afterwards. It will begin when Labour population, eroding the Labour vote. Brecon and Radnor, Ceredigion decides whether or not to seek a junior The western side of the seat covers and Ynys Mon partner to help them run the fiefdom that the largely rural and beautiful Gower Another seat to watch, but not one that is Wales. peninsula. Here population is increasing, affects Labour, is Brecon and Radnor. Here many choosing the area as a place to retire the seat in the Assembly is held by Liberal – fewer Labour voters amongst them. The Democrat leader Kirsty Williams but her seat will be decided by whether or not fellow traveller Roger Williams lost his seat Gareth Hughes is a political the newcomers will bother voting in an to the Conservatives’ Chris Davies last May. commentator and a Fellow Assembly election. They haven’t in the past. Will the Tory machine do for Williams? of the IWA.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 25 The Manifesto Makers

Behind closed doors, it’s the busiest time of the political year; manifesto coordinating and they’ve emphasised makers are meeting to decide on policy proposals and parties are putting that they are, unsurprisingly, focusing together their election strategies. Liz Silversmith gives an insight. on health, education and the economy (the main areas where the Welsh Government drives direction, rather than needing UK Government approval). The party have said they want to hear ideas that demonstrate a commitment Andrew RT Davies and Leanne Wood confusing because there was another to co-production rather than any extra arguing over ‘rainbow coalitions’ this public consultation undertaken earlier spending by the government. ‘Localism’ early in campaigning is no bluster. The in 2015 called ‘The Wales We Want’ in and a more flexible balance between Welsh Conservatives know, as do Plaid, order to inform the Wellbeing of Future public, private and third sectors is likely to that their best chance of government is in Generations Act. The categories are also feature throughout their manifesto. partnership with another party, either with very similar to the ‘Wellbeing Goals’ that each other or with Welsh Labour. Unless are prescribed under the Act. However The Welsh Conservatives Labour manage a positive swing, they will they do cover policy areas, as they are have a different approach. need either a coalition or another minority matched, respectively, to the economy, government where budgets are passed health, education and having a ‘long- They’ve been holding with the assistance of an opposition party. term vision’ for Wales. roundtable meetings with It is against this backdrop that manifestos The document very much echoes organisations and are are being put together. Even if the parties Ministerial dialogue over the last few don’t admit it in public, the policies may years and outlines policy initiatives currently honing in on be subject to coalition negotiations, which already achieved; interestingly it also uses a policy focus. certainly makes it more likely that different the term ‘Welsh Parliament’ instead of kinds of pledges may be in the next ‘Welsh Assembly’ throughout, indicating Programme for Government. a forthcoming change in political In terms of individual policies, the party For Welsh Labour, the Manifesto nomenclature. It does not allude to spokespeople in the Assembly have Coordinator is Ken Skates AM. A Deputy many new policies, and forms more of a been holding meetings within their own Minister who has held the Skills & reiteration of Bills from the last Assembly. portfolio areas. The final document Technology brief and now the Culture, The only hint of tax policy is that it needs will be ready by the end of the year to Sport & Tourism portfolio, Skates is to be for ‘values of fairness and sustaining go through internal party processes. In working with Campaign Coordinator public services provision’ and ‘not a low lieu of a Welsh Conservative autumn Huw Irranca-Davies MP and the First tax regime that leads of further cuts in conference, Andrew RT Davies AM and Minister with his ‘Carwyn Connects’ public services.’ This consultation closes the Secretary of State for Wales, Stephen town hall events to put together a in October, with the National Policy Crabb, addressed the final day of the winning manifesto. Embarking on a Forum meeting to discuss it on 22nd UK conference, and both men will have public consultation, Labour have a November. Perhaps more concrete policy a focus on planning for the Assembly slightly confusingly titled ‘The Wales will emerge then. elections over the next few months. We Want’ document which outlines The Welsh Conservatives have a Plaid Cymru has Elin Jones AM key themes: a ‘Prosperous and Secure different approach. They’ve been holding as Director of Policy coordinating Wales’, a ‘Healthy and Active Wales’, roundtable meetings with organisations their manifesto. They have launched an ‘Ambitious and Learning Wales’ and and are currently honing in on a their own consultation document, ‘A a ‘United and Connected Wales’. It is policy focus. Suzy Davies AM has been Road Map for Wales’, and held some

26 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org public events in a roadshow with their and a publicly owned energy company. UKIP. The Greens are putting together Cabinet spokespeople. Emphasising The Welsh Liberal Democrats have a document called a ‘Policy for a the accessibility of Leanne Wood, they a job to do in carving out their own Sustainable Society in Wales’. This will encourage discussions at events and on a identity to the electorate at large, so they then be agreed at their November one-to-one basis. Wood has also said Plaid can distance themselves from the failures AGM and key parts of it used in their would want the health and education of the UK Liberal Democrats. But they Assembly manifesto. For UKIP, former portfolios in Welsh Government, do have more say at the Assembly level, MP Mark Reckless is leading the way in indicating that these may be her ‘red lines’ with their budget negotiations resulting terms of policy development. He’s also in any coalition negotiations. in a policy of concessionary fares for been confirmed to be going forward as Plaid’s policies are categorised into 16-18 years olds becoming a reality in an Assembly Candidate, spearheading ‘Getting Wealthier, Healthier, Smarter, September. Coordinated by Peter Black the campaign alongside head of UKIP Greener’ and ‘Being Compassionate AM, the party carried out a manifesto Wales, Nathan Gill. Given their anti- and Fairer’. They’ve already made a consultation over the summer and also devolution stance, it will be interesting fair few policy announcements such as held meetings with organisations. They to see what they propose to do with establishing an arms-length company to will bring forward a motion at their devolved powers. run Welsh railways with public control one-day November conference over its and profits reinvested into lowering key principles; these papers are already fares; a ‘Build 4 Wales’ scheme for online and involve detailed suggestions Liz Silversmith has a background infrastructure; a Welsh Development on taxation policy, expanding the Pupil in working for Welsh MPs Bank; a £50m Drugs and Treatment Premium, more investment in student in Parliament and AMs in Fund; a 10 year NHS workforce plan; hardship funds, grants and bursaries as Cardiff Bay, as well as running integrated health and social services; a well as improving standards for tenants campaigns. She currently Green Skills College; 100% of electricity and capping letting agency fees. coordinates the housing from renewables by 2035; rent controls; Finally, the Green Party and campaign Let Down in Wales. The One-And-A-Half-Party state

Adam Price gives a pre-election rallying cry that reverberates far beyond the confines of his own party

It’s time to state some inconvenient wave was going to usher in a new era of to almost 5 percentage points by 2012/13 truths. Indeed, in Welsh politics, perhaps transformative change, that though a small (again differences in definitions following even the truth that dare not speak its country, we could dare to think big. changes introduced in England make more name: devolution has failed. At least Let’s ditch the hyperbole and check recent comparisons difficult) (see Chart). A according to the terms it set itself. Yes, the facts for those three core determinants parallel gap in the proportions of students we do have a functioning system of of happiness, how well we learn, live in Wales achieving A or A* grades at A government – which, when we eye and earn. Education is an area that we Level compared to England and northern developments in Belfast, is something we might have expected would flourish with Ireland was noted by former Secretary of should never take for granted. There have devolution. Wales has a long history as a State for Wales, Paul Murphy, as part of an been plenty of praiseworthy initiatives and pioneer: the first to create local education inquiry into the steep decline in admissions innovations, many of which have graced authorities, a national system of inspection to Oxbridge from Wales. the pages of this publication – from the and the first comprehensive school. By Perhaps the most damning evidence Welsh Baccalaureate to the plastic bag the beginning of the Assembly, despite of all is the slide in the international tax. Yes, the Assembly has sheltered us the added challenges that higher levels rankings of Welsh 15 year olds abilities’ from the worst banalities of Westminster of poverty represented, Wales still had a in Reading, Maths and Science produced government – Tory, Lib Dem and Labour. record of pupil achievement at 15 years by the OECD. Wales has been tested But devolution was meant to be so much of age almost identical to that of England. three times since 2006 and we have slid more than a dented shield. When it comes Since then our level of pupil achievement, ever further down the league table, now to the fundamentals, improving our public relative to England and other comparator languishing well below the PISA average services and our economy, the system has countries, has gone backwards – so much and significantly below the other UK failed the people of Wales. And in this, our so that a former Welsh Education Minister, nations. The Welsh education system is failing democracy, they are the only ones was forced to admit a ‘systemic crisis.’ failing at both ends of the ability spectrum, that can fix things. Because of differences in qualifications according to the OECD, with ‘a high The word crisis is bandied about too and changes in the way that education proportion of low performers and a low liberally in the political lexicon, of course – statistics are gathered it is difficult to proportion of high performers.’ So much and on the streets, in the bars and cafes of compare Wales to the other nations of so that a country once synonymous with any Welsh town there is certainly nothing the UK consistently over the last twenty educational excellence has now become like the air of popular insurgency that first years. But using figures for the percentage a laggard. If the Welsh Government was swept the SNP to power and then brought achieving A* to C grades from 1998/99 subject to the kind of rigorous assessment a nation to within a 5% swing of freedom. to 2005/06 we see Wales swapping a that schools and local education Satisfaction with the Welsh Government position of level-pegging at the start of authorities are subjected to then it’s hard is just above average – which is probably a devolution, to one of almost 6 percentage to escape the conclusion that its Education fair assessment. Devolution has not been points by the middle of the last decade. Department would long ago have been the unmitigated disaster that its detractors The gap in this set of statistics placed in special measures. predicted. But neither has there been the closed though the major reason is likely As the birthplace of the NHS, devolution dividend - in health, education to be a widening of the definition of what health is also an area in which we might or the economy - that was promised. In constitutes ‘vocational equivalents’ to have expected to excel. The picture here, terms of the national mood, in culture and GCSEs in Wales from 2006/07 onwards. however, is equally troubling. The ‘Gold sport there has been plenty to cheer. But Using the slightly stricter data set of 5 Standard’ in comparing the effectiveness there isn’t that palpable sense, all-pervasive GCSE A*-C grades, including English/ of national health systems worldwide is at the Assembly’s birth, that a democratic Welsh or Maths we see the gap widening ‘avoidable deaths’ (i.e. those deaths that

28 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org could be prevented through healthcare or in 1997 on the economic dividend it is at a-half-party state’ as the Labour Party is public health interventions). The number least worth pointing out that relative to the perpetually in government – though never of avoidable deaths continues to decline EU and to the UK, we are worse off now yet as a majority government. A dominant in Wales as is universally the case among than we were then – down from 85% of minority-party may sound like something of developed countries. But the proportion the EU-28 per capita GVA in 2000 to 74% an oxymoron, but it uniquely describes the of avoidable deaths in overall deaths in 2011, and from 73.8% of UK average peculiarities of the Welsh political system. remains significantly higher than England. income in 1997 to 72.2% in 2013 (see It also perhaps represents the circuitry of The preventable mortality rate has also Charts). The payback for Welsh voters’ power in Wales, neither fully closed nor declined more slowly in Wales – 2% less twenty-year-long loyalty to Labour it seems fully open and always eventually leading overall over the period 2001-2013. If these has been a decidedly negative return on back to Labour. It’s a lesson that coalition seem like small numbers then it’s worth their investment. parties – the half-parties co-opted through noting that if Wales had kept pace with It’s important to remember that necessity – have had to learn to their cost. the region in England with the most similar behind these statistics lies the human cost There are, of course, plenty of health profile – the North East, which has of reduced earnings, lower grades and examples of one-party dominated declined by 36% compared to Wales’ 28% shorter lives. Individual explanations of democracies – Gaullist France, LDP-led over the same time period – then more failure will differ according to ideological Japan or Swedish social democracy – than 800 people in Wales every year would prejudice. Is the failure in education due that proved very successful, for a time. avoid unnecessary deaths. As this is a to an accountability gap – the decision not One of the reasons for this was that they cumulative failure, it amounts to thousands to test and publish league tables, or the created key institutions beyond the central of avoidable deaths over the course of the lower amount of school funding per pupil? state: France’s ENA training ground for last decade and a half. Is the failure in health the result of shutting technocrats or Japan’s MITI industrial Though many of the interventions out the private sector, or the decision policy powerhouse, for example. In Wales, necessary to save these lives are in the area post-austerity to cut health spending in we did the opposite, shutting down one of of public health – an area where Wales, real terms? I think if we really want to the few capable institutions we had, in the in the 1980s, was seen by the WHO as something of a world leader – it’s likely that Wales’ appalling record on waiting Welsh democracy is a ‘one-and-a-half-party state’ times is also contributory factor. By the as the Labour Party is perpetually in government end of July of this year, 27,313 patients had been waiting more than 36 weeks for their – though never yet as a majority government. treatment, the highest number on record ever, and an almost fourfold increase since 2011. This cannot be so easily dismissed as Daily Mail propaganda. The Nuffield Foundation confirmed in a comprehensive study last year that waiting times for hip understand these multiple failures (which form of the Welsh Development Agency, in and knee replacements in Wales were on are repeated across other areas of policy a fit of political hubris. average 100 days longer than in England or not covered here) then we have to look for Even the smartest of single-party Scotland – and waiting times for life-saving a deeper, more systemic cause. hegemonies eventually run out of steam. coronary bypasses or sight-saving cataracts By the time of next year’s Assembly Starved of the oxygen of new ideas, had also declined. Figures provided by elections the Labour Party will have dominant parties become sclerotic, an ugly the Wales Audit Office in its systematic governed Wales at a national level for an word for an ugly phenomenon: the furring of analysis of the problem earlier in the year unbroken nineteen years. This makes it the arteries of a political system. I don’t think showed that the median waiting time for the longest serving administration of any it’s uncharitable or sectarian to suggest that a patient in Wales was about five to six country in the whole of the European Union. we are long past that point in Wales. weeks longer than in England, but, for those It’s not hard to realise why this might lead The problem has not been, as is waiting the longest – the 95th percentile – it to problems. Every democracy needs the sometimes said, a lack of ambition. The was 33 weeks in Wales, compared to 19 genuine possibility of political change. targets that have been set from time to time weeks in England. The pendulum swing of an alternative have been bold and laudable: achieving a Turning to Wales’ dismal economic government brings with it new ideas and GVA of 90% of the UK average by 2010, performance, it is fair to say it has been new leadership, the lifeblood of renewal. being among the top 8 European countries referenced so often in these pages there’s The opposite is stasis, inertia, fatigue. for cancer survival by 2015 or the top 20 little need to dwell on it again. But given the Croeso i Gymru. worldwide in the PISA education rankings emphasis in Labour’s case for devolution Welsh democracy is a ‘one-and- by next year. The problem was not the aim,

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 29 but the lack of a coherent vision and the kind of collective leadership necessary to achieve them. When ministers and priorities changed, the targets were quietly dropped. Those with a sentimental attachment to the Labour Party may hold out hope that it will be possible to renew Welsh Labour from within. I genuinely wish them luck, but political history suggests this can only be done seriously in Opposition. It’s precisely that opportunity for reinvention that Jeremy Corbyn has grasped at the UK level. But it’s difficult to see Corbynism as a constructive challenge to the policies of Welsh Labour. Indeed, the new Leader has gone out of his way to praise Carwyn Jones’ government as a model for the UK. Neal Lawson of Compass has described the big divide in modern politics being between incumbent Black Cabs, the mainstream establishment in power for years, fighting off the challenges of insurgent Ubers. When Jeremy, the Uberista, pitches up at Cardiff Central, it’s a Black Cab he’ll find waiting to take him to down to the Bay. As a Plaid Cymru candidate for the Assembly, it’s no surprise that my hope lies in the kind of ‘velvet revolution’ we saw in Scotland in 2007. Nothing would shake up the complacency of our policy and political establishment that, let’s face it, have failed to deliver on so many fronts, than these four words: First Minister Leanne Wood. If you think this is a little optimistic then take a look at Alberta, which in May this year, saw a 44-year unbroken term of office by the Conservatives overturned by a New Democratic Party caucus that went from four seats to 53. Change sometimes comes like an avalanche. That’s not to say we should replace one party’s dominance with another. Part deliver the change we need we can talents’ like never before. We need to press of the very essence of what we were meant comfortably take off the table: a simple Ctrl-Alt-Del in Cardiff Bay and create a to be creating in the National Assembly repeat of the One Wales government with new high bandwidth democracy. One that was a new way of doing politics – open and Plaid as a junior partner or a Rainbow recognises that no single party can have collaborative, inclusive and diverse. There Coalition with a Conservative Party that a monopoly on the truth, and that our were signs of that in the first Assembly has moved far and fast to the right. Either collective intelligence consists of three – the inter-party collaboration that of those options would simply entrench million citizens, not sixty. despatched Alun Michael, the power of the the political establishments in Wales Assembly Committees, the first coalition. and Westminster. But other forms of But the adoption of a Westminster-style cooperation between and beyond party Adam Price is Plaid Cymru system of Government and Opposition has should be explored to the utmost. In Wales candidate for the Carmarthen meant importing its values and its culture. such is the extent of the challenges we East and Dinefwr seat at the next Two scenarios that cannot possibly face, we need a ‘government of all the assembly election, in 2016.

30 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org fifteen nations rather than twelve. That is a Westminster Parliament headed by a Prime Minister who has just called and won a party leadership election in which 89 of his colleagues voted against him. There is no Scottish Parliament, no Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland and no National Assembly for Wales. Princess Diana has not yet given her Panorama interview to Martin Bashir. The Joint Communique between the UK and Irish governments on the twin- track process on peace negotiations and decommissioning of weapons is a couple of months away. Divorce has not yet been approved in Ireland though a referendum is coming up. Jack Charlton is still Ireland’s football manager. Ireland’s Culture Minister Michael D. Higgins has recently published his Green Paper on Broadcasting – the only Government consultation document I have ever read which quotes the German philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas. I wonder what Mr Higgins is doing now! Frank Bruno has just won the WBC World Heavywight Championship. David Trimble will be elected Ulster Unionist Leader in two days time – no doubt an equally pugilistic role. The Scottish Constitutional Convention’s document, Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right is two months from publication. The SNP has recently won the Perth by-election and the deep-fried Mars Bar has just been invented in Stonehaven. In Wales, Tower Colliery has been re-opened as a workers’ cooperative. Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers has just disappeared and Neil Kinnock has just resigned from Parliament to become a European Commissioner. A New Union Wales were knocked out of the Rugby World Cup after only three games following a narrow defeat by Ireland. Mentality Meanwhile Eric Cantona is still suspended after his Kung Fu attack on Leighton Andrews makes an impassioned It is 1995, and I am working in London, at a Crystal Palace supporter and Dennis plea for a constitutional convention the heart of Britishness, as the BBC’s Head Bergkamp is the most expensive football of Public Affairs, looking after relations transfer in British history. At £7.5 million. with the Westminster Parliament and the Now, does that all feel like a different European Parliament. That is the European world to you? It does to me. The following Parliament recently expanded to represent year, 1996, I got married in Cardiff, left the

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 31 BBC and returned to Wales to live for the referendum guaranteed the endurance because someone, like Othello, has ‘done first time since I had left shortly after our of the Barnett formula, without reference the state some service’? referendum defeat in 1979. to Wales, Northern Ireland or the English A referendum on our relationship I list these things simply to say regions, all of whom were affected. with the European Union is pending – that in the UK I think we need to take Constitutional issues are addressed on a which, as everyone knows, has potential stock. Not to slam on the brakes, but to bilateral basis between, say, Westminster to wreak havoc on the UK’s own appreciate how far we have come, and that and Scotland or Westminster and Wales, constitutional balance. just maybe, before we find we have set off without wider consideration. Some The Wales Bill will be published in different and incompatible directions, issues are proposed for change without in draft this autumn. There is agreement having a map of where we want to get effective advance consideration of the in general on a reserved powers model – to might be helpful. We need a cultural constitutional implications – such as the but there’s a suggestion that Whitehall change in Westminster and Whitehall. proposals around reform of the Human wants an enormous catalogue of reserved A move to a New Union mentality, away Rights Act, which require agreement with powers – which actually undermines the from a centralist mentality which sees both Wales and Scotland. Now my good whole purpose of the model. Westminster, Whitehall and English friend Michael Gove has never been afraid The Supreme Court’s judgements practice as the norm and all others as of a fight, but even he I think will find this in certain areas, notably the Agricultural deviant. The UK itself should recognise one a challenge. Wages (Wales) Act and the Bylaws the profundity of constitutional change There are proposals for a form of (Wales) Act have already widened the post-devolution, post the creation of English votes for English laws within a scope of understanding of the post-2011 the Supreme Court, and indeed post our single Parliamentary institution, with the Welsh devolution settlement. It would be joining the European Union in the 1970s. Speaker as the final arbiter of what is an intolerable and illegitimate – and contrary I believe that the notion of traditional England-only bill. I have great confidence to the expressed wishes of Welsh voters Westminster Parliamentary sovereignty is in Mr Speaker Bercow, whom I employed – if the UK Government were now to try now redundant. for five years from 1988-93, but this and trim back on powers already held by In Wales, we wonder sometimes means that in Westminster, it is the the National Assembly for Wales and the whether Whitehall and Westminster have institution’s Presiding Officer who decides Welsh Government. realised that the constitutional world is the competence of an England-only Bill, The development of the UK different from 1995. The problem, I fear, whereas ultimately for Wales it is the Constitution is a bit like watching a drunk starts at the top. Whitehall Ministers carry Supreme Court which may decide whether getting dressed in the dark. Nothing seems on with their jobs, often without the basic a Welsh Bill is within competence. Could to fit. And we don’t know where they’ll realisation that post devolution there are the Speaker come into conflict with the stumble next. That is why the First Minister three kinds of UK Minister: those with Supreme Court? We shall see. of Wales called, three years ago, for a UK genuinely UK-wide responsibilities such There are proposals for devolution constitutional convention. I believe that such as the Defence Secretary and Foreign to major cities in England without the a convention is now the only way to preserve Secretary; those with GB responsibilities requirement for referenda that the people the United Kingdom. I appreciate that is not such as the Secretary of State for Work of Wales and Scotland and Northern everyone’s goal, but for those of us who wish and Pensions, who have to work through Ireland had to face. So why does Wales to see the UK preserved, modernised and devolved structures in Scotland and Wales have to jump through hoops of referenda developed, albeit in something of a looser if their goals are to be achieved, for example and repeated legislation while English arrangement, this hell-for-leather slalom in skills and training; and finally, those regions gain substantial powers at the needs to stop before some parts fall off. Ministers such as Education and Health say-so of the Chancellor of the Exchequer I see little evidence from the who are largely now Ministers for England. without any meaningful public or political classes in London that anyone is How many of us honestly thought parliamentary consultation? giving much serious thought to the future it likely, twenty years ago, that the Union The second chamber, wholly shape of the Union. At best, we have an would come within a whisker of ending? unrepresentative, the largest second ad hoc jumbled response. Successive UK The landscape in Scotland is, to use a chamber in the world outside China, has Governments claim they’d like to see a phrase familiar to Irish colleagues in this been expanded yet again. As usual, this definitive end to constitutional tinkering. 150th anniversary year of W.B. Yeats’ birth, only took account of winner-takes-all So would I. The only way to achieve that ‘changed utterly.’ My party knows better politics and had no regard for geographical is through a cohesive and comprehensive than most. or devolved interests and the long-term process looking at all aspects of future There is a seeming inability to shape of the Union. Why should there be UK constitutional practice. The longer we address constitutional issues in the round. an expectation of entitlement to continue avoid that, the longer we’ll keep tinkering. The Vow in the latter part of the Scottish in an unelected legislative role just Some time after the devolution defeat

32 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org resentment of elected politicians. The ‘Who will join us in making the case National Assembly was created by a free vote of the Welsh people – narrowly in for a modern, creative, mutually 1997 but more emphatically in 2011 - and supportive union of nations?’ should only be capable of dissolution on the same basis. The Union is a union of four nations – let’s be grown up about that in the 1979 referendum, the great Welsh time, will the Scots still be with us? Will and develop a constitution which properly historian Gwyn Alf Williams, fulminated the English have tired of all of us? Where reflects that reality. that: ‘We Welsh look like being the last of will Northern Ireland be? Will it be simply Last year Scotland accepted that the British. There is some logic in this. We the Welsh who believe in a union bigger the United Kingdom was ‘Better Together’. were, after all, the first.’ Maybe our nostalgia than themselves? Who will join us in I prefer the slogan of the Football for the union is based on something making the case for a modern, creative, Association of Wales, on the eve of our deeper than the union of the Crowns and mutually supportive union of nations? home game against Israel – ‘Together, Parliaments. After all, there was a time when The UK urgently needs a UK Stronger’. But do others still believe a form of Welsh was spoken throughout this Constitutional Convention – every year that, or care enough to ensure it – or will island. No doubt it will be surprising to some lost cedes further ground to nationalists insular Westminster party games and here to learn that the oldest poem written in and separatists. It should be open and metropolitan provincialism kill the union? what we now call Welsh – ‘Y Gododdin’ – was it should seek to engage people beyond I think we have a choice. But time is actually written in Edinburgh – Caer Edin - existing legislative institutions. running out. about a battle in Yorkshire. So, the oldest We are moving towards a system poem in Welsh is arguably also Scotland’s based on popular sovereignty – and the Leighton Andrews AM is oldest poem. people sometimes show their sovereignty Welsh Government Minister When we look back in twenty years by spectacular indifference to and for Public Services. Return of the Native

David Marquand revisits his Welsh roots and celebrates having come home to an unsettled political community

Young David Marquand with his mother

I was born in Cardiff 81 years ago and, to Cardiff High School, and another Ystalyfera, in the upper Swansea Valley. though most of my life has been spent to the University College of Cardiff in She and my father met accidentally in in England, my Welsh roots matter what was then the federal University of the University Library in Cardiff; long more and more to me the older I Wales. After graduating, he spent a year after my father’s death my mother get. I begin with a brief look at them. in America as a research fellow and told me that the first thing that struck Like me, my father Hilary Marquand then taught at Birmingham University. her when she saw him was: ‘he’s was born in Cardiff, as was his father He was professor of industrial relations beautiful’. Her family history could Alfred Marquand. His grandfather, my at Cardiff throughout the 1930s. hardly have been more different from paternal great-grandfather, another He published a pathbreaking study, his. Her grandfather Ebenezer, my Hilary Marquand, was born in 1825 South Wales Needs A Plan, which Rees great-grandfather, was born in in Guernsey. He worked briefly in a still resonates today. He was drafted western Monmouthshire, in 1848. He lawyer’s office after leaving school, but into the civil service at the start of the was illegitimate, and brought up by the call of the sea was irresistible. As Second World War. In 1945 he was his mother’s relatives in the village a cabin boy of 14 he sailed to Havana elected Labour MP for Cardiff East, and of Cwmtwrch, a few miles from and thence to Trieste; on the return held a variety of ministerial posts in the Ystalyfera. He went down the pit at voyage the ship was chased by pirates post-war Attlee government. the age of seven. As a young man he off the coast of North Africa, and the Far more important than any was blacklisted as a trouble-maker captain succumbed to a severe bout of this was his marriage to Rachel, and trade unionist. He emigrated of insanity. Undeterred, Hilary stuck to née Rees. She was born in 1903, in to America with his wife Jane (who his chosen career, rising to become a what was then the mining village of had taught him to read and write). Master Mariner. In 1867 he retired from Somewhere along the way, he learned seafaring and settled in Cardiff. He and printing; and when Jane’s mother died, a friend John Martin set up a shipping they went back to Ystalyfera and started firm, Martin and Marquand, to take part a small printing business. In 1898, in the burgeoning coal trade which was Ebenezer founded the first socialist making Cardiff an El Dorado. newspaper in Wales, Llais Llafur My great-grandfather Hilary died (‘Labour Voice’). It preached a blood- of smallpox, aged only 46, in 1872, red socialism that would make Jeremy but the firm continued to prosper. Corbyn look pale pink. It was both an Though my grandfather Alfred was the emblem and a catalyst of a mood of least successful of great-grandfather insurgent popular defiance that swept Hilary’s sons, he shared the instinctive, through the South Wales coalfield in anti-intellectual Toryism of his more the early twentieth century. successful brothers. My father Hilary As a child I wasn’t conscious of broke dramatically with the family this heritage. My grandfather Alfred tradition. He used to sell the Daily Marquand died during the First World Herald, then a rumbustious, far-left War, long before I was born. Though socialist paper, outside the dock gates, his widow Mary survived him, I can’t and joined the Labour Party in 1920, remember her. But my mother’s aged eighteen. He won a scholarship parents, David James and Roberta Young David Marquand with his father

34 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Rees, played a major part in my young made Barry a safe Conservative seat. than Leeds. As that implies, it wasn’t life. During the War, their house in But despite failing to unseat noticeably Welsh. I remember a Ystalyfera was a haven of continuity for Gower, I learned a lot about the member of the Barry constituency me and my siblings. Our family home in constituency – and a fair amount Labour Party telling me, ‘Wales for the Llanishen may have been requisitioned; about Cardiff which the constituency Welsh and Glamorgan for us’. That may in any case we didn’t live in it between encircled, like the outer ring of a have been a joke, but I suspect that it 1940 and 1944. For most of the time, doughnut encircling the hole in the expressed a fairly widespread attitude. my father’s job was in Cardiff; and middle. Despite its magnificent civic My third Cardiff incarnation still we lived in a bewildering variety of centre, I have to confess that Cardiff continues. It started at an IWA event places in the Vale of Glamorgan: a farm then did not capture my imagination. around ten years ago. Geraint Talfan house called Maes Mawr; a disused Davies, then IWA Chairman, invited railway office near Miskin; Radyr; me to speak about a book of mine and Porthcawl, then full of American which had interested him; he and soldiers training for the Normandy John Osmond the Director took my invasion. Then, in the autumn of 1944, wife and me out to lunch, I think in the we went back to Llanishen. I think of Millennium Centre. We joined the IWA, the year 1944 to 1945 as my first Cardiff and over the years came back to Cardiff incarnation. I travelled by train every for several IWA events. Since then we day to school in Penarth (why Penarth have settled in Penarth and luxuriate in I have no idea); I used to go swimming the ever-changing seascape and admire in Cardiff; and I have a hazy memory the beautifully restored Victorian pier. of going to an open-air play, on a The contrast between this warm summer evening, in the grounds incarnation and the second is of Cardiff Castle. I have a very clear extraordinary. Today no one could memory of Sir Stafford Cripps speaking possibly doubt that Cardiff is indeed a at a packed election meeting in the capital city, and a remarkably vibrant Cory Hall. one. Visually, the redeveloped Bay My second incarnation came area is a splendid counterpoint to nearly 20 years later. In late 1963 I was the Edwardian baroque of the civic selected as Labour candidate for Barry. centre. Richard Rogers’s elegant and The actual election came ten months welcoming Senedd building is not later. I lost, of course. The incumbent just beautiful; it breathes a spirit of Marquand’s Parents’ Wedding Conservative MP, Raymond Gower, participatory democracy, a world away from the oligarchic archaism and pompous flummery that pervade But despite failing to unseat Gower, I learned a lot about the atmosphere of the Palace of the constituency – and a fair amount about Cardiff Westminster. Visiting the Houses of which the constituency encircled, like the outer ring of Parliament you feel that they belong to that remote and myth-encrusted entity, a doughnut encircling the hole in the middle. the Crown in Parliament. Visiting the Senedd you feel that it is the property of the Welsh people. But there is more to twenty- was. an indefatigable, inexhaustible, In the mid-1950s the Home Secretary first century Cardiff than the visual even compulsive canvasser. No sooner Gwilym Lloyd George, the great excitement of the redeveloped were the votes counted in one election Lloyd George’s son but to all intents Bay. The Senedd is the child of the than he was tramping the streets and and purposes a Conservative, made Government of Wales Act of 1997 that knocking on doors in preparation Cardiff the capital of Wales. But, gave the Principality a limited form for the next. Letters, sometimes unlike Edinburgh, Cardiff did not feel of what used to be called home rule of condolence and sometimes of like a capital city. It felt more like an and is now called devolution, and of congratulation, poured from his office English provincial city – less exciting the subsequent Welsh referendum. to constituents of all kinds. All this had than Manchester, but more exciting In 1979, in the dying days of the

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 33 well, the devolution settlement was unsatisfactory in many ways. Despite subsequent improvements it still is. But with all its inadequacies, it has given the people of Wales, through their elected representatives in the Welsh Assembly and Government, a better chance of answering the primordial questions that face all political communities – Who are we? And who do we want to be? – than we have had for centuries. At bottom these questions are philosophical, in a profound sense moral, not mechanical, economic or narrowly institutional. They have to do with ends, not means; with the intangibles of culture and sentiment, Hilary Marquand, David’s father David James Rees, Marquand’s maternal grandfather not the outward forms that clothe and all too often conceal them. In stable, settled political communities ill-starred Callaghan Government, of union of 1707 merged the Scottish they are rarely discussed. They don’t the Welsh electorate had voted by and English Parliaments, but they need to be. But the reason why Cardiff an overwhelming majority against guaranteed the continued existence of is such an exciting place is that the devolution. In 1997 they voted by a tiny the other institutions that differentiated political community that is Wales is majority in favour (Cardiff and Newport Scotland from England; and these kept neither stable nor settled. Thanks voted against). But the minutiae of the the memory of independent Scottish to devolution it is unsettled. So the result didn’t and don’t matter. What statehood alive and acted as an enduring questions have to be debated, and did and does matter is that for the first focus for a distinct Scottish identity. the answers sought. I don’t pretend to time since the days of Hywel Dda in None of this was true of Wales. know the answers. No single person the early middle ages, and arguably What Wales had was the language. could. But I am sure of one thing. since the eve of the barbarian invasions Its survival for centuries, not as a Some time ago a civil servant in the in the fifth century CE, distinct Welsh peasant patois, but as a language of devolved Welsh administration tried, political institutions now reflect and high culture and learned disputation, in my hearing, to distil in a few words shape a distinct Welsh political will. testify to an extraordinary resilience the crucial difference between the As a result Cardiff is now the most among Welsh speakers. Yet it was a political culture of Wales and that of exciting city in the United Kingdom, waning asset. By the early-twentieth the United Kingdom as a whole. The and one of the most exciting in Europe. century, Welsh speakers were a overarching theme of United Kingdom A brief look at the contrast between minority of the population of Wales, governance, he said, can be summed the histories of Wales and Scotland albeit a substantial minority. By the up as ‘choice, customer, competition.’ helps to explain why. Scotland was an early twentyfirst the great majority of The Welsh equivalent, he thought, is: independent kingdom for centuries Welsh people didn’t speak it. (Of the ‘voice, citizen, collaboration’. Instead before the treaty and acts of union of three greatest Welshmen of the last of endlessly looking over her shoulder 1707 that created the United Kingdom. century – David Lloyd George, Aneurin at her English neighbour, the task It had its own legal system, its own Bevan and Dylan Thomas – only Lloyd for Wales is to make a reality of that Presbyterian Kirk, which professed George was a Welsh speaker.) Against magnificent trio. different doctrines and had a different that background, Welsh devolution form of church government from the takes on a special significance, absent Church of England and four great from its Scottish counterpart. To put it David Marquand is a political universities as against England’s two. simply, it has given the people of Wales writer and historian, a former It also had its own Parliament, dating new strings to their bow. As readers Labour MP and Principal of back to the fourteenth century. The acts of the Welsh Agenda know only too Mansfield College, Oxford.

36 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Putting the patient experience first

and the Jane Hodge Foundation, as well as > Financial support and information should Jess Blair outlines the findings of the an expert steering group. We also recruited a be readily and easily available for people IWA’s Let’s talk cancer project panel of practitioners to test the practicality affected by cancer. of the issues that emerged. The outcome took us a little by surprise. > Patient transport provision should be Whereas the debate amongst politicians, clearer and more flexible prioritising the Getting experts together to devise journalists and lobbyists tends to focus on the patient experience, with an emphasis on improvements is the standard approach to availability of high-cost drugs and the length efficiency and timeliness. policy development, but the expertise of the of waits for specialist referral, when we asked person who experiences the service is all too ‘the crowd’ for their views on what the most > Where possible some elements of care often absent in the discussions. important issues to address the answers should be delivered locally. Building on our experience of using the focused on the simple, everyday, issues ‘crowdsourcing’ approach with our online facing people in the health service. > Patients’ records should be available Constitutional Convention earlier this year, As Kirsty Williams, leader of the to all practitioners treating the patient we extended the methods to the debate Welsh Liberal Democrats, said at the launch throughout their care. around cancer care. of our report: ‘We [politicians] are actually We posed three simple questions missing the point, and that’s why this work is These recommendations are not new ideas online to people who had first-hand so valuable, because we’re actually hearing and they are certainly not just explicit to experience of caver care in Wales: ‘Tell us a what is important.’ cancer care. We now plan to work with good experience you’ve had of cancer care in partners to try and develop these ideas Wales’; ‘Tell us a bad experience you’ve had The report recommended: further, and identify what the barriers to of cancer care in Wales’; and finally ‘What > Patients should be given accurate implementing these suggestions might be in would be your idea to improve cancer care information about delays to appointments practice and how they can be overcome. in Wales?’ on-the-day so that they may better Over a six week period some 9,000 manage their time during the delay period. people engaged with the debate, primarily online but also through paper questionnaires > Patients should be able to easily access in NHS settings. We worked with our their notes and any letters relating to Jess Blair is Policy and Projects funders for the project, Tenovus Cancer Care their case. Manager for the IWA.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 37 A vibrant research capacity in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (and) medicine (STEMM) is long considered a key element of national government strategies to sustain the economy and improve society. In the US scientific and technological advances produced roughly half of all economic growth over the last 50 years and in the UK innovation is credited with nearly two thirds of economic growth between 2000 Can Wales and 2008. In many countries, the strength of the university research base is crucial for supporting this innovation get its ‘fair and economic success. Unlike England and other larger EU countries where much of the Research and Development expenditure comes from business, share’ of the Welsh research base lacks a significant private R&D sector and consequently relies on its research universities to produce 84% of Wales’ research outputs research and nearly half of all R&D investment. In terms of research standing, population-based targets are commonly used when comparing the funding? performance of the UK’s constituent countries. Given strong UK-wide competition for UK Research Council funding, the annual total income from the four UK countries have been used for the past 20 years as a proxy Peter W Halligan of regional research standing. Since Wales never secured its ‘standard population share’ of 5%, improving RC grant capture was a key target for the Welsh Office in 1993 and a high profile target and cause of concern for successive Welsh Governments since devolution. Achieving this population share of RC income was also seen as an important step in stimulating economic growth. Reliance on securing Wales’s UK share of RC funding however has contributed to a misleading and reputationally damaging perception of the Welsh university research base particularly when compared with Scotland, which wins considerably more than its standard share. My recent report for the UK Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, ‘The Case for Growing STEMM Research Capacity in Wales’, co-authored with Louise Bright, provides some of the important backstory and reasons why, despite a range of well intended by HEFCW and Welsh Government initiatives, Wales has over the last two decades failed to achieve its standard share of total Research Council income and the Welsh Government’s ambition to secure the standard share remains a high profile target. The main reason why Wales did not secure the Research Council target over the past 20 years was that Welsh universities secured proportionally less research income from the high-spending science and medical research councils. This, however, was not due to poor performance, but rather to a historical and significant under-capacity in the number of academic researchers working in science, technology, engineering,

38 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org mathematics and medicine (STEMM). Welsh engineering, and maths. impressive improvements in Welsh research universities are relatively good at attracting In addition to highlighting the need to performance (as measured by published research funding from the Economic and better match policy outcome targets with research impact) over the last decade and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts levels of research capacity, our report shows particularly from 2003 onwards. and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). that the Welsh research base, despite its While the long standing policy However, both these councils distribute relatively low share of total RC income and to secure Wales ‘standard share’ of UK comparatively smaller proportions of the total small levels of STEMM academic staff, is the research council income was well intended, it RC funding. most efficient at translating its relative low ultimately proved elusive and reputationally To derive a more complete picture of levels of research income into high impact damaging due to Wales’s historic shortfall the current STEMM shortfall in Wales, we research and at the same time producing in STEMM research capacity. Although calculated the total number of academic research impact that outperform many similar mentioned in reports over the past decades, researchers in the four UK nations engaged sized countries both in Europe and worldwide. this underlying problem of under-capacity in in producing the UK’s academic research This is impressive given that R&D spent in STEMM was not seriously tackled until 2012 base. Using Wales’ population share of Wales typically only represented 2.1% of the when the Welsh Government contributed total UK academics contracted to engage UK total. £50m towards building a stronger science in research we found that Wales’ academic The strategic decision by HEFCW to base. Building on this Sêr Cymru investment, research population was some 0.5% below fund reconfiguration and collaboration over Wales’s current chief scientific adviser Wales’s population standard share of 4.8%, the past decade was largely intended to is currently planning further initiatives to whereas Scotland had over 2.4% above its improve the quality of research conducted address this capacity deficit and in the country population share. Moreover, much by Welsh HEIs and primarily directed at process improve Wales’s ability to win greater of the research capacity deficit involves countering the effects of the sector’s historical competitive funding. STEMM disciplines with the largest subject fractionation. While this produced little staff deficits being in clinical medicine, effect on the Welsh Government’s high- Prof Peter W Halligan is biosciences, physics, electrical and computer profile target of growing research council Chief Executive of the engineering, mechanical and production funding, the initiatives were associated with Learned Society of Wales.

the welsh agenda winter 15—issue 55 | 39 subsequently supporting students who Student Finance: will be in their first and second years during the last year of the Assembly term, also excluding EU students who are also time for a rethink? entitled to the full tuition fee grant. There is no evidence that this policy has encouraged more students to Ken Richards challenges the anomalies, inconsistencies and costliness apply to university though it may have of the student finance system and outlines areas for potential reform prevented a decline in applications. In terms of application rates, Welsh numbers remained at around 29% from 2010 through 2013 with a slight increase in 2014. Acceptances from Wales were Given shrewd financial planning, in replaced by a loan. It is encouraging to roughly constant between 2006 and 2014 Wales it is possible for a student from note that, compared to a decade ago, whereas in England, which did not have a family with a household income of these students in Wales are 65% more a tuition fee subsidy policy, acceptances £100,000 and financial assets of £1million likely to apply for university, though in increased by nearly 30%. It is true that to receive the same package of support England the comparable figure is even in both England and Wales the number as a student from a one-parent family on greater at 95%. of 18-year-olds has fallen by between benefits. The current means testing of Unlike England, Wales has also 5% and 7%, so a constant acceptance access to funding is fundamentally flawed retained the Education Maintenance level represents some progress (Data in two main respects: it is too generous to Allowance, designed to encourage from UCAS 2014 End of Cycle Report). students from high-income families and students from poorer backgrounds to Universities in Wales are concerned that the definition of household income used stay on in education after the age of this policy may encourage Welsh students is out of date. 16: important since these students are to study outside Wales. The move to a maximum tuition fee just as likely to apply for university as The Tuition Fee Grant is a bad idea level of £9,000 per annum recommended other students. for all students, not just those who study by the UK government following the However, the Tuition Fee Grant, outside Wales. If we want to encourage Browne Review in England has increased which pays all universities with Welsh Welsh students to study here, a non- the flow of resources going to universities domiciled students the difference means-tested grant could be introduced in Wales. In his recent budget, George between their fee level and £3,685, for those staying in Wales, which would Osborne announced that from 2017-18, is extremely poor value for money; it have the additional advantage of not universities that demonstrate excellence is mainly a middle- and upper-class having to be extended to EU students. - the Russell Group comes to mind - will subsidy, effectively paying students and Cash in hand now might also prove a be allowed to increase their fees by their families for pursuing a course better incentive to students than a tuition the rate of inflation. Together with the of action they would have followed fee loan deferment into the far-off future. raising of the cap on university places in anyway. Students from these social England, this is likely to further handicap backgrounds are in a majority in every the majority of Welsh universities in their university in Wales, the proportion Ken Richards is a retired quest to expand numbers. varying from about 54% to about 78% academic economist who was The issue of student finance is likely (Sunday Times University Guide 2015). a member of two Assembly- to be a lively one in the next Assembly. I estimate the cost of this subsidy over sponsored reviews of student It is hoped that by then the Diamond the course of this Assembly term is finance chaired by Professor Review into higher education funding around £1bn, not including the cost of Teresa Rees. will have been submitted. Current policy on student finance has many features to commend. For Unlike England, Wales has also retained the example, the Assembly Learning Grant for disadvantaged students is Education Maintenance Allowance, designed considerably more generous than in to encourage students from poorer backgrounds other parts of the UK, totalling a little to stay on in education after the age of over £5,000 a year; in England the 16: important since these students are just as likely full grant was less than £3,500 and following the recent budget is to be to apply for university as other students.

40 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org

Image from visual minutes of a Coleridge planning meeting, by Chris Glynn.

was a visionary, and so is Richard Zombie Nation: Parry. Coleridge in Wales, ostensibly a ‘nation-wide touring festival’ to take place over three months early next Wales Resuscitated, summer, is perhaps, above all else, an independent think tank: its aim ‘to By Samuel Taylor Coleridge gently seek and nourish courageous new thinking, relationships and action for our times.’ ‘Richard Parry has founded an institute In 1794, four years before Dylan Moore meets classical singer of Welsh affairs, says Dylan, halfway his celebrated collaboration with and facilitator Richard Parry, and through our conversation.’ Parry allows Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, reinvented catches a glimpse of a society that himself a smile at the length of time poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge could yet be it has taken for your correspondent dropped out of Cambridge University to reach this realisation. The mission and took off on a walking tour of of the IWA is to ‘act as a catalyst for Wales. Immersed in the raw beauty change, [to] bring people together so of a natural world that was, then, that ideas can collide and solutions of little interest to society, Coleridge can be forged, its vision ‘to help dreamed up a utopian vision he called create a Wales where everyone can ‘pantisocracy’ – ‘level government by flourish’. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and for all’ - and made plans to institute

42 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org an egalitarian community on the banks summarised the vision thus: ‘Most people cracked the French Enlightenment’ and of the Susquehanna river in the eastern would think of Wales as a place and clearly inform the project’s scope. The United States. When his friend, the Coleridge as person; and what it seems names that pepper Parry’s conversation poet Robert Southey, doubted the you are doing, rather, is to treat Wales as form a kind of alternative history project’s viability, for a while the plan a person – and Coleridge as a place.’ of ideas: the German philosopher- was to decamp to Wales. It is an astute observation that poets Johann Gottfried von Herder Despite Coleridge’s affirmed place reaches toward the heart of the and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the canon of English poetry – his ‘territory’, a word Parry employs Schelling, the half-forgotten Englishmen reputation rests today on a handful of time and again as he ambles through who prefigured them, Cambridge very great poems, ‘Christabel’, ‘Frost the philosophical underpinnings of Platonists Henry More and Ralph at Midnight’, ‘Kubla Khan’ and the the project. Personally, the territory Cudworth, and Ruskin’s profound peerless ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ – explored by the project encompasses influence on Gandhi. What links such disparate figures At a time when England, but perhaps not Wales, again is an emphasis on the validity of experience and a freedom from limiting seems to be pulling away from the continent, Coleridge mechanical and materialist thinking. in Wales asks the question: ‘What cultural, social and ‘The highly influential and now rather environmental treasure does Wales hold today that other forgotten clergyman and political areas of Britain have forgotten? campaigner F.D. Maurice was very much inspired by Coleridge,’ says Parry, ‘and asserts boldly and learnedly that we Richard Parry suggests that the fullness Parry’s singing heritage as a classical are not animals with souls, but spiritual of Coleridge’s genius ‘has never been baritone and his work as a facilitator, beings.’ In a dominant culture of fully celebrated.’ R.S. Thomas, in which, he explains, is rooted in the materialism and an age of narrow policy ‘Abercuawg’, his keynote address to the work of the American psychologist Carl agendas, it is heartening to hear such 1976 Eisteddfod about a relationship Rogers, whose groundbreaking work in a clearly different voice being brought in Welsh culture of place and identity, establishing a person-centred approach back into circulation. Whatever might claimed that ‘in order to understand in clinical psychology led to, amongst actually happen next year - and Parry imagination’s true meaning one must be other things, the appearance of the cheerfully admits he is not fully sure, acquainted with the work of Coleridge, modern counsellor. because of the massive emphasis on but I haven’t time to go into that today.’ But Parry is self-effacing, and it is ‘participation’ – it is clear that Coleridge What Parry is planning, in association the unexplored avenues and canons in does have something to say to us, now, with an already impressive cast of the mind of Coleridge that fire this festival about our lives, personal and collective. collaborators, is ‘an eighty day footnote’ of the public imagination. One of the ‘This exploration is not to Thomas’ remark, ’forty years later, to reasons Parry claims that ‘Coleridge’s a backward-looking re-visit of find out what that means.’ ideas do not sit well with the English 18th and 19th century historic The 80 day festival will comprise cultural palette’ is that he was ‘a major Romanticism,’ emphasises Parry, meetings, happenings, local events, conduit for European sensibility and ‘It is a contemporary exploration, touring exhibitions, excursions and thinking.’ At a time when England, with institutions and communities, theatre, winding its way around Wales, but perhaps not Wales, again seems of unexplored intellectual streams through museums, universities, art to be pulling away from the continent, and daily culture that emphasise the centres and local communities. There Coleridge in Wales asks the question: wealth of relationship and place in our are even plans to bring the Ancient ‘What cultural, social and environmental communities and economies.’ Mariner himself, together with a crew full treasure does Wales hold today that other ‘Perhaps a stereotypical English- of zombies, into the ports and harbours areas of Britain have forgotten?’ British culture is in terror of spirit; of Wales. But this is no conventional Parry describes himself as ‘just an there seems an antipathy to it in ‘commemorative’ event, despite that arm waver’. ‘These are not my ideas,’ modern Britain and in popular culture,’ next year will mark the bicentenary of he says, ‘I’m a facilitator and am just Parry ventures. ‘And Coleridge is Coleridge’s midlife classic Biographia pointing out that a lot of unfashionable interested in spirit, theologically and Literaria. Parry is less interested in stuff sits in a particular constellation... a philosophically held, that doesn’t celebrating the man Coleridge or powerful, and important constellation.’ seek to instrumentalise the Other. His exploring the nation Wales than the This ‘unfashionable stuff’ includes the language of spirit gives us a better inverse. The artist Ivor Davies has ‘brooding poets and philosophers who repertoire for talking about our sense of

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 43 self and a wider creative capacity.’ a Coleridgean. As Jeremy Bentham’s with such questions is the twentieth Coleridge was an anti-slaver utilitarianism began to dominate politics century painter and modernist whose opposition to the human and culture, we’ve sort of lost sight of poet David Jones, whose famous capacity to enslave, to host and to the alternatives.’ But he also identifies copperplate engravings illustrating relationally instrumentalise each other and emphasises in Coleridge ‘the power The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are went beyond his activism against of the fragment’. The poet’s breadth to receive a full retrospective at the the economic slavery opposed by of vision and chaotic lifestyle left many National Gallery in Cardiff. Jones Wilberforce. Ironically, both men projects tantalisingly unfinished, and to identified in the poem a Brythonichud were addicted to opium, Coleridge some extent Coleridge in Wales is about a lledrith mystery voyage that explores a famously so. ‘We don’t hear much picking up some of the pieces. The central theme of our relationship to the about Wilberforce’s opium habit,’ says artist and Parry’s co-curator Chris Glynn natural world. Parry wryly. ‘He was able to regulate it, has called the project ‘a slow-motion Parry is full of praise for Wales’ whereas Coleridge was a much more Hadron Collider, around the mountains pioneering Future Generations Bill, turbulent personality.’ The poet once of Wales, seeking lost and hidden but convinced that UNESCO’s ‘three tried and failed to kick his addiction by particles of relationship.’ pillars’ of sustainability – the freedom to going cold turkey on an epic walk from It is to these ideas – of move capital, social inclusion (‘couldn’t the Lake District into Scotland. relationship, of participation, of they stomach social justice?’) and the But this popular image of humanity – that the conversation environment – cannot be supported Coleridge the drugged-up madman constantly returns. ‘The bedrock by a new fourth pillar, culture, because poet has eclipsed not only Coleridge the of a creative economy is strong ‘culture is our humanity, it is who we polymath - journalist, scientist, diplomat, communities and a capacity to be are.’ ‘Art and creativity,’ he argues, revolutionary, thinker – but also hosted by the environment and with Coleridge leaning heavily over Coleridge as ‘a place’: a critical juncture each other,’ maintains Coleridge, his shoulder, ‘are not a bolt-on. Our in the history of European ideas, a road through Parry, and ‘English pragmatic current culture has a tendency to leave not taken that will, at last, be embarked materialism no longer provides the artists marginalised and the theologically upon, by Wales ‘a person’ next year. institutions for us to address questions interested wandering. What Coleridge Says Parry: ‘In the mid nineteenth of how we handle our capacity to be sought to do was to balance liberalism century, John Stuart Mill declared that destructive, or to be a blessing.’ and radicalism with conservative everyone was either a Benthamite or One Welshman who has grappled institutions.’ Gladstone, claims Parry, ‘attempts to build the British state out Image from visual minutes of a Coleridge planning meeting, by Chris Glynn. of Coleridge – the relationship between church and state etcetera.’ And it is within these etceteras that the territory lies. An exploration as much of Wales in Coleridge as the other way around. A footnote to R.S. Thomas. An exploration of the Ancient Mariner illustrations of David Jones. A ‘sigh’ for a girl called Mary Evans in Wrexham. And a inspired scribbling on a poster by his sometime collaborator Iolo Morgannwg. Disillusioned and returning from London, the founder of the modern Eisteddfod – where Coleridge in Wales will culminate next year - stopped in Bristol where he heard Coleridge lecturing. His graffito read simply, ‘Coleridge, Coleridge, Coleridge, Coleridge, Coleridge.’ It is enough to make one want to add: ‘Yes, Coleridge.’

Dylan Moore is Comment & Analysis Editor at the IWA.

44 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org children’s educational outcomes by making sure their development is optimal The Bigger Picture: and they arrive at school happy, able and ready to learn. If we fail to look beyond the school gates when implementing Donaldson, we risk failing children before they reach school. Donaldson recommended that literacy, alongside numeracy and digital competence, should be a cross-cutting priority across the whole curriculum, recognising the centrality of language and communication to a good education. The rationale given is: Language is the essence of thinking and is integral, not just to effective communication, but to learning, reflection and creativity... Being able to listen attentively and speak lucidly and understandably or to use non-verbal communication effectively are crucial attributes in learning and life more Lessons for generally. Developing oracy – the capacity to develop and express ideas through speech – is of central importance to both the Early Years thinking and learning. Clearly, this is an area that needs focus. Four out of 10 children living in poverty in Wales leave primary school at age 11 unable to read well - and this to implement these ambitious plans, and gap begins in the early years. Children Mary Powell-Chandler and ensure that all children and young people in first learn to read; then they read to learn. Chris Taylor look beyond Donaldson Wales are able to reach their full potential By age three, 50% of our language is in for solutions to the early years in school. This journey will not be easy nor place and by age five, 85% of it is in place. attainment gap without cost. There are numerous challenges Learning to read well starts early and ahead, but the gains can be substantial. good early language skills are the vital However we must be careful that stepping stone. If children do not learn to we don’t pin all our hopes for children on a understand words, speak, and listen from system they don’t encounter until they are an early age, they will struggle to learn The Donaldson Review dominated three years old. Neither should we allow to read well when they start school. At political and policy debate on educational radical changes to the rest of education school entry, children from low-income attainment for the past two years. The system to take our attention away from families lag behind their high-income results of Professor Donaldson’s review the early years. The impact of policies counterparts in vocabulary by 16 months were eagerly anticipated and, when aimed at the early years, such as the – a much larger gap than those for other published in February 2015, did not Foundation Phase and Flying Start, have so cognitive skills. disappoint. In total 68 recommendations far been fairly positive - but there is a great The Read On. Get On. campaign - a were made, which amounted to radical deal more to be accomplished and still coalition of charities, academics, businesses and far-reaching changes to the school many issues that need addressing. and individuals - has a common goal: that curriculum. The Welsh Government has Incredible things happen to all children in Wales will be reading well announced that it has accepted all of the children’s brains in their very early years. and with enjoyment, by age 11, by 2025. recommendations, and during the autumn A child’s brain doubles in size in the first This is an ambitious vision, and will require we will learn when and how the changes year, and by age three it has reached considerable effort from all parts of society. will be phased in. around 80% of its adult volume. The early In Wales, a stubborn gap in attainment Many minds are now focused on how years present a key opportunity to improve between poorer children and their better-

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 45 face, particularly those living in poverty. It also relies on the false assumption that the decisions and behaviours that parents make are primarily responsible for their child’s development. This is simply not correct and offers a simplistic view of the problem and hence the solution. The state has a role in ensuring that the necessary resources and facilities are available to support children and parents, in the forms of technology, libraries, access to museums, and well-trained community based practitioners. Schools play a key role, and must be given the resources to employ off peers remains. Using a new analysis Common aspirations for our children are community outreach or family engagement of the Welsh data within the Millennium needed across policy and sector divides. We officers who have the freedom to extend their Cohort Study, Read On. Get On. has found believe the early years and early language skills and develop new innovative practices. that a child who has experienced poverty development should play a part in the There is still much to be done to ensure the persistently is twice as likely to score below common mission. The Early Years workforce Foundation Phase is firmly embedded in average in vocabulary scores age 5, and should feel a sense of co-ownership as some all maintained and funded non-maintained these patterns persist through to literacy of the earliest educators. Relying on the provision for three to four year olds, and that skills at age 11. education system to make the difference at parents realise the educational opportunities Boosting children’s early language the age of 3 misses an important opportunity and benefits of the Foundation Phase in skills is critical to narrowing the attainment to improve the life chances of children. these early years. Equally, we need to ensure gap and improving the life chances of our The Donaldson recommendations have been that all childcare provision, whatever the poorest children. Waiting until a child broadly welcomed across Wales, and there setting, is delivered through developmentally starts school is leaving it too late. In fact, is much to be optimistic about. However, appropriate practice that encourages a love waiting until a child starts early education to truly make a difference to children’s of learning. In Wales in particular, there is at age three is also too late to start focusing attainment and life chances we need a an untapped source of support in the form on children’s language skills. Babies are coherent system that tracks and responds to of grandparents, extended families and the born ready to learn language and need children’s development and makes the most local community. We would argue that we stimulation and encouragement to develop of the opportunities in the early years. need policies and strategies in Wales that their language skills, right from birth. Talking, Education and early years policy can support and exploit this great resource to reading, playing and singing with even the sit in different ministerial portfolios help parents, schools and ultimately young youngest child can have a huge impact within the Welsh Government, which children to develop their readiness for school. on their early language development, and may help explain the gap. Different Donaldson surmised the mission therefore on their ability to learn when they political pressures and drivers inform as helping every child ‘grow as a capable, arrive at nursery and then at primary school. policy-making in these areas, which can healthy, well-rounded individual who Professor Donaldson was given the lead to competing pressures. To make a can thrive in the face of unknown future remit of looking at education between the fundamental difference to the life chances challenges.’ To make the difference we ages of three and sixteen. However, there of children growing up in Wales, we need all aspire to, we need to support families is much we can learn and apply to the a unifying approach informed by a child’s better in the early years of a child’s life. As early years. Of the eleven Statements of developmental journey. a nation which has proudly enshrined the Purpose, three resonate perfectly with the There are many reasons why children United Nations Convention on the Rights approach needed for the early years: do not develop better vocabulary skills in of the Children into our legislation, we owe their early years. Explaining the importance it to all our children to ensure we take the > mobilise the education community of early language and talking to parents and earliest possible opportunities for them to around a common mission practitioners is fundamental to improving the achieve their full potential. > promote broad ownership of education situation, and the Welsh Government has and make the curriculum open to made progress through focused campaigns Mary Powell-Chandler is Head wide debate beyond the professional and resources, for parents and practitioners. of Save the Children in Wales community However, simply telling parents ‘what to do’ and Professor Chris Taylor is > provide clarity about aspirations for the for their child’s development is not enough: it Co-Director of Wiserd. children and young people of Wales underestimates the challenges many parents

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A Justice for Wales

Paul Silk makes the case for a Welsh Justice on the Supreme Court

Eighteen months ago, the Commission I chaired made a carefully graduated set of Some may justify the different treatment of proposals for the transfer of aspects of the justice system from Whitehall to Cardiff. Wales by saying that there is (as yet) no But we also wanted to preserve links between the justice systems in England separate Welsh jurisdiction. and in Wales. In that context, we never really contemplated the replacement of the Supreme Court as the final appeal court for Wales. But we did recommend that there should be at least one judge on the in Scottish criminal cases), and it also the Court of Appeal. Supreme Court with particular knowledge decides ‘devolution issues’ in respect of As IWA members will well know, and understanding of the distinct Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A there have been more references of requirements of Wales and Welsh law. devolution issue arises if (in the case of Assembly laws to the Supreme Court than The Supreme Court was set up under Wales) either the Attorney General or the there have been Scottish and Northern Irish the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. The Counsel General believes that the Welsh references. Though we are now promised Court is made up of 12 Justices. Two are Government or the National Assembly have a new ‘reserved powers’ devolution model, Scots and one is from Northern Ireland. It not acted, or propose not to act, within their I am not entirely sanguine that Welsh is the final court of appeal from the three powers. It is also possible for a devolution devolution issues will then disappear from jurisdictions of England and Wales, of issue to arise in the course of litigation and the Supreme Court. It is even possible that Scotland and of Northern Ireland (except for it to be referred to the Supreme Court by their numbers will increase.

48 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Wales may not be a jurisdiction, but there will increasingly be different laws that apply in Wales, both as the National Assembly legislates for us and as, in devolved areas, Parliament legislates for England alone.

The President of the Court has is (as yet) no separate Welsh jurisdiction. and different devolution issues, it is also announced that in any hearing involving However, the 2005 Act requires the First the case that laws made by the National Welsh devolution issues, the Supreme Minister to be consulted on appointments Assembly have equal validity in Welsh and Court panel will, if possible, include a judge to the Supreme Court, and it also – as in English. They should be co-drafted in the who has specifically Welsh experience the outgoing Chief Executive of the Court two languages and able to be construed and knowledge. Helpful and welcome has recently reminded us – requires the by the judiciary at all levels, including the though this is, it still treats Wales differently Supreme Court selection Commission to Supreme Court, in Welsh, not in Welsh from the other devolved nations. And ‘ensure that between them the [Supreme translated into English. although the Court has recently brought in Court] judges will have knowledge of, and Having a Welsh Supreme Court Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd when Welsh experience of practice in, the law of each Justice would perhaps incidentally do devolution issues have been considered, we part of the United Kingdom.’ Wales may not something to improve the Court’s diversity. cannot rely on the serendipitous advantage be a jurisdiction, but there will increasingly The nine England-and-Wales Justices of having a Lord Chief Justice who so clearly be different laws that apply in Wales, both are overwhelmingly associated with the comes from Wales and understands Welsh as the National Assembly legislates for South-East of England. All except one were issues so well. us and as, in devolved areas, Parliament educated at Oxbridge, and all but one Some may justify the different legislates for England alone. attended English public schools. There is treatment of Wales by saying that there As well as distinctive Welsh laws only one woman. None is from an ethnic minority. The need to have greater diversity and life experience among the Justices is pretty clear, and, just in those terms, it would be good to see the appointment of a Justice who went to a Welsh comprehensive school, or attended a Welsh university or, at least, whose practice as a lawyer – and therefore whose social milieu - had been in Wales. The Supreme Court can meet away from London, and the President has said that he is ready to do so. When the next Welsh devolution issue arises, I very much hope that the Court will convene in Cardiff, ideally with a Welsh Justice.

Sir Paul Silk chaired the Commission on Devolution in Wales.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 49 A colonial fantasy

Jasmine Donahaye examines nineteenth-century plans to establish a Welsh colony in Palestine

How differently we might be marking mid-nineteenth century English fantasies was later interested in similar opportunities colonial anniversaries if, as originally of Jewish return long predated Theodor in Patagonia. However, despite Jones’s suggested, Y Wladfa had been established Herzl’s formulation of political Zionism, support for Mills in 1856 and his early not in Patagonia but in a dusty province and overtly or covertly they were more interest in Palestine rather than Patagonia of the sprawling Ottoman Empire. The concerned with ridding Europe of its or America, he shifted focus after two idea of setting up a Welsh colony in Jewish population than with Jewish societies objected categorically to Palestine Palestine was not some passing, whimsical interests or needs. and withdrew their support – for Mills notion, as the occasional mention of it by Mills’s proposal for a colony in proved to be something of a liability. historians would suggest, but a plan with Palestine was, therefore, a different matter. Mills was an unusual missionary, for concrete developments – and it might well Uniquely it combined conversionism and despite some observations and attitudes have been realised had its proponent, the colonisation – not a Jewish settlement that read now as deeply offensive, his Reverend John Mills, been a more ruthless in Palestine, but a Welsh one – and its views on Jews changed in positive ways or effective missionary. purpose was political as much as religious. as a result of contact. Though he spent Mills introduced the idea in Y Since losing independence, Mills argued, twelve years seeking to convert the Jews Drysorfa, in his monthly column, ‘Y Wales had also lost its place on the map, of London at the behest of the Calvinistic genhadaeth Iuddewig’ (the Jewish and a colony in Palestine would bring it to Methodists, not only did he fail to achieve Mission) in early 1856. At the time he was the world’s attention: it would, figuratively converts, but he was accused of courting the Calvinistic Methodists’ missionary to and actually, place Wales back on the map. conversion himself. the Jews of London, and he proposed the Initially, in presenting Palestine as His mission in London ended colony after visiting Palestine the previous ‘the best place in the world for the Welsh abruptly in 1859 in a public spat over his year to ‘relieve’ (and convert) the destitute colony’, Mills emphasised the missionary dubiously ‘gentle’ rather than ‘coercive’ Jews of Jerusalem. By the end of 1856, advantages of the location, arguing that the conversionist methods. Suspicion had the idea had developed and been widely opportunity to do good for ‘Israel’ (meaning been mounting for some years, not least endorsed. ‘At the request of and in unity the Jews as a collective, but particularly the because of the sympathetic views he with the Reverend M. D. Jones, and other mostly impoverished Jewish population expressed in his 1853 volume entitled The friends from various denominations in in Palestine) would lend the idea weight. British Jews. With his integrity in question, Bala,’ Mills wrote in a letter to Yr Amserau, ‘Some of the leading men of the land have and two societies and consequently ‘I have been speaking with the Turkish agreed to give a helping hand’, he wrote, Michael D. Jones withdrawing support, ambassador about the matter, together an endorsement that derived from the Mills’s plan for a Welsh colony in Palestine with some of the leading men of our land, project’s ‘importance’ in connection with was undermined. Nevertheless, from and I am pleased to be able to say that the conversion of the Jews. The support for the mid-nineteenth century onwards he there is every sign that we will succeed.’ his work in Palestine was widespread: the opposed Patagonia and heavily promoted At the beginning, Mills’s emphasis following month Y Drysorfa listed donations Palestine for what became increasingly was similar to that of English colonisation collected from readers in London, Liverpool political rather than missionary reasons. societies, whose purpose was to better and across Wales. It was in his 1858 book about facilitate Jewish conversion to Christianity. Missionary aspirations are usually Palestine, entitled Palestina: sef Hanes However, English proposals concerned omitted from popular Welsh Patagonian Taith Ymweld ag Iuddewon Gwlad Canaan Jewish settlement in Palestine – or, to narratives, but it was precisely the [Palestine: namely the history of a journey use their millenarian ‘End of Days’ terms, missionary possibilities that made Michael to visit the Jews of the Land of Canaan], Jewish ‘restoration’. These early and D. Jones initially favour Palestine, and he that Mills made his detailed argument

50 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org for Palestine rather than Patagonia as This facilitation of other state power ‘the best place in the world for a Welsh interests had its counterpart in Y Wladfa. colony’. Here he presented the distinctive As Glyn Williams argues in The Welsh advantages of the quality of the land; the In Patagonia, it was a new expansionist opportunities for Welsh independence and Argentine government, eager to secure world influence, and – as an added bonus control of a contested and unstable region rather than the chief reason for its being against both internal and external claims, – its religious situation and potential. He which actively sought European settlers to dispensed with what he expected would colonise Patagonia. be ‘the inevitable objection’ from those Mills casually disposed of the who believed that Palestine belonged to problem of an existing population in terms ‘Israel’ and that it was they who would typical of colonial attitudes in the period: ‘possess her again’, by suggesting that he characterised the ‘natives’ as childlike, the territory was sufficiently large to welcoming, and easily convinced of the accommodate the Welsh settlers. colonisers’ benign interests and care. Jew, Palestine was rich in natural assets, Moslem and Christian, he remarked in he argued, and was sleeping through a long passing, would embrace the idea when they Sabbath from which it was only waiting to saw what benefits the Welsh would bring. be awoken by honourable Welsh labour. He felt sure, he concluded blithely, that The exploitation of these incomparable Moslems, Christians ‘and especially the resources, under-utilised because of Jews, would very quickly be full of kindly eastern sloth, would not require the kind of Image: Keith Davies feelings for the colony, and would be eager hard labour that Wales itself exacted; on to serve it’, and the settlers would lead the contrary, unlike in Wales and America, this way, he concluded, ‘the Welsh colony by example, and would quickly win their in Palestine nature did ‘more than half the in Palestine would be like “a city set on a neighbours round to virtue and to truth. work’. In turn this would leave time and hill”– a light, in some measure, unto all the Despite some practical developments, energy for the cultivation of the mind and nations of the earth’. including plans for Welsh involvement for the service ‘of virtue and belief’. The reference here to Matthew 5:14 in the extension of the Hejaz railway, the Mills believed that Welsh emigrants – ‘Ye are the light of the world. A city that colony in Palestine was never realised. Mills had to be able to ‘live as a community is set on a hill cannot be hid’ – also has its lectured widely on his proposal, even after of Welshmen – live on their own land; forerunner in Isaiah’s ‘or l’goyim’, ‘a light the establishment of Y Wladfa, and the earn their own bread; speak their own unto the nations’, which is how Zionists idea was still in circulation at the beginning language; formulate their own laws – in would characterise what the state of Israel of the twentieth century and would no a word, carry on their whole being as a was to be. doubt have been familiar to Lloyd George. community independent from any other Mills gave no detail about the Perhaps his directive to General Allenby government’. Even if the proposed colony practical organisation of the proposed to ‘get Jerusalem as a Christmas present in Patagonia were to prove successful, he colony, but argued that its autonomy for the nation’, and the Balfour Declaration argued, it was ‘so remote, and so out of would be secure, for it ‘would be under with its promise of a Jewish national home sight of the civilised world’ that there was the continual gaze of the various European in Palestine in 1917 were informed by that no hope that it would ever be noticed, powers and this would ensure that no one colonial fantasy – a fantasy that might well but every country felt such an interest in could interfere with its independence’. have become reality had Mills been a less Palestine that the Welsh settlement would In contrast to the Patagonia enlightened man, and one that casts an carry the weight that would enable it – and idea, Mills’s colonial vision was not interesting light on the colonial dream that therefore also Wales – to regain a place one of escaping tyranny and securing was realised in Patagonia. on the map of the world. Inevitably the independence away from interference by Welsh colony would come to the attention European powers, but one of influence: of the thousands of people who visited a politically independent Welsh national Jasmine Donahaye’s latest book Palestine every year, and they would take home in Palestine would be empowered, is the memoir Losing Israel (Seren, home with them this knowledge about and would therefore also empower 2015). Other work includes The the Welsh, ‘and before a few years were Wales within Britain, for, as he observed, Greatest Need, a biography of out, the character of the Welsh colony Palestine was going to be extremely Welsh-Jewish writer Lily Tobias would be well known in the civilised world valuable in the near future, and such a (Honno, 2015), Whose People? and its history would be known in all the settlement would facilitate British imperial Wales, Israel, Palestine (UWP, main languages of Europe and Asia’. In interests in India in particular. 2012), and two poetry collections.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 51 The trouble with civil society in Wales

assisting the vulnerable, championing the Those cash-rich days are now Rebecca Rumbul calls for greater environment and breaking news. It is a long gone, and civil society in Wales distance between government in critical friend to government and champion has undergone a contraction in its Wales and the third sector for its diverse public. For all of its virtues, plurality. This has been exacerbated by however, there is an inescapable tension the funding regimes put in place by the between doing good work and maintaining Welsh Government and its EU funding organisational existence. And such good body WEFO, in which high value and high works must be paid for. volume requirements for service providers Civil society in Wales is often neglected. In the late 90s and early 2000s, squeeze out smaller organisations from The politico-economic landscape is generous low-maintenance grants receiving a share of the funding. This dominated by publicly funded bodies and from the National Lottery Good Causes means services that are small, local, agile, rhetoric on the need for a more thriving and Objective 1, as well as the Welsh holistic and innovative are lost. Our media and robust private sector. It is, however, Government’s grant system, enabled civil has similarly contracted, with local news the hard-working and under-appreciated society in Wales to grow and diversify, and and regional news subject to ever greater engine of public policy, responsible for to invest in professionalising alongside cuts. Arguments against plurality are often high levels of service delivery, the plugging the development of devolution. This based on cost, with opponents querying of gaps in publicly funded services, funding environment supported a rising why Wales would need more than one innovation in addressing cross-cutting plurality of organisations (considered by charity for ‘young people’, or more than one policy issues and the provision of expertise scholars to be a sign of a healthy civil ‘regional’ newspaper. Whilst questions of and critical appraisal in the development society environment), in which multiple cost are valid, plurality guards against single of legislation. constituencies of expertise could inform interests being served, and it is prudent Civil society is populated with debate and maintain a constant pressure to examine who exactly is providing the inspiring and passionate people working upon government to improve the quality of funding to these dominant organisations in often low-paid and insecure roles, legislation and policy delivery. that are singular in their policy area. Civil society organisations are mostly charities or social enterprises, and therefore many Arguments against plurality are often based on cost, rely on a mixture of private gifts, service with opponents querying why Wales would need more contracts and grants. News outlets rely than one charity for ‘young people’, or more than one on good contacts to provide them with reliable information. Developing and ‘regional’ newspaper. maintaining good relationships with funders

52 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org and contacts is integral in ensuring an where a change of Government is quite current government policy. If it is unable organisation is able to continue operating. possible every 5 years, and average to do these things freely, the sector may In the service-delivery oriented sphere, it is tenure is now down to 1.3 years, in Wales, stagnate, public money may be wasted on the Welsh Government that provides the organisations must contemplate that the useless policies, and eventually citizens most significant funding to the dominant current Minister and their small pool of themselves may develop the same civil society organisations in Wales. colleagues may be around for another two mistrust of civil society that is currently There is no question about whether decades. This knowledge does not provide reserved for politicians and bankers. government should provide at least fertile ground for debate or criticism, Unfortunately, the losers here are some funding to civil society groups – it however friendly the framing. A small civil the people of Wales. Without plurality absolutely should, in particular to those society sector plus a small political class in our civil society sector, and with that provide vital services. However, the ensures that, if you work in Wales for your perpetual organisational fear of funding distance between donor and recipient has whole career, you are likely to work with withdrawal, civil society groups will been shown to be concerningly close in the same people for over 40 years. In such continue to sanitise their views and limit Wales, in particular with regard to those circumstances it is unsurprising that civil their contributions to wider debate. The organisations that receive the bulk of their society leaders are not often heard being inevitable result of this course of action is funding from the Welsh Government. fiercely critical. that policy development will be stunted. Quite naturally, organisations do not wish The result of such timidity in Most concerningly, it will likely travel in to bite the hand that feeds. To criticise expressing criticism of government policy the direction of the ideological preferences one’s benefactor is risky in the most reduces the quality of information and of Labour Ministers, rather than towards benign of situations, let alone when you debate available to legislators, policy innovative real-world solutions that take and your staff are vulnerable to an annual makers and the wider public. Civil society advantage of Wales’ agility and showcase review of your organisation’s funding. has the knowledge and expertise to the best of its civil society talent. Organisations are also painfully aware question government, to challenge its of the lack of dynamism in the political actions, and to work with the media in Rebecca Rumbul is Head of environment in Wales. Unlike in England, publicising issues that might go against Research at mySociety

The South American Connection Jon Gower looks back on another year of cultural commemoration

Hard on the heels of the on new immigrants to shed traditions and Edwards realized a lifelong dream for his Dylanextravaganza and just before detach from their roots, thus to conform TV series when he joined the veritable Llandaff’s finest – the fighter ace and and convert, in this case to the Spanish caravanserai of broadcasters who have children’s favourite Roald Dahl – gets a language, or to Catholicism. This the travelled across the Patagonian deserts similar celebratory treatment, this year Welsh colonists managed to do with a to tell the self-same story. Not satisfied has been all about Patagonia. For it marks mixture of personal resolve and communal with that, BBC Wales is going the whole the sesquicentennial of the intrepid and determination, not to mention an ability hog and more and taking the entire works rather foolhardy overseas departure of a to tame the wind-blasted thorn scrub and band, sorry, National Orchestra of Wales boatload of Welsh adventurers to South make a good fist of it as agriculturalists, across the south Atlantic to play concerts America and the persistence of that even winning a gold medal for their wheat in places such as Gaiman and Trevelin. settlement, Y Wladfa, to this very day. in Chicago. They are to be commended for having the In that sense we salute both the spirit of So 2015 has been a non-stop vision to do so, let alone rustling up the those on board the Mimosa, which set cavalcade of events, with theatre shows money to support it in these hard times. sail from Liverpool docks in the summer by no fewer than three companies, a Many people will have their own of 1865, and their steely determination TV season on S4C and BBC, not to highlights but for me it was the chance to keep the old ways in a new land. This mention Radio Cymru and Radio Wales to meet up again with Rene Griffiths – meant building chapels and keeping their broadcasting documentaries about life in after maybe a couple of decades – as he doors open, of safeguarding the Welsh Y Wladfa now and then. We had some published his autobiographical Ramblings language in the face of the usual pressures of the really big guns firing, as when Huw of a Patagonian. Cineastes among you will

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 55

Photo by Tom Beardshaw

remember this much-loved guitarist, actor and singer was the human grail after which the musician Gruff Rhys’s quested in the film Separado! Rene is a relative of Gruff’s, who ‘searched’ high and low for him in Argentina, only to ‘find’ him in the shadow of Cardiff castle. Rene, with his ebullient singing, and songs which marry the Welsh language – so often wedded to the minor key – to the infectious rhythms of tango is, for me, at least the modern embodiment of the Patagonian spirit, a human bridge between languages and musics. There is every sign that this year’s panoply of events will help build many lasting links between Wales and our south American satellite, having even more effect – and Image: Mark Douet / National Theatre Wales thus a greater legacy – than the centenary celebrations in 1965. These brought to an mention how sweetly his voice resounded Gardner’s review of the latter production, end a period of severance and disconnect in the metal cathedral of the huge suggesting that ‘over the past three days between the two places, caused by the storage areas. As with so many of Marc’s Port Talbot ha[d] been the happiest two World Wars, outbreaks of global productions there was so much material, place on earth.’ This was clearly the most influenza and a lack of faith in sea-travel such complexity, that there were things transformative theatre and reading this after the sinking of the Lusitania. that didn’t work – a Bierkeller-style dance assessment of the play’s impact made me incredibly proud, if regretful that I hadn’t seen it too. But that word – transformative There is every sign that this year’s panoply of - is not a bad label for McGrath, too, for his events will help build many lasting links between time in our National has been just that. Wales and our south American satellite, having He has been tireless in his support not only for this once-fledgling organisation even more effect – and thus a greater legacy – but for theatre more generally: he has than the centenary celebrations in 1965. been to more productions, in both Welsh and English, than many a theatre critic. He has put the word ‘generosity’ at the Another Patagonian singer, Billy sequence to a thumping dance beat heart of the company’s mission statement Hughes, travelled to Wales to take part seemed incongruent – alongside moments and supported a generation of theatre in a very different case of bridge-building, of great tenderness and beauty but that makers. It is no coincidence that Wales is namely the first joint production by Theatr may well have been his intention, for we fair hooching with small theatre companies Genedlaethol Cymru and National Theatre are lucky to have an artist so keen to both at the moment, creating a sense that the Wales, helmed by Marc Rees, one of the take the pulse and test the waters. So whole theatre ecology, to purloin one of very few people who can imagine and we had a work of complexity, conjoining Geraint Talfan Davies’s favourite words, realise work on a scale big enough to film, conventional acting, choreography is healthy. That it is in such fine fettle make use of the enormous and arresting and even large scale tapestry, so that the owes much to John McGrath’s unstinting setting of the Royal Opera House stores in people who gave me a lift back to Cardiff commitment to the art form and to his Abercwmboi, in the Cynon Valley, home to talked about it non-stop, stirred by it, fired native country. I for one wish him well as he many of the original settlers of Patagonia. up even, if slightly mystified by it too. moves to Manchester and thank him with I’d last heard Billy sing in Bethel This production was also among all heart. Transformative, yes, that’s the one. chapel, Gaiman, and seeing him in this the last work under John McGrath as transmogrified setting, full of dancing Artistic Director of NTW. I missed both women, showers of grain and articulated of the biggies – namely The Persians and trucks was to realize how extraordinary The Passion - yet there was something Jon Gower is a broadcaster was the feat of keeping the Welsh incredibly uplifting about sitting in a hotel and writer. His latest book is language alive in a far-off land, not to room in San Francisco and reading Lyn Gwalia Patagonia.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 57 Nudging people out of their cars

Jane Lorimer outlines the success of a programme providing people with transport choices

Why do people choose to travel the way other transport options with no significant for bus and train were provided on request. they do? For many people it’s simply a effect to travel time. People choose the car Over the three-year project, 50,000 matter of habit and ‘I’ve got a car so I’ll use for subjective reasons. households across the target areas received it.’ But even for people who own a car, there Once baseline travel behaviour in almost 500,000 items of travel related are cheaper and faster alternatives. the intervention areas had been gathered, information and incentives. Most importantly, The Welsh Government funded contact with households was made by the project influenced travel behaviour with research in four urban centres across telephone and on the doorstep. Residents recorded increases in walking, cycling and Wales between 2010 and 2014 to get a were invited to discuss their travel needs in public transport and a decline in car use. detailed picture of travel behaviour and how a non-judgemental way, and were offered This was evaluated by resurveying the target it could be influenced. The Personalised information specific to the locality and areas one year after the initial travel behaviour Travel Programme presented people will journey opportunities of their routine trips to samples. Within Cardiff a 12% reduction alternatives to the car for everyday journeys work, education and leisure. in car use was observed, as well as a 4% tailored to their needs and their locality. A suite of new marketing materials reduction in single occupancy car journeys, The programme had a target population was produced including a location specific equating to a reduction of 49 car journeys per of 99,000 households split between Cardiff Local Travel Map, which identified bus route person per year. (63k), Pontypridd (10k), Caerphilly (14k), and numbers and cycle routes for the main There were corresponding increases the Mon a Menai region (12k). destinations within the area. Personalised seen in the use of sustainable travel modes Personalised Travel Planning (PTP) journey plans using Traveline Cymru’s website in Cardiff between 2011 and 2013; the most works with households to offer tailored information and help to enable people to walk, cycle and use public transport more often. It has been tried and tested across the world and has been shown to deliver measurable declines in car use, helping to reduce traffic congestion, increase public transport patronage, cut harmful emission and increase levels of physical activity. Travel behaviour in urban Wales is fairly typical of the patterns elsewhere in the UK. On average, households make just 2.8 journeys a day with the average distance being 11 miles. Roughly 20% of these journeys are commuting to work, whilst over a third of all journeys are for leisure purposes. The research also looked at whether viable alternatives existed for journeys people were habitually making by car - and found that the potential for change to public transport, walking and cycling was high. Over half of the regular car journeys made in the Cardiff area could be substituted by

58 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org significant contribution to this change was a Within Cardiff a 12% awareness of new transport options and growth in cycling, which gained 48 trips per reduction in car use was influencing local travel behaviour. person per year. observed, as well as a 4% There is a growing understanding Qualitative research demonstrates that achieving a green growth development that the service and method of contacting reduction in single occupancy path requires efficient and sustainable urban households was popular and well received. car journeys, equating to a transport systems. With an increasing body reduction of 49 car journeys of evidence demonstrating the importance Caerphilly household: ‘Excellent. per person per year. of excellent urban mobility as an ingredient Hopefully this sort of project can get for attracting inward investment, a reliance people out of their cars and help alleviate on private motorised transport cannot be a the congestion caused by the school run.’ With an average cost of £20 per household policy of the future in our urban areas. PTP offers an excellent return on investment, What’s more, there is an increasing Pontypridd household: ‘It’s good to especially when compared to road building public interest and appetite for investment be asked your opinion and much more programmes which attempt to cater for – three quarters of all Cardiff residents engaging to be contacted rather than sent increased demand but have the result of would like to see more money being spent things out of the blue. It was nice to have locking-in carbon intensive and increasingly on improving bicycle lanes because they a conversation about it, rather than just unaffordable private motor vehicle use. think it would make Cardiff a better place to receiving things.’ PTP would be an effective tool to live and work, and according to the Bike Life reduce local car journeys where there are Survey this year, 70% of people who currently Mon a Menai household: ‘The children pressures on the strategic road network, commute by car themselves would like to are now back in school and I’m getting as is the case around the M4 Newport cycle more. them to bike to school and back every day. corridor and A55/A494/A548 Deeside I was surprised reading the package and corridor. It would also work well phased discovering routes that I was not aware of.’ to follow public transport enhancements Jane Lorimer is National Director including the South Wales Metro by raising of Sustrans Cymru Good Food: A quiet revolution

Kevin Morgan makes the case beginning to emerge; they want to tap Many chronic conditions – notably for Wales to actively embrace the the commercial opportunities of a more coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes good food movement discerning, quality-conscious market that and certain cancers – are linked to poor fosters rather than frustrates health and diets, costing the NHS some £6 billion wellbeing. The significance of this good a year. Obesity attracts most public food movement has been obscured by attention, and is more prevalent in Welsh ‘local’, ‘organic’ or ‘Fairtrade’ food, each a children than those in any region of small part of a bigger picture. England, primarily due to food spending differences between social classes. A quiet revolution is underway in the Sustainable diets Austerity is likely to exacerbate class UK: to make good food more available Ill-health due to unhealthy diets is disparities in diets, health and wellbeing and affordable. Its agents are consumers reckoned to be some fifty times greater because, in the view of a leading food who are becoming ever more conscious than ill-health due to food-borne diseases, poverty expert, ‘more and more families of how and where their food is produced; a finding that raises big questions about in the UK are unable to buy affordable, producers who want to work with, rather the nature of our food industry (Rayner, nutritious food’ (Dowler, 2012). than against, nature; campaigners who 2002). Food is often treated as a Consumers – including the poorest want to reform the conventional food conventional business. But we ingest its consumers – already know a great deal chain to render it more sustainable; products and therefore it is vital to human about what constitutes a healthy diet, but parents who want to see better food health and wellbeing in a way that other choose not to act on information. We need served in school canteens and families of industries are not. Agri-food firms need instead a societal response to the challenges patients who are shocked by the absence to make a profit, but their products are because individuals are more likely to of wholesome food in hospitals. They are also increasingly required to meet societal consider changing their habits and practices also ecologically-minded entrepreneurs tests: human health and ecological with their friends, families and communities. who believe that a new food culture is integrity (Garnett, 2014).

60 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org The Public Plate societal challenges through a sustainable The Public Realm Public sector catering service needs to be food programme integrating public The notion that governments are powerless viewed anew. The best index of a just (and health, ecological integrity and social victims of circumstance is one of the most sustainable) society is the way it treats its justice. Launched in 2007 with the pernicious and disempowering notions in the poorest and most vulnerable members, support of the Big Lottery, the FFLP was world today. In an age of austerity there will be they pupils, patients, pensioners or designed to promote the ‘whole school always be pressures to cut costs: profoundly prisoners. Good food should be more approach’ to school food reform. FFLP is counter-productive if cost is merely displaced. readily available in schools and hospitals now branching out in two different ways Poor diets generate short term costs in the (Morgan and Morley, 2014). Fortunately, – geographically, by diversifying beyond form of nutritional poverty and long term costs fewer public caterers now feel obliged to its original schools in England and, in the form of burgeoning healthcare charges. forage in the cheapest end of the spectrum sectorally, by including day nurseries, Despite the spectre of the Nanny but provisioning continues to vary to a universities, hospitals and care homes. State – an ideological weapon that has been degree that is totally unacceptable. The first independent evaluation wielded to great effect by the food industry to One of the most important public of FFLP in schools concluded by saying forestall public regulation - the public realm sector innovations was the creation that the FFLP Schools Award can act as has a financial obligation and a moral duty in 2013 of the National Procurement a proxy for outcomes across school meal to regulate the production and consumption Service, which manages contracts take up, parental engagement, sustainable of unhealthy food and drink. Simon Stevens, across the public sector ‘to reduce food attitudes and healthier eating. chief executive of NHS England, has said that expenditure, eliminate duplication, develop Wales has been something of a educators and public health bodies need to a sustainable procurement model and desert for the FFLP model compared to tackle obesity with the same ferocity as teen increase efficiency’. To date more than 73 England and Scotland, which is odd when pregnancy and drink driving, labelling obesity public bodies have joined the NPS. the values embodied in the model are very ‘the new smoking’, because it is the cause of 1 similar to those championed by Welsh in 5 cancer deaths. Food for Life Government. Therefore, there is no reason The good food movement is the The Food for Life Partnership (FFLP) why Wales’ government could not emulate greatest ally of the NHS; the civic energies is one of the most inspirational social its Scottish counterpart, embrace the FFLP of the movement need to be harnessed experiments of our time; it addresses model and champion good food for all. if the societal challenge of diet-related disease is to be met with a societal response. As it is a societal problem, with multiple causes, every section of society needs to be part of the solution, and there is no better place to begin than in our schools. Welsh Government has made bold commitments to public health, social justice and sustainable development; commitment to becoming a Good Food Nation would open a new chapter in this story. Welsh Government has a political obligation (on account of its sustainability duty) and a social need (on account of the high rate of diet- related disease in Wales) to make health and wellbeing second to none in importance. Good Food for All by Kevin Morgan is the IWA’s third Senedd Paper.

Kevin Morgan is Professor of Governance and Development in the School of Planning and Geography at Cardiff University, where he is also the Dean of Engagement.

the welsh agenda autumn/winter 15—issue 55 | 61 Culture Section Reviews Tell Mum Not To Worry: A Welsh Soldier’s World War One in the Near East | Gwalia Patagonia | William Hazell’s Gleaming Vision: A Co-operative Life in South Wales, 1890-1964 | A Gift of Sunlight: The fortune and quest of the Davies sisters of Llandinam | New Welsh Short Stories | Clown’s Shoes | Desire Line

Local lads, distant vistas and Allied offensive that pressed at first war service took him far from his home, and Toby Thacker slowly through the Sinai desert towards exposed him to other worlds, geographically, Gaza, then with gathering momentum on to culturally, and emotionally. He dealt with Bethlehem and Jerusalem in December 1917, this, as so many other soldiers did, by writing before ending with the capture of Damascus home, frequently and at great length. This in October 1918 and the complete defeat of book is based around the large collection of the Turkish armies facing them. In March 1919 surviving letters from Dewi to his family, and Dewi was demobilised in Egypt, and made the from them out to him in his odyssey through long journey back across the Mediterranean, the Eastern Mediterranean and Palestine. to Italy, then through France, and eventually From these letters we learn that Dewi’s from Southampton back to his native Cardiff. main preoccupations, which he evidently During his four years of service, Dewi never shared with other soldiers, were with food, had any home leave, and did not rise above drink, shelter, and with diversions from the the rank of Sapper. Most of his time was spent monotony of army life. And although he was working with signals and communications. far from home, he – again like his comrades – This then is not the usual narrative of spent much of his time dreaming of the world the First World War, the story of journeying he had left, of Cardiff, of holidays at Porthcawl, out to Flanders and fighting in the mud and of cycling and walking in the green valleys and blood of the trenches that has been so of Glamorgan. Tell Mum Not To Worry: A Welsh Soldier’s tragically and lyrically told by writers such as The greatest strength of the book World War One in the Near East David Jones and Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, or lies in its local detail and colour. Rhys David Rhys David more prosaically by a private soldier like Frank has worked meticulously to reconstruct Deffro, 2014 Richards. It is not really a story of fighting, the domestic life of Dewi’s family in Splott, as Dewi spent most of his time behind the and to find out about the many different On his seventeenth birthday in March 1915, lines and saw little actual combat. It is the places Dewi spent time in while in the army. Dewi David, a young Post Office worker in record of an innocent and ordinary lad whose The often obscure references in his letters Cardiff, volunteered to join the British Army and serve in the First World War. He joined the Signals Company of the 53rd (Welsh) The greatest strength of the book lies in its Division, and after six months‘ training was shipped out with his new comrades to the local detail and colour. Rhys David has worked Mediterranean, to join the ill-fated Gallipoli meticulously to reconstruct the domestic life of campaign. On 22 October he landed at C Beach, Suvla Bay, where for the next eight Dewi’s family in Splott, and to find out about the weeks he endured the worsening weather on many different places Dewi spent time in while the peninsula before being evacuated, taken briefly to Salonica, and then to Alexandria. in the army. For the next three years Dewi served with the Welsh Division in Egypt and Palestine, taking part in the gradually growing British

62 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Culture / reviews

Britain? In Dewi’s case, it appears that he A labour of love How did soldiers resumed where he had left off, re-joining the Dylan Moore in a comparatively Post Office and living in domestic peace in Cardiff until his death in 1963. Rhys David neglected theatre of tells us that Dewi’s military service had a ‘profound effect’, ‘perhaps persuading him war – like Palestine – to value all the more a quiet domestic life in the city he loved’. So this is not a narrative feel about the public of trauma, and the persistence of trauma, focus in Britain on like those which have come to occupy a dominant place in the collective British the horror of the memory of the First World War. In terms of identity, we do learn a Western Front? great deal. As Dewi grew up in the army, he wrote his letters very largely in the common language of the soldiers, often rendering slang words and phrases phonetically, and confirming David Jones’ observation that a Cockney idiom was the default language for the ordinary British soldier. But Dewi was also Gwalia Patagonia self-consciously Welsh, and proud to serve Jon Gower in a Welsh Division. Although not a native Gomer, 2015 Welsh speaker, he liked to use Welsh phrases and words, and to comment on differences Gwalia Patagonia (Gomer) has been a labour between people from different parts of Wales. of love for self-confessed ‘professional He does not appear to have experienced a Welshman’ Jon Gower. For such a small colony to books he had read, to poems he knew, tension between these dual Welsh and British (just 162 people originally set out on the old to contemporary music hall songs, or to identities, and his letters would seem to tea clipper Mimosa), in such an obscure end local characters known to his family are confirm the recent work of scholars who have of the world – ‘grey – tough and stunted – wiry, all carefully explained. We learn precisely examined how soldiers in the British Army, desert shrubs on parched dry scrubland’ – Y which brands of cigarette Dewi and his whether they were from Wales, Tyneside, Wladfa has attracted an inordinate amount comrades favoured, and how much they Scotland, or the Home Counties, shared of attention, especially this year, from both relied on food parcels from home for variety strong senses of local and regional belonging academic historians and the popular media. in their otherwise terribly monotonous diet. while at the same time feeling themselves The book’s structure - chapters of history Intriguingly, there is also some exploration of part of a larger collective, and rubbing followed by chapters of travel and chapters of issues which historians of the larger British shoulders with comrades from all over the UK, more personal writing - suits Gower’s propensity experience of the First World War are now and indeed from the far flung British Empire. for indulging esoteric passions as well as his addressing: how did the local and regional This carefully researched book will be capacity to encapsulate big-picture visions. He identities of soldiers sit alongside the larger of interest not only to readers interested in is a Philomath, a bibliophile and a helpless addict shared identity of being part of the British the local history of Cardiff and in the Welsh of ‘ornithology porn’. But however enjoyable army? How did volunteers – like Dewi – feel experience of the First World War, but to the indulgences that are the hallmark of the about their contemporaries who did not those looking for detailed evidence about how writer’s work, only one question really needs to volunteer, or who became conscientious ordinary lads experienced this huge conflict. I be asked, soberly, of Gwalia Patagonia. Was it objectors after conscription was introduced suspect Dewi David himself would have been worth it? Five years of writing, a six-foot writing in 1916? How did soldiers in a comparatively very pleased to think that it would help bring desk’s span of reading and a Creative Wales neglected theatre of war – like Palestine – feel to wider attention the experiences of Welsh Award to fund the fieldwork, to produce a book about the public focus in Britain on the horror soldiers in what he ironically described as about a place already over-trampled by hopeless of the Western Front? Did the experience ‘petty side-shows’ like Suvla, Egypt, Palestine, dreamers and literary giants. The answer, of of military service change their attitudes and Salonica. course, is a resounding ‘yes’; Gwalia Patagonia about gender roles and in particular, towards won’t be the last word on Y Wladfa, but it may women? And how did soldiers returning from be the last for some time. what David Jones called the ‘parenthesis’ Toby Thacker is a Senior Lecturer in Modern of wartime experience readjust to post-war European History at Cardiff University Dylan Moore

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An unstated rebuke Burge focuses on Hazell and the cooperative movement Aled Eirug as one that saw people as consumers rather than simply as

workers and producers. A recurring theme of the book is the emphasis given to the interconnected character of the labour movement in south Wales in this period.

towards nationalisation and the corporatism century. At its peak the movement had of 1945. Whilst Hazell welcomed the placing 300,000 individual members. of the mines under public ownership, and Burge focuses on Hazell and the the introduction of a National Health Service, cooperative movement as one that saw he also questioned whether the principles people as consumers rather than simply as of co-operativism and the role of mutual workers and producers. A recurring theme and friendly societies had been sufficiently of the book is the emphasis given to the recognised by the Labour Government in its interconnected character of the labour building of the welfare state. movement in south Wales in this period. Burge’s main sources are the Hazell was personally the embodiment of 400 articles written by Hazell that he interconnection between the co-operative William Hazell’s Gleaming Vision: has painstakingly traced. In Hazell, he society, the local miners lodge, the Workmen’s A Co-operative Life in South Wales, encapsulates the central importance and Institute, the Trades and Labour Council and 1890-1964 widespread impact of the Cooperative the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Alun Burge movement: these ‘democratically skilled, Both Hazell and the cooperative Y Lolfa, 2014 self-governing bodies comprised of movement with which he was synonymous committed community based activists have been badly served by labour and who married social commitment with good working class historians hitherto. The This is a detailed, engaging and affectionate business sense’. As well as being a leading Co-op was a valuable socialist tool in the biography of William Hazell, one of the light in the co-operative movement in armoury of institutions built up by the same hitherto unrecognised heroes of the south Wales Hazell was, as Burge explains, class solidarity that created welfare halls, cooperative movement in south Wales. characteristic of the thousands of men libraries and a nascent voluntary health It is also a significant contribution to the and women who were the backbone of service in south Wales in the first half of the historiography of those social movements labour organisation in the valleys. Most of twentieth century. This inheritance has been that created a real sense of community those community leaders are now rarely insufficiently recognised. So the significance and self-help in the era before the post-war remembered, and this biography should of Burge’s work lies in its unstated rebuke: Labour Government’s creation of the welfare serve not only as a tribute to Hazell but also that whilst the political struggle and the state and the introduction of nationalisation. to those who followed the same path. role of trade unions, including the history This portrait of a key figure in the Hazell was born in London in 1890 of the South Wales Miners’ Federation south Wales coalfield is partly based and lost his mother at an early age. At 13, he has dominated Welsh historiography, the on Hazell’s own short history of the co- worked in a builder’s firm in Woking in Surrey pervasive growth and influence of the co- operative movement in south Wales, ‘The and because of his stepmother’s cruelty ran operative movement has, with the exception Gleaming Vision’, published in 1954. This away from home at the age of 16, to find of Burge himself, passed historians by. was ostensibly the history of the Ynysybwl work at Lady Windsor Colliery, Ynysybwl, This significant study is the Co-operative Society, which described ‘how where he was to live and work until his death culmination of eight years of original and ordinary people assumed responsibility in 1964. There he became active in the local innovative research that has interrupted for organising aspects of their economic miners’ lodge, secretary of the Workmen’s Burge’s original intention to write the history and social lives to provide co-operative Institute, and a local Labour councillor, but of the coop movement in south Wales. It services for their own community.’ Burge’s his most important contribution was his forms a formidable foundation for that wider achievement is to place Hazell’s work fully in involvement in the co-operative movement. study and we will indeed be fortunate if Alun Welsh and British contexts, and to describe He was a cornerstone of the self-sufficient Burge is able to match the high standard he how the mutual forms of owning and communitarian culture that created its own has set in this remarkable biography. belonging, as expressed in the cooperative institutions and that served south Wales so movement, were bypassed on the path well throughout the first half of the twentieth Aled Eirug

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Gifts indeed flux, his linguistic verve echoing the modernist and encouraged the girls to study culture Susie Wild painters who worked ‘to capture the moment, and to travel. They toured the galleries and to transmit a sensation of movement, to viewed the architecture of France, Italy, make paint itself seem to quiver.’ With photos Germany, Switzerland and Greece, and both from the family archive, and over 50 images their interest and knowledge bloomed. Early spanning their art collection, the illustrated ‘forays as buyers of art were tentative and pages turn easily. modest’, and yet, after a burgeoning idea that The book begins with perhaps one of they could build an art collection for their their most famous acquisitions, Renoir’s 1874 country began to prove quite likely - their first painting La Parisienne, icon of the collection exhibition taking place in Cardiff in 1913 — the sisters bequeathed to the National they soon gathered more. Museum of Wales. Gwendoline bought the Between 1951 and 1963 the Davies piece for £5,000 from the Grosvenor Gallery sisters bequeathed 260 works of art to the in 1913 and it can still be seen on display National Museum of Wales, making theirs in Cardiff today. The recount flits between one of the great British art collections of Paris, where the Impressionist Movement the 20th century. Fishlock explains that, in was stirring and which was regaining its an art world dominated by men, ‘As female collectors they were rare; and since they were also sisters and spinsters and Welsh and A Gift of Sunlight: The fortune and quest Between 1951 and 1963 Nonconformist they were unique.’ Artworks of the Davies sisters of Llandinam the Davies sisters they amassed included pieces by Van Gogh, Trevor Fishlock Turner, Constable, Rodin, Monet, Augustus Gomer, 2015 bequeathed 260 works John, Cézanne, and Boticelli. The book details of art to the National their travels, their purchases including the Museum of Wales, making setting up of the ‘music mansion’ Gregynog As women who valued beauty, the Davies theirs one of the great and its private press devoted to ‘beauty at all sisters would not be disappointed with the costs’. There are also subtle hints at the self- sumptuous production of this hardback British art collections of denial of the sisters’ romantic hearts, of those tribute to their lives, bound in gold; a vase the 20th century. who ‘in a sorrowing world have erred in too of sunflowers on an autumnal day. This is much loving.’ the first book to fully examine the sisters’ At times the book feels overly collection of paintings for the people of dominated by the lives and histories of the Wales and an interesting story, well told by men in the family and those in their political Trevor Fishlock. Shy and reticent Edwardian ‘swagger’ after the Franco-Prussian War, and and social circles — those for which more women, gatherers of flowers and artefacts, the mountains of Wales. We learn of the records will exist, of course — and so, ‘Gwendoline and Margaret believed that humble beginnings of the sisters’ grandfather, frustratingly, it doesn’t always give the reader beauty had a power to do good.’ In the the industrialist and philanthropist David as much as they would like to know about depression years of the 1920s and 1930s they Davies. Chapters cover his time in Parliament, the inner lives, thoughts and motivations transformed their home in Montgomeryshire railway construction and coal mining (the of Gwendoline and Margaret (or any of the into ‘a place of music, song, poetry, paintings, ‘buried sunlight’ to which the title refers) and other mentioned women) specifically. Later printing, festivals and flowers among glorious naturally progress to discussing Gwendoline chapters also become bogged down with trees […] Their assembly of brilliant paintings and Margaret’s father, Edward Davies, who the minutiae of dates and other numerical is a marvel. For love of their country they gave died when his children were teenagers. He details at the loss of the earlier pace. Overall, it to the people, a gift of sunlight.’ left £1,206,311 as his estate, the equivalent however, A Gift of Sunlight is still an enjoyable Fishlock’s introduction sets the tone of over £130 million today, the majority of introduction into the accomplishments of two for this accessible and evocative appreciation which was divided equally between his three women who devoted their lives, wealth and of the sisters, the history, the happenings heirs, leaving the two women ‘independent philanthropic endeavours to the arts and to and the art of their era. Having already mistresses of their own wealth.’ Wales. Gifts indeed. made two documentary programmes about The girls were home-schooled but the Davieses of Llandinam and the Davies Higher Education for women was still Susie Wild is a poet, writer and festival sisters’ trailblazing art collection, he makes warned against and resisted at the tail end organiser. She is Publishing Editor at an informed narrator. Fishlock’s own visual of the 19th century. Luckily for us, their Parthian Books and Marketing Officer for style of writing dances us through a Paris in stepmother had a personal interest in art elysiumgallery, Swansea.

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Short stories showcase Kay Davies writes an uneven story about An accomplished debut Lewis Davies childhood while Tyler Keevil offers a night start John Lavin for a young fiction writer from Canada coming to terms with impending fatherhood by cutting the lawn at midnight. Maria Donovan produces a profound and elegiac narrative of loss and leaving the past go with ‘Learning to Say (Goodbye in Russian)’. ‘Crocodile Hearts’ by Kate Hamer is a convincing portrayal of suburban dysfunctional through a horror comedy but I felt I wanted a bit more of it. The world of the story is successfully created and then it slithers away like one of the crocodiles in the story. Some of the slighter stories don’t quite pull in all the elements of a successful fiction and read as something half-formed, not quite finished, needing another draft. Alun Richards in his masterclass on stories in the New Welsh Review in the late nineties claimed he liked New Welsh Short Stories them to have a beginning, a middle and an Clown’s Shoes Eds. Francesca Rhydderch end. He didn’t really mind which order they Rebecca F. John and Penny Thomas came in but he wanted them there. Parthian, 2015 Seren, 2015 With a few honourable exceptions such as Carys Davies’s The Redemption of Galen Pike One of the stories in Clown’s Shoes (Parthian), there seems to be a lack of ambition in the world the debut of Rebecca F. John, is ‘The Glove Cynan Jones’ playful dragon story, ‘A Letter of Welsh fiction at the moment. There is very Maker’s Numbers’. Concerning a synesthete’s from Wales’, complete with found Victorian little experimentation, the length is really too breakdown following the death of her brother, letters and drawings of bugs, is one of the short. The stories that have been winning or it was shortlisted for this year’s prestigious highlights of the New Welsh Short Stories. It being short-listed for the big international short Sunday Times Short Story Award. It is not is a homage to late Victorian gothic, skilfully story awards like Lionel Shrivers’ ‘Kilifi Creek’, difficult to see why. John enters a mind setting the fiction and tension before a Rebecca F John’s ‘The Glovemakers’s Numbers’ unravelled by grief with both empathy and suitably dramatic and surprising ending. It is a or Francesca Rhydderch’s ‘The Taxidermist’s perception. However, given the author’s youth, good example of a writer trying to break out of Daughter’ are a lot longer than most showcased what is perhaps most impressive is her lack of the Welsh tag by sending it up while also with here. The Rhys Davies Award has cut the word sentimentality when dealing with this and other Jones trying something new and extending his limit on entries invited to under 2,500. I realise ambitious subjects. Take the bewildered Korean own reach beyond the old sgwar mile. it is not purely a numbers game but it is hard for girl, starting a new life in England with her aunt, The selection, edited by Penny Thomas stories of this length to compete against longer after the apparent death of a wayward mother and Francesca Rhydderch, brings together a works of five to six thousand. The work of Alice – someone that her aunt describes as having selection of Welsh writers, offering a showcase Munro is a sustained example of this. had a ‘bad mind’. Or try ‘Salting Home’, where for current talents. In form it is a bit like The most significant new voice, and for a woman finds herself unable to communicate John Williams’ selection Wales Half-Welsh me the most ambitious story in this collection, with a daughter that she has believed to be (Bloomsbury, 2004), which wasn’t so much half- is from Thomas Morris. ‘17’ showcases his dead for ten years. When the daughter leaves Welsh as half-written or my own Urban Welsh work, introducing an engaging anti-hero in the night, the mother experiences a terrible (Parthian, 2005) – which was wasn’t very urban from contemporary urban Wales who holds sense of relief that feels both alien and wrong either. The editors in this new selection claim in together an implausible story of frightening – not only to herself but to the reader too. In their introduction of asking writers whose work neighbours, small-time crime, suicide and the bold, dramatic stories collected in Clown’s they like – which is fair enough. Unfortunately mud-wrestling in the grounds of Caerphilly Feet, John plants us, time and time again, in what you often get using this approach is a few castle to produce a work both comic and new terrain. This is an extremely accomplished stories that have been hanging around, a bit serious at the same time. Morris’s first debut and, alongside Carys Davies’ Redemption lost, not quite finished or fully realised, drying collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing of Galen Pike (Salt) and Thomas Morris’ We and mouldering at the bottom of a drawer for a has just been published. I’ll be buying a copy - Don’t Know What We’re Doing (Faber), yet season or two like a bag of old conkers. which is what these anthologies are all about. further sign of the renaissance of the Welsh Joe Dunthorne contributes a found urban short story. myth, Rachel Trezise moves from valleys youth Lewis Davies won the Rhys Davies Award for his to Port Talbot nursing home pensioners, Deborah short story ‘Mr Roopratna’s Chocolate’ in 1999. John Lavin

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Beyond murder-mystery The shadow of Hitchcock also looms large over a book in John Lavin which the narrator holds imaginary conversations with the

Master of Suspense.

Gee Williams’ prose style calls to mind a Once a glamour girl but finding she was somewhat unlikely hybrid between James unloved, Rhyl had stopped taking care of Joyce and Martin Amis. First person, herself years ago. Self-harmed in fact. unreliable narrator, not-quite-murder-mystery, Desire Line (Parthian) is told in a semi stream And a place where the body of the renowned of consciousness style where meanings Oxford author, Sara Meredith, is found are not always immediately apparent – washed up on the beach. In the narrator’s deliberately so – and where appearance and celluloid-centred search to find the truth reality are constantly called into question. In behind Meredith’s death, he uncovers a great this it echoes the best – i.e. early-to-mid – many secrets and lies not only about her life Martin Amis, in particular his own not-quite- but about his own. Much like fellow Welsh murder-mystery, London Fields. author Jo Mazelis’ recent work Significance, The shadow of Hitchcock also looms Desire Line is a work of great philosophical large over a book in which the narrator depth and profundity masquerading as a Desire Line holds imaginary conversations with the murder mystery. And like that book it leaves Gee Williams Master of Suspense. And in Williams’ you both disorientated and yet somehow Parthian, 2015 hands, Rhyl, the book’s setting, becomes awoken. A must read. a noir-ish, too-bright-early-technicolour otherworld, the match of Hitch’s San Dr John Lavin is Fiction Editor at Francisco. A damaged place: Wales Arts Review Last Word

#RefugeesWelcome Dylan Moore

Writing regularly on the subject of Wales Totalitarianism in Eritrea; repression in Oromia; both at the Cardiff march. But this is not a provides a perpetual reminder of Gwyn war in Syria and Sudan; extremism in Pakistan natural disaster like the 2004 tsunami, or a Thomas’ reaction on being afforded column and Afghanistan; barbarity in Iraq. And the famine like the one that spawned Live Aid. inches in a weekly newspaper: ‘What on world’s problems are divorced neither from We cannot patch up Europe, or the world, earth has a civilised man to say to readers of each other nor from us. There are refugees with loose change and old clothes. We must a Sunday newspaper at seven-day intervals? seeking sanctuary in Cardiff some of whom are pick up the pieces, and recognise that the And it has to do with ‘Welsh affairs’; there escaping violence waged by jihadis born and ‘rubble’ of this crisis is our fellow human. isn’t a Welsh affair in sight that isn’t black raised in Cardiff. The whole thing is a mess. Those in Croatia, Kos or Calais today may be and blue from polemical flogging.’ Thomas’ It is perhaps instructive that Alun Davies, in Wrexham or Newport next month; they will verbose, lyrical tongue, as usual, was at least AM for Blaenau Gwent, evoked the ghosts need more than a hashtag to welcome them. partially ensconced inside a jowly cheek, but of former Yugoslavia as he lamented the It is heartening that the sympathetic public he had a point. slow reaction of our political leaders to the outpouring has been matched by some political The Welsh agenda’s half-yearly intervals crisis: ‘I remember witnessing at first hand will in Wales. Leanne Wood has long made provide plenty of material for today’s columnist, the human impact of genocide in Rwanda it Plaid Cymru’s position to develop all-party but there are other reasons why writing and again in the Balkans. In both cases support for refugees and Carwyn Jones has about Wales has changed since Thomas’ day. it took a public outcry over the deaths of previously stated in principle support to make Devolution; the pace of change; fragmentation thousands of people before politicians Wales the first Nation of Sanctuary. The First of society and politics. The most significant, took action.’ Watching thousands of men, Minister was quick to call an emergency though, is the greater interconnectedness women and children tramping across fields summit to plan Wales’ response. It is time to of our world: now, there are very few ‘Welsh where Serbs and Croats fought and died be both brave and bold. affairs’ that are not also ‘world affairs’, perhaps in Europe’s last major conflict is almost as Wales has long told itself a story of being even fewer world affairs that are not, or will poignant as the pictures of crammed trains a nation with a proud tradition of keeping a not become, Welsh affairs. This century, of refugees desperate to get into Germany. welcome. This year’s republication of Wales: A our challenges are global: climate change, Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, it seems, Tolerant Nation? (UWP) celebrated, explored resources, inequality, education, healthcare, is attuned to irony as well as complexity; and challenged this myth. We now have a crime, terrorism, the internet. ‘where we see a chain of events… he sees a unique opportunity to make Wales a world There has been lots of noise, on social single catastrophe… rubble on top of rubble.’ leader. Prejudice around asylum and migration media and through mainstream print and At the #RefugeesWelcome march in is often founded on a fear of lacking capacity broadcast channels, about the language used Cardiff, a chant went up: ‘No borders! No to cope with numbers, ‘pressure on public to describe the current and ongoing situation nations! Stop deportations!’ The man walking services.’ But public response to the current across Afro-Eurasia. It began as a ‘migrant next to me lowered his voice and asked crisis has shown that a human infrastructure crisis’, presented by the British rightwing press ‘What about the Rugby World Cup?’ An is here, waiting to be tapped. Many people over the summer as an offence to hardworking impracticable reality, but a powerful slogan, are offering up rooms in their own homes; families’ holiday plans, then morphed, almost No Borders should apply to our thinking rather current asylum mechanisms do not allow for overnight, into a ‘refugee crisis’, lent a name than our physical checkpoints. The literal cry such generosity. Unprecedented times call for and a face by the harrowing photographs of of a permanently disgruntled anarchist fringe unprecedented measures. little Aylan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish serves as a useful signpost for mainstream You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not beach. If we have to have a simple name for the political thinking. Global problems have global the only one - and the hard reality we face is entire complex situation, I would prefer to call it solutions; the Angel of History’s ‘sky-high that if we don’t dare to dream, we will instead, a ‘human crisis.’ rubble heap’ is a Welsh affair too. surely, be enveloped by nightmare. As one It is a human crisis not only because Humans in Wales have responded. graffito in Calais has it: ‘We must learn to live it is global, but also because it needs to Donations have been made. Collections together like brothers or we will die together be explained as a failure of humanity. Our for the camps at Calais abound. The music like idiots.’ To imagine this applies to some collective inhumanity has created the community in Wales has pulled together to human beings but not to others could yet conditions for the biggest displacement create Reach Out!, a 30-track charity rock prove the mistake of the century; there is no of people since the second world war. album. Charlotte Church and Gruff Rhys were ‘them’, there is only us.

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The IWA Fellowship has been developed as a special category of membership as a mark of recognition for those who have made, or are making, a significant contribution to the life of Wales. To discuss becoming a fellow of the IWA please call Lee Waters on 02920 484 387.

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