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+ Mererid Hopwood Owain Glyndwˆr and the Welsh dream Devolution in reverse Case for the Jon Owen Jones Costs of ’ newest quango Kevin Brennan Rise of the Twitter generation Stephanie Matthews Statins scandal Reinvention of David Reynolds Schools trapped in time warp Helen Birtwhistle Welsh canals Health and social care gap Alison Taylor Still lost in care Trevor Fishlock Magic of the movies Peter Stead Swans fly high

www.iwa.org.uk | Winter 2012 | No. 48 | £8.99 The Institute of Welsh Affairs gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Waterloo Foundation.

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the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 1 Contents

26. A new economic 42. Tesco’s law catalyst for the Valleys Sarah Wyburn asks whether Agenda 48 1 Sebastian Barrett believes new entrants on the high Winter 2012 Changing Union the Circuit of Wales will be a street will give a distinctive Cover: The Pontcysyllte viaduct that game-changer edge to the Welsh legal system carries the Llangollen canal over the 16. Radical tax varying valley of the River Dee powers recommended 28. Renewables for Wales versus nuclear John Osmond examines the Carl Clowes considers the Silk Commission’s first report implications for north Wales 4 advocating more financial of Hitachi acquiring Wylfa Education autonomy for the Welsh Government 30. Wind power’s 44. Welsh schools should economic impact focus on skills rather 17. Challenge facing Mark Fleming assesses the than knowledge unionist parties in community spin-offs that David Reynolds examines Scotland can accompany wind farm the challenges facing an Jeremy Purvis outlines the developments education system trapped in argument for Devo Plus a time warp of a world free from competition 18. Why we need devolution in reverse 46. We need to make Adam Price detects a 3 new Welsh-speaking stirring of the tectonic pates Politics & Policy communities that underpin Europe’s Steve Morris reports on a political map 32. False prospectus research into creating new underpins Natural spaces for the language in Resources Wales anglicised areas of Wales 4.  Essay Jon Owen Jones indentifies Symbol of the Welsh groupthink policy making dream 2 behind the creation of Mererid Hopwood unpacks Wales’s biggest quango Economy what we can learn about 5 ourselves from our national 35. Rise of the Twitter Science anthem 20. New Severn Barrage generation design would exploit Kevin Brennan examines 48. The statins scandal 8. Outlook two-way tides the political impact of the Stephanie Matthews says S4C at 30 Peter Hain makes the internet revolution we are at risk of using –T. James Jones case for the biggest Welsh mass medication to solve a –Euryn Ogwen Williams investment project in more 38. Public intellectual of lifestyle issue –Chris Grace than a generation world history –Mari Beynon Owen Dai Smith looks back at 50. Iodine deficiency –Ian Jones 23. Wales beyond the the life of Eric Hobsbawm, should be on Welsh wires consummate myth-buster and Government’s radar Mike Joseph argues that uncomfortable truth-teller John Lazarus warns of a offers a hidden dietary threat to the

template to follow in the 40. Education trumps development of our children All rights reserved. No part of this provision of public transport in 21st Century Wales publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form across the whole country Dave Egan distils the lessons or by any means, electronic, mechanical, we can still learn from the recorded or otherwise without the authors of The Miner’s permission of the publisher, the Institute of Welsh Affairs. ISSN 1464-7613 Next Step

2 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org

Newsflash

Coming Up • Making Sense of the NHS in Wales 6 9 In association with the General medical Council Wed 16 January 2013 11.00am – 4.00pm, Novotel, Cardiff Health Heritage The future of the NHS in Wales has never been more contested. There are unprecedented pressures on budgets, dire warnings 52. Transparency and 70. Beyond the towpath about the unsustainability of the current package of services, and scrutiny vital for Mark Lang celebrates the at the same time a general acceptance that we need to get the NHS and people working together to improve their health. future of NHS contribution canals are Keynote speakers: Professor Marcus Longley, Director Institute Marcus Longley asks making to 21st Century Wales for Health and Social Care, ; Rachel whether financial pressures Podolak, Head of Welsh Affairs, General Medical Council; Professor Ceri Phillips, Swansea University; and Dr Stephen will drive down quality of Monaghan, Public Health Wales. care in our hospitals £70 (£56 IWA Members)

55. Plugging the gap 10 • Launch of IWA Inspire Wales Awards Thurs 24 January, 10.30am, City Hall, Cardiff between health Culture Official launch of the 2013 competition (Entry free) and social care Helen Birtwhistle says NHS 72.  • Renewable energy, devolution and development Fishlock’s File Breakfast meeting and local authorities must We’re more Kyber Cardiff February 2013 – date and venue tbc work together to provide a than the Kyber Launch of two reports: one examining the economic impact of seamless service Trevor Fishlock observes onshoire wind power in Wales, and the other on how devolution how Wales shares the magic has influenced renewable energy delivery. Keynote speakers: Professor Max Munday, Cardiff Business of the movies with the stars School, and Richard Cowell, Cardiff School of Planning and Geography. 74. Swans fly high • IWA National Education Conference 7 Peter Stead examines a Beyond PISA 2013: the next wave of improvement Social Policy 100-year sporting story of Cardiff, February 2013 – date and venue tbc tragedy mixed with farce The PISA results that rank Welsh school performance against 58. Still lost in care that has ended in triumph other OECD countries will be published in December 2013, with the likelihood that Wales will be still slipping behind. This Alison Taylor describes her for Swansea City conference examines what we should be planning now to ensure long struggle to bring the enhanced performance in our secondary schools. north Wales child abuse 78. Reviews £70 (£56 IWA Members) scandal to public attention Welsh questions • IWA National Economy Conference that inform global Making Wales Competitive 61. Level playing field understanding In association with PwC and CBI Wales needed for the Owen Dudley Edwards Fri 15 March, 2013 9.30am – 4.00pm, Parc Thistle Hotel, Cardiff disadvantaged  The Welsh Government is seeking ways to fund major infrastructure projects in Wales to boost the economy, improve Nick Morris says that most Epicentre employment prospects and build for the future of the country. of all deafblind people need for the stag and hen What options does it have in pursing these objectives? Could a early intervention support Peter Finch new investment vehicle prove successful in attract city investors such as those controlling bond funds? What scope will there be for the Welsh Government to utilise borrowing? Last of the analogue Keynote speakers: UK Government Minister tbc; Gerald Holtham, alternative poets special adviser to the Welsh Government; Rob Lewis, Chairman, Ifor Thomas Wales and West, PwC £90 (£72 IWA members) 8 Environment When everything has a • The future of North Wales price, less has value North Wales branch research conference, Llandudno Late March 64. The Arctic sea ice Rhys David Further information on the IWA website collapse Gareth Wyn Jones explains why the loss of cover across 88. Last Word: Just Published the North Pole is doing much Wales turns corner into • 25/25 Vision: Welsh horizons across 50 years more than merely bringing zero growth politics Edited by John Osmond and Peter Finch us bad summer weather Peter Stead £11.99

More information: www.iwa.org.uk Essay —Essay Symbol of the Welsh dream a Mererid Hopwood unpacks what we can learn about ourselves from our national anthem Were I to ask Who are you? and you . The clues come early.

failed to remember, it would be fair After ‘fathers’, the next to be mentioned to say that you had lost, at least in are the ‘bards’ for whom language is part, your sense of identity. The act of of the essence. The resounding refrain remembering is core to our sense of emphasises this with its plea for the recognising and knowing who we are. survival of the old language, and the last To some extent, we try to discipline verse declares that the creative energy of our memories, controlling how much the Welsh language, in words and song, time and value we divide between the is stronger than the might of the sword. unpleasant and the pleasant. This is part (I shall return to the fact that it is a Articles of the secret that allows us to survive singularly personal anthem, referring to and move on. ‘my land’, later.) Essay: If this is true of individuals, it’s equally Thus it appears, that if we wish to true of a group of people such as a family use the anthem to learn something of Symbol of the or a nation. Reliving common memories our identity, we must first look at the Welsh dream creates a sense of shared identity and of concept of language and ask: what belonging. Consider the adopted child. exactly is the relationship between the Outlook: The child and parents don’t have the language we speak and our identity? S4C at 30 same genes, yet they are members of Asking this takes us immediately to T. James Jones the same family. They belong together the realms of philosophy and that because they share the memory of when awkward conundrum about the link Euryn Ogwen cousin Anna got married, when the between language and thought - the Williams parrot next door bit John’s finger, when way we think about ourselves and Chris Grace Great Uncle Elwyn died ... about everything else for that matter. Mari Beynon In English this ‘remembering How do we think without language? Owen together’ is called ‘commemoration’, Indeed, can we think without it? But a word that has become associated first, perhaps it would be useful to reflect Ian Jones with celebration. Celebrating the act on what makes a language, what are its of remembering together is essential constituent parts? if we wish to confirm and strengthen Every language has its own words. the sense of belonging together. And We have in Welsh words that are while an individual might only be able completely different from those in any to discipline his or her memory to some other. But hold on… are they really extent, a group can do so to a much completely different? Examining any greater extent. Celebrating a nation’s good dictionary soon reveals that most memory is a matter of choice and will. words are promiscuous. Elements of so Thus, studying what a group of people many Welsh words are found in dozens choose to remember and celebrate is of other Indo-European languages. Take important if we wish to understand who the Welsh ieuanc and compare it with those people are. juvenis (Latin), young (English), jung In Wales, when we come together to (German) jóven (Spanish) and yuvan celebrate almost anything we usually sing (Sanskrit). Fine. So language is more the National Anthem, and like every other, than words. Aha! It is grammar too. ours is an expression of our identity as a Without grammar, a series of words, people. It doesn’t take long to find that the each of which can be understood on its anthem’s main concern is the expression own, may well make no sense (and after of patriotic passion through a love for the all, the main purpose of language must

4 | Essay be to convey meaning). By contrast, with grammar even nonsense words can appear to make sense. Remember Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky? So is this what makes a language: the combination of words held together by grammar? Was it Stephen Pinker who remarked that an alien visitor to this planet would be more surprised by how similar the languages of the world are rather than by how different! Healthy humans everywhere control breathing, tongue and larynx to produce Owain Glyndwˆr - “symbol of the dream of the Welsh that one day they could live in a self-governing country”. This portrait sounds that enable us to communicate is a computer-generated image produced in an S4C documentary on 1 March 2012 by Wild Dreams Films. The process meaning. But perhaps the ultimate of creating the image started by making a basic mask from the Glyndwˆr marble statue in Cardiff City Hall. wonder is that the grammar of every language allows them to differentiate thoughts and actions? declension. In other words, the want, between subject, verb and object - what Some philosophers hold that need, fear or own does not seem to Chomsky calls the ‘universal grammar’. language circumscribes the range of arise from within the speaker/subject, Some languages depend on pitch to possible thought, arguing: if we do but comes to him or her from outside. achieve this differentiation. In Welsh not have a word or construction for The difference is subtle but significant. we use mutations, while German uses something, then we cannot think it. I Or take the English phrase ‘to talk the order of words in a sentence… one do not completely concur. But we must to someone’ and the Welsh ‘siarad misplaced word could see you baking accept that once we speak a particular â rhywun’ (talk with someone). The your husband rather than the cake. language it is surely difficult to measure former seems more didactic, the latter Yet the ‘tower-of-babel-effect’ has how that language affects our ability to conveys more the sense of dialogue. occurred, and in spite of a ‘universal think. After all, it’s much easier to think Others scholars however place grammar’ and the similarities in the following a well-trodden path of familiar emphasis on the way the natural roots of words, we cannot really words than to try to think things that habitat influences a people’s way of communicate meanings to each other have no ready-made words to hand. thinking, insisting that thought is at across languages. There must therefore (The pursuit of these kinds of thoughts least as much a product of landscape be some other constituent of language, is probably the spring for creative as it is of language. There are three in something more that makes each expression. When everyday language this marriage. In his 1911 Hanes Cymru language unique. This must surely be falls short, we turn to music, dance, Part 1, O. M. Edwards observes that ‘context’ - and in the context (no pun painting, and poetry). this land was populated by the small, intended) of this discourse, this could What clues do we have in Welsh dark Iberians before the Celts, and surely be labelled ‘culture’. to suggest that our way of thinking believes that the Welsh have inherited When people migrate in order is different from others, or that the the dreamy understanding of the former to flee wars or famine, today as ever language offers at least the possibility for and the energy of the latter. But he before, those who move together its speakers to think differently? Let’s explains that we are described as Celts necessarily grow closer to one another for a moment compare the English ‘I and not Iberians, because the Iberians and more distanced from the ones left want’, ‘I need’, ‘I fear’ and ‘I own’ with lost their language and learned that of behind. This leads to a new ‘context’, a the indigenous, idiomatic Welsh ‘mae the conquerors. Not, however, before new ‘shared-existence’, which in turn eisiau arnaf’ (literally: there is a want adapting the newly acquired language. leads to the creation of a new family on me), ‘mae angen arnaf’ (there is a His theory is that while Wales could or tribe. A new culture develops as need on me), ‘mae ofn arnaf’ (there lose its language many times again, the a new way of co-working and a new is fear on me) and ‘rwy’n meddu ar’ people here will always change any new way of thinking common to the group (I’m in possession on). In English, language until that language can express of migrants emerge. A new language these expressions are in the first person the peculiar characteristics of their evolves too. But the next step is the singular (with a capital I), while in Welsh way of thinking, not perhaps through difficult-to-define moment. When does (apart from ‘rwy’n meddu ar’) are third words, but through constructions and language cease to be merely a means person constructions, but each relates turns of phrase. He believes that there of describing thoughts and actions, and back to the first person by the use of is something intrinsically Welsh about become the very catalyst (or agent) for the preposition ‘ar’ (on) in its matching the way the people who live on this

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 5 Essay particular piece of land think, as though ‘togetherness’, we return to the notion warriors is virtuous, as is Glyn Dwˆr’s, the land itself - in partnership with the of ‘commemoration’, and are reminded namely Freedom. The anthem goes language and the mind - contributes to that it’s time to consider those ‘brave on to tell us that ‘for freedom these produce unique ways of thinking. In his warriors’ who gain such prominence in warriors, these good patriots, gave their collection published in 1972 Cerddi’r the first verse of our anthem. And if ever blood’. What we must ask is whether Cywilydd (Poems of Shame) Gerallt there was one such warrior, Owain Glyn today we can separate the means Lloyd Owen says something similar: Dwˆr was he. from the ends? Can a government, like In the blurb on the back of Professor Britain’s for example, really insist that its A chawsom iaith, er na cheisiem hi, Rees Davies’s excellent pocket book, aim is to establish a just system for, say, oherwydd ei hias oedd yn y pridd published in 2002, Owain Glyn Dwˆr, the people of Afghanistan or Iraq, when eisoes, Trwy Ras Duw, Tywysog Cymru (Owain it uses unjust means? a’i grym anniddig ar y mynyddoedd. Glyn Dwˆr, By the Grace of God, Prince What does Freedom entail? It’s more of Wales), the author is praised for than the opposite of being shackled. And we inherited a language without having portrayed Owain as a man of Is it, as the review of Professor Davies’ seeking her, “flesh and blood”, as a “vengeful and book suggests, living in an independent because her passion was in the earth cruel leader ... our chief national hero”. state which governs itself? Surely it’s before us And this is where I begin to feel uneasy, more than that too. It has to do with and her restless strength on the just as uneasy as when I sing about the how we govern ourselves. It must mountains. said ‘brave warriors’ of the anthem. I surely encompass the idea of living in a find myself asking: do we really want civilised manner without violence and To ask ‘Who was here first?’ is pointless, a ‘vengeful and cruel man’ as our oppression. And I’m convinced that we, in Wales as in any other country. What’s national hero? Is it such a good idea to as a people, will never be free while important is that whoever is here now commemorate ‘brave warriors’? we are part of a system that oppresses is humble and creative enough to tune In Brecht’s play Galileo (1955), others. To be free is to be free from into what and who has gone before, Andrea the laboratory assistant says: violence and the threat of violence. Is to listen out for the ‘restless strength’ “It’s a sad country that has no heroes”, it not strange that we no longer keep and hear the ‘passion in the earth’, and to which Galileo answers: “No, it’s a order in the classroom by threatening having heard it, to respect it and adopt sad country that needs heroes”. You will the cane, yet still we insist that the (perhaps adapt) its best attributes into recall that it was Galileo who challenged way to keep peace in the world is by the ever-evolving language of the land. the Church by confirming Copernicus’ threatening the push-button-bomb? One question worth asking here, at findings that the earth goes round the Is Wales part of the system of least in passing is: when we try to teach sun, but recanted in the face of threats. oppression in the world? I’m afraid it is. or learn a new language, do we pay The question Brecht poses is: how And if ‘Wales’, then so, too, ‘we’ and ‘I’. enough attention to its context, its culture? should we view such a man - as hero or The anthem may speak in one breath A Welsh speaker, on hearing ‘calon lân’ coward? A coward for recanting, or a of her noble warriors, but it also speaks (a clean ) will tacitly know that it is hero for buying his life and hence time of ‘the land of my fathers’ – these are always ‘llawn daioni’ (full of goodness), to proceed with his research? I cannot our warriors, yours and mine. Consider or that a cry of ‘A oes heddwch?’ (is answer that – but it does confirm for me how much of our country is under the there peace?) is followed by a collective that the question of defining heroes is a control of the military, from St Athan cry of ‘Heddwch!’ (Peace!). If you have difficult business. to Anglesey, from Martin to mastered all the mutations in Welsh or But returning to the review of Epynt, and many points between. With know all the nuances of the subjunctive Professor Davies’ book, we see that it the limited independence we have, mood in Spanish say, and yet do not know also says that Glyn Dwˆr is “a symbol of we do not protest at these intrusions the nursery rhymes and sayings of those the dream of the Welsh, the hope in into our land and air-space, where the languages, can you really claim to have their hearts that one day they could win techniques of oppression and violence ‘crossed the bridge’ into the land of the right to live in an independent self- are learned. On the contrary, those who the fluent? governing country”. Looked at in that light govern us seem to welcome them. Thus it seems that language somehow things are quite different. So, perhaps, when we encompasses words, grammar, Let’s go back to the anthem and commemorate Owain Glyn Dwˆr in place, people and peculiarities of those warriors. Praising a warrior, brave the 21st Century, we can consider thought processes, all melding to or otherwise, I find repugnant. But the names of three different kinds of make sense within a particular culture this phrase is coupled with the next: heroes, names which should be echoing and context that its speakers share ‘very good patriots’, and things alter throughout Wales in 2012 of all years: together. And with this notion of somewhat. The aim of the anthem’s • , born 100 years ago,

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the principled politician who on 12 it, while ‘unfair practice’ reflects the common land. In ceding responsibility, July 1940 told a Military Tribunal effect of the individual’s behaviour on we lose trust in one another, and when in Carmarthen’s Guildhall, “I am a the wider community. It’s tempting to things go wrong, as they must do from pacifist first and a nationalist second”. romanticise and see in this a throwback time to time, we become less prepared to the philosophy underlying the laws of to look sympathetically at the motives • Born 200 years ago , . Be that as it may, it certainly for the actions of others, and ultimately, the Apostle of Peace, who knocked reveals a different way of thinking, less prepared to forgive. on doors the world over to persuade though in this instance, interestingly, Returning to Waldo’s poem the people, the press and their rulers not expressed in a different language – next question is, “what is it to arm a that negotiation was a better way of remember O. M. Edwards. kingdom?” Waldo answers: “it’s putting resolving disputes than war. To progress from crawling, we the knife in the baby’s hand”. The horror will need to examine every model of this image reminds us that kitting out • , whose bust, of governance. It’s sometimes worth a country with an army is madness - the beautifully sculpted by John Meirion considering that an ancient Athenian, baby will hurt itself and everybody else. Morris, was unveiled in October. for instance, would not be able to To claim that we should seek peace or comprehend our present version of freedom through brandishing weapons These are three great names that give democracy where one man or woman is asking for bloody chaos. What’s more, us a reason to commemorate; three ‘represents’ at least 50,000 people. For, freedom gained thus is unjust, and heroes and not a single warrior. In his when, after the wars with Sparta, 30 therefore no freedom. The means and collection Dail Pren (Leaves of a Tree, represented 30,000 - one for every 1,000 the end must be one. When Ghandi 1955), Waldo Williams asks: “What is it - the Greeks described it as ‘tyranny’. led the Salt March, he was right to insist to govern a kingdom?” and answers: “a ‘Democracy’ was the term used when on this. His was a march for freedom craft that is still crawling”. I should like to 6,000 represented 30,000 - one for every without weapons. Truth and freedom is suggest that we shall be forever crawling five. And what’s more, these 6,000 were one. Satyagraha: hold fast onto the truth. as a self-governing people unless we chosen by lottery. Every eligible name By all means, let’s continue to begin to understand the relationship went into the hat, because everyone had remember Owain Glyn Dwˆr, and to between us and our physical and responsibility for the state, and whoever sing the anthem with gusto. But let us, cultural environment, our past and our came out landed himself a job. (Oh too, remember the aim behind the future, the way we speak and think. We yes, ‘himself’, I’m not supporting the campaigns of those warriors of old. need to ask what is a goal suitable for Athenian model wholesale, of course– it And, having learned from the past, us, and how shall we reach for it? excluded women and depended on let us no longer divorce the means We must realise that it will not do slaves). The ancient Athenian might well from the ends. Of course we still want simply to help ourselves to off-the-shelf say that in voting for a representative we Freedom for Wales and the world, but policies made by others for others. somehow cede responsibility. let’s campaign for that Freedom in a Creating, even adapting policy is more Yet, we call our people ‘Cymry’, way that is appropriate for us. After all, complicated than merely translating it. For derived from ‘Combrogos’, indicating we are a people who share a piece of in translating, we must be careful that we that we view one another as people land. We also know an old language do not unwittingly import another’s way of who share a piece of land. And so that allows its speakers to think of the thinking to the detriment of our own. We perhaps it’s time to create a governance untranslatable tangnefedd, a word that must always ask, not only are the words that listens to its own language, means something like ‘peace’, ‘peace- right, but is the content in sympathy with treating common assets as personal made’, ‘reconciled tranquillity’ and whom we are, and whom we wish to be? responsibility, where we really do much more. Let thoughts of this possible Do they reflect and create an appropriate consider that Wales is ‘my country’, as tangnefedd way lead us to Freedom. context? And if the thoughts are another’s, we claim in the anthem – the country do they enrich rather than impoverish? each I shares with each you. Perhaps we Let me give you just one example could then restore confidence in one where the context has been respected. another rather than in systems where Mererid Hopwood, a lecturer in Recently I was told that in universities the process is more important than the University of Wales: Trinity St David’s in England the term ‘academic individual, and where one process only in Carmarthen, was the first woman misconduct’ is used for what in Wales leads to further process devised to check to win the bardic chair at the National we call ‘unfair practice’. One thing, two on the first, and then ultimately, when , in Denbigh in 2001. This essay labels. But what a revealing difference! all processes fail, the system drifts into is based on the inaugural IWA Galeri, ‘Academic misconduct’ focuses really a witch-hunt. Only, we are not witches. Glyndwr Day annual lecture only on the individual who perpetrates We are brothers and sisters, sharing a she delivered in September.

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His relationship with Cymdeithas was emotionally charged to the utmost yr Iaith Gymraeg which was led and during those days by the birth of Hedd, S4C at 30 inspired by some of his own offspring their tenth grandchild, at the beginning became strained to breaking point. He of April. And the celebrations of his sixty became regarded by friend and foe alike eighth birthday on the first of September Gandhi and the owls as the ‘fallen saviour’ of his beloved must have been very muted. Rhiannon’s Wales. He more or less confined steadfastness, loyalty and courage made himself to his home at Talar Wen, near her a true heroine of this story. Llangadog, enduring sleepless nights In the meantime, Gwynfor had of personal guilt at his utter failure been persuaded by his son in law, Ffred to lead Wales to the ‘promised land’ Ffransis, to postpone the start of the fast of his dreams. The owls in the trees for a few months as a pragmatic move, surrounding the homestead seemed at not only in order to allow the Thatcher times to mock him. government time to deal with the However, ironically 1979 also situation, but more importantly, in order T. James Jones proved to be the year of his salvation. to set in motion a number of events that On 12 September of that year the would galvanise support for the cause. It was in the 1960s that I got to know , William Whitelaw, Gwynfor came to regard it as his final Gwynfor Evans well enough to announced in a lecture to the Royal opportunity to endow his leadership realise that an essential element of Television Society in Cambridge that with an enduring influence on the his character was stubborness. I lived the government was to renege on its political life of Wales. It is ironical that in Carmarthen during the years prior manifesto election pledge to set up a his threat to sacrifice his own life was his to his historic triumph in winning the Welsh language television channel. salvation as a politician. 1966 by-election, and witnessed his Gwynfor immediately seized on the Having got the support of his family unstinting determination to fight against opportunity to organise a strong body and after sharing his intention with the odds to achieve his goals on behalf of opinion, which included leading a very select group of Plaid Cymru of Plaid Cymru. members of the reconciled Welsh members, on 3 May 1980 he finally But the wily George Thomas, his Language Society, against the Thatcher went public by suddenly conveying his main rival in the House of Commons, government’s betrayal. Protests such intentions to the Plaid Cymru executive soon began to set a trap for Gwynfor as a refusal to pay the television committee members, but only when the and Plaid Cymru by arranging the licence fee were organised by Plaid chair was dealing with the ‘any other 1969 Investiture of the . Cymru, effectively endorsing a policy business’ item! Controversially, Gwynfor refused to of unconstitutional direct action, a In spite of the division within the attend the ceremony at Caernarfon, but move which Gwynfor had been forced Plaid Cymru ranks caused by the was obliged, as the local MP, to welcome to reject throughout the years of his announcement, Gwynfor, along with the Prince to Carmarthen as part of the parliamentary election candidatures. Peter Hughes Griffiths and Dafydd celebratory tour of Wales. Then the thought of adopting the Williams meticulously planned a series This action was perceived as an most extreme mode of direct action of successful rallies to coincide with indecisive inconsistency on Gwynfor’s began to take root in Gwynfor’s re- making the actual arrangements for the part, and it provided his opponents energised mind, namely his threat to fast. That was to take place in Gwynfor’s with constant ammunition to contest fast to death unless the government home at Talar Wen, Llangadog, starting subsequent elections, which finally changed its mind. His one initial doubt on 5 October. The local public hall resulted in Gwynfor losing the Carmarthen concerning this course of action was was booked for the anticipated press seat to the Labour Party in 1979. whether it could be reconciled with conferences. Umpteen television, radio But 1979 was also a disappointing his pacifist Christian principles, and and newspaper interviews took place. year for Gwynfor because of the dismal he immediately sought the advice of The story reached many countries failure of the Yes vote in the Referendum. his trusted mentor in such matters, beyond the British Isles. Cabinet papers This plunged him into the grips of a Pennar Davies. Among many other show that it became one of the main depression which threatened his political considerations, the example of their issues of the Thatcher government. career and his own health. He regarded mutual hero, Gandhi, was cited. Then on 17 September, ironically the 1979 losses, along with the earlier one As soon as Gwynfor’s fears were the very day that Gwynfor received by suffered at Tryweryn, as his own personal allayed (Pennar even offered to join him in post the summons for refusing to pay failures. It seemed that his once acclaimed the threatened fast), the next painful step the television licence fee, the ‘not for leadership of Plaid Cymru could be was to inform his wife Rhiannon and their turning lady’ relented, famously being coming to a very sad end. children. The poignancy of the situation forced to make her one and only U-turn.

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It had a very mixed reception at Talar Aberystwyth and it is loaded with signs, being. However, Gwynfor’s threat and Wen. Gwynfor yearned for a few more signals and symbols communicating the the subsequent resolution were about a weeks of campaigning on behalf of the key elements, some contradictory, that much wider political vision than just a status of the Welsh language and of Plaid had to be nailed in that first hour. television channel. Cymru’s cause. But although he felt that For example, the hour begins with The other key word on that opening the game had ended too soon he was the station ident. The brand colours night was partneriaeth (partnership). persuaded to accept the score painted were red, black and white, dominant After long and difficult negotiations on the walls of Westminster, ‘Gwynfor 1, colours that symbolised confidence and between S4C and HTV, which had Whitelaw 0’ as a win. an independent spirit. Inside the frame engaged journalists over many months, However, I have no doubt of each ident were specially filmed this night had to underline the partnership, whatsoever, that had Gwynfor begun his images of scenes from different parts of in Willie Whitelaw’s words, of “good fast, the unyielding stubborness which he Wales to signify that S4C was a channel chaps”, that would serve the people of portrayed throughout his life would have for every part of the country. Finally, Wales. The BBC was providing ten hours taken him, if necessary, to the bitter end. and controversially, at the bottom of the of programmes from the licence fee, screen WALES appeared from the left HTV nine hours on a commercial basis, and CYMRU from the right and the letters and the developing independent sector T. James Jones (Jim Parc Nest) is a WALE and YMRU disappeared leaving would, theoretically, provide three hours poet, dramatist and Archdruid of the S4C at the centre. Sensing that this was on a commercial basis. That made up the National Eisteddfod. He wrote the drama a powerful but controversial signal, we initial requirement of 22 hours per week documentary Gwynfor, which recreates had launched the brand concept with of Welsh language programmes in ‘peak’. the critical year 1979-80 in the life of the the idents a couple of months earlier to The maths didn’t quite work out that Plaid Cymru leader, broadcast by S4C on ensure that the debate would have run its way and, because of the delay to HTV’s 1 November to mark its 30th anniversary. course by opening night. supply, the independent producers took The concept was intended to give up the slack and were providing at least two signals. Firstly, S4C would not be a four hours per week. Programmes from all totally Welsh channel as there would be three sectors were shown on that opening rescheduled English language Channel night and promoted during the first hour. Semiotics of the first hour 4 programmes, too. Secondly, and more The other partners were the complex, there was a signal tintended Independent Broadcasting Authority to address the fears of many Welsh and . The former provided the speakers that we could be creating a funding (from the net advertising revenue ghetto for the language that would of ITV) and broadcast the channel on its exclude the monoglot majority. transmitters, while the latter provided the After the ident, Owen Edwards S4C’s programmes in English that would be director, a charismatic and consummate shown on the Fourth Channel in Wales. presenter from his earliest days on The partnership with Channel 4 was television, welcomed viewers to Sianel very close and was demonstrated during Euryn Ogwen Williams Pedwar Cymru (an open invitation to the first hour when Jeremy Isaacs, Chief the home of S4C). Every word was Executive of Channel 4, appeared in a chat When the fader was opened on the carefully chosen: Croeso (Welcome), with Owen. Channel Four had agreed that dot of 6.00pm on Monday 1 November Cartref (home) aelwyd gynnes (warm S4C would have the freedom to use its 1982, there was no going back. That first hearth), and cynnau coelcerth (lighting programmes in its own schedule. This was hour was not an all-singing-and-dancing a beacon). All were clear signals that a massive concession as the expectations in celebration launch. It wasn’t meant to be this was no traditional authoritarian the Broadcasting Act had been for an opt- an award winner. The notorious launch of broadcaster. Although it was inextricably out service, like the BBC and HTV in Wales. Harlech Television in 1968 had made the tied to the politics that brought it into To make the statement, Channel 4 delayed television industry in Wales rather wary of being, S4C would be a channel driven its launch until the Tuesday and allowed celebrity launches, anyway. But in S4C’s by the principles of public service S4C to show its opening night programmes case it was never an option. There were broadcasting serving its community. a day early in Wales. too many targets to hit in that first hour to It is inevitable that S4C will always During that first hour too, we had the risk a glitzy light entertainment show, even be associated with the passion of the premiere of Superted. The little bear had if we’d had the resources to make one. reaction to the government’s broken become a mascot for S4C’s early ambition. That first hour is in the National promise and the U-turn that followed in We actually only had one completed Screen and Sound Archive at September 1980. The name of Gwynfor episode when we went on air, a fact that the National Library of Wales in Evans is indelibly printed into its very did not escape BBC journalists who made

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Outlook certain that the viewers of the news were It was a risky, life changing decision. I Critical to the service were the two informed at 7.00 that this was the case. But had a secure and well-paid management programme partners supplying the the little bear got in first and captivated the position at HTV. I was a Sais from Kent majority of the 22 hour service. BBC nation’s children, of all ages. married into Sir Benfro with patchy GCSE Wales under Geraint Stanley Jones was That first hour also contained an Welsh. And S4C had been given only 3 supportive from the start. However, the expression of S4C’s intention to have years by a reluctant Mrs Thatcher to prove programme relationship with HTV was wide horizons and included good luck itself. So why? a commercial one and the contractual messages from all over the world. Bjorn I had arrived in Wales in 1970 as a bargaining became fraught as transmission Borg and were probably the television planner. With Welsh language approached. Through the paper thin walls most outlandish, but they were there as scheduling a highly contentious issue, I I could sometimes hear raised voices as signals that S4C wanted to take Wales became ever more aware of the linguistic different cultural mindsets clashed. With and the audience out to world as well as divisions. Through Wendy, and then our just weeks to go before 1 November, the reflecting the community to itself. children attending Welsh medium schools, deal was finally closed and the relationship For any fan of semiotic analysis, the I met and was moved by those who were with HTV under Huw Davies became as hour between 6 and 7 on 1 November fighting for a language and culture, some of sturdy and fruitful as that with the BBC. 1982, is a treasure trove of signals about whom had been imprisoned. Later I found We worked as the S4C Headquarters S4C’s positioning in the political and myself in England vehemently defending in Sophia Close was rebuilt around us. cultural structures of the time. Add to Gwynfor Evans’ courageous stance, one For months our desks and papers were that the content of its magazine Sbec, that finally brought a rare change of mind covered each morning in dust. One which was distributed free of charge from the Lady. morning, late for a train to London and with TV Times, and you have a snapshot At heart I wanted our children to with reception blocked, Sir Goronwy with of the perception that S4C wanted to evolve in a nation at ease with itself. With brolly, briefcase and bowler hat was seen create in Wales and beyond. Doesn’t it a following wind I believed that S4C was coming down the two storey building feel a long, long time ago? central to achieving that and quite simply I via a vertical, and hazardous, fire escape wanted to be able to say in years to come ‘I ladder. Builders and staff alike watched Euryn Ogwen Williams was S4C’s was there’. open mouthed but we were fortified Director of Programmes from 1981 -1991. The 15 months leading up to the by his commitment. This tale went into launch on November 1st 1982 , a day the pantheon of stories about him. How ahead of Channel Four, were progressively when Lady Valerie left him for a weekend, exhausting. My father dying that year made she returned and upon opening the it the more poignant. fridge found that instead of the delicacies Good chaps made it work As with most start ups, we were prepared for him, Sir Goronwy had eaten woefully understaffed. With eight the cat food. Or how when driving up late months to go, there were just 16 of us on a Sunday night from his Pembrokeshire commissioning, purchasing, marketing, home, he was listening so intently to a contracting, engineering, financing, and Learning Welsh programme, he completed scheduling. When we went on air, there a full circle of the Carmarthen roundabout were still only 45 of us. Sir Goronwy and was nearly back in Letterston before assembled a brilliant Board. Alwyn Roberts he realized his mistake. and Glyn Tegai Hughes, both former BBC Aside from directing the launch Chris Grace Governors, were wise and broadcasting campaign with the brilliant Ann Beynon, savvy and gave no quarter when Goronwy my role was to devise a weekly schedule “I give S4C a year before it is wound up,” was at his most imperious. Owen Edwards’ that incorporated 22 hours of Welsh with said a well known BBC Wales journalist leadership and integrity welded us into 40 hours of Channel 4. The philosophies of and presenter to me in the summer of an ever growing family. He represented both could not have been more different so 1982, five months before our launch. That us compellingly and was outstanding at I cherry picked. Out went Channel 4’s hour attitude was fairly typical, although no winning the all important battles in BBC long news, US basketball and How to make one else was quite so open and forthright. London and Whitehall. In his black dog a Quilt. In came American Football, Treasure I had joined S4C almost a year before, moments he was underpinned by Mair Hunt, and ..shhhh… a US import Battlestar inspired by the chutzpah of our Chair, Sir Owen, his chief of staff and the beating Gallactica. We hammocked weaker shows , telling ’s Select heart of S4C, and by Euryn Ogwen of either language between stronger ones Committee and the media that he knew Williams whose flair and vision, with Emlyn and revelled in our devolved autonomy – nothing – ‘Dim’ – about broadcasting. A Davies, created the conditions for the the first UK channel to be completely free Big Man, I thought - I want to work for him. emerging independent sector. of London.

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Our logo and branding caused Moby Dick, Beowulf and the Canterbury unfairly - with the effing and blinding controversy. Martin Lambie Nairn, Tales were made accessible worldwide Channel Four/Bore/Swore. At the creator of the Channel 4 logo, unveiled through a novel use of the art form, same time our on-air presentation was ‘waleS4Cymru’. To this Sais, it seemed originated by and distributed from Wales. made to look amateur by an Equity a brilliant design solution to a bilingual But that was to come. In the autumn strike which left great holes in the channel. But few Welsh speakers realized of our launch the UK press started to take scheduled timings. that their S4C would be broadcasting a David/S4C versus Goliath/Channel 4 Six months later, with new programme more English than Welsh programmes. interest in us. Michael Buerk did a friendly stock running low, our ratings slipped and Tensions and fears ran very deep. Wales piece and took away a SuperTed under his as night follows day the bad press followed. coming ahead of Cymru in the logo arm. In the Sunday Times Jan Morris was The Sunday Times called us “an ailing provoked some graffiti -Bradwr (Traitor) - endlessly and authoritatively encouraging. channel” and we felt frail and vulnerable daubed on S4C’s Sophia Close windows. But one leading journalist, Welsh but with through our first summer. But in the And then there was SuperTed, too no sympathy for the language and writing autumn HTV programming came properly English for some, originally offered by for the Sunday Telegraph Colour magazine, on stream, and we steadied as, across Cardiff born Mike Young to me at HTV but took us apart and had a revealing swipe at the linguistic divide, audience loyalty and turned down by the company for fear of my messianic self. I still remember it. “Hells understanding of the channel grew. We being sued by Superman. This bear now Bells,” shouted Chris Grace as he rose from even had an audience across the border. cleared the legal hurdles by meeting his his empty desk. “It is so exciting!” SuperTed, broadcast in Welsh six months fellow Super Hero in New York. SuperTed October passed in a blur as ahead of the BBC’s English transmission, agreed to wear yellow not blue, to be programmes began to roll into the was a hit in ! powered by rocket boots not a cloak, and Presentation suite to be timed and So my journalist friend was wrong. never ever to change in a phone box. He checked. Meanwhile all the scheduling, Willie Whitelaw, Home Secretary when and Superman shook hands, SuperTed flew marketing and presentation elements, S4C was established, apparently said to back to findWil Cwac Cwac waiting for envisioned and started months previously, a doubting senior civil servant, “Good him in and Jumping began to come together. chaps will make it work”. He was right. Juniper! the Welsh animation industry was The countdown to 1 November began. S4C had a collection of Good Chaps that born. The duo gave the launch campaign a We were all desperately tired and anxious. did make it work. The commitment of the colourful and distinctive boost . Had the campaign worked? Would the Authority, staff and programme suppliers Animation, expensive but of high programming be strong enough? How was like rock. All of us were driven by the quality, easily dubbable and with a would we assess the audience figures when knowledge that failure was not an option. long shelf life, gave S4C and Wales we had nothing to compare them with? That commitment will always be at an immediate international profile. Above all, would we disappoint all those the heart of a channel that is still adapting Subsequently this was complemented by who had fought for the channel? to a monolingual, digital era. Happily the documentaries, films such asHedd Wyn In that atmosphere I upset our public service relationship of S4C and and dramas such as Joni Jones. esteemed Chairman and incurred the BBC Wales, the core of the service, is now The momentum was ratcheted full blast of a former Mandarin’s wrath. strengthened structurally. My hope is that in upwards when the end of the Cold War Without consulting him, I had arranged a multi-channel environment increasingly inspired our new Chief Executive Geraint for a live feed of the launch to be fed to searching for imaginative, well resourced Stanley Jones to position S4C as a cultural a London venue for MPs and the Welsh content, S4C can revert to having an and linguistic channel within the New diaspora. Upon hearing this, the Secretary international role. Europe. Simultaneously, friend and of State, Nicholas Edwards, said he would Our children have indeed grown up colleague Geraint Talfan Davies suggested attend which in turn meant Sir Goronwy in a country at ease with itself, in a mature animating Shakespeare. At a time when being in London not Cardiff for the launch. bilingual environment to which they want animation was Disney, S4C turned away His dressing down was more a reflection to contribute and in which to bring up our from Hollywood towards Moscow and of the strain he was under and typically he grandchildren. S4C was part of the engine Shakespeare, animated and then dubbed wrote a charming letter. of change that brought that about and I into over 20 languages, became a bridge At six o’clock on Monday 1 was privileged to be a part of it. between East and West. November 1982 S4C came on air. Over the decade, with Huw Jones The following night Channel Four did now at the helm, the channel facilitated likewise. We waited anxiously for the pioneering partnerships with over 30 ratings. They were good! We had beaten Chris Grace left S4C in 2003 to countries, amassing Oscar nominations, BBC2 into third place behind HTV and establish the Shakespeare Schools Emmies and Baftas. The Bible, opera , folk BBC1. Now we were helped by the UK Festival www.ssf.uk.com, now the UK’s tales and literary classics such as Y Mabinogi, press contrasting us favourably – and largest youth drama festival.

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Adventures of a young not confined to an isolated youth slot of being part of European contemporary commissioning editor such as BBC 2’s DEF 2. We held joint youth culture. I also commissioned an meetings with colleagues at BBC Cymru eclectic mix of programming, including and HTV to review the programme mix, La Carrera, a documentary on the famous and shared the overall aim of further road race in Mexico. directed by Richard developing the youth audience. Pawelko, and the fashion style series Steil Whilst flagship youth programmes such Eto (Dressed to Thrill), a Teliesyn/HTV co- as ITV’s The Tube; Channel 4’s Network production with a Russian company. 7 and The Word; and DEF 2 were points In fact this series was the last of reference, the growing critical mass of production I oversaw as commissioning creative activity here engendered great self- editor before leaving for BBC Network Mari Beynon Owen confidence. With John Peel also regularly Television. I spent a surreal week in featuring Welsh bands on his cult BBC Radio Moscow. The Russian crew were totally In 1987, I was appointed S4C’s first 1 show, there was a tremendous feeling that unreliable and so the Welsh crew ended Commissioning Editor for Youth what was happening here was totally valid. up covering for them. If I remember Programmes. I was the Channel’s first Also it was becoming increasingly viable for rightly I was assistant wardrobe mistress. woman commissioning editor, at that our contributors to make a living out of their What was worse, there had been a mix- time, the youngest in the UK and, to the creative work. We were kick-starting a ‘local’ up at the hotel and no room had been great horror of several long established creative economy. allocated to me. For several nights I slept production executives in Wales, I had never I was recently reminded of this by on a couch in a colleague’s room as the even produced a television programme. Gareth Potter’s autobiographical show management obviously did not think The appointment reflected the – Gadael yr Ugeinfed Ganrif (‘Leaving that a Welsh TV executive should take rather dare devil, confident mood which the Twentieth Century’) in which he precedence over Russian guests. permeated the offices in Sophia Close conjures up the excitement and intensity On the last night we ended up by and the collective desire to engage with of the period. He and collaborator Mark chance in the same restaurant as Luciano a relatively untapped pool of musicians, Lugg set up techno outfitTyˆ Gwydr. Pavarotti, who was performing at the video directors, performers, writers, poets Mark designed T-shirts and provided Bolshoi. To our dismay he had ordered all and thinkers who could become creative graphics for Criw Byw; Gareth became the house specials in advance so we had to drivers for the channel. an actor. In my mind they represent make do with the leftovers. As we joyfully Perhaps ‘Zeitgeist Editor’ would have the aspirations of that generation – toasted Pavarotti and our Russian hosts, I been a more appropriate job title for me, and indeed what should still be our do remember thinking how wonderful it as my role was to pre-empt, promulgate aspirations – a credible platform for was that here we were playing our part in and promote emerging talent, ensuring talented, creative people in Wales. European media culture. that the youth audience was reflected The overall ethos of Channel 4 and the I had been encouraged and supported across all of S4C’s programming. My brief promise of an independent sector willing to to help create new programme platforms, was incredibly wide, incorporating factual, innovate really benefitted S4C, and youth to widen the programme range, and most music, and drama programmes. But it programmes in particular, as by association, importantly, allow programme makers to was greatly facilitated by the collaborative the fourth channel transmitted a sense of develop their ideas. We were unhindered by cross-genre approach to programme freedom. We were given permission to the strictures of audience reach and viewing commissioning adopted by the S4C try out new ideas and most importantly figure targets, and allocated generous commissioning team, in contrast to the to challenge the youth audience with programme budgets. It was a great time defensive guarding of entrenched territorial completely different concepts in terms of to follow instinct and let producers and divisions encountered at most broadcasters. Welsh language culture. directors indulge their creative passions. Due to S4C’s arrangement to transmit But our aspirations were not contained In the nineties, as a genre, youth programming by BBC Cymru and HTV within Wales. From the outset, Fideo 9 programmes quietly disappeared. Wales, there was already a ‘youth’ presence had a European and strand. Nonetheless, in Wales the legacy of that in the schedule with BBC Cymru’s music Through S4C International we had access period of cultural adventure remains programme, Y Bocs; HTV Wales’ review to international music videos which were as many of those early pioneers are still show Heno, Heno and zany Eisteddfod shown alongside new video work directed creative ‘drivers’ across many different art spin-offs. With the arrival of independent by emerging Welsh directors such as forms and in the media. Criw Byw’s Fideo 9, presented by the . With bands now performing enigmatic Eddie Ladd, and the current in Europe, music festival specials of Yr Mari Beynon Owen is an Arts affairs strand MC, youth programmes Anrhefn, Jess, Maffia Mr Hughes were Management Consultant and Chair of were dotted across the schedule and filmed, which contributed to a real sense Ymddiried, the Welsh Broadcasting Trust.

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We need to burst out button – from any device. It is a media no barrier to me – just as there is no of our box environment we simply would not have barrier to the vast majority of the Welsh believed possible on the day that S4C’s speaking population. first viewers watched Owen Edwards We cannot meet the challenges of wander down the steps of our then the future if we sit back and expect that headquarters to launch the service live people in Wales will watch S4C because on air back in 1982. our programmes are in Welsh. We must Given how the industry has prove to the people of Wales that it is not developed, the challenge is completely only relevant to their lives – but it can different today to the one we faced in compete successfully for their precious 1982. Now, it’s time to forget the old- time with what the rest of the world has Ian Jones fashioned view of what a TV channel to offer. For this reason, I’m focussed on was. Our content has to break out of that recapturing S4C’s historic ability to work 30 years is quite a milestone, especially box in the corner of the room and reach with partners internationally to share our when you consider that I was here, the people of Wales every hour of every product and get the best of what the rest working for S4C when it launched fully day, wherever they are. The challenge is of the world has to offer on S4C. three decades ago. Back in 1982 I was a to provide Welsh speakers everywhere We have to be on the look out for young programme finance manager who with all kinds of entertainment and that programme idea, that spark in a had ventured to Cardiff to work in the TV information in our language – not just to storyline, that unique element that can industry. There was a palpable excitement reflect what’s available in English, but to lift a TV programme up and make it a about the project that lay before us. We compete with what’s available in English. must-watch. Sure, that is all the more would provide a television service which While language is of course at the challenging in a global market, but it is would include programmes to meet the core of S4C, modern Wales means a not beyond us to break new ground in varying needs and tastes of the whole modern approach to fulfilling the needs entertainment as other cross-platform Welsh speaking population. of our population. Generally speaking media organisations worldwide are It was what TV channels did back we’re a nation of two languages – but doing. then. In the mould of established the dynamic is far more subtle than At S4C, we already stream services, S4C would be a home for that. Some people are making an effort programmes on the internet – live and children’s programmes, as well as mature to speak Welsh and want programmes on demand. Innovative services like Ti Fi comedy, plus specific programmes which help them to do so. This may not a Cyw shows how we embrace the age for agricultural communities along always mean programmes about learning of social media, and the fact that many with others for a more cosmopolitan Welsh – but it will always mean providing people these days are comfortable using audience. A full range of programmes to programmes which are genuinely multiple methods of communication at suit the full range of people – and we’d interesting and pitched at a linguistic the same time. provide it all in Welsh. level that enables people to follow what’s As in all walks of life, there are limits Even in those days of relative stability being said. to what we can afford to provide and we within the UK broadcasting industry, the But the major challenge in this need financial security in order to invest rumblings of change were already being regard is for our programmes to speak in future-proofed services. However, the felt. The BBC had long since been given a in a voice that is accessible and familiar next step for us is to truly burst out of that second channel – and used that channel to the bulk of the population. This won’t box in the corner of the living room – the to target specific audiences. It was a always please linguistic purists, but it box that dominated our thinking back fairly subtle thing at that time, but such will strengthen the connection between in 1982, and establish S4C as a constant rumblings were the precursor to what the audience and their channel. After information and entertainment machine would be an explosion of opportunities all, unless we listen to the audience and which reflects and responds to the to provide specific content to specific provide what they tell us they want, people of Wales wherever and whenever groups of viewers. one would have to ask what we are they choose. As we now know, that explosion trying to achieve. took place around the time of the The proliferation of media and video millennium. As a result, we now have in particular, means that now I can sit at almost countless TV channels – many home of an evening and choose from specialising in programmes for a specific content from anywhere in the world demographic or interest group. We to watch, listen to, play or interact have online media available every with. And the fact that so much of that minute of every day at the touch of a content is in English, means there is Ian Jones is Chief Executive of S4C.

14 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org

Radical tax varying powers

recommended for Wales 1 John Osmond examines the Silk Commission’s first report advocating more financial autonomy for the Welsh Government Changing Union In its first reportEmpowerment and On income tax the Silk Commission proposed Responsibility: Financial Powers to Strengthen that each of the three rates – 20p, 30p and Wales published in November, the Silk 45p – be reduced in Wales by 10p, allowing the Commission recommended greater power for Welsh Government to decide to what extent they the Welsh Government to vary income tax than wanted to restore the level in any of these bands, was granted to the Scottish Government in the if at all, or even to increase them. If the rates in Scotland Act 2012. The Commission proposed Wales were to be set lower than in England, the allowing Wales to vary the rate on each of the Treasury would deduct a sum equivalent to the three current income tax bands separately, lost revenue from the block grant. This change Articles whereas the Scotland Act requires any variation would be subject to a referendum that Silk Radical tax to be the same in each band. suggests could be held in 2017. varying powers There is potential now for this The requirement in the Scotland Act that recommended recommendation to be taken up in Scotland, any income tax changes should be identical for Wales demonstrating the dynamism that is inherent across all three bands has led many to worry in the asymmetry of the different devolution that it may prevent the powers being used Challenge facing settlements across the UK. Normally it is Scotland at all. Any increase or decrease in the rate unionist parties that sets the pace. On this occasion it could be the Scottish Government might wish to set in Scotland Wales. Following such interconnections is central for the basic rate would also have to apply Why we need to the Changing Union project being undertaken automatically to the other rates. Similarly, any devolution in by the IWA in collaboration with the Wales reduction in the top rate would also have to be reverse Governance Centre at Cardiff University and applied to the basic rate. Cymru Yfory/Tomorrow’s Wales. The project, The Silk Commission clearly believe this to funded by the Nuffield Foundation and Joseph be too inflexible, because the amounts raised in Rowntree Charitable Trust, is tracking and each band vary so much. In Wales a penny on influencing the devolution debate across the UK the basic rate for our 1.3m taxpayers would be between now and the Scottish independence worth £180m – a not inconsiderable amount - referendum in autumn 2014. while a penny on the 4,000 top taxpayers would A central part of this effort is to pull together yield only £4m. evidence for the Silk Commission and it is Indeed, it is arguable that it might pay the noteworthy that its first report contains a number Welsh Government to decrease the level of the of references to the evidence presented by top rate, by say 5p or even 10p, since that would the project’s Finance Working Group, chaired encourage wealthy people to move across by former Finance Minster in the Welsh the border into Wales, with the potential of Government, Professor Andrew Davies. A key significantly increasing the Welsh tax take. part of the Group’s evidence, taken up by the Silk This speculation illustrates one of the Commission, was that the Welsh Government commission’s arguments in favour of devolving should have the power to set the income tax rate significant tax powers, that it would enable the separately in each of the tax bands. political parties to offer the Welsh electorate a The proposal is part of the Silk Commission’s real choice on taxation and public spending. It package of 33 recommendations including full also claims that its proposals would incentivise devolution of business rates, stamp duty, landfill economic growth. If implemented in full they tax, aggregates levy and - with a nod to ongoing would be sufficient to raise about 25 per cent of debates over the future of - long- the Welsh Government’s budget. haul rates for Air Passenger Duty. It also proposes giving the Welsh Government the power to create new taxes or levies, such as the so-called tax on plastic bags. John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

16 | 1/PoliticsChanging Union

Challenge facing unionist parties in Scotland Jeremy Purvis outlines the argument for Devo Plus In the Scottish referendum debate roughly the Scottish TUC will report on policy and especially in Wales. It is why 30 per cent support independence, 30 per development work it has underway we were pleased to able to brief the cent the status quo, with a large middle early next year. Even so it is possible to First Minister on our ground of 40 per cent wanting something identify common ground between all proposals in November. inbetween. That something – Scotland three unionist parties, which includes: The unionist parties will have to decide remaining part of the UK but with more whether they believe it is better to go into powers for its Parliament, is known as Devo • Greater tax accountability. the 2014 campaign with three distinct Plus. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey • Maintaining solidarity with UK positions and hope the people trust them has revealed consistent support for it over funding support. individually to deliver some of this post the last few years, most recently in June, as • Reforming UK bodies, including the referendum. Alternatively, and preferably, shown in the accompanying table. , to better reflect the they could coalesce around a set of Devo A key issue is whether the Unionist permanence of the Scottish Parliament Plus proposals so that the people can parties will coalesce around Devo Plus within the constitution. understand the positive consequences that in the run-up to the independence would follow from voting No. Similarly, the referendum which will be held in autumn All these are at the heart of the Devo Yes campaign will have to outline clearly 2014. The signs so far are encouraging but Plus group’s proposals. Its first report, what independence actually means. there are major decisions to be made. A Stronger Scotland within the UK, We have been working very closely The Devo Plus group is a cross party advocated greater tax devolution to with all the parties, the trades unions and body formed at the beginning of 2012 with enhance fiscal accountability. A second others, to build a coalition around which membership of MSPs from the Labour, report, Improving Social Outcomes in a unified position can be presented that Liberal Democrat and Conservative groups Scotland, outlined areas where more the people understand. in the Scottish Parliament. Since its launch devolution of welfare can take place to The simple fact is that for the very the Scottish Liberal Democrats have ensure better social policy delivery. A third large number of people in the ‘middle published their proposals for a UK-wide report, A New Union, to be published by ground’ who support Devo Plus will federal solution. The Labour leader in the end of the year, will advocate: make a judgement on the basis of their Scotland, Johann Lamont, has established answers to the following two questions: their party’s devolution commission tasked • A permanent Scottish Parliament that with considering further areas where can only be dissolved it if agrees. 1. Will the proposition outlined by the powers can be devolved. Meanwhile, the • That Westminster cedes sovereignty over SNP for a Yes vote best represent Conservatives have moved away from legislating in currently devolved areas. their best chance of gaining seeking to draw a ‘line in the sand’ with no • That the Barnett formula used additional powers? further devolution, to a more open minded to distribute block funding to the 2. If they vote No can they trust the view on further powers after the 2014 vote. devolved administrations, is put on a unionist parties to deliver further Of course, these three policy statutory footing. reforms to the devolution settlement? positions are all different, and in particular we await what the Scottish This approach has great relevance for Our approach, for the unionist parties to Labour Party will propose. In addition, the rest of the UK beyond Scotland coalesce around Devo Plus, presents the strongest basis on which a deliverable and long term arrangement between Thinking about Scotland’s constitutional future, which of the following Scotland and the rest of the UK can be statements most closely matches your views on this issue? secured. This is now a key part of the Scotland should remain part of the UK with the increased substance of the debate in Scotland. The powers outlined in the Devo Plus proposal 41% outcome will have repercussions for the Scotland should remain part of the UK with the same whole of the . devolved powers it has at present 29% Scotland should become a fully independent country, separate from the rest of the UK 27% Jeremy Purvis was Liberal Democrat MSP Some other view 4% for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale from 2003 to 2011 and is the leader of the Source: IPSOS/ Mori 7th to 14th June 2012, sample 1003 adults in Scotland. Figures rounded by MORI Devo Plus cross-party group in Scotland.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 17 1/Changing Union

Why we need devolution in reverse Adam Price detects a stirring of the tectonic pates that underpin Europe’s political map

It’s eighty years since events in Spain galvanised an entire political generation in Wales. The winds of change we are witnessing today in Bilbao and Barcelona may prove every bit as defining for the emerging 21st Century Parti Québécois leader Rene Lévesque acknowledging supporters during a provincial election in Montreal in 1973 generation of Welsh leaders. As I write that began the momentum towards the indecisive referendums in 1980 and 1995 when, in his words, Québec voted “yes, but not yet”. Could Scotland follow suit in autumn 2014? In his concession speech in 1980 Lévesque called a majority in favour of independence upon his followers to persevere À la prochaine fois! (until next time). has already been elected in the Basque Country, and Catalonia. ironic is the fact that ’s Modern Wales is far removed from Even Galicia which remained loyal to success over the next two years will the tribulations of the 14th Century. But the centralist Partido Popular of its native be the biggest factor in determining the parallels are intriguing. In its current son and Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy, the outcome of the referendum vote. form the United Kingdom is a carefully saw nationalist parties achieving almost a Polled recently by the Sunday Times, a constructed constitutional balancing quarter of the votes, a near-historic high. majority of Scots said they would vote act which nevertheless only functions In Flanders the pro-independence N-VA for independence if they thought the through the tacit acceptance by the has just taken control of Antwerp City Conservative Lib Dem Coalition would minority nations of the Celtic Rim that Council, a potent symbol of their likely be returned at the next Westminster the Centre of Power ultimately reigns victory in the 2014 Federal Elections. election. That result depends upon the supreme. Challenge that – as Bruce Meanwhile, members of the Veneto prospects of an economic recovery. and Wallace did in 1314 – and then the Regional Assembly have voted 42-18 to George Osborne’s green shoots may yet whole unwieldy structure can soon come hold an EU-monitored referendum within supply the SNP their victory laurels. tumbling down. the year to become a sovereign republic But what does this mean for us in But herein lies the problem. The within the EU. Wales? Well, don’t discount the possibility Mexican wave of independentisme Given this constellation of events of some kind of domino effect. It’s sweeping through western Europe from it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that happened before. A little over a year the Ramblas to Renfrewshire is limited the tectonic plates of Europe’s political after Scottish independence was secured to those stateless nations that are more map are shifting. For so long a Utopian at Bannockburn, the Welsh in Glamorgan advanced economically than the central dream, the breakdown of nations once rose in rebellion under Llywelyn Bren. State they are seeking to leave. This is a prophesied by the Austrian visionary Edward Bruce, the King of Scotland’s club of the successful-yet-stateless whose Leopold Kohr and the Breton advocate brother, wrote to the Welsh offering to membership to which we in Wales can of L’Europe aux cent drapeaux, Yann help liberate them from the Norman only aspire. Fouéré, at long last seems close to yoke. Sir Gruffydd Llwyd wrote back to When a youthful , Phil becoming a reality. say that the Welsh were happy to accept. Williams and sat down And then, of course, there is Scotland. Llwyd was arrested for attempting to to write their classic Economic Plan for How fitting it is that a descendant of make Edward Bruce, already Overlord Wales in 1970 we could boast a level of the Cameron clan, fervent Jacobites of Ireland, Prince of Wales in a Celtic income of about 92 per cent of the UK all, should help pave the way back to Empire to rival the emerging Anglo- average. Factoring in lower inflation, Scottish independence. Even more Norman State. higher amenity value (Wales is, after

18 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Changing Union all, a beautiful country) and with some economic integration with the rest of Getting agreement on that will require well-targeted pruning of an over-weaning Britain. May the best narrative win. what Lévesque called a “beau risque” defence and foreign affairs budget, then What matters is our ability to deliver, say, between nationalists and unionists, to self-government (as it was called then) half a dozen transformational policies create in Gwyn Alf Williams’ term a was an imaginative but realistic political and mega-projects that can drive up our Commonwealth of Wales, constitutionally project. Today we are caught in the growth rate by 1 per cent a year over sovereign but, in international law, constitutional equivalent of Catch 22. the next 20 years. in free association with the successor Lack of self-government – and the levers We need to do this whatever happens British State, choosing to share with of economic power it supplies – has in the rest of the island. The Scottish Britain-wide institutions, including a immiserated the Welsh economy to just people may end up sending something directly elected confederal parliament, 73 per cent of the UK GVA per head. We of a mixed message to the political class those areas where the continuation of need the powers of independence to – as the Québécois did in 1980, and even common policies are in our own interest. prise us from this rut, but are deemed too more so in 1995 – in the words of the In other words, devolution in reverse. poor to afford them. great René Lévesque, the urbane chain- The Commonwealth of Wales – like those This need not be a manifesto for smoking Premier of Quebec, voting other half-way-houses, the Irish Free Welsh miserabilism. So what is the “yes, but not yet”. But if the break-up State and the Dominions of Australia and alternative? Wales needs a grand of Britain comes before the end of the Canada – will give us self-determination historical compromise between decade, then we in Wales will need to without separation, and the power to what I call ‘practical nationalism’ display a degree of intellectual agility. A build up our wealth in common. It’s an and ‘progressive Unionism’. On the union of England-and-Wales simply will opportunity we can ill afford to squander. economic front this means a pact to not work – look up bi-nationalism and drive Welsh prosperity back up to levels Austria-Hungary to work out why. Yet, close to the average in these islands. for the majority at least, independence is Adam Price is the former MP for For nationalists this will be a platform of a step too far at this stage in our political Carmarthen East and Dinefwr self-confidence for future independence. evolution. Which is why we need a and Co-Chair of Plaid Cymru’s For Unionists this may represent a closer meaningful interim arrangement. Economic Commission. Artist impression of the Corlan Hafren consortium’s proposal for the Severn Barrage.

2 Economy

Articles New Severn Barrage design would exploit two-way tides Wales beyond New Severn Barrage the wires A new economic design would exploit catalyst for the Valleys two-way tides Renewables versus nuclear Wind power’s economic impact Peter Hain makes the case for the biggest Welsh investment project in more than a generation

As by far the most exciting green The UK has set a target to cut harmful investment project before Wales, the emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 mainly Severn Barrage would have a bigger and by investing in renewable energy – a very more positive impact on the economy ambitious objective dependent upon than anything else for the foreseeable much more renewable energy. And there future. But that is not the only case for it. is no bolder commitment to delivering a It is the biggest renewable energy project greener Wales and a greener Britain than in Europe, the equivalent of around three the Severn barrage. nuclear power stations or over 3,000 With the second largest tidal range wind turbines. It will make a greater in the world in the Severn estuary, the contribution to tackling climate change Cardiff-Weston barrage would generate than any other green energy project. fully 5 per cent of the UK’s electricity Alternative schemes for the (16.5 terawatt hours a year) of clean, Severn such as reefs and lagoons low carbon, predictable and therefore offer only a fraction of the power. No base load energy. Unlike any previous consortium has proposed building them Barrage consortium, Welsh-based and they would have other serious Hafren Power will finance it entirely by disadvantages, including navigational private investment with no Treasury problems for shipping. grant required.

20 2/Economy

It will cost at least £25 billion to 1,026 turbines to be manufactured adopted an entirely different system. build and will be financed by Sovereign at a new factory at docks. Using Low-Head turbine technology Wealth Funds and other infrastructure And because these turbines have been and generating on both the ebb and the investors, providing the UK with a huge specifically designed to be as fish-friendly flow, it emulates the Severn’s natural tidal private-sector stimulus during a time as possible, they could be exported pattern. This allows for integration into of a chronic lack of private and public globally for a new generation of tidal the local ecology, making it permeable investment. This will be a massive boost power right across the world – another to fish and invertebrates, and minimising to the economies of and skilled jobs legacy. its effects on the Estuary, its banks and south-west England, with 80 per cent of The tidal manufacture industry tributary rivers. the investment being spent in the UK. is in its infancy. The Severn Barrage The Barrage will also act as a flood In contrast, according to the UK Energy has the opportunity to lead in design, protection barrier, without which 90,000 Research Centre, offshore wind imports manufacture and research and export properties and 500 square kilometres of 80 per cent of its equipment and services the industry across the world, with the floodplains around the Severn are at risk from abroad and only spends 20 per cent world’s second largest tidal regime being from global warming induced rising sea in the UK. harnessed to produce 5 per cent of the levels, saving the nation billions in flood Construction of the Barrage will take UK electricity needs as the working damage and defence costs. nine years and employ at least 20,000 example. Other countries have seized the The Coastal Habitat Management workers. Hafren Power plans to set up opportunity in developing renewables, Plan forecasts a loss in coastal habitat skills centres to train local workers – for example Germany which leads in of around 10 to 20 per cent in the next creating a highly skilled, well-paid jobs wind turbine design and manufacture. one hundred years and in the Severn legacy. It is estimated that construction Hafren Power is also prioritising Estuary the Cardiff Weston Barrage and manufacturing will indirectly bring research to limit the environmental would be invaluable in avoiding this. about another 30,000 jobs. Given the impact of the proposal. They are The ecology of the Severn is highly scale of the project it is possible that engaging with wildlife groups to minimise important to Britain. The various species this figure could be higher and the jobs the impact of the Barrage on fish and of bird and benthic (sea bottom) habitat longer-lasting than expected. bird life. There will be substantial funding availability around the Severn Estuary The Port Talbot area will receive a for up to 50 square kilometres of habitat are part of the rich tapestry of Britain’s massive investment and jobs injection compensation and displacement, to heritage. Hafren Power recognises because the gigantic concrete structures ensure a legacy of sustainability for the this and is putting a large percentage (caissons) will be built and assembled Severn. I would not have backed the of its private investment into detailed and then floated out from its deep-water project had these key ecological issues academic research, ensuring a greater casting yard. The other benefit is a legacy not been integral to its mission. understanding of the impact and effect of the largest deep water port in north Research suggests some aspects of the the Barrage will have on the Severn. west Europe which would be ideal for project could actually help to reinvigorate The proposal will be adjusted and the new generation of container ships the ecology and wildlife that co-exist modified on the basis of that research, – ULCs, Ultra Large Container ships – around the Severn where, for example, and angling and birdlife groups have which otherwise would have to find a numbers of the iconic Dunlin wading been invited to assess this research. port outside Britain. bird have declined drastically over the It is encouraging that there was However, the Barrage will not last decade because of global warming. broad support in the recent debate affect existing shipping to other south The environmental argument is in the Assembly and Carwyn Jones’ Wales ports, nor Bristol Port, because not between the status quo and the backing in principle when replying to the special locks would enable current size scenario post-Barrage. The status quo debate was welcome. He was right to ships to pass through without charge. is changing all the time, and will do so say that the Welsh Government should On the contrary – because of the new because of global warming anyway – be involved in the consultations even benign sea environment in the giant and for the worse. The real issue is how if all the consents will be delivered by ‘lake’ behind the barrage – there will be the new environment could be made the Westminster Parliament through a enormous new opportunities for marine most beneficial. ‘hybrid’ Bill. leisure and commercial activity currently Previous Barrage schemes attracted However, after recent meetings with rendered impossible by the Severn’s big criticisms because they trapped the the Prime Minister and the Secretary of fearsome current. water at high levels and released it at low State for Energy at which we have made There are also plans for the Barrage’s tide in a powerful surge. But Hafren have a strong case, the ball is very much in

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 21 2/Economy

One other potential benefit – though Construction is 100 per cent privately not one which is part of Hafren Power’s financed and the cost of price support plans – is an exciting option for road is offset by flooding cost savings of nearly and rail link over the top of the Barrage between Wales and , half-a-billion pounds a year, according to with both economic regeneration Government estimates opportunities, and an alternative to the Severn Tunnel for inter-city trains. If the relevant authorities wished to pursue this, the Barrage could easily allow for both road and rail links on top. But Hafren Power is rightly focusing exclusively upon the Westminster Government’s court. further 90 years. delivering the Barrage – that is more than The Barrage cannot proceed without Uniquely, however, for a renewable sufficient a task on its own. Government backing in principle which energy project of any kind, it costs the All in all – and with the necessary wildlife is needed for the private investors to public almost nothing. Construction is safeguards being integral to the design – commit. Time will have to be made 100 per cent privately financed and the the Barrage should be a no brainer. in Parliament by Government business cost of price support is offset by flooding managers to enable the necessary cost savings of nearly half-a-billion Private Bill to go through, providing pounds a year, according to Government planning consent. And, finally, an estimates. It will reduce overall consumer electricity contract will have to be electricity bills by 3.5 per cent a year on negotiated containing the usual price average over its life. So it would be the support mechanism for all renewable cheapest electricity source in the UK, 50- Peter Hain, MP for , was Secretary energy projects over 30 years – after 75 per cent cheaper than coal, gas, wind of State for Wales and a Labour which it will generate freely for at least a or nuclear for over 100 years. Government Minister for 12 years. 2/Economy

The Hauptbahnhof in Zurich, a similar city in size to Cardiff. Whereas on an average day 33,500 use the Welsh capital’s railway station, the equivalent figure for Wales beyond Zurich is 340,000. the wires

Mike Joseph argues that Switzerland offers a template to follow no rail network at all. There is only a in the provision of public transport across the whole country series of disconnected rail fragments, supplemented by a declining bus In a few years Wales will lose membership at the apex. They express modernity, network that, despite good intentions, of an exclusive but undesirable club of timeliness, and connectivity. Everywhere has failed to integrate meaningfully with three - European nations without a single it goes, electrification delivers a virtuous rail. How can west and north Wales mile of electrified railway. One huge spiral of growing usage and investment. possibly compete in economic and investment in electrification will at long And by signalling confidence in the social performance, in contrast to and in last enable Wales to part company with future, it becomes a major lever for competition with the electrified south- Albania and Moldova, although the latter economic and social development. east? Will we remain an inefficient rural is now seeking EU funding for electrifying Electrify the line and the people backwater, suitable terrain for preserved a line to Romania. In a few years, two will ride. Electrification has proved railways and Celtic theme parks? The in every three will finally beneficial wherever and whenever it has transport playing field is about to have modern commuter and high-speed been applied to a railway network. We become very uneven indeed. electric train services. have lost a century during which Wales This question is plainly one for Welsh This investment ends a century has been denied electrification (or any Government and Welsh democracy. Are during which Wales has been bypassed, other major rail investment) by London we content to see Wales further divided side-lined and starved of successive governments. It will be interesting to between an economically successful waves of rail innovation in Britain. Until see if the long delay means that pent-up and modernising south-east, and a rural this year’s electrification announcement, benefits will be all the greater. backwater? No London parliament or the last time Wales was in the forefront But there is another side to this government can be expected to have of rail investment was 1912. coin: one in three Welsh people will not such a debate. If we want the debate, we Of course, the decision, as finally be served by the new network. What must have it in . The future of amended to bring Swansea under transport future can be expected for the Welsh public beyond the wires, is hugely welcome. Rail greater part of Wales from to the electrified wires faces two problems: electrification means speed, energy Llandudno? If Swansea rightly feared efficiency, reduced noise, increased the consequences of being left out of the • The absence of credible cases for reliability, improved scheduling, better electric revolution, should Carmarthen, further electrification. acceleration enabling more stops Milford Haven and Aberystwyth now • The challenge of sustaining even the without sacrificing journey times. The fear their diesel-hauled future? Worse current level of bus service for the social hierarchy of transport esteem has still, in much of the rest of Wales vast tracts of rural Wales beyond buses at the base, and electric trains west and north of Swansea, there is the railway.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 23 2/Economy

Scattered small and often ageing lack of services, is one of the most notable they run everywhere. Where they don’t communities, significant distances failings of public transport in Wales. run, post buses, cable cars and ferries and difficult terrain - the picture is Disintegration is the common do. Above all, the whole operation runs familiar and daunting. Even so there experience of regular transport users. as one seamlessly integrated network. are occasional positive signs. When For example, at first sight Fishguard Because of this, the Swiss railway clock a rural transport innovation manages seems well served by public transport. is an icon of the country. Is it possible to to be established despite official One rail and six bus routes serve the draw meaningful comparisons between scepticism - as with the successful revival small . Yet very few connections Wales and Switzerland? of the Fishguard rail service - it turns between these services are possible, and For all their contrasts of wealth, out that people have the same travel all proposals to integrate the timetables peripherality/centrality, and needs and aspirations as anywhere are met with well-reasoned objections. independence/dependence, Wales and else - commuting to college and work There is neither commercial motivation Switzerland have surprising similarities. in Carmarthen, to shop and meet in nor a statutory requirement to deliver Both are mountainous countries Cardiff, to take time out in London, at the roadside the integration that is surrounded by larger neighbours. Both or flights from Manchester. There in discussed endlessly in Cardiff Bay. have densely populated urban belts to microcosm is the challenge and the Nevertheless, the idea continues one side of the country. The greater part opportunity. Further decline is easy, to guide public debate and of each country consists of extensive while a public transport revival for the consultation. The latest is being held mountainous regions with small highly whole of Wales beyond the wires seems by the Assembly’s Enterprise and scattered communities. Tourism is beyond reach, beyond imagining. Business Committee. Their ‘Inquiry a vital component of both national The usual response to this challenge into Integrated Public Transport economies. Both countries have been, comes in the form of the integrated Wales’ called for written evidence by in their time, world-class pioneers of transport debate. The convenience, November. If talking about integration railway investment and innovation. And independence and flexibility of the would only deliver it, we might now despite the majority of their population private car is taken as a benchmark, be in a better place. So what can be being highly urbanised, both countries against which to assess the performance done to inject credibility, ambition and draw strongly for their distinctive sense of public transport in delivering end-to- urgency into this debate? of citizenship and identity from the end journeys. Hardly surprisingly, public Switzerland is often, and rightly, remotest rural parts of their nation – the transport struggles to measure up. Indeed, seen as a country that has got its public Cefn Gwlad. Switzerland is slightly more poor connectivity, rather than an absolute transport right. Trains run on time, and than twice as populous as Wales, and slightly less than twice the size. So the population density of the two countries is similar, Wales with 382 people per square mile and Switzerland with 496. Now consider three cities of similar size: Cardiff (346,100), Bristol (433,100) and Zürich (380,500). On an average day 33,589 people arrive and depart at Cardiff’s main station, Cardiff Central. That equates to ten per cent of the city’s population. That seems impressive, and even more so when compared to Bristol Temple Meads which can only manage 23,038, a mere 5 per cent of the city’s population. The reason for the discrepancy is not hard to find. Coal gave south-east Wales a legacy of rail lines which survived Beeching to be reborn as a commuter network, today the most developed outside Britain’s main conurbations. Moreover, Cardiff’s main bus station is immediately outside Cardiff Switzerland’s railway system, which seems oblivious to mountainous terrain. Central. By contrast Bristol’s Broadmead

24 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 2/Economy

Bus Station is a 20 minute walk from taxpayer subsidy per passenger kilometre already being electrified, in south London Temple Meads, and Beeching closed every was 25.7 centimes. Ten years later, in and Tyneside. In that year, Wales’ first Bristol branch line he could, bequeathing 2008, this had dropped to 14.9 centimes. and only high-speed rail line was opened, the city a legacy of congestion that it is Productivity gains have contributed to carry the London boat train on its only just starting to tackle. to growth. Over the same period the journey to and from the transatlantic And what of Zürich? Every day number of people employed in public steamers at Fishguard. The line bypassed 340,000 people use its main station, the transport fell by 13.4 per cent, while the the slow bottlenecks of Neath, Swansea Hauptbahnhof. That is equivalent to 89 volume of transport services rose by 16 and Carmarthen, cutting many minutes per cent of the city’s population. The per cent. Passenger volumes have seen a off journey times. The line is still open statistic is eye watering. It demonstrates 30 per cent growth in demand since 1996. and used for freight and just one daily the real meaning of integrated transport. Each seat in the Swiss public transport return passenger journey, the lunchtime For it is a consequence of every Swiss network is used eleven times a day. Fishguard boat train, still timetabled as train, tram, bus, Postbus and ferry Where should we begin in Wales? one of the fastest long-distance routes running in a synchronised transport Perhaps with the plethora of transport anywhere in Britain, Cardiff to Llanelli system that reaches every remote valley operators. Is that a particular problem in about an hour. However, it is barely and Alp. The Swiss travel on average for us in Wales? In Switzerland, 280 open, with the restoration only this winter 2,422 kilometres a year by train, making separate operators combine to provide of a double track between Swansea and them the world leaders in train use. one seamless passenger service. Could Llanelli - it was singled by Thatcher in The achievement rests on much that be done here? the 1980s. There is a serious threat of more than a synchronised timetable. In fact it turns out that Welsh public closure to the Swansea by-pass line and 2.3 million Swiss adults carry a half-fare transport is already highly concentrated its survival should be a matter of concern travel card. A further 400,000 have a in just two boardrooms, in for any long-term Welsh transport plan. full-fare travel card, and another million and Berlin. Stagecoach, of Aberdeen, But the opening of the high-speed have travel passes for specific routes. owns First Group which holds the line in 1912 proved not a new beginning Thus well over half of all Swiss adults Great Western franchise and operates but a culmination for public transport in buy discount travel passes. buses across south Wales from Cardiff Wales. Within two years, we were at war It is not hard to see why passes are to Haverfordwest. First Group was also and the transatlantic dream was at an so popular. They are valid for all 280 expecting to hold the north Wales line end. We have had to wait a century for transport operators in Switzerland. as part of the West Coast franchise until the next serious investment. So it takes Single tickets are also valid across all UK Government miscalculated the risk, an effort of memory to recall that until operators for the end-to-end journey. throwing all franchising into limbo. 1912, Wales had been at the forefront In addition passes offer entire-route Deutsche Bahn in Berlin runs all other of railway innovation since 1804 – from discounts regardless of the terms of rail services in Wales through Arriva, and Trevithick’s first railway steam engine individual operators involved. The also operates buses across north and mid at Penydarren, to Brunel’s broad gauge passenger and his or her journey is Wales, and from Aberystwyth to Cardiff. high-speed Great Western running (in the central consideration, not the Two operators in Wales; 280 in 1845, two years before the first Swiss convenience of the individual operator. Switzerland. Given the political will, it is railway) the fastest rail service in the It might be thought that Swiss hard to see why the job of coordinating world, and of course producing and transport reached this developed state public transport in the public interest exporting the coal that energised the many years ago and has since rested, should be any harder in Wales than world’s railways. perhaps even stagnated, but far from in Switzerland. The world now rightly regards Swiss it. From 1992 to 2008, the number of The problem, I suggest, is not achievements in public transport with stations and stops in the public transport the scale of the task but the lack of respect. It is equally worth remembering network increased by 30 per cent, and ambition. Wales has never been offered Wales’ remarkable contribution to the total route length grew from 21,709 a comprehensive vision of what public the first transport revolution, and very to 28,075 kilometres, with recent growth transport can and should be, that necessary to remember it, if we wish to being largely from new bus and Postbus comes remotely near the daily reality believe that we can do it again. services. In addition 90 kilometres of in Switzerland. With this electrification new rail routes including a 40 kilometre decision, London has handed the onus tunnel and a new urban underground of a unified public transport future for have opened in recent years. Wales back to us. Has all this come about at huge Which brings this discussion back Mike Joseph is a journalist public expense? It seems not. In 1998 the to 1912. In England, railway lines were and broadcaster.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 25 2/Economy Aerial artist impression of the proposed Circuit of Wales to the north of . A new economic catalyst for the Valleys

Sebastian Barrett believes range of sectors. The development will The project is well-timed, with the the will be a attract upwards of 750,000 people a year improvements to the A465 Heads of the Circuit of Wales into the area. In short the Circuit of Wales Valleys Road scheduled to be completed game-changer will drive change and transform lives in prior to Circuit of Wales’ proposed the Welsh valleys. launch date in 2015. The Circuit should The Circle of Wales will have a also contribute to the economic rationale central role in developing the concept for further infrastructure development The Circuit of Wales, a £250 million of a ‘city region’ linking Cardiff with in the Valleys, in particular the proposed motor sport development in Ebbw Vale its Valley hinterlands. It will have a high-tech Cardiff Metro system. This will be more than a racing track. It will central role in addressing the imbalance would put in place fast, regular, and bring international events such as Moto between the Heads of the Valleys and reliable connectivity between Heads of GP, World Superbikes and Touring Cars the Welsh capital. the Valleys to the capital city. to Wales. But it will also have the facilities The Heads of the Valleys Circuit of Wales will give a boost to to carry out high-end engineering Development Company is the those pressing the case for the Cardiff together with a technology centre consortium driving the motor sport Metro because its flow of visitors will put capable of attracting global automotive project. It comprises a range of global numbers on the line, not to mention the companies to undertake research into leaders in infrastructure and investment, people travelling to work. It will be as green transport. Alongside will be on-site as well as motor sport experts. They much about people going up , industrial units and hotels. chose over other as coming down. The project is set to bring £50 million locations in the UK for three reasons: The combination of a world-class a year into the Welsh economy. It will motor sport circuit and a new Metro bring more than 3,000 jobs during the • Impact on the area. system would re-establish the economic construction phase, and over 6,000 • Natural topography, which makes for network between the more deprived permanent jobs once the site is fully a more interesting racetrack. areas of south Wales. Together they operational. These will be across a broad • Good road links to the rest of Britain. present Ebbw Vale developing Blaenau

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economic catalyst for the Valleys and its economy. As well as reinforcing the case for new investment in the transport network, it will provide spin-offs in terms of tourism. People who will be arriving at a big event will also want to explore the wider area, spending their money in pubs, restaurants, hotels and bed and breakfasts across the whole of south east Wales. Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council is shortly to decide on the Artist impression of the paddocks to the rear of the Circuit’s main stand. planning application for the Circuit of Wales. It has an opportunity to embrace Gwent a quite different persona as a Since the decline of coal and steel this vision for a sustained economic hub for activity within the region. the Valleys have not experienced large- regeneration of the Heads of the Valleys The Circuit of Wales will give the scale private sector-led infrastructure Valleys by building stronger links with Valleys more to bring to the table, developments. The Circuit of Wales will the Welsh coastal region. balancing the attention inevitably provide just this in a sustainable way. given to Cardiff when the city region With its world-renowned motor sport concept is discussed. For many of the events, it’ll be the equivalent of having communities in Blaenau Gwent such as four Ryder Cups a year in Blaenau Sebastian Barrett is a freelance Blaina which have lost their economic Gwent, drawing a large proportion of journalist involved in communications role can now look forward to becoming people to spend money in the local area. for some of the biggest construction dormitory . The Circuit of Wales will be a new projects in Wales. 2/Economy

Renewables versus nuclear Carl Clowes considers the implications for north Wales of Hitachi acquiring Wylfa

Hitachi’s purchase of Wylfa is yet of the economic downturn throughout consistently supported the development another episode in the saga that has Europe. At the same time, the of Wylfa B, both in his present role beleagured this site since the early consequences of the Daiichi meltdown and previously within the OneWales 1980s. Then, under a programme at Fukushima began to be realised and Government with AM driven by Prime Minister Thatcher, Germany agreed to phase out nuclear his Plaid Cymru Deputy also in support. the UK was scheduled to have 11 energy by 2022. Nevertheless, Plaid Cymru’s policy new nuclear power stations. In the There was now a moral question. remains opposed to new nuclear build. event only Sizewell B saw the light of Should a country which was not Although Wales does not have day as, not surprisingly, following the willing to allow a technology within responsibility for sanctioning the build Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the idea of its own borders be supportive of such of new nuclear power station, we a new generation of nuclear stations a development elsewhere? I recall do have devolved responsibility for disappeared off the agenda. attending the AGM of E-ON in Essen in waste management. So, since there That remained the response of 2010 when the writing was clearly on can be no new nuclear station without successive governments until 2005 when the wall. In response to a question, the waste, could this be a faultline in the Prime Minister Blair commissioned yet Chief Executive made it abundantly clear Westminster programme should Wales another energy review. An earlier one before the 5,000 shareholders present perchance say “no”? in 2002 hadn’t produced the result he’d that there was “no concrete agreement Throughout the early 1980s, and over hoped for. “We don’t want to see the lights to go ahead with new nuclear build the last decade, People Against Wylfa go out,” became the Ministerial mantra in in Wales or elsewhere”. These factors B (PAWB) has been deploying the very anticipation of the outcome. When it was came to a head in March this year when real arguments against nuclear power published in 2006, the report indicated Horizon formally pulled out of Wylfa and whilst, at the same time, offering practical that a new nuclear build was clearly back sought a buyer for the site. alternatives both for employment and in business. This has remained the case Since March, Russian interest, energy, recently published in A Manifesto at Westminster ever since, with Labour through Rosatom, came and went as did for Môn – a strategy for sustainable and now the Conservative and Lib Dem interest from the state-owned Chinese employment. With 2,400 currently on coalition fully behind the case for new company Guandong Nuclear Power in the job-seekers list for the island, PAWB’s nuclear power stations. conjunction with the French company manifesto has shown how some 2,650 EDF bought the land adjacent to Areva. The arrival of GE Hitachi on sustainable jobs can be created, 1,650 of the Magnox plant at Wylfa in Spring the scene with an, as yet, unlicensed which would be in the renewable energy 2007 only to sell it that same summer to Advanced Boiling Water Reactor was a sector – primarily off-shore wind, sea RWEnpower and E-ON who combined surprise to many. energy, photo-voltaics and conservation. to form Horizon Energy. Horizon The political response from Wales The strategy shows how a further 1,300 became the flag bearer for a new Wylfa to new development at Wylfa has been jobs can be created in the agriculture, B station and gained support from confused. Wales does not have devolved tourism and IT sectors. Add to this the 600- all levels of politicians on the island. responsibilites for energy production 700 jobs that will remain at Wylfa during The driver for this momentum was over 50Mw and yet , as the 25-year decommissioning period and undoubtedly the need for employment First Minister, made it perfectly clear in a more than adequate number of jobs can and who can deny the need in a county the in June 2007, and repeated be stimulated without any of the inherent which, with a GVA at 55 per cent of the frequently subsequently, that Wales did risks found with nuclear. UK average, is the lowest in the UK. not need new nuclear. This view was Public attitudes towards new The development of Wylfa B was borne out by the Environment Minister nuclear are sceptical. A study seen to be a panacea, an answer to Jane Davidson who, in a written reply carried out by researchers from all our economic woes in north-west in 2009, quantified Wales’s usage of the Department of Social Sciences Wales and, unquestioningly, diverted electricity as 24TwHrs per annum at Bangor University in 2010 (pre- attention from a more meaningful – and whilst having a capacity of 33TwHrs per Fukushima) showed that jobs in balanced – economic development plan annum from renewable resources. renewable energy had the support of for the region. We then saw the impact First Minister Carwyn Jones has two-thirds of the area’s population with

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only a third supporting nuclear. People are mindful of the many potential threats that Ynys Môn faces if Wylfa B goes ahead. Because the radioactive waste from the new generation of reactors is particularly ‘hot’, it will need to be kept on site for up to 150 years in a store equivalent to the size of three football pitches. With RAF Y Fali just a minute’s flying time away, and several near-miss air accidents reported in the area, there is little to reassure the public that the situation is safe for the next 150 years. Further, the threat of terrorism is no longer an abstract possibility and, with Demonstration by PAWB (People Against Wylfa B) in Llangefni. pilots from various countries being trained at Y Fali, the opportunities for generally regarded as the front-runner to justify (Financial Times, 30 July 2012). ‘green’ on ‘blue’ style attacks have to in nuclear energy, has decided to cut its More specifically, nuclear power is more be a cause for concern. We are told reliance from 80 per cent to 50 per cent expensive than offshore wind power. that technology has moved on but under President Hollande. However, Generation costs for offshore wind are nothing can combat such threats and Germany, the largest economic driver currently about £140/MWh with their the reality is that human and mechanical in western Europe, provides the best costs expected to fall one-third by 2020” error frequently underpin most major example of the way ahead. In June 2010 (, 13 June 2012) incidents. This was the finding in an they produced as much energy from There is little doubt that the only independent report, following the photo-voltaics in the one month as is way new build will take place at Wylfa Fukushima incident. According to planned by the UK for the whole of 2020. and elsewhere is if the government the report, the crisis was the result The arrival of Hitachi in Anglesey is persuaded to offer a ‘strike price’ of “a multitude of errors and willful is a distraction. At a time when Japan sufficiently high to subsidise the companies negligence” by the government, safety is phasing out its reliance on nuclear concerned. The reality is that, should officials and the plant’s operator, Tokyo energy and Hitachi have lost a large part new nuclear stations come on stream Electric Power (Lessons from Fukishima, of their anticipated portfolio in their own in the 2020s, their need would have by a group of independent scientists country, they have paid an exorbitant largely disappeared as the contribution commissioned by Greenpeace). sum for what is essentially agricultural of renewable energy grows exponentially Wasn’t Wylfa fined £0.5m by the land alongside a station scheduled to year-on-year. Sadly we, the taxpayers, Nuclear Inspectorate in 1993 for breaches begin decommissioning in 2014. would remain carrying the financial of safety guidelines? Further, the scale of This Hitachi decision coincides with burden long into the future and the legacy the proposed development – eleven times a new study by Renewable UK which of waste for generations to come is one for the size of the existing site – would have a shows that, on current projections, which nobody has a response. profound impact on the island community. renewable energy will power over There is now a commercial race The huge influx of some 6,000 temporary one in ten UK homes by 2015 and will around the world to take advantage workers (many of whom would choose overtake the capacity of nuclear power of the rapidly-growing market for to stay) would exacerbate unemployment by 2018. There is little doubt that the renewable sources of power. We should at a later date and worsen existing economics of new nuclear are flawed be competing vigorously in that market, pressures on local people for housing and in the years ahead and there are serious reaping the benefits in jobs and earnings. the Welsh language. questions as to why Hitachi would We need strong political leadership For those who doubt the way ahead choose to invest here now. which acknowledges that reality. as outlined in PAWB’s manifesto, one Jeff Immelt, Chief Executive of only needs to look at the rest of Europe General Electric, one of the world’s where the renewable energy agenda largest suppliers of atomic equipment, Carl Clowes founded the Nant is developing apace. The majority of has said that nuclear power is so Gwrtheyrn Trust in 1978, is Honorary European countrues have turned their expensive compared with other forms of Consul for Lesotho and authored the back on nuclear energy. Even France, energy that it has become “really hard” PAWB Manifesto.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 29 2/Economy The Toisa Warrior carrying out grouting procedures during the installation of wind turbine foundations at Gwynt y Môr off Rhyl in Liverpool Bay.

Wind power’s economic impact Mark Fleming assesses the community spin-offs that can accompany wind farm developments

Wind farm contributions to local developing four sites that offer companies alone, sustained hundreds communities have long been hidden substantial annual community of contract jobs, while sparking a away, only spoken of in whispers prior investment opportunities - at Taff new apprenticeship scheme that will to the outcome of planning for fear of Ely, worth up to £90,000 a year; at continue year on year to train and prejudicing the decision-making process. Mynydd y Gwair some nine miles north employ young Welsh recruits into skilled, Now, however, communities are far of Swansea, worth up to £240,000 engineering roles. more benefits savvy, and there are high a year; and at Brechfa Forest in The windfarm will generate enough expectations of funds to accompany south of Rhydcymerau, energy from wind to power almost a wind farm applications. Today no worth up to £150,000 subject to the size third of Wales’ 1.2 million households. developer would consider making an of the finally approved wind farm. Over and above this, however, the application without including robust But it is with RWE npower project will result in an investment plans for community spin-offs. renewables’ Gwynt y Môr offshore wind of some £19 million into north Wales Last year RWE npower renewables, farm in north Wales that the potential is communities over the 25-year or so one of the biggest operators in most evident. A €2 billion project that lifetime of the scheme - £768,000 a year Wales, invested £313,000 in Welsh will be operational by the end of 2014, index linked to inflation. communities. And this could increase Gwynt y Môr will consist of 160 turbines To ensure that this money is by a further £1.7 million if the company off Rhyl in Liverpool Bay. invested according to the priorities is successful in gaining consent for wind Since onshore construction of the communities themselves one farm sites in development. work began in 2011, the project has of the largest consultation exercises In south Wales RWE NRL is invested over £80 million into Welsh ever undertaken by the industry was

30 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 2/Economy commissioned a year ago, engaging with over 1,000 people including the general public, business community, voluntary sector, local authorities and elected representatives. The responses are currently being analysed and will inform the community initiative that will begin once the windfarm comes on stream in 2014. A further £690,000 over the three years of construction has also been put aside and is being invested across Conwy and Denbighshire to support local tourism initiatives. Conwy and Denbighshire county councils are working together to suggest schemes designed to secure maximum match funding. Competition for wind farm community funding is high, not least of all from cash-tight local and community bodies eager to find alternative ways of plugging public service funding gaps. One of the two offshore substations at Gwynt y Môr in Liverpool Bay. The challenge is to deliver tangible, transparent benefits to aid sustainable renewables are starting to ‘box clever’ • Community ownership of turbines. development of communities, whilst and are looking at a range of options. supporting local and regional strategic For example, with some of its larger • Contributions to reduced energy fees priorities in Wales and continuing to funds in rural areas, the company for the surrounding community. engage local people. is splitting its investment between Community investment funding community funding and a dedicated • Looking to significant supporting has a key role to play in helping Welsh economic development fund. Proposals infrastructure, such as Grid upgrades, Government achieve its aim of maximising for this fund are being explored with to become a source of community the economic benefits from the delivery the wider business, regeneration and benefit. of its green agenda. However, in some economic communities. The aim is to communities, the levels of funding find ways of generating longer-term • Giving consideration to top-slicing offered are such that they could become income for the area, perhaps through funding to contribute towards important infrastructure projects.

The challenge is to deliver tangible, A smarter approach to investing in local transparent benefits to aid sustainable communities is inevitable. The challenge development of communities, whilst for the renewables industry is to build on its history of engaging local communities supporting local and regional strategic and empowering community priorities in Wales and continuing to representatives to make funding decisions. Maximising the impact of the engage local people. long term, reliable and highly flexible funding delivered by onshore wind farms is a great opportunity for the future regeneration of Wales. overwhelming for the very communities skills development, support for higher they are intended to support. education, or helping unlock local So, under the influence of the business barriers. Government’s Localism agenda, Other issues and ideas that are being Mark Fleming is Senior PR Officer for developers like RWE npower considered include: Wales with RWE npower renewables.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 31 False prospectus underpins 3 Natural Resources Wales Politics Jon Owen Jones indentifies groupthink policy making & Policy behind the creation of Wales’s biggest quango

In April next year Natural Resources Wales, that it supports were likely to be resistant to with 2000 staff, will assume the functions of what would appear to be a take-over by the three very different organisations: one entirely Environment Agency which has more than Welsh body, the Countryside Council for double the staff. I can see no other reason for Wales; a largely Welsh body with some shared inclusion of Forestry Commission Wales. A Articles Britain-wide functions, Forestry Commission three-way merger looks more balanced and False prospectus Wales; and a completely integrated Wales and holds out the prospect to the Countryside underpins England body, the Environment Agency. The Council for Wales of managing 6 per cent of Natural amalgamation has depended on a business Wales’s land. Resources Wales case which forecast savings of £158 million In December 2010 the Environmental over ten years. Even before the new body has Department attempted to get the then Labour/ Rise of the opened its doors this forecast is falling apart. So Plaid Cabinet to agree this proposal. Agriculture Twitter why is Natural Resources Wales being created? was unhappy about Forestry’s inclusion and generation The policy began to develop two and a half Finance was unhappy with the costs and so the Public years ago within the Environment Department proposal was withdrawn. What then followed intellectual of of the previous Assembly administration. Its over the months leading to the Assembly world history Minister, Jane Davidson, and her senior civil elections was a strange process of manifesto Education servant, Mathew Quinn, had enjoyed a high osmosis. A very small group of people have to trumps coal in reputation amongst environment movements write manifestos on a wide range of policies. 21st Century largely on the strength of their aspirations and On many issues they have long established Wales the ambition of their targets. However, delivery policy but in other areas there is a blank canvas. was proving more difficult than declaration. Upon that canvas the influence of one or two Tesco’s law Our biodiversity target had not been met, our politicians and civil servants can be profound wind energy programme was becalmed, and and ‘groupthink’ can emerge. our ambitious target to reduce Wales’s carbon For whatever reason, three political parties emissions by 3 per cent per annum had no all made the same commitment to this merger. prospect of being achieved. However, Labour included an important On top of that there lurked a looming caveat, possibly as a result of last minute crisis, with the department trying to avoid lobbying by the First Minister. This was that taking responsibility either for or against a £1 the proposed merger should be subject to a billion gas power station in Pembrokeshire. detailed business case. Its two regulatory bodies, the Countryside With the benefit of hindsight I now think Council for Wales and the Environmental that the Forestry Commission and Mathew Agency, were at daggers drawn giving Quinn’s department had a very different completely contradictory advice and probably understanding of the caveat. We thought the would be again if Wylfa or the Severn Barrage business case was a test that the policy had were allowed to proceed. It’s not hard to to pass. On the other hand, they behaved as understand why the prospect of merging the though the policy was a test that the business two began to look attractive in Ty Hywel. case had to pass. They had initially assumed On the other hand the Countryside that there were considerable savings to be Council and the various environmental groups made by separating Wales from England in the

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should be the same or very similar than at present. The naivety of this assumption is staggering. Wales now has to enter new contractual arrangements, often with the private sector, in which we usually have no alternative providers. In other words they have us over a barrel. The new real costs are being closely guarded but I have heard that the Environment Agency functions alone are coming in at £28 million a year as opposed to the predicted £24 million. If that is borne out, it alone knocks a £50 million (allowing for inflation) hole in the headline benefit over the decade. The Minister was presented with a false prospectus and that false prospectus was presented to the Assembly. I must Forestry Commission Wales is one of three organisations being merged in the quango Natural Resources Wales, along with the Environment Agency Wales and the Countryside Council for Wales, yet it is the only one that will have assume that if the Assembly had been no representation on the new board – see overleaf. given more accurate figures they would not think it a good idea to disrupt the Environment Agency. However, finding In spite of our warnings the Minister, work of a highly regarded institution savings to justify the incorporation of John Griffiths, accepted the “robust” case struggling to cope with a devastating Forestry proved difficult. and presented it to the Assembly. His disease on Larch, another huge threat to Forestry Commission Wales believed recommendation was accepted. Ash, a massive wind farm programme, that some very optimistic assumptions were Now, some four months before and an ambitious government target made because a positive business case the Natural Resources Wales begins on increased woodland (without an depended on it. We requested that the case its work, real figures are beginning to instrument to deliver it). To do all of that be examined by the Wales Audit Office replace estimates and the “robust” case is within an administrative system that is before it was presented to the Minister. This disintegrating. As I write, the staff do not now going to be more expensive than the request got a very frosty response from know what pensions will be offered or one we had before is surely an idea that Mathew Quinn who instead appointed imposed upon them. What we do know would be rejected. an external consultant, Nigel Reader, a is that none of the options in the business Developing an idea or policy with a Board member with Natural England. He plan can be used. It seems likely that very small number of people and then pronounced that the case was “robust”. It is most staff will continue in their present ignoring all well placed voices to the significant that he has now been appointed scheme. That may suit some but this was contrary is not an isolated phenomenon to the board of Natural Resources Wales considered unacceptable in the business in the experience of Welsh devolved (see panel overleaf). case as it would involve maintaining staff government. Neither is promoting the After the business case was published in different schemes within the same body silent or compliant and excluding the there followed a consultation process. - an expensive and arguably unfair system. warner and the straight talker. Indeed, it In an article in the Winter 2011 issue of On ICT, the business case assumes has become a well-established practice. agenda I argued that the case was hugely a basic joint system will be available on The way most of the European Structural optimistic and even so could only make day one, with it gradually building more funds were wasted, the demise of the the thinnest of arguments for forestry. The capability, allowing efficiencies and savings , the creation supposed benefit of £158 million over ten to grow. We now know that nothing will of 22 health authorities, the support of years is almost entirely produced from be ready on day one but it might, crossed the Wales Ethnic Minority Association the Environment Agency. The business fingers, be ready after six months. Even if (AWEMA) are just some examples that case shows no benefit from Forestry for they meet that expectation it still means follow the same pattern. five years and only £11 million after ten that costs will increase and benefits But let us be fair, there are similar years. That case depended upon what we diminish and be delayed. examples of poor governance in other saw as highly unrealistic assumptions on As to buying in residual services, the parts of the UK. The Welsh distinction pensions, ICT and the costs of continuing business case assumes that as Wales will is that no politician or civil servant has to buy in services from the parent bodies. not require additional services the costs ever paid a price for conspicuous failure

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in Wales. In Westminster politicians Board of Natural Resources Wales and civil servants often avoid the consequences of their actions but often Professor Peter Matthews (Chair) has held a variety of r positions in the they do not. The two DEFRA ministers environmental field, including chair of the Northern Ireland authority for responsible for the plan to sell the Utility Regulation, deputy managing director of Anglian Water International, Forestry have been sacked and thanks to president of the European Water Association. He is a visiting professor at Branson’s deep pockets the civil servants Anglia Ruskin University. who messed up the West Coast rail franchise are suspended. Dr Mike Brooker holds two non-executive positions at the Wales Audit Office In England and in Scotland a failed and Natural Environment Research Council and was from 2001 to 2005 Chief policy can end your career but not so Executive of Glas Cymru/Welsh Water. here. When John Griffiths had to decide Rev Hywel Davies is the Director for Tearfund Wales and a Minister in Llangefni, if the case before him was really sound, he was chair of Menter Mon and Vice Chair of Anglesey Local Health Board and he would know that there was no danger is a Independent Member of the Betsi University Health Board. He to him if it proved to be a disaster in the has served on a number of public bodies, including Sports Wales. longer term. However, if he didn’t go through with it there would surely have Dr Ruth Hall is a non-executive member of the main Environment Agency been paradoxical accusations of weakness Board. From 1997 to 2005 she was Chief Medical Officer for Wales. in not pushing through the policy. In short, we have a system which punishes caution Dr Madeleine Havard is the Board Member for Wales for the Environment and fails to punish failure. Agency. She has held a number of academic posts and served on several Though I am sure he would never voluntary and statutory bodies. admit it, I think the First Minister Harry Legge-Bourke is a partner in the family-run Glanusk Estate centred probably agrees with much of that in southern Powys, which has: farming, forestry, fishery and major event analysis. Privately he would argue that operations. A former officer in the Welsh Guards (1992-2001), he also runs the solution is a much larger legislature in and owns a number of companies providing security, crisis management, which scrutiny is enhanced and regular procurement, training, data and document storage. He is Chairman of the ministerial reshuffles are possible. The United Usk Fishermans Association. trouble is that isn’t going to happen any time soon. What you could do is value Andy Middleton is a Countryside Council for Wales Member and founder those who tell you the truth (as they see director of the TYF Group, a sustainability education, consulting and adventure it) rather than those who tell you the organisation and Wales’ first carbon neutral business. ‘truth’ you would like to hear. In Welsh its Y rhai heb flewyn ar ei tafod (Without hair Morgan Parry is Chair of the Countryside Council for Wales, and a member of on their tongue). a number of statutory environmental bodies. His background is in science, local One last point on that business case government and the third sector, from where he promoted the understanding of which originally acknowledged a risk sustainable development in Wales. to the forest estate. Before publication, and without any consultation, that risk Nigel Reader is a Board member with Natural England and of the Marine was removed. Since it now seems quite Management Organisation. He was formerly director of finance with the likely that Natural Resources Wales will Environment Agency and the National Rivers authority. run short of money in the next few years Professor Lynda Warren has served on the Countryside Council for Wales, it will have three choices: to cut back on the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Environment Agency. She is staff and services, to get more funding Emeritus professor of Environmental Law at . from government, or to sweat its assets. The Forest Estate is worth hundreds of Sir Paul Williams, was formerly Director General Health and Social Services millions of pounds. Welsh Government and Chief Executive NHS Wales.

Jon Owen Jones is chair of Forestry Commission Wales.

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Rise of the Twitter generation Kevin Brennan examines the political impact of the internet revolution

In 2007 the Prime Minister, Gordon technology in ways both professions of the US Senate he had made similar Brown, appointed me as a Minister in have sometimes struggled to keep up remarks before. The press lobby, with its the Department of Children, Schools with. As Rose points out, the events of cosy familiarity with the freemasonry of and Families. One of my responsibilities 9/11 represent the last time a cataclysmic the Senate, paid little attention. was ‘cyber safety’ for children. We news story occurred before the age of But the newly emerging crop of commissioned a report by Dr Tanya social media. citizen commentators in the blogosphere Byron on the subject, and during the When millions witnessed passenger took issue with an openly segregationalist course of looking into the issue I decided jets flying into the World Trade Centre and racist campaign being praised. The to delve more closely into what my Towers in New York live on rolling furore grew exponentially online until teenage daughter was doing online. I television news, it was rightly hailed as eventually even the mainstream media knew she was a huge fan of the Harry an extraordinary news media event, as had to take note and to report a story Potter novels, and that she liked to make well as an appalling act of mass murder. they had initially ignored. Senator Lott fan videos on her computer. But the reporting was largely linear and was forced to resign and social media I asked her why she did it, and she traditional. The cameras of CNN were had its first major political scalp; and all said “my fans like them”. I said, “What fixed on downtown Manhattan as the this within a year of 9/11. Now social do you mean ‘fans’?” She then showed talking heads of the networks tried to media has become a preferred route for me one of her videos which had interpret events and the numbed public political resignation with even ex-Welsh attracted over 100,000 viewings. I was just watched. Secretary Cheryl Gillan letting the world flabbergasted, not least as most politicians If something similar occurred know of her demise on Twitter. could only dream of that kind of reach. today there would be millions actively In the way that the printing press Frank Rose’s The Art of Immersion participating in the events via social made books, and therefore knowledge, explores this brave, now not so new, media rather than passively receiving more widely available by reducing the world in 319 pages which read a bit like a the news. Viewers tweets would have cost of the distribution of information, frenzied Google search. Facts and stories offered insight and commentary. And so the internet has made information are pulled almost at random to tell his tale those at the heart of events would have universally available to anyone with of how technology has impacted upon had in their hands the means to film, access to a mobile phone. culture in the last two decades. To do so photograph, write and broadcast instantly In 1984 I spent seven months in he reaches across the globe and back in and immediately from the front line. with my future wife. Once a time to describe how humanity’s desire But social media played no part in week I would go with her to the University to tell stories, combined with the advent 9/11. Just a year later, however, the new where she was doing her degree. I headed of the internet have led to a new form of trend for blogging brought down the to the library to eagerly devour week-old public engagement with narrative. Republican leader in the US Senate. copies of the Sunday Times. This was Of course, this is not simply true of Senator Trent Lott made remarks praising the only way to get relatively up-to-date the novel, or film or TV or, more broadly, the 1948 Presidential Campaign of fellow information on what was going on in the entertainment. Politics and journalism Southern Senator Strom Thurmond. UK. For some reason BBC World service are being deeply impacted by interactive In the rarefied and genteel atmosphere radio was nowhere to be found on the

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the people have their for their characters, that information say directly? A dystopic is now often accessible online and or utopian vision? Pure can be manipulated by readers and democracy or cyber viewers. This more playful interaction mob rule? with narrative is the expectation of a Should we go to war generation of digital natives. with Iraq? You decide – When the web got going in the on Twitter. early 1990s it made the delivery Of course, the result of information to ordinary people might be a more brutal possible. It seemed when the dot com knee jerk politics with bubble burst in 2000 that the internet less consideration and might be little more than a fad. In fact, respect for minorities; but the opposite was true. The dot com perhaps I would say that businesses failed because they thought as one of those whose they could stake out territory and role would be abolished. guarantee revenue by being the first And what of to control the delivery of information. storytelling and the With the transition of the web from future of film, TV and provider of information to enabler of the book? Rose points participation, or web 2.0, as it became The 9/11 attacks on New York’s Twin Towers – “If something similar out how participation known, people now connected with occurred today there would be millions actively participating in events via social media rather than passively receiving the news.” now goes well beyond each other online through tools that reading the text, or developed Myspace, YouTube, Flickr, crowded Californian airwaves. A decade passively watching. In 2009 Betty Draper, eBay, Facebook and Twitter. later the internet made global news a character from the US TV series Just consider YouTube. Rose points instantly available. Now, combined with Mad Men, started tweeting. This is odd out that if three leading US TV networks the power of social media, the internet has because she is a fictional character, and had broadcast non-stop for the 60 odd played a huge part in momentous events what is more, a fictional character that years they have been in existence their like the Arab Spring. lives in the early 1960s when tweeting output would have been 1.5 million In political terms the implications was reserved for birds. A fan of the series hours of programming. That is less than could be even wider than the ability had decided to adopt her persona on users of YouTube uploaded in the first six of the new media to change which Twitter, and was joined by others playing months of 2008. The cultural fall out of politicians run a country. Representative fellow characters from the show. The this revolution is still not fully understood. democracy exists in part because of success of their tweets in inhabiting But it is clear that spontaneity, the impossibility up until now, due the skin of these fictional folk attracted participation and self-expression are by to practically and cost, of consulting many followers on Twitter and the TV products, as well as a blurring between everyone about everything all the characters came to life online. publisher and recipient, fiction and fact, time. Instead the people, or ‘plebs’ as The response of the series’ producers entertainment and advertising, story and the Tory Chief Whip might say, elect was the traditional one. In an attempt to game, politician and citizen. representatives to decide for them. protect their intellectual property they Making sense of this new power of the But what if a plebiscite could be held forced Twitter to shut down the accounts. reader, viewer and voter is a challenge on any issue at virtually no cost and The resultant outcry on social media for publishers, producers and politicians. with instant decision possible? Through led to a hasty retreat; anyway it was Although at times exhausting in his Google- the development of social media direct tremendous free publicity after all, even if like flitting from topic to topic, Rose each democracy is now technically viable the series creators weren’t directly being time focuses in sharply on the deep cultural and affordable for the first time since the paid for the use of their characters. Social implications of the internet age. ancient Greeks met in the agora. media had given them lives of their own. Information can be posted freely As Rose points out, it is natural online in any form, it can be accessed for us to want to immerse ourselves Kevin Brennan is Labour MP for almost for free, it can be discussed without in fiction. Traditionally this has meant Cardiff West. The Art of Immersion: limit, and it can be voted upon without being absorbed in a book, or film, but How the Digital Generation Is Remaking cost. It leads to the question ‘why not cut now can involve active participation Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way out the middle man?’ Why do we need in the narrative. Whilst it is common We Tell Stories by Frank Rose is published a professional class of politicians when that authors will construct a back-story by W.W. Norton & Company.

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Public intellectual of world history

Dai Smith looks back at the life of Eric Hobsbawm, consummate myth-buster and uncomfortable truth-teller

No young historian setting out to work in the fields of social and labour history in the 1960s could have been unaware of the Colossus that E. J. Hobsbawm already was in our discipline. His essays, published as Eric Hobsbawm – “… a truly global figure in ambition and achievement”. Labouring Men in 1964, had placed him securely amongst a cohort of writers and influentialThe Making of the English although there would be implications, public intellectuals - notably the historian Working Class in 1963, palpably did not. later, in that phrase and a more conflicted E.P. Thompson and the critic Raymond It was, in part, why Gwyn A. Williams, sense of what he came to think of as our Williams - who were going beyond our generational equivalent in Wales, more diminished meaning. orthodox economic and political history to dedicated his 1982 volume, The Welsh The original meaningfulness derived uncover lives and cultures hitherto hidden in Their History, to ‘Eric J. Hobsbawm, squarely from his knowledge of the history or mis-read. Master Craftsman’. of working-class struggle in south Wales. Amongst this brilliant cohort of There is ample evidence of this That was not common in academic thinkers, Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) mutual regard. If you consult the index circles, even if they were left-wing in stood out for the range of his scholarly of his reflective autobiography of 2002, sympathy. In 1959, in his breakthrough interests and the depth of his analytical Interesting Times, you will find amongst the book, Primitive Rebels, a study of pre- mind. He was truly a global figure in great historian’s encyclopaedic referencing industrial protests and millenarian ambition and achievement. As the of the countries of the world from A to Z, rebellion in Spain and Italy, he showed publications followed, decade by decade - several name-checks for Wales. Yet there his understanding of the different time notably his overarching masterpieces, The are none for Scotland or Ireland. Why capsules in which people lived in 19th Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The was this? Century Wales - their religious fervour Age of Empire, The Age of Extremes - he In a nutshell, because at both the and the spill-over into the riot and social covered world history from 1789 to the personal and professional level Wales discontent that affected us from Chartism 1990s in masterful fashion. was an important part of his life. Early to Syndicalism. And yet we in Wales, mining our own on in his career, even from the 1930s, Typically, he cites Gwyn Thomas’ history-from-below, could see from the off, the deep interest lay in his conviction of carnivalesque novels of the 1940s as and indeed throughout, that he included the centrality of our marginal country wonderful exemplars of worlds-turned- us in his perspective on the entire world to the practice of his politics and to the upside-down, such as ours had been. in ways which others, such as the dazzling philosophy of his history. And, from the For Hobsbawm, the coalfield was a Edward Thompson in his seminally 1960s, it was literally his second home, bastion of political solidarity to be placed

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in the Pantheon of European Socialism, non-pareil Eric Hobsbawm. once, the one in awe of the other. Then, alongside Paris’ Red Belt of Factories and Eric’s own links with Welsh historians in the past few years, as I brought my Turin’s militant Workshops. For he knew of my generation deepened as well as much-delayed Life of Raymond Williams our more contemporary history, too, from widened as he found our enthusiasm to a close, it was Eric who urged me on Tonypandy in 1910 to in 1936, congenial, our conferences of both and who chaired the book’s launch at and from Popular Front to Welfare State. academics and trade unionists around Birkbeck, his longstanding base in the His own adherence to communism, Llafur welcoming, and even our work University of London, in the summer of as a revolutionary creed beyond the as it appeared in print worthy of his 2008. It was an appropriately celebratory pragmatics of Labour politics, had begun critical attention. He was a considerable and abrasive occasion, no ‘easy’ when he was a Jewish teenager in Berlin influence on and benefit to that then examiner still. in 1931, and stayed with him as the burgeoning Welsh historiography which Wales meant too much to him for orphaned boy left for England and his has, I believe, often made the intellectual him to be easy on us. It was his task extended family in 1933. weather in Welsh public life over the last to remind us of why he valued us. So, Raymond Williams, who became a quarter century. when he introduced me at Hay to give life-long friend, met him in Cambridge in His personal connection was also the Raymond Williams Annual Lecture, 1939 where Hobsbawm, then a research profound, albeit at the other end of Wales, he spelled out what he felt had been student, was the leading light of the in Cwm Croesor, Meirionydd, where a the historic importance of this western Socialist Club where invited guests like kind of ‘Bloomsbury-in-Wales’ holiday peninsula of the British Isles in providing Arthur Horner, elected in 1936 as the nest of metropolitan lefties flourished in such an example to all who sought wider Communist President of the powerful the purlieus of the Kingdom of Clough human purpose and commonality than South Wales Miners’ Federation, came (Williams-Ellis). They felt at home and the defensiveness of identity politics could to speak. Horner died, virtually forgotten, thought and plotted and walked and ever offer. in 1968 but I can still remember the gossiped, and drank in The Ring in He abhorred the adventurism of thrill I felt when I read that year in Llanfrothen where a young Merfyn Jones celebrity and mere political opportunism, Hobsbawm’s magisterial survey, Industry gazed on and listened from behind his and said again it was why he had and Empire, that he regarded Horner as father’s bar, until he went away to do supported in the 1980s in the outstanding trade union leader of 20th work like their’s, albeit not with their his fight to salvage the Labour Party in Century Britain - only overshadowed by sometimes obtuse Anglophone slant. its institutional form - a very necessary Ernie Bevin because of the Welshman’s Increasingly, Eric felt out of sync with and very Welsh fight - just as its culture stubbornly principled refusal to leave the tides of linguistic affirmation and needed saving again from the short-term the Communist Party, no matter what nationalism lapping around him there Faustian electoralism of very un-Welsh his doubts and reservations (a bit like the from the 1980s, and he moved his base New Labour. historian himself). in Wales further south to Powys where He wished our literature written At that time I had just begun my his arrival fortuitously coincided with the in English to be read widely in its doctoral research into the history of the advent of the Hay Literature Festival. Its own country and to be more widely Fed, and of Horner himself, and when it brand of international openness, on a appreciated beyond our borders. He was completed for submission for a PhD border, well suited his Janus-like vision admired our specificity for its universal in 1976 it was Hobsbawm I requested and he became, steadfastly, a supporting application. He was a consummate as its external examiner. I was warned luminary and ultimately its President. I met myth-buster and an uncomfortable by the genial Professor at him there for chat and challenge, year truth-teller, and just as much as he Swansea that he was notorious for not on year, and in 1994 was honoured to be recognised the very best of what we pulling his punches; more, that he could asked by Hay’s Director, Peter Florence, to did as a people of purpose in the last be ferocious in interrogation, unforgiving be Eric’s one-on-one interlocutor before century, so I would say we should of sloppiness in scholarship, and that a packed audience when The Age of continue to recognise Eric Hobsbawm, there were ‘easier’, just as suitable, Extremes was launched. our friend, as an intellectual presence examiners to consider. I persisted, and It happily fell to me, too, when Gore tangential to our locale but central to in a forensically challenging viva I was Vidal and Norman Mailer book-ended a the realisation of our better aspirations. mauled, dissected, quizzed, scorned, fabulous week (Hay wasn’t big enough corrected, advised, praised and, finally, to hold them both at the same time), to awarded the Doctorate. Almost four introduce Eric to a bedazzled Vidal. They Dai Smith is Raymond Williams Chair decades later I still feel inordinately proud sat down together, oblivious to the party in Cultural History at Swansea University that I had no ‘easy’ examiner, only the buzzing around them, with Vidal, for and Chair of the Arts Council of Wales.

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Education trumps coal in 21st Century Wales Dave Egan distils the lessons we can still learn from the authors of The Miner’s Next Step

A century ago a group of young, a ‘fighting union’. Militant action radical, largely self-educated south would improve wages and conditions, Wales miners published The Miners’ achieve workers control of the Next Step. Along with the Tonypandy industry and thereby contribute to the ‘Riots’ of 1910 and the epic Cambrian overthrow of the capitalist system. always a real threat and strikes as well Combine Dispute of 1910-11, it helped The Miners Next Step was both as economic slumps could lead to hard to establish a reputation for the south a practical schema for the reform times. Nevertheless, this was a confident Wales coalfield as one of the most of the SWMF and a revolutionary and buoyant economy and society that militant and at times revolutionary socialist manifesto. It was an emphasis saw only future expansion in front of it. areas of the United Kingdom. on the latter that soon earned it its Dominated as it was by its major industry, The pamphlet was the handiwork contemporary notoriety with the it was ‘Coal Society’. of the Unofficial Reform Committee Edwardian establishment. However, In the early 21st Century Wales is of the South Wales Miners Federation its enduring achievement, was the faced by very different circumstances. (SWMF). Its main authors were the transformation of the SWMF into a The slow decline of the coal industry future Labour MP, W.H Mainwaring, militant union that would be at the through the remainder of the 20th the pure syndicalist, Will Hay and the forefront of the great labour struggles of Century reached its peak after the Ynyshir-born, Noah Ablett. the 20th Century. 1984 Miners’ Strike when through an Although a flawed individual, Ablett A hundred years on, what resonance act of callous vandalism the industry was one of the most influential thinkers does The Miners’ Next Step have for was virtually wiped from the face of produced by the labour movement in us today? On first reflection it might Wales leaving behind post-industrial south Wales. As a SWMF scholarship be thought very little. It was and reads communities. student at Ruskin College he imbibed a like the product of a very different age. During the current recession the heady mix of socialist, Marxist and other A much more confident one where, challenge of reviving the fortunes of these revolutionary ideas and fashioned these despite the vicissitudes of an unregulated communities has become even greater, into his own brand of what he called capitalist economy with its periods of with areas such as the Heads of the ‘industrial unionism’. slump and falling wages, full employment Valleys being among the most difficult in At Oxford in 1907 he had been one and increasing living standards were the the UK to re-generate. The main reason of the leaders of a revolt against the more general picture. is its low skills and qualifications profile. more orthodox teaching of the college The Welsh coal industry was Whilst in the heyday of the coalfield authorities. With his fellow activists they reaching the height of its remarkable this didn’t matter, now it is a major formed the Plebs League to campaign expansion with a labour force of about weakness. Today we live in an ‘Education for an independent form of working- a quarter of a million men. Most miners Society’ where economic prospects and class education intended to produce left school in their early teens with no prosperity are closely linked to levels of revolutionary socialists. formal qualifications and proceeded to skills and qualifications. Back home in south Wales, whilst the largely unskilled employment but also In recent years, led by a resolute ultimate target of their agitation was the skilled work learned through an informal Welsh Government Education Minister capitalist system of the Coalowners, their apprenticeship system. In a period before in , we have become immediate aim was to turn the SWMF the full development of the welfare very aware of the need to improve the away from conciliation to becoming state, the possibility of dire poverty was performance of our education system.

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Perhaps the greatest problem we face Where we have possibility that the producer interests is the education achievement of those of teachers should be dominant who live in official poverty in Wales, success today within within our education system is not which lags well behind that of our more supportable or sustainable in a modern prosperous families and communities. our education system democracy such as Wales. Indeed, we A third of our children in Wales live in and particularly know from robust research evidence official poverty and in areas such as the that the greatest influence on a child’s former mining valleys this is much higher, where the tendency educational development is the parent, with some of its primary schools having followed next in importance by that of 60 per cent and above of their children for poverty to lead to the community. entitled to free school meals. Although low achievement is Of course, schools and teachers there are children, families, schools and have a profoundly important role classrooms that buck the trend, overall bucked, outstanding to play, particularly when they help the link between poverty and relatively to raise achievement of the most low levels of educational achievement in leadership is disadvantaged children and thereby our most disadvantaged communities is absolutely critical. contribute to the growth of a more very strong and getting stronger. egalitarian society. However, that At the age of sixteen it is two and half influence should not be paramount and times more likely that children who are kept between centralised control (the placed above that of ‘consumers’. not on free school meals will achieve state) and local autonomy. Finally, they So inevitably for us today The the basic standard of education - the believed in the power of the producers Miners’ Next Step appears to have mixed equivalent of 5 higher grade GCSE (the miners) and their ultimate control messages. It was a remarkable product including English/Welsh and Mathematics of the coal industry as a first step to of a remarkable society produced - needed for good future progression the creation of a new society based on by remarkable individuals. Let us into education, training and employment industrial democracy. remember and celebrate it for that. than children who live in poverty. From the standpoint of today their That doesn’t require, however, what the It is, therefore, not surprising that of critique of leadership is not persuasive. great historian EP Thompson called “the the 130,000 or so new jobs that have For success within our education system enormous condescension of posterity”. been created over the last few years in and particularly where the tendency What endures most of all from The Wales despite the recession, that very for poverty to lead to low achievement Miners’ Next Step is its radicalism and its few of these have gone to the south is bucked, outstanding leadership is freethinking. That is what we need in Wales valleys. This is precisely because absolutely critical. education policy in . A belief the great majority of them require mid In developing a devolved education that we can fashion a better society, to higher level qualifications. system in Wales we have become that poverty and its influences can be Quite simply, the ‘Education Society’ expert at developing policies, plans and eradicated, and that education can be in parts of contemporary southern Wales strategies. However, we have neglected a powerful weapon in achieving this. is not providing a future for its citizens the development of a leadership at all This requires a radicalism in leadership, and particularly its young people that levels - national, regional and local- that governance and policy implementation the ‘Coal Society’ once did for the is focused upon policy implementation. that I’m sure the authors of The Miners’ communities from which The Miners’ We may also have got wrong the difficult Next Step would wish to be their legacy Next Step appeared. balance between centralisation and for today’s Wales. Is there anything, therefore, in the local autonomy. acute analysis that the pamphlet offered In particular, the move to local of its society that may still have salience management of schools begun under for us and the serious challenges that we the Thatcher regime and continued by face today? The authors of The Miners successive governments at Westminster Next Step argued that three things were and Cardiff has probably not served Dave Egan is Policy Adviser to the essential if they were to achieve their us well. We need a major reform of Heads of the Valleys Education objectives. Firstly, they wished to ensure governance in education in Wales to Programme. This article is based on a that leaders and leadership (both of restore this balance. talk he gave to Llafur: the Welsh People’s which they distrusted) were subservient What of producer control? History Society in October to mark the to the authority of the rank and file. Again, this does not play well into centenary of the publication of The Secondly, they wanted a balance to be our contemporary situation. The Miners’ Next Step.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 41 3/Politics & Policy Tesco’s law Sarah Wyburn asks whether new entrants on the high street will give a distinctive edge to the Welsh legal system

In the fifteen years since the 1997 not legally qualified, such as chief effect on the legal sector in Wales, its Referendum, devolution has led to a raft executives and practice managers, to impact may not be as extreme as some of policy initiatives that have changed become equity stakeholders in their predictions suggest. There will be an the way Wales is governed, and has firms, or allowing firms to seek outside increase in external investment. Possibly set a new public policy agenda. Last investment to continue growth. It soon some brand names will set up shop - the year’s referendum gave significant new became clear that the Act would also Co-op has already put its name down. impetus to this momentum. Yet beyond provide opportunities for non-legal However, it will not mean the end of constitutional law, you could be forgiven companies, including big household the independent specialist law firm. for thinking nothing has changed in the name brands, to set up legal practices. Indeed, when the first three approved Welsh legal world. The legislation was dubbed ‘Tesco Law’ Alternative Business Partnership firms The law that governs criminal, civil although, ironically, Tesco have no were named in March, two were small and family proceedings is actually “the plans to enter the market. It led many traditional law firms who had simply law of England and Wales”. There is lawyers to fear a future dominated by applied for authorisation to take on extra no practical difference between a case big names squeezing out traditional investors. The first Alternative Business being heard in Wales or England, save high street practices. Partnership in Wales is also a pre-existing that cases in Wales can be conducted The most commonly imagined Cardiff law firm. through the medium of Welsh. scenario saw new entrants dominating Asking whether ‘Tesco Law’ is a Following the 2011 referendum, the market, through a combination of threat to the legal sector in Wales is lawyers in Wales increasingly ask whether economies of scale, marketing budgets, something of a red herring. The real the next step could or should be a move and a brand recognition that most law question is what the legal sector in to full law-making powers in further firms could only dream about. The Wales will look like when the Act, areas of public life. Naturally, much of new entrants’ overheads would be combined with the UK Government’s this discussion has centred on whether lower (so the argument goes), and so planned budget cuts, are in full force. there might soon come a time when a separate Welsh legal system exists. The UK Government’s planned funding The legislation was dubbed ‘Tesco Law’ cuts, combined with a completely unrelated piece of new legislation, could although, ironically, Tesco have no plans unwittingly be providing additional momentum in this debate. to enter the market. The legislation in question is the innocuous-sounding Legal Services Act 2007, which contains provision to allow non-lawyers to set up a law the fees charged to clients would be Market research indicates that firms firm, or to buy into an existing one, in lower. Their adverts would emphasise emphasising a local, personal service, a new structure called an Alternative trustworthiness and loyalty to a known especially those specialising in niche Business Partnership. This legislation brand. Existing firms in profitable areas of law, can continue to differentiate could ultimately have far-reaching locations would be swallowed up or themselves from new competition. For consequences for Wales. driven out of business. Those located non-transactional work, people seem to At the time the Act was drafted, in less desirable areas would become want a bespoke service from a dedicated much of the debate centred on financially unfeasible. specialist, not a low-cost service mainly allowing professional staff who were Whilst the Act will have a major handled by a call centre.

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I have found the fact that my firm with pressure from new investors, and Such a move by the Welsh specialises in family law a real asset competition from rivals who have this Government would not only safeguard when approached by new clients. They kind of investment in place, most firms services for people most in need, often say they have come to us because are seriously considering giving up Legal but could moderate the approach of we are a niche practice rather than a Aid work. national ‘brands’ currently considering ‘jack of all trades’. I would expect any The options for those who need legal setting up in Wales. It could also pave existing specialist high-quality firm to representation, but are not in a position the way for a more localised emphasis tell the same story, and do not see that to fund it privately, will be severely within legal services. This would open being any different if the competition restricted. In Wales, this could have a up new opportunities for community were a bank or a supermarket. disproportionate impact compared to social enterprises, as well as existing The real impact in Wales will be other areas of the UK, because of its independent legal practitioners, to fill. that outside investors will look for existing levels of social disadvantage. The fifteen years following the profitable work (not Legal Aid) to There is already a growing surplus of first referendum on devolution have ensure a return on their capital. When clients needing public funding in Wales, seen little change for the legal sector combined with the Justice Secretary’s and an increasing shortage of firms able in Wales beyond constitutional law. announcement that Legal Aid funding to service them. Waiting times of over a The next fifteen years following the is being withdrawn for almost all family month to see a solicitor are common. second referendum could see the most disputes, this will make it much harder The Welsh Government has pursued sweeping changes in centuries, and for individuals in Wales to secure Legal a progressive public policy agenda, and might lead to a ‘Law of Wales’. Aid representation. it should now give serious consideration The rates paid by the Legal Services to to how it might seek to restructure Commission for Legal Aid family work the funding of legal services in Wales. are already so low as to make doing It should consider how it can intervene this work uneconomical. With the UK to protect legal services for the most Sarah Wyburn is a Partner at Wendy Government’s further cuts, combined vulnerable in Wales. Hopkins Family Law Practice. Welsh schools should 4 focus on skills rather Education than knowledge David Reynolds examines the challenges facing an education system trapped in a time warp of a world free from competition

You would have had to have been - by policies determined from within a resident of another planet in the the educational system by educational past year to miss how education has professionals. Welsh parents are become one of Wales’ hottest topics. therefore not used to performance Articles The international surveys showing us data, and to ‘banding’ of the schools Welsh schools doing badly, the GCSE-based conflicts according to their quality. They are should focus on with Michael Gove in London, and the only used to choosing their local school skills rather than wide range of policies now being rolled for their children. Only slowly are they knowledge out from the Welsh Government have becoming quality monitors. generated a constant flow of headlines All this means that on the ‘demand We need to and controversy. side’ of the equation, ‘consumerism’ in make new It really all started with the publication the form that exists in England and in Welsh-speaking of the results of the OECD’s PISA study many other societies is not the powerful communities in December 2010, continued with force it needs to be, given the need the announcement of the 20-point to get the simultaneous ‘supply side/ change strategy by Leighton Andrews demand side’ leverage. All this also in February 2011, and more recently means that the pressure on the ‘supply culminated in the summer of 2012 with side’ to achieve the ambitious targets the examination marking fiasco. that now exist – on PISA performance Over that time, it was becoming by 2016 and GCSE results by 2015 – is clearer by the day what the problems huge. Whether it can provide the ‘push’ of our Welsh education system are, and in the absence of the necessary demand what measures may be necessary to side ‘pull’ is unclear. turn the system around. Firstly, virtually Secondly, the ‘supply side’ of all industrial societies attempted to education may be finding it hard to do reform their educational systems in the the kind of things necessary to improve first decade of the 2,000s. In doing so pupil performance. Again, as a result of they used policies for both the ‘supply’ our policies through the last decade, we of education, determined by the state did not ‘upskill’ our professionals in the and the producers of education, and way that other societies did. Where were the ‘demand’ for it from parents and our literacy and numeracy strategies? other educational consumers. Using the Where were the information and training mantra spoken across the world, this is about the key educational levers affecting the simultaneous ‘supply side/demand pupils? Where were the assessments of side’ range of policies we are also now the effectiveness of classroom teaching? implementing in Wales. All manner of opportunities to However, our situation is that the acquire the knowledge that the world’s operation of the ‘demand side’ part teachers acquired over the last ten years of the equation has been stymied by are coming on stream in Wales. One a decade of ‘producerism’ associated example is the Learning Wales website, with previous Welsh Education Ministers with its best practice about Numeracy,

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Education Ministers on diverging pathways – Leighton Andrews in Cardiff Bay and Michael Gove in Westminster.

Literacy, Behaviour and much else. PISA tests require more familiarity with any hopeful aspects as we prepare for However, many Welsh educational non-fictional material and with non- the publication of the 2012 PISA testing professionals lack the foundations, the continuous texts such as graphs than results next December 2013? The insights and the professional vocabulary would be usual in Wales. upcoming 2015 testing, to be published to access and use this kind of material. The second problem is in the in 2016, will major on Science, where For instance, ask teachers around the tests themselves. They contain a lot of we already are at the average for all PISA world what is ‘whole class interactive language whereas in Wales we have countries. Today the Welsh system is learning’ and they will know what you been trying to reduce this. They have less hostile to the need for change than mean. Try the same in Wales and they variation in the typefaces used while in 2011 when the reform plans were may not. we have been using standardised outlined. There are fewer attempts to Wales has a mountain to climb in typefaces as much as possible. They are use alibis and excuses for our failure. reaching its aspiration for being a ‘top administered in long testing sessions – There is a more self-confident feeling 20’ country in the 2016 PISA tests. These and children in Wales have not been among educational professionals as they do not measure the ‘knowledge’ that used to external testing at all. look at Michael Gove’s absurd desire to children possess – how could they, given All these factors mean PISA tests do return the English assessment systems to that different countries teach different not easily relate to the way we are used a focus upon testing ‘knowledge’ rather knowledge bases? Instead, they measure to doing things in Wales. We need to than ‘skills’. As night follows day that will the ‘skills’ that pupils have. Nowadays make it clear to PISA deniers why all this condemn the English educational system there is no point in schools teaching matters. Children performing better on to rapid decline in its PISA scores. So knowledge which can be obtained at the the PISA tests will possess the skills of the there are some positives in our situation. press of a computer or smartphone key. future and also perform better in other Even so, we will need to explore The important thing is to teach students forms of assessment, including GCSEs. more radical education policies for how to access knowledge, the so-called We need a reform of the curriculum Wales. How can we further develop the metacogntive skills that are becoming in Wales on a scale that has not been ‘demand side’ by encouraging Welsh a more important emphasis in the PISA attempted before. This is not just a parents to compare results between tests over time. matter of the organisational structure schools and vote with their feet for better But we have a twofold problem. of the curriculum, examinations and standards? How can we give the teaching The first issue is alimited overlap in assessment. It goes deeper to what we profession the skills to pick up all the the relationship between our existing teach in terms of the skills content of the materials that are now available to them? curriculum and the PISA tests. It shows curriculum. The Welsh Joint Education How can the WJEC be roused from its in our Science subjects, where PISA Committee, which has been asleep as torpor and sleep? We’re only half way up reflects the merging of the three sciences a curriculum developer for a decade, that mountain we have to climb. that are still taught as three distinct will have to develop a different role. The subjects in many schools in Wales. It material it has been trying to sell into shows in Mathematics, where the tests schools across England and Wales is out David Reynolds is Professor of require the reading of large amounts of date and moribund. We simply cannot Educational Effectiveness at the of contextual information which is perform well in modern PISA tests using University of Southampton and advises unusual in Maths at the moment in an out dated school curriculum. the Welsh Government’s Department for Wales. And it shows in Reading, where Given these difficulties, are there Education and Skills.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 45 4/Education Swansea’s Welsh Centre provides a base for socialising in Welsh.

We need to make new Welsh-speaking communities Steve Morris reports on research into creating new spaces for the language in anglicised areas of Wales

A constant theme amongst adults on implemented to extend and expand challenge is obviously much greater. why they are motivated to learn Welsh is the Welsh medium social networks of One response in some areas has a belief that as a result they will become adult Welsh learners? As Linda Pritchard been to create Canolfannau Cymraeg more integrated with their community. Newcombe puts it, in her 2007 book (Welsh-speaking Centres) where classes The following comments are typical: Social Context and Fluency in Second are combined with activities for other Language Learners: Welsh-speaking groups in the community “I live in Wales so I should under the same roof. There may also be speak Welsh.” “If learners do not receive a positive a Welsh language bookshop, bar or café response when they first use the in the same building. How effective can “It’s important to keep the language, they may lose confidence they be in integrating learners into Welsh- language alive.” and withdraw, believing their Welsh speaking communities? to be inadequate. Learners are Commissioned by the Welsh “I’m learning to understand and speak not usually prepared for the gulf Government and the South West Wales to members of the community in the between learning in class and using/ Welsh for Adults Centre, Heini Gruffudd language of the community.” practising Welsh in the community.” and I carried out research into this question. We looked at around a third Evidently there is a mismatch between Many teachers of Welsh to adults will of all adult learners of Welsh in higher the aspirations of learners to integrate be familiar with learners who prefer level classes (those who are nearest to with a Welsh-speaking community the safety of the classroom to the fluency in the language) in areas of both and the linguistic reality that often challenge of trying to use the language north and south Wales where less than the majority of that community does outside it. When these learners live 15 per cent of the population are Welsh not speak Welsh. How can this be in communities where the majority of speakers. Three settings emerged as addressed? What strategies can be the population only speak English the offering the main opportunities for new

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speakers to socialise in the language:

• Family • Canolfan Gymraeg • Activities and events in ‘familiar’ locations

It is notoriously difficult for language planners to influence the first setting to any great extent. However, the research showed that Canolfannau Cymraeg offere regular opportunities for these new speakers to use Welsh. Moreover, interactions with other speakers of Welsh could take place in a ‘familiar environment’ where they felt ‘safe’ and more confident. By holding events and running activities through the medium of Welsh for all Welsh speakers, Canolfannau Siop Ty Tawe provides a hub for Swansea’s Welsh speakers. Cymraeg are a good way of increasing new speakers’ confidence in using the language outside of the class Swansea University to discuss how be mindful that this generally has be environment. They also encourage to increase the number of these achieved in situations where Welsh isn’t Welsh speakers to persevere in speaking centres. Certainly, there needs to be the natural community language. In our Welsh with Welsh learners. Crucially, more cooperation between the Welsh anglicised areas Canolfannau Cymraeg from the point of view of language Government, local government, the can be the basis for creating varied and planning and policy for the less Welsh- Welsh for Adults Centres, the Mentrau innovative Welsh-speaking communities. speaking parts of Wales, Canolfannau Iaith and other key organisations and They can bring together three categories Cymraeg also offer a rare opportunity individuals to create more of them. of people who in combination offer hope for other Welsh-speaking groups, such Efforts should be made to locate all for the future of the language, namely as ex-pupils from local Welsh medium the organisations which are involved first language speakers, the new adult schools, to use the language and with the Welsh language under speakers of Welsh, and young people develop new Welsh-medium social the same roof. This is an obvious who have received their education networks. Activities such as these are way to turn a building from merely through the medium of Welsh. vital to reversing language decline. providing office space for one or two It is difficult to see how we can The research found there was organisations into a complete Canolfan restore Welsh as a ‘normal’ language potential for great success in a number Gymraeg where Welsh speakers can in the non-Welsh-speaking areas of of strategies for helping new speakers. go with the confidence that everything Wales without the creation of more Examples include persuading parents to happening there will be through the Canolfannau Cymraeg as a basis for raise their children through the medium medium of Welsh. new Welsh-speaking communities and of Welsh, encouraging new speakers to We should also learn from the social networks. take more responsibility for organising success of those centres that have events, raising awareness amongst already been established, especially in Welsh speakers of the needs of new , Swansea and . speakers and linguistic assertiveness A first lesson is to ensure that there is sessions for learners to increase local ownership. confidence. The effectiveness of all these The late frequently strategies is much greater when they reminded teachers in the field of Welsh Steve Morris is a lecturer in Welsh take place within a Canolfan Gymraeg. for adults that their main raison d’être at Academi Hywel Teifi, Swansea In September a conference was was to create new speakers of Welsh. University and leads the national Welsh organised by Academi Hywel Teifi at Few would disagree. But we should also for Adults Research Committee.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 47 5 The statins scandal Stephanie Matthews says we are at risk of using mass Science medication to solve a lifestyle issue

One in three people who read this article will sexual dysfunction to name but a few. be prescribed a statin. The rationale for this Proponents of ‘statins for all’ say there are is to reduce the cholesterol level in the blood few side effects, but in my clinical experience which if high can lead to a heart attack. It has there are lots. Many are low key and would been suggested, albeit tongue in cheek, that be put up with if the alternative was a heart statins should be added to the water supply attack. However, they are severe enough and be available as the McStatin alongside to take the edge off enjoying life, and if the mayo and ketchup. evidence of protection is not there, why spoil Articles There has been a seven-fold increase in someone’s wellbeing? The statins the number of people taking statins in the Everyone agrees that if the risk of having scandal last ten years. The cholesterol lowering drug a heart attack is high, they should take a budget is now over £500 million per year in statin. The debate centres around whether Iodine deficiency the UK. Has the world gone mad? Is it really everyone should be treated with a statin. should be necessary to ‘medicalise’ a generation? The experts disagree and arguments in the on Welsh Maybe it would be acceptable if statins medical community continue to rage. In Government’s were perfect drugs. They are amazing, the UK, the National Institute for Clinical radar powerful and do what they say on the packet, Excellence (NICE), the body which shall but they also have side effects. These include be listened to, says that statins should NOT muscle pain (a rare form can be fatal), fatigue, be used if your ‘risk’ of a heart attack is headache, tummy upsets, sleep disturbances, low. This view is supported by a Cochrane review, internationally recognised as the highest standard in evidence based health care and named after our famous late fellow countryman, Archie Cochrane. If NICE and Cochrane agree, what is the problem? An editorial in May this year, in the auspicious medical journal The Lancet, recommended that everyone over the age of 50 take a statin and this view has been given significant publicity. We are at risk of mass medication to solve a lifestyle issue. But who benefits from this whole population approach to taking drugs? And where did the funding come from to do the original research? The pharmaceutical industry has fuelled the research into cholesterol since the 1950s. A juggernaut developed which could not stop, despite research findings that were not always supportive. In 1957 a committee of Archie Cochrane, a Scottish doctor, undertook randomised the American Heart Association declined control trials of treatments in the from the 1940s, to impose national dietary advice based on becoming a pioneer of evidence-based medicine. His experience with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil research findings. By 1961, two key scientists War and later in a prisoner of War Camp during World War II whose reputations and careers depended persuaded him that much of medicine did not have sufficient evidence to justify its use. on the cholesterol bandwagon had got

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Cholesterol of people who really need a statin are going undiagnosed and will have their Cholesterol is made in the liver and needs to be transported around (probably fatal) heart attacks in middle the body to all other tissues, where it is used to make membranes age. There is a condition called Familial and hormones. It is carried in a structure called LDL (Low Density Hypercholesterolaemia (FH) which Lipoprotein). If there is too much LDL in the blood, the cholesterol is inherited high blood cholesterol. comes out and sticks to the wall of the blood vessel furring it up. It is Children and adults with FH have high also dangerous if the LDL changes shape and becomes smaller and blood cholesterol through no fault of more compact. This often happens with diabetics and people on a bad their own and it can lead to changes in diet. LDL has become known as the bad cholesterol. The body also has the coronary arteries from as young as a mechanism to pick up rogue cholesterol and take it safely back to the ten-years-old. liver. This is called HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) and the cholesterol in Statins work brilliantly to reduce HDL has become known as the ‘good’ cholesterol. To increase your HDL, their cholesterol and their risk of a don’t smoke and take some exercise. heart attack. There are estimated to be 10,000 people in Wales with FH but only about 20 per cent of them realise Cholesterol levels you should aim for this and are treated properly. Could you be one of the 8,000 who don’t If you are at low risk of If you are at high risk of know? If any close blood relative has coronary heart disease coronary heart disease heart trouble under the age of 60, or is known to have high cholesterol, go to Total cholesterol in mmol/l Less than 5 Less than 4 your GP and get a cholesterol check. It affects men and women equally. If there LDL cholesterol are any problems with rationing in the (the bad one) in mmol/l Less than 3 Less than 2 NHS, these people should be high on HDL cholesterol the treatment list as their condition is (the good one) in mmol/l More than 1 More than 1 totally preventable. The tragedy of early sudden death which devastates families is avoidable. Finally a Health Warning: Don’t believe everything you read and have a healthy scepticism. Don’t change themselves on the said committee. result of the Heartbeat Wales project any drug treatment unless discussed On presenting the very same research which ran from 1985 to 1990. This was with your GP. You may be one of the findings, the advice was changed. The a vibrant programme led by dedicated, undetected 8,000. A piece of advice, low cholesterol goal was born. The enthusiastic and energetic people. Many when you have a cholesterol check authors now stand accused of selection careers and reputations were made and done, always ask for LDL and HDL to be bias in these studies. By 1980 we were in many doctors and policy makers were written on the blood test form. Only with a situation where the whole population carried in the slipstream. both these results can your levels really was being targeted, not just people at We are left with millions of people be interpreted properly. And finally, take known risk of heart attacks. That dietary taking statins when a healthy dose of will control. It’s your life. advice we now know, actually caused power, weight loss, dietary restraint and heart attacks. exercise would be cheaper, safer, and Despite the lack of evidence, by avoid side effects. The individual would the end of the 1980s the work of the be in control and feel so much better. vociferous and powerful cholesterol/diet But, why bother looking after ourselves campaigners led to a series of dietary when we can take a pill instead? And Dr Stephanie Matthews was a guidelines by such auspicious bodies of course, the latter approach does not consultant (1988 to 2008) at University as the World Health Organisation, the involve any profit for anyone, except Hospital Llandough where she ran the Health Education Council (UK) and perhaps sports shoe manufacturers. adult and children’s lipid clinic and set the American Heart Association. Wales Getting lost in all this argument is up a specialist unit to treat people with played a significant role in this story as a the tragedy that the smaller number severe inherited high cholesterol.

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years to denote thyroid enlargement due to iodine deficiency. But iodine deficiency Iodine deficiency was also characteristic of large parts of western Britain. No specific legislation was enacted should be on Welsh to correct the problem and a laissez faire situation was allowed to continue. Government’s radar In fact the iodine status of the UK improved due to the use of iodophors in the milk industry and the practice of feeding cattle cake to cows in winter. John Lazarus warns of a Council for Control of Iodine Deficiency This cake contains iodine. In addition, hidden dietary threat to the Disorders – a non-governmental periodic estimations of iodine intake by development of our children organisation that works closely with the the government using an average food World Health Organisation and UNICEF basket method had shown improvement - the British Thyroid Association and in iodine consumption and a reduction One of the issues facing Dr Ruth Hussey, the British Thyroid Foundation. It was in the incidence of goitre. But in recent the new Chief Medical Officer for Wales, concluded that that the degree of iodine decades we have seen not only the who took up her post this autumn, is deficiency could be adversely affecting end of universal provision of milk in the proposed Public Health (Wales) Bill pregnancy outcomes and the cognitive schools, but also a general decline in milk which will, in the Welsh Government’s development of children and that further consumption throughout the population. own words, provide a “legislative basis monitoring of the iodine status in the UK Meanwhile, advances in for delivering improved life expectancy is essential. It called for a national strategy understanding of the role and action of and well-being and for reducing health to manage this public health problem. thyroid hormones have indicated their inequality in Wales”. Iodine was first produced from critical importance in brain development In many fields Dr Hussey will need to seaweed in 1811 and derived its name both in utero and during childhood and exercise influence with her counterparts from the Greek for violet. It is essential adolescence. Iodine from the mother in the other countries of the UK because for the synthesis of thyroid hormone enters the foetus and can be used to solutions will often have to be found on a which occurs in the thyroid gland in synthesise thyroid hormone. This will UK or even European basis, especially if humans and animals. But it was not not happen till the baby is about 16 those solutions involve the collaboration until the start of the 20th Century that weeks old. Hence the baby is entirely or the regulation of the food industry. the devastating effect of severe iodine dependent on thyroid hormone derived One such issue, which is already deficiency was recognised. from the mother and iodine is required an item in her in-tray, is the question In the western Himalayas people with for manufacture of this thyroid hormone. of a deficiency of iodine in our food, a large goitres were noted to be imbecilic In iodine deficient areas a reduction deficiency that can affect the development and the term cretin (implying an IQ in maternal thyroid hormone occurs of a child’s brain during pregnancy and less than 40) was used to describe their which means that the developing brain intellectual performance later in life. intellectual status. This was shown to be is at risk. So the disorder of iodine Recent studies of school children in cities due to iodine deficiency and subsequent deficiency is not limited to cretinism and around Britain, including Cardiff, have studies found that this condition did not a large goitre. Those clinical presentations confirmed the long-standing concerns of exist in areas of iodine sufficiency. Since are the tip of the iceberg. More subtle many who have been working in this field. that time many areas in the world such effects on development and particularly Shockingly, the UK is now eighth on the as mountainous parts of South America, intellectual performance can be seen list of the top ten iodine deficient countries large areas of Africa and Asia and parts even in mildly iodine deficient areas. in the world in terms of the number of of several European countries, including The concept of the spectrum of iodine schoolchildren with insufficient iodine Spain and Italy, have been found to be deficiency disorders from the very mild intake. As the accompanying chart grossly deficient in iodine. to severe is now accepted by the medical shows, we are placed between Angola We obtain iodine from our diet, profession and associated disciplines. and Mozambique. mainly through milk, dairy products and During the 1960s it became This is now prompting a concerted sea fish. In the 1920s a survey by the apparent that iodine deficiency world- attempt to engage with public health Medical Research Council in the UK noted wide was one of the major causes of authorities and the food industry. the presence of goitre in many areas of the mental deficiency and, importantly, was Earlier this summer a meeting was held country, particularly in Derbyshire. The potentially correctable. The solution was under the auspices of the International term ‘Derbyshire neck’ was used for many to introduce iodine into a commonly used

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Number of school- Pakistan age children with Ethiopia insufficient iodine intake (millions) Sudan

Russian Federation

Afghanistan

Algeria

Angola

United Kingdom

Mozambique

Ghana

0 5 10 15 20

foodstuff or the water supply. Iodised salt that mild iodine deficiency is present in of this type of salt in the UK accounts is the preferred method of iodisation in 51 per cent, moderate iodine deficiency for only around 5 per cent or less. In many countries and this has been shown in 16 per cent, and 1 per cent had severe most supermarkets iodised salt is not to be cost effective and a major public iodine deficiency. More than two-thirds of available. Iodine nutrition could also be health success. Universal salt iodisation schoolgirls in UK have low iodine intakes. improved if the food industry undertook has increased significantly world wide The results, which were published to use iodised salt in the preparation in the last 20 years. The World Health in The Lancet, suggest that the UK is of processed food. The fact that there Organisation has made recommendations iodine deficient. As developing foetuses is a public health drive to reduce salt for adequate iodine intake for the are the most susceptible to adverse consumption (which is supported population as well as for pregnant and effects of iodine deficiency and even strongly by the medical profession) lactating women, which are substantially mild perturbations of maternal and should not deter the introduction of higher. It was to achieve this result that the foetal thyroid function have an effect on iodised salt. International Council for Control of Iodine neurodevelopment, these findings are of While many countries in the EU Deficiency Disorders was formed. potential major public health importance. have enacted a salt law requiring The standard accepted method Randomised trials of iodine addition of certain concentrations of of evaluating the iodine status in a supplements given to schoolchildren iodine to salt, not all these laws are population is to obtain an adequate have been performed in Spain and Italy being adhered to. There could be a number of urine samples to measure the and have shown positive effects on IQ. need for general legislation across the iodine concentration. On a population To underline these findings a longitudinal European Union. But it would be better basis this yields an accurate indication of study of children and adolescents from if the pressure came from below. It is the daily iodine intake. This method was the Bristol area was carried out. The important, therefore, that, if it wishes to used to survey 15-year-old schoolgirls as yet unpublished data have shown take the lead in public health natters, in the UK in 2010 by collecting samples intellectual deficiencies related to the Wales plays its part in putting this issue from around 900 girls from nine cities in maternal iodine status. There is no reason onto the wider public health agenda. the four countries in the UK. In Wales to think that similar results would not be For the sake of future generations it is three schools in Cardiff were chosen to observed in Wales. not something we should allow to be provide samples. kicked into the long grass. The results of the survey were What now is the way forward? striking and consistent. The median urinary iodine concentration was Unfortunately there has never been Professor John Lazarus is Emeritus 80.1 microgammes per litre (WHO any legislation in this country requiring Professor of Clinical Endocrinology at recommendation is 100) and this meant the use of iodised salt. Consumption Cardiff University School of Medicine.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 51 Transparency 6 Health and scrutiny vital for future of NHS

Articles Transparency and scrutiny vital for future of NHS Marcus Longley asks whether financial pressures will drive down quality of care in our hospitals Plugging the gap between health and social care The governance of the NHS is probably suggest that a staggering 1,200 patients not an obvious spectator sport, much may have died as a result of this regime less one you would think of taking part presiding over the hospital unchecked in. But we really should be pulling on for more than four years. And this our boots and getting ready to run onto was not an isolated asylum where few the pitch because, quite literally, it’s a people saw what was going on. This was matter of life and death, and our team a busy general hospital, with thousands is struggling. of staff, patients and visitors going Governance describes the ways through its doors every day. A patient in which an organisation ensures recounted his experience to the public that it performs well. Derived from inquiry as follows: the Greek verb ‘to steer’, it covers all those systems, processes, policies and “In the next room you could hear procedures which keep the organisation the buzzers sounding. After about true to its purpose. In simple terms, 20 minutes you could hear the it can cover both internal elements, men shouting for the nurse, ‘Nurse, how a Health Board discharges its own nurse!’, and it just went on and on. responsibilities, and external- the impact And then very often it would be two of bodies such as Inspectorates on the people calling at the same time, and Health Board. then you would hear them crying, All are now in question following like shouting ‘Nurse!’ louder, and the events at a fairly average English then you would hear them just hospital in Mid in the crying, just sobbing, they would just middle years of the last decade. In the sob and you just presumed that they words of the subsequent public inquiry had had to wet the bed.” – patients were “routinely neglected” by an organisation “preoccupied with cost An isolated aberration? Not in the cutting, targets and processes and which view of the House of Commons Health lost sight of its fundamental responsibility Committee Patient Safety report in 2009: to provide safe care”. Some estimates

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“Several recent investigations have shown in detail how senior managers and Boards have failed in their most basic duties as regards patient safety, with disastrous consequences. In each of these cases, patient safety was found to have been crowded out by other priorities, including the meeting of targets, financial issues, service reconfigurations...”

But this all relates to England. Wales hasn’t had such a scandal for decades. Things are different here. Maybe. But the NHS in Wales faces its worst financial squeeze ever in the coming few years: Can we be sure that massive pressures to balance the books couldn’t have a similar impact here? At a minimum, we need to take stock of our governance arrangements in NHS Wales. The picture is currently quite complicated. Health Boards and Trusts are in pole position on governance, since they actually provide the services. Their governing Boards – made up of executive The seven Welsh Health Boards. directors (employees) and non-executives (appointed by the Minister) – have access to all the information, and can have no greater responsibility than for the safety of this is, including Healthcare Inspectorate virtually). At one level, it’s a matter of their patients. Wales, Wales Audit Office, Care and logistics – the more people the better. At But there are many challenges Social Services Inspectorate Wales, and another, it’s about opening up the NHS to for those 15 or so people. One is a host of inspectors with specific roles in the shareholders – all three million of us actually knowing what is going on in relation to health and safety, mortuaries, in Wales. The NHS is huge, complex and an organisation that employs as many information and so on. often obscured by jargon and mystique, as 18,000 staff, across many hospitals. And then – unique to Wales – are and sometimes beset by self-interest. If How can you be sure, as a Director, our eight Community Health Councils. we could mobilise patients, carers and that you’re measuring the right things? Their role is to bring a patient and lay potential patients to share our knowledge Another is making acceptable trade-offs. perspective to all these issues, to spot and views, that would be a powerful aid How low should staffing levels get, or what experts don’t see, and to ensure to those 15 or so Directors sat around the how many patients should you treat, that patients and the public get a good board table in each Local Health Board before the risk becomes unacceptable? deal from their healthcare. Welsh each month. We need a multiplicity of This is particularly important when you Government is currently consulting ways of getting this intelligence: social have a statutory obligation to balance on how they should develop to fit this media, the Internet, simple things such the financial books at the end of the new world, based on a review which as routinely and sensitively asking every financial year, but quality of care is far colleagues and I recently carried out. patient to say what they found good less easy to define, let alone measure. This is where the sport analogy comes and bad, collecting patient stories, and If they get it wrong, there’s the classic in. The eyes, ears and intelligence of lay a host of alternatives, so that everyone question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? people should be a crucial component in can contribute in the way they find Who will guard the guardians? There the governance of the NHS in Wales. We convenient. are various external bodies whose job all need to be on the pitch (at the least, There are probably four governance

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functions that must have an element 3. We need lay people to monitor third sector? What is its role in providing of independence from the provider of service provision, from the a voice for the voiceless? services (the LHB or Trust). perspective of what matters most These are complex but crucial to patients, and without fear of questions. We have to be sure that 1. Individual patients who wish to displeasing your manager. we have got a robust, efficient and complain must have easy access to proportionate system of governance effective and independent advocacy. 4. We need to provide a voice for for our NHS, that ensures the active For many people, complaining the voiceless. Sections of every involvement of patients and the public. about the care you have received community who will never, for The NHS in Wales is aiming to be ‘world is too daunting even to try, without whatever reason, wish to engage class’, to have services best suited to help. Currently, about 10 per cent directly with powerful public bodies, Wales but comparable with the best of complainants to Health Boards but whose health needs are probably anywhere. What does that mean for are supported by an independent amongst the greatest. patient and public governance? advocate, employed by the Community Health Council. We need to be clear about who should do which of these priorities. For example, 2. The plans of Local Health Boards what is the role of local government? must be subject to scrutiny from It has a democratic mandate and the Marcus Longley is Director of the the perspective of the local public resources to quiz and investigate, and it Welsh Institute for Health and Social and patients. They should do this as has massive local intelligence. Should Care and Professor of Applied Health part of their planning, but probably we in Wales – as in England – ask local Policy at the University of Glamorgan. shouldn’t be left to do it alone. government to play a scrutiny role over the NHS? Or could it be a job for the 6/Health

Plugging the gap between health and social care

Helen Birtwhistle says NHS and local living longer. However, we also need to recognise the authorities must work together to reality that this success increases pressure on health provide a seamless service and social care services. At a time when budgets are tight, it is more important than ever that NHS and social care Social care is rarely an issue that hits the headlines. organisations work together to provide an effective In the public debate, it is often overshadowed by its service. Experience shows that social care and health close partner health and the latest stories of hospital are so interdependent that savings made in one reconfiguration or waiting time targets. budget can simply transfer costs to the other. While much has been made of financial pressures There are indications that when people’s needs on the NHS, there has been less attention to how are not met by the social care system, they turn to the social care will cope with similar financial challenges. NHS. The impact is seen through increased demand Both are facing real-terms budget cuts. Last year the for emergency and unplanned work, and delays in Wales Audit Office said that social service budgets discharging people from hospital. were facing real terms cuts of almost 2 per cent, while And sadly, it is the individual who suffers as they the NHS is preparing to make 5 per cent savings fall in the gaps between organisations. Too many every year for the next three years. patients stay much longer than necessary in a hospital At the same time, both the NHS and social care bed while there are difficult and complex discussions will need to deal with rapidly rising demand due to about who should fund the long-term care package. the ageing population. In 2011 there were more than In Wales, there has been a strong emphasis on 430,000 residents aged 90 and over in England and integration between health and social care over Wales compared with 340,000 in 2001 – a 26 per cent the last few years to avoid these sorts of situations increase in just ten years. occurring, and there are many examples of where We should celebrate the success story that we are health and social care staff have been brought

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together into integrated teams. However, integration and seamless working on a widespread scale is something that has proved elusive. There have been any number of ideas and pilots, including pooled budgets, shared offices, integrated teams and joint appointments. But there still remain many barriers that hinder completely integrated working across health and social care. Complete structural merging of the two functions has proved problematic, largely because of the fundamentally different governance arrangements between NHS and local authorities, with local government’s direct democratic accountability inconsistent with the more complex governance arrangements that exist in health. The complexity of financial flows and the difficulties of separate IT systems are other reasons often given to explain why integration can be so hard to achieve. Springfield Day Hospital at St Woolos is part of the Gwent Frailty Programme designed to provide an alternative to Encouragingly, some successful projects hospital admission for older people at times of acute illness. have shown there are ways and means around these obstacles without costly, finding the right complex care package. services that could well include the use of time-consuming and distracting structural The programme was launched April pooled budgets - something that has been change. One project often cited as an 2011, but a lot of the groundwork was talked about in Wales for some time. exemplar is the Gwent Frailty Programme. done in the months leading up to it. Joint This legislation offers an important This is designed to provide an alternative work streams were created to look at opportunity for Wales to lay the to hospital admission for older people information sharing around performance foundations for more effective and at times of acute illness and to enable and evaluation to make sure that all integrated services. Our aim should be people to leave hospital earlier. aspects of integrated working were taken to enable people to have a single point into account. There was recognition, too, of access covering both health and social Our aim should be to of the importance of well-motivated and care, which they can understand how enable people to have supported staff. A workforce work stream to navigate. Certainly, there is a clear worked through the logistics of training, expectation for local authorities and other a single point of access induction, team-building, and ongoing public service organisations, including covering both health supervision and development prior to the health, to demonstrate that they are and social care, which programme ‘going live’. working together. It is an approach backed up by Success will come down to strong they can understand research by the NHS Confederation, local relationships and leadership and how to navigate. which found that examples of successful commitment from both the NHS and local integrated working have been brought authorities at the local level. We have about through creating the right culture, an opportunity to get health and social All localities in Gwent have established encouraging the right behaviours and services working together effectively on a integrated health and social care setting the right values rather than widespread basis across Wales. Whatever Community Resource Teams. These work formal structures. the outcome of the Bill, integrated with people with the aim of supporting It is something the Welsh Government working is too important not to get right. them to stay independent in their own will be looking at closely in the next year, homes. They manage this by providing as it seeks to introduce legislation on care at home, helping people return home social services. The intention is to set up a Helen Birtwhistle is Director of the sooner, and by speeding up the process of legislative framework for more integrated Welsh NHS Confederation.

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7 Social Policy

Articles Still lost in care Level playing field needed for the disadvantaged Still lost in care Alison Taylor describes her long struggle to bring the Alison Taylor north Wales child abuse scandal to public attention

In 1976, from a tough background of a small dossier of abuse allegations psychiatric social work and probation, that the council had wilfully ignored, I I became deputy head of contacted a county councillor who then County Council’s flagship children’s alerted North Wales Police. assessment centre. Twenty four years The Waterhouse Inquiry described later, the North Wales Child Abuse that first police investigation as “sluggish Tribunal (the Waterhouse inquiry) and shallow” and condemned its condemned the chronic understaffing, attitude towards the complainants – one underfunding and abysmal management boy was described as “dull and wicked”. oversight at the centre. This had resulted I was judged manipulative, with my own in the abuse, mistreatment and neglect very suspect agenda. suffered by so many in care, and had Inevitably, I was suspended, then allowed the head of the centre, former dismissed on the grounds of gross Bryn Estyn housemaster Nefyn Dodd, to misconduct for allegedly causing create his own fiefdom in which even a “breakdown in professional the Director of Social Services dared not relationships”. Other social workers interfere. had witnessed and reported abuse but I first reported physical abuse to let themselves be silenced by threats of the council in 1976. The perpetrator meeting the same fate. I hold no brief disappeared on sick leave and I for them; clearly, the council could not unwittingly marked my own card. have succeeded with multiple dismissals. Expressing concerns about the quality of There was other underhandedness social work we were able to offer simply including, I later learned, a deal with the drew fire in my direction. In 1985, with union to drop my case in return for the

58 7/Social Policy creation of some manual jobs. Within days of the of their journalists contacted me and During the Waterhouse Inquiry I admitted that he had not even seen learned that an external investigation Newsnight broadcast Lost in Care. No surprise then that Lord into alleged abuses by Nefyn Dodd had Alistair McAlpine, wrongly identified by taken place several years before I voiced David Cameron Messham through absolutely no fault my own concerns and recommended announced new of his own, is now considering legal his removal. The council suppressed the proceedings, and that George Entwistle, whole matter. investigations into the briefly Director General of the BBC, had Presumably, the council expected old investigations. to fall on his sword. me to be vanquished. I sued for unfair Within days of the Newsnight dismissal and began lobbying the Welsh broadcast David Cameron announced Office, Parliament, even Margaret new investigations into the old Thatcher. Again, the Waterhouse investigations. The embryonic National Inquiry condemned the collective fabricated most of the abuse allegations Crime Agency will investigate North apathy of government, its willingness to and conspired with young criminals to Wales Police and Mrs Justice Macur will believe that I was the source and extent fabricate allegations for money. Webster investigate the Waterhouse Inquiry. But of abuse allegations. had sat through every day of the Inquiry’s why? Was Cameron responding with Intent on denying me a public hearings. For this article he cherry-picked a knee-jerk or are there long standing platform the council settled my claim what suited his thesis and ignored the concerns within government that out of court. But north Wales is a small mountain of very compelling evidence previous investigations stopped too short? place. People knew why I had lost my to the contrary. He adopted the same The NSPCC states that one in four job. More and more abuse allegations tactics in the many articles on his website children are abused, many within the came my way, pointing to rottenness at and in his self-published book about Bryn family, and that abuse occurs throughout the heart of childcare across Gwynedd Estyn, for which Claire Curtis-Thomas, the social spectrum. I know from and Clwyd. Word spread beyond the the former MP for Crosby, threw a launch harrowing experience that it is almost border and reached the UK media. party at the House of Commons. His was impossible for young people to make In 1991 HTV’s Wales This Week the voice of a backlash movement intent that huge leap of faith to report abuse. current affairs programme and the on demonising those who complained of They believe the system will punish Independent published hard-hitting and abuse and anyone who supported them, them for so doing, and are usually shocking exposes. Private Eye took up and he had powerful backing from many right. Even as adults, many keep quiet, the fight. Without the intervention of quarters, including the legal profession. particularly male sex abuse victims, who a handful of brave journalists, some Although he died in 2011, his website is carry the shame of that abuse like a of whom paid a heavy price, this dark maintained, his word still current. millstone round their neck. chapter in social work’s history would Twelve years on, abuse in the From my perspective, the Newsnight remain unwritten. north Wales children’s homes once debacle is a gift from the gods to the That media coverage forced hands. again dominates the headlines. On 2 many like Webster who are determined North Wales Police mounted a new and November Newsnight broadcast an to vilify the victims and deny the wide-ranging investigation and some interview with Steven Messham, one horrible reality of child abuse. Messham successful prosecutions followed, but the of the many victims of the depraved has apologised to Lord McAlpine, Crown Prosecutions Service’s refusal in individuals – like Fred West - who target stating that the police showed him many other instances to accept police children in care knowing they are a photograph of his abuser and recommendations for prosecution caused essentially alone and uncared for and, themselves identified Lord McAlpine. huge disquiet. Government’s eventual therefore, easy pickings. The facts have already been skewed and response was to order the Waterhouse Messham’s Newsnight claims about condensed. We read now that Messham Inquiry. On the day it was announced establishment figures were made to made “false allegations”. a Conservative MP told me that in his the 1991 police investigation and opinion, children in care were “vermin”. the Waterhouse Inquiry. Rumours The Waterhouse Inquiry published its about the identity of these shadowy Alison Taylor was a senior childcare report, Lost in Care, early in 2000. Within figures have long circulated, along officer with the former Gwynedd days, the New Statesman published with caveats about possible mistaken County Council and is now a novelist an article by self-styled investigative identity. Newsnight should have and journalist. She was long listed for journalist and abusers’ champion known that but instead relied on the the 2012 Sunday Times short story Richard Webster, claiming that I had shoddiest journalism imaginable. One competition.

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7/Social Policy Joyce Costie, from Cardiff, attending the tenth anniversary celebration of the Deafblind Guidance in Cardiff Bay earlier this year.

Nick Morris says that most of all deafblind people need early intervention support Level playing field needed for the disadvantaged

“When I wake up in the morning I don’t know if I’ve opened my eyes or if I’m in this world or the next,” says Fred, a deafblind man in south east Wales. “The only way I know I’m alive when I wake up in the morning is that I can feel my wife breathing next to me.” Over they ears he has worked as a navy signalman, newsagent and publican. He is deaf, has sight loss and runs a group for visually impaired people in his local area. Deafblindness is a combination of both sight and hearing difficulties that can vary from slight to profound loss. Most of what we learn about the world comes through our ears and eyes, so deafblind people can often face problems with communication, accessing information and mobility. One research estimate in 2010 suggested around 570 per 100,000 have co- occurring vision and hearing difficulties they have never been able to watch and independence and daily living skills. across the UK. This is higher than rates listen to other people and what is going Without access to information, people found by Welsh local authorities, which on around them. Therefore, they need cannot make informed decisions which suggests deafblind people are not being intensive support to develop. leads to further loss of independence. identified in Wales. Deafblindness can also affect people It can also be a ‘hidden’ disability. Deafblindness can affect people as they grow older or through illness “I get terrible depression and have to at any age. Congenital deafblindness or accidents. People may also be born take antidepressants,” a Sense Cymru occurs if someone is born deafblind or with a genetic condition, such as Usher member told a consultation event. becomes deafblind before they develop syndrome, which may mean that they “People can’t see that. But on one language. It has many causes, including have some sensory loss at birth and occasion, when I hit my head and was infections during pregnancy, premature progressively lose their sight and/or wearing a bandage, I lost count of the birth and rare genetic conditions. People hearing after language development. people giving me sympathy.” born deafblind often have additional Sensory loss during adult life brings Social support is necessary to enable disabilities, including learning and many challenges. People become deafblind people to lead independent physical disabilities. They will have socially and emotionally isolated if lives. Communicator-guides are provided little or no formal language and limited communication is limited. When people by local authorities or organisations like understanding of the world because lose mobility it affects their confidence, Sense and they act as the eyes and ears

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7/Social Policy of a deafblind person. This includes guiding their client and communicating with them using various methods, including adapted sign language (if their client has some useful vision) or deafblind manual spelling (a tactile method, where words are spelt onto a person’s hand through touch). A deafblind person in north Wales, who is a Sense Cymru service user, commented: “To have help with my communication means a lot. Without it I wouldn’t have the confidence to go out alone.” Gethin Plant, from Wrexham who has multi-sensory impairment, pictured with his father Kevin exploring the tactile The statutory Deafblind Guidance aspects of some feathers. to Welsh local authorities (2001) is the key document for access to publicly elderly deafblind woman, lived alone and a short term cost saving, for example, funded support. It gives responsibilities until her sensory impairments impacted to avoiding giving mobility training to to local authorities to identify and during her early eighties she was active a person with new sight loss. However, contact deafblind people, to give and took part in voluntary work. She was if the person then falls at home and them assessments of their needs by a given two hours per fortnight of support. suffers a bone fracture, there are costs specifically trained person and to ensure However, she became increasingly to the NHS, social services and to the support is appropriate. confused due to her deafblindness and individual’s confidence. As a deafblind The Welsh Government is now the decision was made, against her person in south Wales commented: “My proposing a new system. It is not wishes, to place her in residential care. support has been cut down to about an clear whether it will provide generic But the staff at the residential home hour. My support worker needs that long guidance covering all social services did not know how to support her. For just to sort all my medication. There’s across Wales. This is concerning because example, they would leave her food on no time left to deal with letters. I ended even now – with statutory guidance a tray in front of her but did not inform up contributing my own money to keep – almost a third of deafblind people her the food was there. She developed my support going.” The issue is not just surveyed by Sense in Wales have not depression and talked of suicide. The one for deafblind people. Sense Cymru had a specialist assessment despite Sense professional working with Ann is working with other disability charities their legal entitlement. However, Sense believes that if she had been given to ensure that the separate value of early is encouraged that Social Services just two hours a day of support from a interventions and ongoing support are Minister has written communicator-guide to help her adjust, given a statutory basis in the Bill. to a deafblind person who asked about and thereafter three hours twice a week Public spending cuts and reforms to the future of the guidance to say she of one-to-one support she could have welfare are a threat to deafblind people. will “strive to ensure that the specific remained in her own home. In Ann’s But there is the opportunity of reform, needs of deafblind people, their families case ‘specialist’ did not mean more to ensure that people can be supported and carers, are fully integrated into the expensive but merely support that was to lead independent and fulfilled framework of support”. suitable for her needs. lives. As one Sense Cymru member The Welsh Government is Another part of the challenge facing put it, “I was reluctant to ask for help undertaking a major process of social the Welsh Government is reforming at the beginning. I didn’t want to feel service reform, including the Social the culture of social service delivery inadequate. I prefer to do everything Services and Wellbeing Bill due in – away from cost and expectation myself with some support... I just want to January 2013. The context of the management and towards proactive, have a level playing field with everyone reforms is familiar: tightening public preventative and responsive services. else. I just want to be independent.” finances, an ageing population and A key role for the Welsh Government is growing demand on social services. a continued emphasis on making sure The first step to appropriate service local authorities carry out prevention Nick Morris is Policy and Campaigns for deafblind people is a specialist and early intervention work to prevent Officer for Sense Cymru and RNIB assessment, as the Deafblind Guidance needs escalating. Cymru. Sense Cymru can be contacted requires. Non-specialist assessment can Local authorities face difficult on [email protected] lead to inappropriate support that can decisions. Not supporting ‘lower level’ Names in this article have been changed cause problems. For example, Ann, an needs can be a false economy. There is to preserve anonymity.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 63 8 Environment The Arctic sea ice collapse Gareth Wyn Jones explains why the loss of cover across the North Pole is doing much more than merely bringing us bad summer weather Article The Arctic sea ice collapse During August and early September most will be effectively free of summer ice by 2016, of Britain bathed in the golden glow of the give or take three years. That is to say it could Olympic and Para-Olympic games. A minority even, but with a low probability, be ‘free’ by may have found the coverage too jingoistic next September. but most were enveloped in the feats of We must appreciate the huge significance the athletes and the Union Jack. It was a of this phenomenon, one that has caught huge and entertaining diversion from an some in the scientific community off-guard. unrelenting and unresolved economic crisis. The official climate change projections of However, far away in the Arctic, a much the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate more significant drama was being played out. Change and others, while recognising that The Arctic sea ice was collapsing in extent, arctic warming would be significantly greater area and volume at an unprecedented rate than changes in the global mean, were to record lows not observed in recent history. nevertheless only anticipating major losses of This is illustrated graphically in Figure 1a. Arctic sea ice in several decades. But these But the most important metrics are the ice’s are occurring now. thickness (Figure 2), and volume, with an 80 per cent loss in a decade (Figure 3). No doubt ice extent will The crash is well documented, being recorded by satellite feeds in Norway, recover rapidly this winter Denmark, Germany, Canada, the EU, Japan but this thin, annual ice will and several US agencies as well as by various probably be subject to rapid vessels in the area. By September little thick multi-year ice was left. melt in 2013. Undoubtedly, there is residual ice in areas apparently ice free and, vice versa. There are also areas of open ocean where the satellite images show only ice. However, the annual and seasonal trends are all too clear. No doubt ice extent will recover rapidly this An obvious conclusion is that this year’s winter but this thin, annual ice will probably be Arctic summer has terminally undermined subject to rapid melt in 2013. One of the most the position of the ‘denialists’ and alerts all experienced specialist observers, Professor sensible, pragmatic people to global warming Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University and the need for much more urgent action to who has been studying the Arctic sea ice for combat the threats posed. Certainly this was decades, is predicting that the Arctic Ocean the case following the impact of Hurricane

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Figure 1a: Decade changes in seasonal Arctic sea ice melt area Sandy on the coast of the eastern in October. As New York-based Bloomberg Businessweek put it in banner headlines, “It’s global warming, stupid.” Warmer oceans make hurricanes more likely and more severe. But on this occasion there was the critical factor of the blocking ridge of high pressure over Greenland which diverted the storm westwards from the sea to the land. The blocking high – rare at that time of year – is likely to have been caused by the record ice melt in the Arctic. Nonetheless, ‘denialist’ websites are still rubbishing the observations from this Arctic summer and are already at play weaving their disinformation. Two main arguments are being advanced:

• It’s all happened before so it doesn’t matter much and it’s part of ‘natural’ cycles. • Look at the Antarctic where the winter ice extent is very high.

It may well be that during the climatic maximum in the Northern Hemisphere Figure 1b: some 6,000 years ago, the Arctic was Decadal changes in seasonal Antarctic melt cycle area largely or entirely ice free but since then the natural Milankovitch cycles should be causing a gradual and continuing hemispheric cooling which the current Arctic warming shows has been overwhelmed. Of course, 6,000 years ago the human population was miniscule by modern standards and our society far less complex. Interestingly this summer the 31 foot Beelzabub 2, achieved a first North-West Passage by a sail yacht in a couple of months compared with Roald Amundsen’s first passage in his 15 horse power Gjoa in three seasons from 1903-5. This was after many heroic, sometimes disastrous, attempts from Elizabethan times until the last century. Sadly it is doubtful if Richard Parks’ amazing feat of reaching the seven highest peaks on each continent and the three Poles (North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Everest) in seven months can even be repeated (see Figure 4).

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Figure 2: Arctic ice thickness Conflating large summer Arctic changes with small changes in winter Antarctic accumulation is deeply misleading for a raft of reasons (compare Figures 1a and 1b). Even in the much more insulated and isolated Antarctica continent, there are strong indications of change and loss of sheet ice. Arctic sea ice, by contrast, is highly dynamic and sensitive. Every season millions of tonnes of ice are exported through the Fram Strait between north- east Greenland and Svalbard to be lost to the North Atlantic Ocean warmed by the Gulf stream and historically replenished in winter. That is to say, the summer ice cover is the result of a dynamic equilibrium. As shown in Figure 1b, the Antarctic sea ice changes are small by comparison. The implications of the Arctic sea ice crash extend even beyond the compelling evidence for an alarming rate of global climate change in this region. These changes expose us to a number of self-generating, positive Figure 3: feed forward reactions and unknown Changes in sea ice volume risks. Part of the Arctic refrigeration system is the reflectivity of white ice but when this is replaced by dark seawater, especially as Arctic summer days are so long, the sea absorbs more energy and heat, thereby naturally contributing to further melting. This is called a change in surface albedo. Professor Wadhams calculates this new heat gain is equivalent to several decades of

growing CO2 emissions. Similarly the peaty tundra is warming and decaying. As it is very wet, its anaerobic degradation tends to produce methane, itself a greenhouse gas but

with a potency 100 times that of CO2 on a 10 year time frame, and about 24 times on a 100 year time frame. Aerobic breakdown of the arctic peats will,

of course, produce CO2. Additionally there are deposits of methane clathrates beneath the Arctic Ocean, especially the shallow Laptev Sea where Russian

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scientists report finding methane plumes the North Atlantic jet stream. We are bubbling from these waters. It cannot the beneficiaries of one component be over-emphasised that the dangers of of this conveyor, namely the Gulf self-reinforcing, feed-forward changes in Stream whose decay might mean that, the Arctic are very substantial. paradoxically, while the planet generally So far no mention has been made warms, we in Wales (and North West of the huge Greenland ice cap, nor the Europe more generally) might be decrease in the northern snows. While subject to a climate more typical for melting of sea ice has no direct influence 53°N or S – that is, Labrador, southern on global sea level, the melting of the Alaska or Tierra del Fuego -- God forbid! Figure 4: terrestrial ice caps does. As well as However, such a threat is not our Michael Parks’ 737 Challenge observing the collapse of sea ice, this immediate concern. Briefly, the jet summer has seen a record melt and stream at a latitude of around 60°North Melting of the Arctic ice-cap means it is runoff from the Ice Cap and the calving flows at the interface between the Arctic highly doubtful whether former Welsh from some large glaciers. The ice fields and Ferrel weather cells. It appears that rugby international Richard Parks’ epic are losing their protective skirt of sea ice Arctic changes are now influencing the strength and path of this jet stream journey to reach the seven highest as well as allowing standing, blocking peaks on each continent and the three While officially the EU, meanders (Rossby waves) in it. These Poles will ever be repeated. Following UK and Wales target an have caused this summer’s great heat his injury-induced retirement from rugby, and severe drought in the USA and Parks embarked on the challenge to 80 per cent decrease parts of Russia and Ukraine as well as climb the highest mountain on each in emissions by mid previously similar events in France. In of the world’s continents (the Seven addition it has given North West Europe Summits) and venture the last degrees century, the Arctic data a disappointing wet and windy summer to the South and geographical North pose the question is this as the jet stream threw an unremitting Poles within seven months. He began too slow, too late and series of Atlantic lows at us. And as his journey in Cardiff on 12 December we saw with Hurricane Sandy, other 2010 – the centenary of the departure may be too little? areas have been subjected to damaging of the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, blocking highs. led by Robert Scott – and reached The root cause of the Arctic ice loss the South Pole on 27 December. is the greenhouse gas accumulation Over the following three months he as well as being directly affected by the from our dependence on cheap energy climbed Mount Vinson (Antarctica), rising temperatures. The melt may also from fossil fuels, despite the best efforts Aconcagua (Andes, highest mountain be accelerated by soot from the Siberian of the deniers to confuse and dissemble. in South America), Kilimanjaro (Africa) fires decreasing the albedo of the Their tale is told with chilling clarity in and Carstensz Pyramid (Indonesia), glaciers and ice cap. Many now believe Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes followed by reaching the North Pole in that the International Panel on Climate and Erik Conway who document the April. He completed the epic journey Change estimates of possible sea level way science, in general, and climate over the next three months by climbing rise of tens of centimetres by the year science in particular, has become seen Everest (on the border between China 2,100 are too conservative and values of as a threat to a dogmatic version of one to two metres should be factored in. free market economics and libertarian and Nepal), followed by Denali (Alaska, If the Arctic were insulated from individualism. While officially the EU, highest mountain in North America), the main planetary circulation system, UK and Wales target an 80 per cent and Elbrus (Caucasus, highest peak it might be possible to view even decrease in emissions by mid century, in Russia). On 12 July 2011 he made the observed changes with greater the Arctic data pose the question is this history becoming the first ever person equanimity but this is not the case. too slow, too late and too little? to stand on all continental summits The Arctic is a major determinant of The meandering and stalling of the plus the two poles, finishing more than the thermo-halide circulation system northern jet stream has been responsible two weeks ahead of his self-imposed of our oceans and of the behaviour of for the massive heat waves and many 7-month deadline.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 67 8/Environment excess deaths in the USA (2012), France Figure 5: and Italy (2003), and Russia and the Illustration of recent loss of summer Artic ice extent Ukraine (in 2010 and 2012) as well as the disastrous Indus floods. As far as I am aware, it cannot be proved that these are linked unambiguously to the Arctic changes but the link is highly plausible, as is the case with Hurricane Sandy. It is not just ‘in-country’ excess deaths, harvests have suffered and world food prices risen. In 2010 riots ensued. In our interconnected but vulnerable world, effects cascade. No one is immune. In truth we have made little progress even towards existing CO2 emission- reduction targets. Governments of all colours obsess about debt, fiscal imbalances, spending cuts and restoring economic growth, as traditionally understood. The nature and environmental impact of that growth is a second or third order issue. ‘Green growth’ sits at the margin. In my essay ‘Overshoot Limits’ (in the collection Wales’ Central Organising Principle, published by the IWA in May) I analyse at some length the problems associated with indefinite GDP growth and our demands on planetary sources and sinks. This summer’s Arctic events demand we focus on energy as the most pressing issue and immediately do-able actions that will make sense to people. This is because of the dangers of positive feed forward reactions I alluded to, and the present behaviour of northern hemisphere weather patterns, with ‘known unknown’ and ‘unknown unknown’ threats. Welsh Government data show total energy use in Wales to be about 125 to 130 TWh per year. Of this only some 20 per cent [~25 TWh] is electricity - the rest being from direct burning of oil, coal or gas for transport, space heating, both commercial and domestic, and industrial processes. Ambitious plans are clear from these simple figures that we beg many questions about waste being discussed to generate renewable have major issues. The lead-times in management and hidden subsidies. and relatively low carbon electricity. schemes such as Wylfa B or the Severn The costs will be enormous despite 80 If we gradually convert a proportion barrage are long, about eight to ten per cent of the energy issue still being of our transport to electric power, the years and then only generate electricity. unresolved. Anyway, the schemes will proportion of electricity in the mix They will be subject to huge controversy make no impact until the 2020s. should increase. However, it is quite and especially in case of Wylfa B Many experts suggest that we waste at

68 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 8/Environment least 30 per cent of our energy, electricity Given physical realities, how much will we in Wales and otherwise. If in Wales we could save ~30% of the 130TWh this amounts to and the UK broadly, still depend on external energy about 40TWh. It equates to an installed sources, be that Saharan sun or Icelandic geothermal capacity of ~4.5GW at 100 per cent or power stations with carbon capture or indeed as a load or more realistically 13 to 15 GW capacity at load factor of around 30 per very last and temporary resort, nuclear plant fuelled cent. Note this is much more than our by imported uranium? current total electricity use. If we assume an investment of £1 billion per 1.5 GW capacity, then one might ask: how much could be saved by an equivalent investment of, let us say £10 billion, in saving energy and to complement it, production are mutually reinforcing best interests of their own families and dispersed renewables owned by the as bringing greater awareness of communities? Central governments community or members of it? Would not costs and benefit makes everyone look instinctively to dramatic large the social and community and indeed more careful. It becomes ‘my’ energy schemes that they can readily control, the economic impacts, be much greater to conserve and cherish not your boast of and tax. The National Grid and an example of real ‘sustainable external right to waste. Unfortunately and power company business plans are development’? Albeit somewhat I have seen no detailed, quantitative based historically on distribution from rhetorical, these questions are pertinent analysis of Wales’ renewable energy point sources – large power stations or for four main reasons: resource nor how of these can be refineries - to the clients, you and I. locally owned. Having many thousands of producers • Firstly, the alternative project should and web of supply and demand would enable us to save energy and All this this may well not be enough. be an entirely different game. How can greenhouse gas emissions with much The potential of major tidal lagoons, this be accomplished? Could it give shorter lead-time compared with barrages or flow schemes, wave energy, rise to healthy rivalry- who can enjoy major infrastructure works and be less offshore wind or indeed nuclear stations the best living standard with the lowest contentious. which must perforce be owned by large energy footprint and cost? An obvious corporations, cannot be ignored. Given problem is finance. Governments • Secondly, it would be labour physical realities, how much will we in are near bankrupt although able to intensive. Work will be created for Wales and the UK broadly, still depend refinance the Banks. Will they help small local companies and the wealth on external energy sources, be that finance such schemes? Can we leverage dispersed at a time of economic Saharan sun or Icelandic geothermal local investment? How much will come recession. It would enhance local or power stations with carbon capture from the participants? multipliers. or indeed as a very last and temporary Our Government in Wales is resort, nuclear plant fuelled by imported committed to a Bill to make sustainable • Thirdly, it could save all the uranium? However, might we not development their “central organising participants fuel costs, both electric make real progress towards decreasing principle”. If this is to be more than and directly burn fossil fuels, and help Wales’ high per capita greenhouse gas empty rhetoric, then the collapse of insulate them, not only against cold emissions and sustaining good living this arctic summer must be faced with weather, but against rising fuel prices standards, while making a practical energy policy taking centre stage. on the world markets. and political contribution towards a reasoned response to the Arctic ice • Fourthly, it could be combined with collapse, by new thinking? a real drive to exploit, at a local level, There are many fundamental Wales’ renewable energy resources: problems. In seeking a lower energy wind, solar PVs and heat, wood footprint, as the key indicator of better biomass, micro-hydro, AD (both sustainability, how can we engage with, agricultural and non-agricultural), not discourage, people whose natural Professor Gareth Wyn Jones chairs the ground and air source heat pumps. scepticism is fed by denialists? Can they Welsh Government’s advisory group on Energy saving and localised be convinced such changes are in the Land Use and Climate Change.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 69 Beyond 9 the towpath Heritage Mark Lang celebrates the contribution canals are making to 21st Century Wales

Article Beyond the towpath

Pontcysyllte aqueduct, built by Thomas Telford and William Joseph opened in 1805, and carries the Llangollen canal over the Valley of the River Dee. It is the longest and highest aquaduct in Britain and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009.

This year, which has seen the birth of Glandwˆr buildings. We own, manage and operate Cymru - The Canal and River Trust in Wales, the waterways for public benefit, use also marks the 200th anniversary of the and enjoyment. Our financial security is and Brecon Canal which we underpinned by our property dowry created are celebrating with a year-long programme of over the last 20 years by British Waterways’ events. In Wales we also have the Llangollen shrewd recognition of the potential of Canal, with Thomas Telford’s extraordinary waterside property, and a 15-year contract feat of engineering, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct with the UK Government in recognition of the as the centre piece of the Trust owned World £500 million public benefits delivered each Heritage Site; the Montgomery Canal, which year from the waterways. threads its way down the Wales-England The canals of Wales were originally border; and the . constructed to provide connectivity in the The waterways are no longer the Welsh economy, a role overtaken by the responsibility of the UK Government. As a railways. Today their major role is to support third sector organisation, Glandwˆr Cymru tourism, including the two world heritage represents a major opportunity to forge sites at Pontcysyllte and Blaenafon. Although closer links with Welsh Government and one abiding image is the narrow boat, 96 the National Assembly for Wales, as well as per cent of the people who visit and use the other public, private and voluntary sector canals today are on the towpath and that is organisations in Wales. also where 90 per cent of the visitor spend is Across England and Wales the Canal generated. That supports over 800 jobs, local and River Trust represents the largest ever facilities and services, and the pubs and shops transfer of assets from the public to the third that are such valuable community hubs. sector. The Trust is among the UK’s largest What we are now seeking to do is ensure charities, with responsibility for 2,000 miles the full potential of our waterways is realised. of canals, rivers, docks and reservoirs, along The waterways are a major opportunity to with museums, archives and the country’s contribute to health and well-being, and at a third largest collection of protected historic recent meeting of the Assembly’s Cross-Party

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Group on Waterways we received an excellent presentation on how they are the absolute ideal location and setting for the restorative health effects of green space. Canals are a flat, accessible and safe free outdoor space for people to walk and cycle. The waterways also provide an excellent outdoor classroom for learning about our environment and industrial and cultural heritage. We already work with schools across Wales through our Canal & River Explorers, but we want more children to benefit. We want to widen participation. Half of the population live less than five miles from a canal, and we want more people, particularly from disadvantaged communities, to benefit. Across the UK our inland waterways have experienced a renaissance, transforming some of our largest cities and smallest towns creating new destinations and hot spots for investment and growth. Schemes such as the Olympic Park in London, Brindley Place in Birmingham, and the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland show what an extraordinarily diverse range of regeneration and economic development potential our canals have. We believe there are similar opportunities in Wales that are yet to be exploited, and we are working with national and local government to identify these. As a charity we are, of course, The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal at Goytre. seeking to secure additional funding to fulfil our goals. The Canal and River strengthen our links as a result of our A470. Thankfully attitudes have changed Trust is seeking regular donors through new constitution. Our guiding principle dramatically over the last 20 years. I want its Friends scheme and are also seeking in these discussions is that the waterways future generations to look on our canals to significantly increase our volunteers. of Wales are as much an asset to Wales with as much cause for celebration as we Our canals are here today thanks to as they are to the Trust, and in working now look on the 200th anniversary of the the efforts of volunteers over the last together we can realise their full Mon and Brec, and to be as much inspired 60 years, but we want to increase potential and contribution to Welsh life. by the people who saved them and both the diversity of volunteers and Glandwˆr Cymru has now started the secured their ongoing relevance, as we opportunities. Volunteering plays an process of writing a ten-year strategy for are by the people who built them. important community development the development of Wales’ waterways. role, and it is something we wish to The aim is to look beyond the towpath support, encourage and develop. to identify the areas of Welsh life where We have well developed the Trust can play a full and active part. Mark Lang is Chairman of Glandwr relationships with Welsh Government, In the post-War period canals were Cymru - The Canal and River Trust the National Assembly, and with often seen as dangerous. Many were in Wales. A former political advisor local authorities and other agencies, filled-in and many more had roads built at the National Assembly for Wales, businesses and charities across Wales. over them – such as the Glamorgan Canal he is Senior Researcher at CREW Discussions are ongoing about how we much of which is now underneath the Regeneration Wales.

the welsh agenda winter 2012—issue 48 | 71 10 Fishlock’s File Culture We’re more Kyber than the Kyber

Trevor Fishlock observes how Wales shares the magic of the movies with the stars Articles Fishlock’s File: We’re more Kyber than Film makers scouting a location for their frequently struck by the sheer variety of our the Kyber filmCarry On Up the Khyber in 1968 found a country. Within its 8,000 square miles there’s a likely canyon in Snowdonia. For the sake of tightly constructed mosaic of photogenic and Swans fly high verisimilitude they recruited an army veteran evocative landscapes: think rugged Rhinog, who had served on the North West Frontier mwynder Maldwyn, gorgeous . Given Book reviews to take a shufti. According to Gerald Thomas, such a jigsaw of vistas and vignettes it’s not Welsh questions the director, the old colonel declared, “It’s surprising that so many films are made here. that inform global more Khyber than the Khyber.” The rest is I like to think that much of the visual understanding film history. To save money the uniforms were spadework was done years ago. Richard recycled from the filmZulu . Wilson, Thomas Jones, Paul Sandby, Moses Epicentre capital Cinema and television companies spend Griffith, J. M. W. Turner and other trailblazers for the stag and around £22 million a year making dramas in of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries hen Welsh settings. If we can’t actually eat scenery immortalized the grand panoramas. No Last of the we can rely on our noble mountains, beaches doubt the Wales Film Commission has maps analogue and estuaries to earn some of our living. with GPS coordinates showing modern alternative poets Perhaps the Sunday Times over-egged cameramen where their tripods will fit into things a bit recently when it described the the easel-holes left by the artist pioneers. When everything coast between Stack Rocks and Stacpoole The Conwy valley and Betws-y-coed, for has a price, less as “dynamite”, but the fact is that Wales example, must be riddled with these intriguing has value is a stand-in, or body-double, for China, triangular indentations. Afghanistan, Scandinavia, India and many Movie-makers are notoriously hard- other places. We’ve grown rather blase about headed and Wales has to compete with the blokes creaking about in chainmail, King world when directors hunt for locations. Arthur galloping around his birthplace and Even the great Welsh desert doesn’t compare Robin Hood in Fforest Sherwood. with Monument Valley, but then Monument A film extra told me he’d been killed Valley is for Stetsons only. On the other hand, many times in mounted combat in Wales but Wales is notably versatile and convenient never hurt. A farrier by trade, he revealed, and specializes in bespoke landscapes for the interestingly, that the herds of horses brought discerning. Leafing through the catalogue I in for medieval dramas really enjoy meeting see dramatic, dreamy, sleepy, stirring, stark, up again on the set. I imagine them having a dark, forbidding, fantastic, charming, scary, good neigh about Russell Crowe. medieval, industrial, riverine, littoral, sylvan In my treks across the landscape I am and cute. If asked we do rainy.

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Ingrid Bergman in a scene in the 1958 movie The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, based on the real-life adventures of missionary Gladys Aylward in China. Here a starring role is given to the Snowdonian landscape. were extras or part-time workers. Others were happy to see how the movie was “This is soul food, so real, and this made. Called The Edge of Love it was about Dylan Thomas and his wartime place is real, and the people here, adventures in New Quay. Not everyone liked it: some locals still disapproved they’re real, too.” of the poet’s scandalous behaviour. Nevertheless, Dr Griffiths told me, “It created a community buzz. People thought it wonderful to see their town on screen. For them the town itself was We also do authenticity. Years Happiness. That was in 1958 but people a key character in the film.” ago, sharing a supper of cawl with have never forgotten the excitement Bunny Evans was recruited as an people filmingUnder Milk Wood in of having Ingrid Bergman in town. A extra and paid a price. He had to submit Pembrokeshire, I heard one of them say man who played an extra at a pound to a shave and a close 1940s haircut dreamily, “This is soul food, so real, and a day told me about the wonder of it for the part. He noted ruefully that this place is real, and the people here, all as if it happened last week. In the in the end he wasn’t in the film. His they’re real, too.” nearby mountains they filmed a long performance had joined his pony tail Wales has been film country since line of Chinese children playing refugees and his beard on the cutting room floor. Aberdare’s William Haggar launched and singing Knick Knack Paddywhack. He didn’t mind, though, he said, and he himself as a producer in 1901 with The Reliably resourceful, Wales hired the enjoyed the experience, the taking part. Maid of Cefn Ydfa, a fifteen-minute crime requisite number of kids from countless As it happened I stayed in the hotel drama which was probably the first Chinese restaurants. where some of the actors in The Edge screen fiction in Britain. Dr Merris Griffiths, who teaches at of Love had been quartered during the Even if we pretend not to be, we’re Aberystwyth university, published a filming. Showing me to my room the impressed when stars step from their study of the impact on her home town manager said, “This is where one of the clouds and come to earth. Actors and of New Quay during the making of a stars stayed. Just think, the person who directors stay a few days or weeks and film there in 2007. Most people were last looked in your bathroom mirror was move on, but the magic endures. A thrilled to be involved. There was a Keira Knightley.” plaque in Beddgelert commemorates sense of togetherness in the creation of Come to Wales. Share the magic of the making of The Inn of the Sixth a unique local experience. Some people the movies and a mirror with the stars.

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The Swans celebrate a victory over Arsenal in their debut season in the Swans fly high last January.

Peter Stead To celebrate the centenary of Swansea City AFC, team in the land, whilst the season before that examines famously and proudly known as ‘the Swans’, Geraint their average attendance had been 3,690. Not Jenkins has written a delightfully elegant, highly surprisingly, this centenary history begins with a 100-year readable and evocative history of the club. No both club chairman Huw Jenkins and Professor sporting story centenary could have been more fittingly set up, Jenkins referring to the club’s history as having of tragedy for on 13 May 2012 the Swans completed their first been something of a ‘roller coaster’. Of course, mixed with season in the Premiership, the most widely followed football fans throughout the land fully realise that farce that and competitive league in the world, by beating this is part of the price one pays by becoming a Liverpool and finishing eleventh. In a season in football fan. The author Harry Pearson was once has ended in which many pundits had predicted relegation the asked why he supported Middlesbrough and triumph for Swans had not only beaten highly-fancied Arsenal ruefully explained that it was “because I’m a glory Swansea City and Manchester City, but had been praised for seeker!” In his 1992 book Fever Pitch Nick Hornby their sophisticated passing-game by those more had articulated what all true fans really knew, that discerning commentators whose standards were set to support any team is bound to involve more in Barcelona rather than domestically. anguish and frustration than pure pleasure. This new set of circumstances had many By any standard, however, Swansea’s 100-year veteran fans pinching themselves. The Swans journey has involved more drama than almost any were now the eleventh best team in the country other British club. At the increasingly dilapidated with an average home gate of 19,946. Yet in 2003 Vetch, their home for 93 years, the Swans had they had finished the season as the 88th ‘best’ provided a highly varied menu that included a fair

74 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 10/Culture amount of tragedy and not a little farce. The story includes lost matches, injuries to key players, successful players and managers deserting the ship, boardroom crises, relegation, possible eviction from the league structure and even legal closure. And yet the club survived, perhaps even miraculously. Professor Jenkins’ first and successful aim had to be the telling of this story. His match descriptions always suggest that he must have been there, and he brings alive all the rich cast of characters and eccentrics that the Swans seem to attract. Yet all the while he is subtly offering an explanation of why the Swans have not passed into oblivion. To survive, any club has to develop Another Swans triumph in their debut season, this time over Manchester City in March 2012. personality, a distinct character, some quality that allows a bond to develop into that league in 1949, and then by did. Given this talent, to this day the between management, players and fans. an astonishing flowering of local talent. question is asked why the Swans did From their first match in 1912, a 1-1 draw For a while Swansea could boast of not achieve more in that era. Professor with Cardiff, the fans had developed an the best schoolboy side in the land Jenkins explains that it has been affection for these white-clad ‘Swans’ and many of those youngsters soon the memory of that golden era that and an appreciation of the excitement became internationally acclaimed still fuels the hunger for footballing generated at the Vetch. From the start stars. In the 1950s there were several excellence that characterises life in there were heroes and characters who players, all born in the terraced houses Swansea. The statue of the great Ivor were identified and developed by the of Swansea’s inner-suburbs, who that stands outside the local press. Soon the Swans were making could have been justifiably named is far more than a tribute to a peerless their mark nationally, first in the FA in any perspective all-star European player, it is a reminder to all and sundry Cup and then after 1920 in the English team. Some of those players like John of what Swansea expects. Football League. Charles and never played Since 1965 the roller-coaster Players had initially been recruited for the Swans but others such as Ivor has gone beserk with the Swans from all corners, but soon there were Allchurch, and Cliff Jones experiencing eight relegations and Welsh heroes with Ivor Jones and nine promotions. Famously the Cardiff- Billy Hole not only playing for their born took the Swans country but establishing local dynasties. from the Fourth Division to the First Between 1919 and 1926 the Swans Reporting on a premier club where the Swans finished sixth in 1982. were managed by Joe Bradshaw Geraint H. Jenkins, Within four years they were back in and their star was the great goal- Proud to be a Swan: the basement division with an average scorer, Cardiff-born Jack Fowler. As The History of Swansea City AFC, attendance of just over 4,000. The this side gained promotion and then Y Lolfa, 2012, £14.95 fans had been thrilled going up on the beat Arsenal in the Cup they gained escalator but on the way down it was a reputation as a good and stylish (with Pete Welsh), soon apparent just how badly the club footballing side. An expectation was Mr Swansea, had been administered. Debts had run created that was to withstand all crises Y Lolfa, 2009, £9.95. up and the club that ‘had lost its grip and which persists to this day. on financial sanity’ was wound up in From 1925 until 1965 the Swans Garry Monk (with Peter Read), the High Court in December 1985. normally operated in the old Second Loud, Proud and Positive, Inevitably, as Professor Jenkins guides Division. However, their modern My Autobiography, us through this era he has to inject identity as a club was forged first by a Y Lolfa, 2012, £9.95. some titbits of Board Room analysis into very good team that, after a two-year his narrative and we begin to realise aberration, gained promotion back the complexity of running a successful

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710/Culture/Culture football team. All too often fans, his Mr Swansea in which he guides well and there are rumours of player journalists and even historians confine his readers through some of the hair- discontent. Earlier this year, Garry their interest to what happens on the raising moments that fans had only Monk’s revealing autobiography pitch and just throw in the odd insult to imagined in their nightmares. explained that a real camaraderie had managers and directors. Only gradually, Fortunately Geraint Jenkins is telling developed amongst Swansea players, as football has become even bigger a happy story and one can sense the largely because they all lived cheek- business, have fans and writers begun purring as his narrative develops pace. by-jowl in the centre of Swansea. He to combine both football as a game and All the ingredients come together went on to show how that allowed as a business into a unified analysis. as if in some divine plan. Perhaps the players to develop a degree of Today any writer seriously wanting understandably, he allows football opposition to the approach of Paulo to reveal the real character of teams to squeeze out politics and business. Sousa who managed the Swans for like Chelsea and the two Manchesters, However, he could have placed more only a season between the regimes let alone Cardiff City, would necessarily emphasis on the vital role of Swansea of Martinez and Rodgers. Now one have to take us into the Board Room Council and of individual directors, wonders how the players are reacting every bit as often as on to the field of not least Martin Morgan. The heroes to the very different style of their very play. One writer who has done this is of his story are the chairman Huw famous and cerebral Danish manager. Anthony Clavane in his examination Jenkins, the managers Martinez and Running a football club involves of United, a great side whose Rodgers, the crucial mid-field axis of juggling of many balls. Fans spend years believing that ‘things can only The heroes of his story are the chairman Huw Jenkins, get better’ and then suddenly find the managers Martinez and Rodgers, the crucial mid-field themselves asking ‘can it all last?’ Is there anyone who doesn’t believe that axis of Britton and Allen, and the goal-scorers Trundle, ‘football is a funny old game’? Scotland and Sinclair. The Swans are flying high and they have given Wales an example of how roller coaster has become even more Britton and Allen, and the goal-scorers politicians, businessmen and ordinary emotionally draining than` that of Trundle, Scotland and Sinclair. The punters can together create the right the Swans. Clavane brilliantly evokes directors are real fans and they know atmosphere for excellence and flair to the essential identity of his club and their history. As a result common sense flourish. As the Swans celebrate their then traces its corporate destruction and foot-balling flair have become the centenary the publication of Swansea as it was “devoured from within by a hallmarks of the new club now strutting ‘Til I Die, a volume of fan memories toxic combination of excessive debt, it out in their classy new stadium. And put together by the Trust, and the self-doubt and bitter in-fighting” and very significantly the fans are integral announcement of the development “plummeted like a stone in the well”. to the story for the Supporters Trust, of new training facilities and links Swansea fans could have done born out of frustration in 2001, now has with Swansea University all point to with this kind of analysis in the bad 16,000 members, a 20 per cent stake in the filling out of a community context years when their only recourse was the club and their own director on the and the building of sure foundations. to stay away or mutter curses on the Board. For the Swans the Liberty and A huge corner has been turned and almost deserted terraces. Fortunately the Premiership form a new chapter everyone is determined that there shall David Farmer, the club’s pioneering but anyone wanting to understand that be no going back. Certainly the great historian, was first and foremost a fan needs to know the story so far. hope remains that once again the city but one who was prepared to become When the hitherto saintly and will be able to breed its own talent. involved in the running of the club. evangelical deserted Meanwhile nobody is forgetting that In his writings Farmer stresses the the club after just the one season in goals need to be scored and matches huge importance of the way in which the Premiership, the Swansea Board have to be won. For players, directors, the City of Swansea saved the day by appointed as his successor Michael management and fans there is only purchasing the Vetch off the club in Laudrup, once regarded as one of the ever the League Table, unavoidable, 1975. Then there was the subsequent greatest players in the world. “They’ve unforgiving and absolute. constant search for local business done it again,” was the phrase on people prepared to invest in the club. everyone’s lips. Another rabbit had One of the most generous and caring been pulled out of the hat. of the club’s ‘saviours’ is former player In the event it hasn’t been quite Peter Stead is a cultural historian of 20th Mel Nurse. In 2009 Y Lolfa published like that. The Swans are not playing Century Wales.

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a vital book for them. birth and one or two no longer live in Reviews The word ‘perspective’, however Wales. Iconographically, some conceit pompous, conveys something of the spreads itself rather in the way the current book’s glory (I utilise the lexicographical Prime Minister promises to spread out Welsh questions finding by H. Dumpty in L. Carroll, Privilege. Each of the 25 essays opens that inform global Through the Looking-Glass, ‘glory’ with a photograph of the author, some understanding meaning ‘a nice knock-down argument’). endearing, some quizzical, some superior, Owen Dudley Edwards Menna Elfyn, for instance, quotes her some smug, some capturing your own poetry but, in grim awareness of allegiance before you have read a word. the pig-ignorance of so many of us, does All are reproduced, suitably cropped (or, so in translations by other hands such as as we art-folk prefer to say, detailed) to R.S. Thomas (which may make her feel appear three more times, on front cover a little like Sophocles being translated by outside and inside, on back cover inside. Yeats). This makes its own excellent point We (if not the authors) could live without about Welsh identity. A poet writing in one at least two of these identical galleries for language cannot translate their own work identification (‘Look carefully, take your satisfactorily. If they did they would show time, see if you can pick out the person they were half-thinking in the tongue into who …’). Maps of north and south Wales which they translate. could have been more useful on front and As a rule a poem cannot be translated back inside covers, reminding us more at all, but if it can, then it requires another than the authors do of the polarisations poet as translater who will make the and partings dividing the two regions translation a work of art of its own, in (far more drastically than the excessively Wilde’s sense of the critic as artist. (And vaunted examples of Northern Ireland 25/25 Vision --- nobody has ever made a good translation versus the Rest, or Highland versus Welsh horizons across 50 years of Wilde’s Salome, including his own Lowland Scotland). It used to be a rudery Edited by John Osmond revisions of Lord Alfred Douglas’s.) Menna in Ireland to say someone’s face looked and Peter Finch Elfyn very neatly shows the importance of like the map of the country, but these IWA, 2012, £11.99 her witness by quoting from Octavio Paz faces are maps of Wales in a truer as that being a poet is to be well as a politer sense. They still leave us Those concerned with the culture of geographically underwhelmed. Wales, Scotland and Ireland are wearily not the voice of history But would maps of what is now accustomed to charges of parochialism or the voice outside history officially Wales be sufficient? The smallest emanating from scholars from England, but the voice within history country of our islands’ four, it has also the remaining, smaller, portion of the which is still trying to say been far the most ruthless and successful British Isles. And we must be on guard something different conqueror of the unfortunate English. against such indictments. This collection The Norman and French kings were of autobiographical studies in Welshness Speaking as a historian I am happy to agree assimilated when driven out of their begins with Trevor Fishlock’s record of that we cannot understand the past or its continental homelands, the Stuarts were self-integration with Wales. Its readers will wars with present and future unless we ultimately only acceptable when Dutch have little difficulty identifying dazzling can hear that voice. Two of the greatest and childless, the German kings of Britain allusions to Welsh cultural leaders, from poems written by Englishmen about Wales had even less lasting cultural effect (save Hywel Dda to Clough Williams-Ellis. are Thomas Gray’s The Bard and A. E. possibly for Prince Albert). The Tudors However, the editors should have supplied Housman’s The , both of planted ineffaceable feet on the face of some footnote explaining who Bernard which are clearly unhistorical and both of England. Shakespeare’s lost lines in Welsh Levin was. The name is tolerably easily which sound unique perspectives of Wales. originally spoken in Henry IV Part One, recalled by septuagenarians such as myself Many of 25/25 Vision’s portraits of his habitual Welsh victors (Fluellen, Sir but unlikely to mean anything to the most the artists are somewhat angular, a little Hugh Evans, Henry VII, Owen Glendower important readers of this book, those self-critical but seldom reaching Joycean (by surviving his tormentor Hotspur), his reading it 25 years from now. And it will be moroseness. Some did not have Welsh Welsh myths originating King Lear and

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Cymbeline, his supposed Welsh descent on his mother’s side, Warwickshire’s place on the Welsh frontier in his time, all support the Welshness of Shakespeare proclaimed in Gray’s The Bard. Its other triumph of Welsh cultural mastery, Milton, derives from the gianthood of that poet’s youth asserted in Lycidas (whose high point in all senses is the shaggy top of Mona high, coupled with Deva’s wizard stream rising in Merioneth) and in Comus (a masque performed at Ludlow Castle). This is at once the glory and the ruin of Wales. It made a success of its domination of England by conquest in depth where Ireland and Scotland simply intimidated and classified the English culturally without remodelling them. The Welsh were still at it in the early 20th Century, whose greatest Prime Minister until Attlee was , a Welsh nationalist who extended his Charlotte Williams pictured on Llandudno pier – “I had long been puzzling my fate as a Black (sic brown) woman in frontiers as he rose in the power game. a small seaside Welsh town…” Photo: John Briggs Gwyn Alf Williams is “the great Marxist historian” to Menna Elfyn. She doing). Nothing fails like success. England rejection of Welsh devolution in 1979 means this as a compliment although is a graveyard of Welsh victories. So 25/25 (following the great evangelical crusade Daniel G. Williams certainly does not Vision shuns the limits of its conquests setting the Valleys on fire against it under when declaring Eric Hobsbawm “Britain’s (apart from apologetic exile memories the preaching of Neil Kinnock) and then leading Marxist historian” to introduce to heighten contrasts with true Wales). by the last-minute cliff hanger-salvation of his sneer at a historical article on blacks Yet the temptation to identity-suicide is 1997). Back to Charlotte Williams: in 18th Century Wales “not in itself a omnipresent. “Our vicinity was Wales, our particularly central subject”: however vision was England,” remembers Grahame “When the politics of belonging rose Marxist, Hobsbawm was a centralist Davies in a roll of Cymric doom. to ascendancy in the 1990s, with (Oxbridge-London) snob. Williams John Osmond’s The Divided Kingdom all the associated paraphernalia of entitled the masterpiece he wrote (and (1988), confronted the bitter couplet: identity rhetoric and neo-nationalist anthologised) When Was Wales? but should revivalism, I had long been puzzling also have asked ‘Where Was Wales?’ The There ain’t no black my fate as a Black (sic brown) woman question is particularly appropriately in In the Union Jack. in a small seaside Welsh town, trying relation to Scotland whose oldest surviving to find a language that spoke to my poems were the work of Taliesin (in what There ain’t no dragon either, but that was predicament. What the heck was I is now Glasgow or at least Lanarkshire usurped so ruthlessly into the English Royal doing here? Why? What god or gods or Dumfriesshire) and Aneirin (in what is Family that it reminds us Representation had thought this one up?” now Edinburgh or at least the Lothians). may be Exploitation up to and including Here John Williams is so well immunised the present Prince of Wales’s hi-jack of Seldom has so potentially painful a in accordance with such intellectual the country’s name to be military alias or problem been put with such infectious and health warnings as to begin his essay “I pseudo-surnames for his sons. Charlotte enchanting good humour. But the smile on don’t speak for Wales. I’m not sure what Williams turns identity enquiry on the her face pulls no punches: or where it is, or when it was”. Would that Blackness or otherwise of Wales. Among other historians of all our countries had her essay’s many rich gifts to her readers “… back in the 1980s the connection such realistic humility! It is this elasticity of is a fine sense of time not always so visible between race and place was a very Welsh frontiers which poses the greatest in other contributions, although many different matter. We weren’t Welsh, threat to Welsh identity. To triumph is others make it clear that their quarter- we were ‘local’. We weren’t ethnic to vanish (as Grey’s Bard concludes by centuries are starkly divided by the historic minorities, we were ‘Black’. We

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weren’t a collective in any Wales in my native Dublin it meant ‘beat up’ in Morgan’s establishment of his Welsh sense, but scattered, largely invisible the 1950s; and thanks to the man who Labour leadership by the humiliation peoples. We were the dispossessed. made politics a four-letter word at the turn of Whitehall/Westminster Labour might Back in the 1980s, if asked, one of our of the century, Mr Alistair Campbell, ‘do’ prove that Wales has political lessons to number might say something like I’m means ‘trade in’, ‘stock’, ‘manufacture’ as teach Scotland. His leonine presence may a Mardy boy or I’m from in his “we don’t do God here” (meaning 10 have insured himself against trying to be a or I live in Llanrhaeadr, Llanrumney, Downing Street), although in the ancient Tudor. Alas for Scottish Labour, the sweets Llangollen. None of us were prepared or modern sense of the term his puppet of office currently destroying the Liberal to say ‘I’m Welsh’ even if we knew proved that one way or another Democrats remain too succulent for the it somewhere in our private lives. Blair did. God has reserved His reply. Opposition to renounce and so Alex We wouldn’t have publicly claimed Happily Professor Patrick McGuinness Salmond will hold his power and may well Welshness because that would have follows with a chapter political enough to increase it while the Douglas Alexanders been far too risky. We were not simply suit any of his Irish namesakes (however and Margaret Currans keep their Holyrood local but localised by a powerful set of spelled) and shows us how Welsh Helots jumping through increasingly assumptions that determined where nationalism and the Welsh language tightening nooses. As of now Scottish Black people could or couldn’t be.” were ‘done’ around 2002 with charges Independence preached by Salmond of racism from Labour votaries against means the conservation of Labour’s Quite apart from its value in its own right, their very existence. He quotes a friend welfare state, National Health, rejection this mode of autobiographical analysis is in wondering what language would be left of nuclear weapons, and free university the supreme tradition of Welsh questions to characterise the British National Party education, while Scottish Labour, under informing global understanding. It is should it bring its ugly face into Welsh London Labour’s whiplash, jettisons them simultaneously unique and universal, and politics (as it almost certainly will). Or, to all. Messrs Osmond and Finch should nothing in its indictment is diminished put it another way, cheapening the English really have baited their editorial hooks by its applicability to innumerable language to bankruptcy levels renders the sufficiently to get Rhodri Morgan to tell us counterparts such as Catholics and/or gays, user/abuser incapable of seeing what is whether he thinks he is unique. with the difference that ‘Blacks’ unless happening in the USA where President And so, ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ much ‘whiter’ than their own norm had Obama has battled with an Opposition Or, to translate, how should we edit the editors? Peter Finch should have learned more from his contributors about self- Professor Williams continues her superlative contextualisation historically: early on he charming by hard hits, to end her essay on her remarks that daughter’s frequent ‘Mum, we don’t do politics’. “Gwynfor’s hunger strike might have She is obviously too kind a mother to point out changed media attitudes to the language’s direction, but it cut no ice that if we don’t, politics will do us. whatsoever in the suburban reaches of the city that dominates us all.”

Presumably the city in question is London: it can hardly be Cardiff, though that is the no choice of closet or ‘Out’. Mind you, at determined to deny the right of him or only city he has so far mentioned. If he the height of apartheid in Northern Ireland any other Brown or Black to inhabit the thinks suburban Cardiff did no ice-cutting ‘local’ Catholics and Protestants could White House. Curiously, ’s over Gwynfor Evans’s threat of a hunger almost always tell at a glance (or a sniff) anti-Welsh campaign coincided with a strike he is on another planet (neither Ned whether they were the one or the other. London fashion of despising everything Thomas’s nor John Redwood’s). And Professor Williams continues her Welsh, no doubt including Welsh Labour if, as I assume, he means London, he is superlative charming by hard hits, to end (Bethan Gwanas documents a little of it for wrong again. His way of writing may lead her essay on her daughter’s frequent us here.) readers in 2037 to imagine Gwynfor did ‘Mum, we don’t do politics’. She is While a convert to Plaid from Labour go on hunger strike. One would naturally obviously too kind a mother to point out himself, Professor McGuinness generously hope that Welsh people of that year will that if we don’t, politics will do us. A Welsh hints at Rhodri Morgan’s opposition to know the realities of that inspirational context makes its reader a more linguistic Welsh Labour’s equation of demand for life, but an editor should give ignorance thinker: ‘do’ meant ‘swindle’ in the 1930s; Welsh speaking as racist. In fact Rhodri on Welsh matters no hostages. Gwynfor

80 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 10/Culture / reviews having become convinced that the want demanding a nationalism identifying itself Epicentre capital of a Welsh-language TV station would with Earth and its protection: for the stag and hen kill the language at the heart of Welsh Peter Finch nationalism, he determined on a hunger “Closeness to the land and the people strike till death to force the Thatcher who share the same horizons seems to government to grant it. I am unlikely me to be the beginning of Welshness. to forget it, because I broke down and Later I discovered it was a starting cried in my interview with him during point for others living close to the what looked like the last weeks before he edge of the British Isles.” embarked on it. He patted me on the arm and said, “It’s much worse for my friends In similar vein the Cardinal Archbishop than it is for me”. Michael Foot later told of Edinburgh, Keith Patrick O’Brien, me how he went up to Willie Whitelaw compared the Earth to the Holy Eucharist, and said, “Chap means it, and if he dies, each as sacred gifts of God to us. As the the whole place will go up in flames”. He Cardinal has been prominent recently nodded: “I will say for Whitelaw, chap in denunciation of same-sex marriage isn’t a bad chap, he went to the bloody legislation I had better make it clear that woman and said she’d have to do it, while one of his flock I don’t agree with him Cardiff After Dark she’d have to give them a Welsh-speaking there, and in saying that I can congratulate Maciej Dakowicz television station, made it clear he’d resign Osmond-Finch on the gay essay by Mike Thames & Hudson, £24.95 if she didn’t and she couldn’t afford to lose Parker, a most instructive exploration whose him then. So she gave in”. But what was perspective as with so many others here Finchley if not suburban reaches? is both entertaining and enlightening. The Drinking a lot isn’t new. The world has Which brings me to the other of the Cardinal, like John Osmond, brilliantly always been filled with drunks. But the book’s editors, John Osmond. His essay integrates our ideological identities with the idea has got around that in the burgeoning is indeed sublime, from its opening with custody of the planet which our own creeds Welsh capital drinking has taken on the best of all couplings of nationalism enjoin on us. epidemic proportions. It never used to be to the environment by personal glory in It should not be thought that the book like this. That’s the complaint of our steady his surrounding landscape which (apart as a whole can be written off as nationalist and suburban council taxpayers. They lie from apposite if astonishing epiphany of or crypto-nationalist. For instance, Owen abed listening to the josh and clatter of the author as 2012’s (and 2037’s) answer Smith MP, Shadow Secretary of State for inebriated youth staggering home. In my to the Reverend Eli Jenkins in Dylan Wales, contributes ‘Why Labour needs the day, they say, we’d have a pint or two, Thomas’s Under Milk Wood) drives him to nation’. In it he dissects a phenomenon certainly. But we always knew how to cite James Lovelock in favour of the idea we noted earlier, Welsh Labour’s behave. This barbarism they see, or think that “the planet should be regarded as a discovery of national identity in contrast to they see in the city’s sparkling streets, is single living organism”. disharmonies in other countries, or indeed new. They are worried. It’s a respectable So far, so geophysical, but the idea Scotland’s case where Scottish nationalism fear. The world has once again gone is older than views of the planet from occupies territory once proudly held and wrong. What can you do? spacecraft which inspired Lovelock. In even pioneered by Labour which Scottish But is it all new? Certainly the mass the last year of his life 1929-30 Arthur Labour now discards. That Owen Smith falling about in public is but then that’s Conan Doyle wrote When the World has written this article is in itself a tell- what you get when cities are developed so Screamed, which is very scientifically tale contrast to the barren waste which that indoors and outdoors merge. Today fictional. In it the Earth is proved to be replaces the productive Scottish multi- the centre of Cardiff is one great well-lit a living organism, whereupon Professor author discussions such as The Red Paper pedestrianised precinct. The smooth Challenger, the discoverer, builds vast on Scotland edited by . oft-swept plazas are rich in street furniture equipment to drive a mighty needle On the other hand, 25/25 Vision makes – bins, benches, booths, revolvers, statues, into Earth far below the surface with the it clear that Wales is still sparkling with billboards, plantings. They are illuminated result that volcanoes around the world ideas and will continue to do its thinking by lines of shop windows like giant practically blew themselves into space for itself. televisions. In fact, in front of St David’s while devastating their surroundings. Hall there is a giant television. Half the It was an all too accurate comment on Owen Dudley Edwards is an Honorary concert hall’s frontage now broadcasts human ambitions for glory at the expense Fellow in the department of History at rolling sport and news. Some of these of the environment. Osmond is in fact Edinburgh University. exteriors are now more comfortable than

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their user’s homes. Little wonder we 1863 with a population a quarter of the Photographer Maciej Dakowicz has search for joy within them, ambling slowly city’s number today, Cardiff had 211 places captured it all in his exhilarating night in soft shoes. where you could drink – inns, pubs, hotel photography. He has spent much of the Across Wales, and indeed across the bars. According to Brian Glover’s excellent past five years staying up late and not UK, public houses have been closing at Cardiff Pubs and Breweries (Tempus) Adam drinking. He follows the revellers, men a prodigious rate. This is nothing to do Street back then had seven pubs while dressed as superheroes and women with the population losing its taste for Bridge Street boasted eight. The density of dressed as Playboy bunnies. He takes their alcohol. It is entirely down to how we available watering holes was unmatched. photographs. He depicts them from when now consume our drink. We like it cheap, Working men, these pubs’ main clientele, they start, full of smiles and upright vitality, we buy it in supermarkets. We drink at would spend their entire leisure hours to when they finish, lying pale faced and home. Together, alone. We drink with inside them, staggering home at stop dishevelled among Caroline Street’s impunity in our gardens, leaning on our tap through the poorly lit streets to their discarded chip wrappers. front walls, walking down the streets, homes in the walking suburbs of Butetown, “Photography is nothing”, the great swaying inebriatedly across the city’s Grangetown, and . photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson once centre with our open lager cans in our Today this mesh of sawdust-floored said. “It’s life that interests me.” That’s hands. It’s an economic driver, a swift hit town-centre drinkeries has been largely Maciej’s approach, too. In his collection, at a quarter of the price we’d pay in an old replaced by the new phenomenon, the Cardiff After Dark, the capital’s street nightlife dark wood, wilton-carpeted public saloon. vertical bar. These gleaming palaces are is revealed in a way that many will find both So the Taff Vale and the Moulders Arms, spread throughout Cardiff’s revitalised amazing and shocking. Amazing because and the Salutation, The Bristol Hotel, the Marchioness of Bute, The Vulcan, The Lifeboat and the Greyhound have all He takes their photographs. He depicts closed. Their badly-shaven regulars, fags them from when they start, full of smiles and in hand, have gone to the winds. The land the pubs once occupied have been upright vitality, to when they finish, lying redeveloped and profit has been made. Cardiff’s stock of watering places has been pale faced and dishevelled among Caroline severely reduced. Street’s discarded chip wrappers. In those lost pubs drinkers of many generations mixed. The old stager would be in the corner, the young buck with his brylcreamed hair at the bar, the travelling salesman in his cheap suit ensconced in the lounge. There were darts and cards, heart. They are vast and built from glass they had no idea that the city’s night life was crisps and conversations. Behaviour was and aluminium. They have pinewood this extensive, and shocking because they cordial. The rising pissedness that alcohol floors and laser lighting. In them you will no doubt disapprove of what they see. brings was controlled by the generational stand, vertically, in your hundreds. You Cardiff, the binge drinking capital. Cardiff, mix. These pubs certainly had their beer- crowd their long bars and down shots and no simple centre of Welsh culture and Welsh fuelled moments but the norm was calm. cocktails and lager stuffed with chillies. You Government, but the place you come to You could go into them and feel safe. shout and yell. You do it with your jacket revel in and then be sick. Nobody ever felt out of place. at home and your skirt as short as it will Maciej’s approach is to stay out of Today in the recessing 21st Century it’s go. You have body art tattooed on every the action. He awaits Cartier-Bresson’s different. If we do venture out to drink available surface. You wear thumb rings moment and then he takes the shot. then it’s likely to be to a suburban tavern and earrings and rings on your toes. You He reached Cardiff in 2004 to study at near where we live. These places mix food enjoy it all. You are young. the University of Glamorgan and as for with coffee mornings and offer families This is the new and frightening to many of his compatriots found the city’s a complete package: games machines, non-participant world for which Cardiff has atmosphere to his liking and stayed. Like sizzling steaks, bouncy , cakes, wine, become famous. Cardiff is the UK’s epicentre Cartier-Bresson he takes an enormous death by chocolate, cider with ice cubes for the stag and the hen do. Coachloads number of photographs. On a good night, in it, high chairs. The city centre with all arrive from Swindon, Gloucester and he says, he’ll shoot five hundred. This its lights is too far off, you can’t park there Portsmouth, dressed as nuns, or supermen splendid Thames & Hudson full plate and readily, it’s full of marauding youth. or fairies. They stay for days. They have a full colour hardback narrows that vast We’ve been here before, sort of. In blindingly staggering time. collection to ninety-nine.

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Nothing is taken with a flash which Last of the analogue and better things, as a psychological cusp gives the photographer the chance to alternative poets is defined, is a moot point. The stapled slide around the action unnoticed. The Ifor Thomas magazines and hand-duplicated pamphlets results are stunning. Revealed in all their have now disappeared. In their place glory are the leisure times of the young: digitisation rules. This review for example their pains and their joys, their rollicking is being written on the cloud. It doesn’t up yours attitudes, their relentless pursuits exist at all, yet it can exist anywhere - of the hit and the high. People sit and lie everything, everywhere. EE as my current in the gutters, on pavements, on street provider is called. furniture, in doorways. They sprawl in And probably, presentationally, the end ungainly fashion, grope each other, suck product is better. But these writers and their cigarettes, drain their stomachs poets were the resistance, the almost secret onto pavements, stare blind-eyed at their army who waged an attritional campaign mobile phones. against the poetry establishment. In the queue outside Walkabout they There are probably few better poets to simultaneously text each other. Outside the corral these disparate souls than Geraldine Prince of Wales they squat eating chips. A Monk. She was a significant figure on the woman in hair curlers and a respectable scene during the period in question and man in a double-breasted suit sit on a her story is typical. She was a misfit, unable street bench as if this were a park. Around to find a literary direction until a chance them the wash of Macdonald’s wrappings encounter with a kindred spirit or a lucky rises like an incoming tide. On St Mary Cusp: Recollections of poetry in transition find in the local library, then the journey of Street a mid-thirties couple in short-sleeve Edited by Geraldine Monk self discovery, the finding of a poetic voice. shirt and fawn jacket lounge on the Shearsman Books 2012, £12.95 It is interesting that she neglects poets pavement imagining the place to be Barry emanating from London or Cambridge Island. Behind them revellers queue for and I cannot quite believe her when she endless fast food. There are pole vaulters, This is a collection of essentially apologises to “the fine poets that have bench sliders, knicker revealers, head autobiographical recollections of that holding ill faces, dissolutes surrounded by period between the end of the second police in high-vis vests, and men praying world war and the advent of the internet. The analogy of a at the windows of patrol cars. A woman The poets who have contributed are of war against the carrying a seven foot plastic penis comes the avante garde - the envelope pushers, out of Wood Street to meet the man explorers of the boundary, or as Iain Sinclair establishment is not far with the tennis racket from the would have it - Conductors of Chaos. You advertisement. Blokes take their tops off, will not see Andrew Motion and Gillian from the mark. Some of kiss each other, show their bums. Captain Clarke mentioned here except, in the case the essays testify to the America has his head up someone’s skirt. of Motion, as a figure of opposition. A guy with red hair and the words ‘One It is almost inconceivable, I imagine, persecution of the poet Life One Chance’ across his back leans for a young poet writing today, to by local authorities and on a bar. There are inflatable women and envisage a period of no internet, no inflatable men, fatties with their shorts social networking, no texts. In the time the police. bursting. Women wearing L plates. Men under consideration, there isn’t even a dressed as women. Women dressed fax machine tucked away in the writer’s as men. Waitresses out of their minds. office. I remember when hitching alone Dancers and singers. Gropers and fondlers. around Europe in the sixties, the sense of The young of this part of the wider world being cut off from my family and friends been connected with them”. The thesis of all having a good time. back home was total. Not only was there this book is that the real poetry innovators Maciej Dakowicz spent seven years no mobile phone network, my parents were born in the Midlands, northern cities living here. He founded the Third floor didn’t even have a landline. The postcards and Cardiff. They were born out of grime Gallery at the bottom of Bute Street. He I wrote home arrived after me, as if they of post industrial Britain, post war austerity now lives in London. That’s our loss. He’s too were reluctant to get to the end of the and, as in the case of the West country, gone, the bars stay on. big adventure. When I ran out of money, I provincial boredom. had to beg. But the sense of freedom was The analogy of a war against exhilarating. When I see a twelve year old the establishment is not far from the on her way to school chatting into her mark. Some of the essays testify to the Peter Finch is a poet, psycho-geographer mobile, I feel for her loss. persecution of the poet by local authorities and literary editor of the welsh agenda. Whether this period led to bigger and the police. No more so than in Tom

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Pickard’s case, a moving account of his When everything has a price, less has value commitment to the cause against the Rhys David prejudice of the council and the bullying and outright violence of the police. The right to practise experimental poetry was hard won in a few of the stories told here. Female poets did not figure significantly in those early days, although they represent nearly 25 per cent of the contributors to this volume. Women it seems had not only to fight against the establishment to get heard but they also had a struggle to strut their stuff with those who espoused the same poetic values. Glenda George remarks that “the majority of those visitors was male, when women visited it was part of a couple”. She and her poetry were not part of a feminist agenda. She saw “no virtue in analyzing the female situation”. She was more interested in art and literature - “how could they change the world?” What Money Can’t Buy: At the other end of the world in New The representation of women improves The Moral Limits of Markets Zealand the national airline chose a as we go through to the latter half of the Michael J. Sandel different means of demonstrating anything pre-internet period, but as Francis Presley Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012, $16.00 can be bought or sold. It hired 30 people postulates, “the role of women poets has to shave their heads and wear a temporary been neglected”. Money and Sustainability: tattoo saying “Need a change? Head down What stands out is that though The Missing Link to New Zealand”. Back in the US, you can the subjects of this collection were Bernard Lietaer, Sally Goerner, earn a healthy $15-$20 an hour to stand often geographically widespread with Stefan Brunhuber in line for a lobbyist who wants to attend a widely differing experiences of their Triarchy Press, 2012, £24 Congressional hearing but is too important development as poets, the influences that to queue overnight himself. keep recurring are the same. Americans People Money: The Promise These and other examples – children like Robert Creeley, a guest reader in of Regional Currencies being paid to read, warfare being Newcastle as he was in Cardiff, , Margrit Kennedy, Bernard Lietaer, contracted out to private security firms, Charles Olsen; and British poets like Basil John Rogers ‘sportsmen’ buying the rights to shoot Bunting, , Eric Mottram, Triarchy Press, 2012, £20 endangered species, prison cell upgrades, Barry MacSweeney (probably the most and solo drivers paying to travel in car frequently name checked). Poets began pool lanes - are all examples that Harvard to group together - The Morden Tower in A new form of investment based on other moral philosopher, Michael J. Sandel, the north-east, Cabaret 246 in Cardiff, the people’s life insurance – ‘viaticals’ - has gives in What Money Can’t Buy. They are poetry exchange in Plymouth. become current in the US over recent just a few instances of the way in which Key figures drove the scene, in Wales years. Suppose someone has a terminal over the last few decades market values Peter Finch in Cardiff, and Chris Torrance illness and needs funds now for medical have intruded into spheres of life where - the creative force behind Cabaret 246. insurance. Someone out there can be they do not belong. And he believes this Somehow everybody connected. This found who will pay, say $50,000, for the is as much an explanation of the near was a web before the world wide web unfortunate individual’s $100,000 life catastrophe inflicted on financial markets was invented. One or two contributors insurance policy and will collect on his in the 2008 crash as the usual candidate are nostalgic for the glue and staples era, or her death. In 2009 Wall Street took it a for blame - unremitted greed. but Tilla Brading sounds the warning “to stage further – and called it securitisation. Sandel believes we should rethink the be content and complacent spells textual Big financial groups were reported to be role that markets play in our society for stagnation”. Good to close a review interested in packaging up life settlements two reasons. The first is inequality. Where of a particularly important period for such as these as bonds and re-selling them all ‘good’ things can be bought and sold, alternative poetry with a call to the future. to investors. The bonds would generate having money makes all the difference, an income stream for ghoul investors from further intensifying the inequalities that the insurance pay-outs when the original have come to exist in rich societies. Just as Ifor Thomas is a poet and architect. policyholders died. importantly, putting a price on the good

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things in life corrupts them. Paying children 1970 and 2010. For all the steps taken and The conventional approach to dealing to read – as happens in some US states - planned by Governments and international with the world financial crisis has, of course, might get them to pick up more books but organisations since the 2008 crash, they been to recapitalise the banks and to seek can turn the act into a chore. The use of believe another global financial disaster will to repay debts through the imposition of mercenaries might spare the lives of citizens occur at some point if we fail to construct a austerity policies. Yet, in the view of these but corrupts the meaning of citizenship. new paradigm. authors, these further exacerbate the Sandel believes we have to decide Their argument is with ‘modern problems by making it even more difficult to finance recovery. Instead, Lietaer and The conventional approach to dealing with the world his colleagues believe we should tackle the problems caused by the monopoly held financial crisis has, of course, been to recapitalise the by Government money creation systems banks and to seek to repay debts through the imposition with a new monetary ecology – in effect of austerity policies. Yet, in the view of these authors, the creation of complementary monetary systems that run alongside the national. these further exacerbate the problems by making it They suggest how just such an even more difficult to finance recovery. approach could help Greece overcome its mounting problems. Instead of leaving the Euro Greece would continue to use it again how to value ‘goods’, such as health, money’ – the monopolistic issuance of for international business such as tourism, education, family life, nature, art and civic currencies by national governments to shipping, exports and imports. Taxes duties, and establish a way of valuing them support bank debt which, they argue, levied in Euros would be used to service – in other words stepping back from being is an historically recent phenomenon. the national debt. However, Greek cities a ‘market society’ – as has happened over Far from being the neutral and passive or regions could issue their own local recent years to once again simply having medium of exchange most people assume currency “Civics” – an electronic payment a ‘market economy’. He claims market ‘modern money’ is responsible for for services provided by the community reasoning has emptied public life of moral shaping a range of deleterious behaviour in support of important local social and argument so that we no longer ask whether patterns. These include: environmental programmes. The Greek some ways of valuing goods are higher or economy retains the benefit of the Euro worthier than others. As he puts it: • The tendency for banks to provide or while the Civic helps each community to withhold funding to the same sectors solve its own social and environmental “A debate about the moral limits of or countries at the same time, thus problems and mobilises households to markets would enable us to decide… amplifying the business cycle towards participate. A separate business-to-business where markets serve the public good boom or bust. currency could also inject working capital and where they don’t belong. It • The imposition of unsustainable into small businesses and accelerate the would also invigorate our politics by exponential growth on the world recovery of mainstream jobs paid in Euros. welcoming competing notions of the economy through the mechanism of People Money follows on from the good life into the public square.” compound interest. previous work, making the case for regional • The concentration of wealth as money currencies in much more detail and Former central banker and hedge fund flows to the top of society and flees the providing the historical precedents. A new manager Bernard Lietaer and his co- bottom, thereby creating inequality and English-language version has been updated authors from the Club of Rome EU Chapter social problems. and edited by John Rogers, founder of the agree with Sandel that greed is not the • The erosion of social capital through Wales Institute for Community Currencies at sole explanation for the dysfunction of the promotion of selfish and non- Newport University, which he co-directed the markets. However, they believe there collaborative behaviours. from 2003-2007. Perhaps surprisingly, the is an even more fundamental problem authors can demonstrate that parallel that needs to be resolved if the world is Yet, as they point out, the need for a currencies have until recent times been the to achieve safe and sustainable economic money system that will achieve social and norm not the exception and that all over growth. They argue in Money and environmental sustainability has never the world new examples are constantly Sustainability that the existing monetary been greater. Over the coming decades being invented, re-moulded or copied to system is not fit for purpose. In support society worldwide will have to face up meet differing local conditions. of their contention they cite the 145 to two huge and costly issues – climate Some use currencies exchangeable banking crises, 208 monetary crashes, change and population ageing – both of into national currencies. Other business and 72 sovereign debt crises tracked by which will require massive investment if variants operate on a system of mutual the International Monetary Fund between they are to be resolved. credits and debits. In Germany, for example,

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the Chiemgauer has some 600 businesses, events or by participating in community- meets local needs but also a drawback if it 2,400 consumers and 220 voluntary based projects. The project is credited with prevents the movement acquiring the scale organisations in participation trading in a creating an active learning culture in one of even to spread across an entire territory local currency exchangeable 1 for 1 with the remoter and more deprived parts of the rather than remaining a local novelty. the Euro. In Massachusetts in the US, former . However, their work is a manual intended BerkShares has more than 3.5m shares in Regional currencies, the authors to guide would-be community currency circulation at near parity with the dollar in a argue, complement and enhance national developers through all the steps they need project designed to mobilise spare business policies, enabling regions to mobilise their to take and the pitfalls they need to avoid. capacity and revitalise high street businesses own resources to address issues without There is a considerable amount that as well as make local money go further. burdening taxpayers either at the national could be learnt from it by policy makers In Britain examples include the Brixton or regional level. And because circulation in Wales, a country that has, such as a Pound and more recently the Bristol Pound of money spent in local businesses stays in strong sense of community, and many of and the Totnes Pound. Here in Wales the the area it can work many times harder in the issues. After all, we have many of the Blaengarw Time Centre has involved supporting the local economy than funds traditions that make a complementary 1,000 members, 30 community groups and spent with multinational firms that are then currency a serious contender for adoption. 15 social enterprises since its foundation siphoned off to a corporate headquarters These include social and economic in 2006. Local individuals are invited to in a distant region or land. Because they deprivation, and swift leakage of spending become involved in a range of helping are outside conventional money-issuance power across the border as a result of the activities at the Time Centre based at the methods such systems have the advantage, absence of strong local companies. Workmen’s Hall. Each hour’s work is paid too, of being non-inflationary. for with a voucher that can be spent on There are issues, the authors of People an activity of choice. The primary aim is Money admit, that need to be looked at. to engage individuals to help the whole Some schemes fail, often after the visionary community, by assisting in after-school and charismatic founder moves on. The Rhys David is an Associate Editor of the clubs, passing on skills, helping with social proliferation of formats is a strength when it welsh agenda and a trustee of the IWA. Last word

Peter Stead Wales turns corner into zero growth politics

Of course I was disappointed to realise for honest appraisals: our party leaders still welfare benefits and a vibrant community that the new BBC Wales Sunday evening proceed as if the Emperor is fully clothed. culture. In the best decades of the last programme The Wales Report meant that This is far from being a purely British century all that politicians had to do was tax I would have to wait thirty minutes for phenomenon. The contrast between the and then ameliorate. As industry essentially Match of the Day. It was only during Huw language of his campaign and then the migrated to Asia and western bankers lost Edwards’s opening remarks, and as he gave subsequent story of Francois Hollande’s their senses it became apparent that what a welcome reassurance that his programme Presidency is the latest example of the had seemed to be the panacea of Growth would cover all aspects of Welsh life, that I dilemmas facing every elected politician in had become problematic if not a chimera. realised that thanks to the miracle of satellite the free world. The most dramatic illustration Zero growth calls for a different kind of television I could go directly to the football has come in the form of the theatre provided politics and a different form of language. on BBC One London. by American presidential debates. As a In the new economic dispensation, one Just as I reached for my remote I noticed lifelong Democrat I had initially sniggered at in which it is clear that the banking and Huw pause, take a breath and look down as the thought of a Romney challenge, although currency crises are far from over, elected he apologetically explained that there would I did give him a second look-over when I politicians have to do two things. First they necessarily have to be ‘some politics’ in his heard about the Nantyffyllon connection. have to put aside party considerations new series. ‘Give us a chance’, Huw was In the event however it was the Obama and embark on a policy of partnership: essentially pleading, ‘it’s not going to be the campaign that gave me cause for concern. their task is not to direct but to work with usual suspects’. Welsh television producers There have been many suggestions as entrepreneurs, bankers, educationalists know exactly where they stand with regard to why the President’s performance in the and professional groups. In such an to confrontations with politicians and their First Debate was so woeful. Was he ill or approach there has to be an emphasis on tired arguments. They are never going to was he just taken aback by Romney’s new far more diversity and experiment than has compete with chefs or ballroom dancers. found coherence and aggression? My own hitherto characterised what had become Huw’s hurried apology revealed far reading of his performance was that he was the hegemony of the public sector. At more than ratings anxiety, for in the last few bored with what he was expected to say. the same time politicians have to speak months it has become clear that politicians The challenger of 2008 had revelled, as any directly to every citizen in their respective are finding it increasingly difficult to retain preacher would, in the rhetoric of ‘Hope’. countries. They have to spell out that it is the our attention. There was a time when the By 2012 he had learnt that the realities of responsibility of every individual to fulfil their British party conference season offered a 21st Century politics do not readily lend own economic and social potential. whole programme of compelling debates themselves to rhetoric. Obama was far In many respects Welsh politics have in which the political big fish tackled major better in subsequent debates and by the turned a corner since the last Assembly issues, often in heated exchanges with rank- end there were glimpses of his charm. His elections. There s a new frankness and and-file delegates. voice, however, was still too light and he sense of reality in our political discourse. This all became too risky for party could not generate sufficient enthusiasm to Certainly some Cabinet ministers are far leaders who therefore arranged for the convincingly convey social and economic more aware of having to work with the conferences to become merely a beauty information. It was still not clear that he had private sector and professional bodies. parade of senior figures, none of whom done enough to beat a confident smooth- But that still leaves us with our national were allowed the eclipse the Leader. Now talking opponent whose simple message mindset. In Boomerang, his stimulating each conference is just about one speech by was that the way forward for America was account of the international crisis, Michael the Leader, written late at night by a group for everyone to just trust and pamper those Lewis cruelly identifies the national of aides just down from university, in which who make money. traits that abetted disaster in particular there has to be a couple of jokes and one The great historic fact of de- countries. What would he have made catch-phrase short enough for a front page industrialisation has left democratic of a Wales that respected cultural and banner headline. Politicians have little to say politicians floundering. Quite simply industry community values and yet allowed an precisely because they have no idea how to had offered jobs and career structures for the underclass to develop and educational broach the awkward facts that need to be masses and in attendance came affordable standards to fall, whilst all the time leaving confronted. The punters are not yet ready housing, pension schemes, health and everything to a monolithic political system?

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To mark the 25th anniversary of the Institute of Welsh Affairs 25 authors cast their minds back over their experience of the past quarter-of-a- century and reflect on what this inspires them to hope for in the next 25 years.

Contributors: Trevor Fishlock, Catrin Dafydd, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Elfyn, John Osmond, Jane Aaron, Grahame Davies, Rhian Edwards, Ifor Thomas, Rachel Trezise, Peter Finch, Charlotte Williams, Patrick McGuinness, Tessa Hadley, John Williams, Daniel G. Williams, Angela Graham, Jon Gower, Zoë Skoulding, Osi Rhys Osmond, Bethan Gwanas, Mike Parker, Adam Price, Owen Smith, Geraint Talfan Davies.

The contributors were given no specific guidance as to what they should write about, other than they should relate some of their own experience to that of Wales during the fifty-year horizon. Two events in the last 25 years stand out, the miners strike of the mid- 1980s and the devolution referendum in 1997. The reflections in £11.99 this volume make clear the interconnections between the two. ISBN 978 1 904773 65 8 They provide the essential background for all that has followed To order a copy, contact: IWA, 4 Cathedral Road, and is likely to emerge in the coming decades. Cardiff, CF11 9LJ Tel 029 2066 0820 or buy online at www.iwa.org.uk (IWA members can purchase publications at a 25 per cent discount). “There’s not a dud essay in the collection.” Professor Dai Smith, Chair, Arts Council of Wales

“This autobiographical analysis is in the supreme tradition of Welsh questions informing global understanding.” Owen Dudley Edwards, Honorary Fellow, Department of History, Edinburgh University

25/25 Vision on tour Photographer John Brggs was commissioned to photograph the contributors to 25/25 Vision. As well as featuring in the book the photographs are touring Wales in an exhibition during 2012-13. The tour, organised in association with , began at the Old Library, Cardiff, and is currently at Oriel Pendeits, Caernarfon, until 6 January 2013. It will be at Theatr Soar, Merthyr Tydfil, from 1 January to 26 February; from 2 March to 28 April; Barnabas House, Newport, from 3 May to 30 June; and the Dylan Thomas Centre, Sansea, from 5 July to 28 August.

The 25/25 Vision Exhibition at Oriel Pendeits, Caernarfon.