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Home , Animal Wall, Brynle Williams, Cardiff Central Library, Coity Mountain, Coleg Gwent, David Melding

+ Gerald Holtham Our choice on tax powers David Marquand in a two circle Europe Roger Scully Best and worst of times for the parties Opening a window on Welsh politics Jane Davidson A central organising principle Prys Morgan Theatrical Land of the chapel Huw Bowen ’s Copperopolis Ron Jones visions We need broadcasting new deal Trevor Fishlock Survival of an invented tradition When nationalism trumps socialism Peter Stead Fifty year stint

www.iwa.org.uk | Winter 2011 | No. 45 | £10 The Institute of Welsh Affairs gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Waterloo Foundation. The following organisations are corporate members:

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For information on IWA events and publications please visit our website at www.iwa.org.uk or call 029 2066 0820. Connectivity priority Editor: John Osmond for capital city region Associate Editors: Geraint Talfan Davies Rhys David The nature and the scope of the Yet if Wales is to go down this route – relationship that should prevail between in the Cardiff region first but potentially in Administration: Helen Sims-Coomber Cardiff and its hinterland is one of the other parts of the country later – there has great unresolved issues of Welsh public to be buy-in from all concerned and not a Design: [email protected] life. It involves at one level the physical residual feeling that this is just the capital on boundaries of the various local government another aggrandising trip. In Manchester To advertise, tel: 029 2066 0820 and other authorities governing the area. this has happened. The spokesman for Institute of Welsh Affairs Is Greater Cardiff, to use that taboo term, the Manchester ‘brand’ is now as likely to 4 Cathedral Road Cardiff and the Valleys, Cardiff and the come from Wigan or Bury as from the city Cardiff CF11 9LJ Vale, or Cardiff, the Vale and the Valleys? itself. We need to reach the same degree Tel: 029 2066 0820 At another level what should be their of consensus in south east Wales so that Email: [email protected] www.iwa.org.uk responsibilities and at which tiers should someone from Nantymoel or Abertysswg they be vested? Even more importantly, can feel as confident about projecting The IWA is a non-aligned independent where within a more co-ordinated region the Cardiff region as a Cardiff & Co think-tank and research institute. should scarce resources be best directed to ambassador. For this to happen everyone Members (annual subscription £40) receive agenda three times a year, ensure the greatest prosperity for all? in the region must feel – and see tangible can purchase reports at a 25 per cent These are all important issues open evidence – that they, too, will benefit from reduction, and receive discounts when to debate. However, as the Getting Ahead promoting the Cardiff brand which, after all, attending IWA events. Together: Connecting Cardiff and the Valleys is the only one to hand that has a chance of Branches IWA conference held this autumn made international recognition. clear, the time has now come to resolve The problems in parts of the region, North Wales Secretariat c/o matters and take action. Old boundaries especially the Heads of the Valleys, are 6 Maes yr Haul, Mold, have become completely permeable. chronic and have responded only partially Flintshire CH7 1NS Previously vibrant communities are no to countless previous initiatives. So this Tel: 01352 758311 longer self-sufficient as they once were is no time to get bogged down in the Gwent Secretariat when jobs were close at hand. Large displacement activity of creating new local c/o Chris O’Malley numbers travel daily across the region government structures. Instead, solutions University of Wales, Newport, Campus to where the employment, housing, must be practical and capable of swift PO Box 179, Newport NP18 3YG retail and leisure facilities are. More than introduction. This is the challenge facing the Tel: 01633 432005 70,000 people commute into Cardiff from City Region Task and Finish Group set up West Wales Secretariat surrounding areas to work each day, mainly by Business and Enterprise Edwina c/o Margaret Davies by car. In practice, if not in an organised and Hart and chaired by Elizabeth Haywood Principal’s Office, Trinity University efficient form, the city region is already here. who is also Director of the South East Wales College, SA31 3EP How much better therefore to plan for Economic Forum. Tel: 01267 237971 the allocation of resources on this much Fortunately, there is one project Swansea Bay Secretariat wider basis, so that important decisions can on which there is already widespread c/o Beti Williams be made on how most effectively to deal agreement and around which the city Department of Computer Science, with public transport provision, new housing, region as a whole could coalesce to make Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP tourism, waste management, and to ensure a strong case to the UK Government. Tel: 01792 295625 the region as a whole is a strong contender Electrification of the Cardiff suburban for economic development projects. railway network – from in Cardiff and Valleys Secretariat c/o Llio Ellis This is already being done in the east to Maesteg in the west –would 3 De Clare Drive, where the reality of city regions has help invigorate the region in a way no , Cardiff CF15 8FY been recognised. Across the world, too, previous public expenditure has managed. Tel: 07971 246116 some of the most successful cities such as Local authorities, the , IWA Women Manchester, Stuttgart, and Vancouver – all transport groups, and business organisations c/o Kirsty Davies of which were highlighted at the conference should come together now to create a new [email protected] – are those that have managed to put aside overarching structure, a passenger transport Tel: 07900 692898 local rivalries and work and plan together, authority, that will have the sole task of Wales in London bringing tangible economic benefits to a making this goal a reality. c/o Robert John First Base, 22 Ganton Street, wider population. London W1F 7BY Tel: 020 7851 5521 agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 1 Contents

Cover: Photo of National Theatre Wales’ production of The Dark Philosophers, based on the stories of writer Gwyn Thomas. Angela Davies’ set “conjures up the teeming miners’ terraces of a small Valley town, crawling up the side of a looming mountain, with a great heap of old wooden wardrobes and tallboys, reflecting both the intense respectability and the heavy, Victorian morality of domestic life in the Valleys.” See pages 4-7. 3 33. The best and worst Environment 1 of times Roger Scully assesses the 46. Welsh forestry Economy with PricewaterhouseCoopers impact of the May Assembly could become election on the fortunes of collateral damage the four main parties Jon Owen Jones questions 20. Wales faces choice the projected merger of between Northern 35. Opening a window the Forestry Commission Ireland and Scotland on Welsh politics with the Environment on tax powers Nick Bourne reflects how Agency and the Countryside Agenda 45 Gerald Holtham finds the over the past decade Welsh Council for Wales Winter 2011 Silk Commission has a wider Conservatives have come to canvas than was envisaged terms with devolution when it was first proposed 38. Boundary obsessions 23. Recession deepens Paul Griffiths says we a north-south divide should put away our Rob Lewis on why Wales local government is performing worst in the reorganisation maps 49. Environment Agency 4.  Essay UK according to a new and Countryside A 21st Century theatrical household financial index Council in planning vision for Wales collision John Osmond explores 26. Skills gaps revealed Gordon James says a how National Theatre in Welsh workforce nearly built power station Wales has dealt with the Kevin Thomas reports on a in Pembrokeshire is testing metropolitan and the new survey of the food and the Welsh Government’s provincial in its first year drinks industry in Wales 41. Assembly denies commitment to sustainable international role development 8.  Obituary - Henry Kroch 28. How we reproduce Francesca Dickson queries From Leipzig to gender disparities the National Assembly’s Abercynon Alison Parken highlights abandonment of its Mike Joseph offers a the pitfalls of sidelining the European and External personal memoir of an contribution women can Affairs Committee 4 influential industrialist make to the knowledge Heritage economy 42. Our central Henry Kroch’s organising principle 52. When Wales was contribution to Wales Jane Davidson describes imagined as one Keith James and Rhys David the legislative journey gigantic chapel look back at the life of the that is putting sustainable Prys Morgan looks back at IWA’s founding chairman 2 development at the heart of a 19th Century figure who Politics the Welsh Government gave Welsh Nonconformity 12. Outlook its national personality Cymdeithas yr Iaith 30. Wales in a two 44. Glancing back at fifty circle Europe to look forward 56. Blaenafon’s forgotten – David Marquand queries Meirion Thomas and Martin landscape –Angharad Tomos what the non-English Rhisiart argue that today’s Steven Rogers explains –Menna Machreth nations will do if the UK era of economic difficulty how sustainability has –Simon Brooks opts to stay outside a newly should prompt some fresh been built into a three- –Huw Lewis integrating European Union blue sky thinking year heritage project

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

Newsflash

Coming Up • Launch of IWA Inspire Wales Awards 6 Monday 23 January 2012, 11.00am, City Hall, Cardiff Official launch of the 2012 competition (Entry free) 58. Heritage and the new Culture experience economy • Developing Newport’s City Centre Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 9.30am – 1.30pm, Huw Bowen explains how 72. Fishlock’s File Riverfront Theatre, Newport the Lower Swansea Valley’s How heraldry This conference addresses strategies for improving Newport’s industrial past is providing prospers in urban environment, focusing on the Masterplan being developed a catalyst for inward today’s Wales by Newport Unlimited and how this can build on the strengths of the city’s cultural heritage. investment and new jobs Trevor Fishlock on the Keynote speakers: Gareth Beer, Newport Unlimited; Sheila Davies, extraordinary survival of Corporate Director, Regeneration and Environment, . 60. Telling Cardiff’s story an invented tradition • Wales’ Central Organising Principle: Neil Evans finds the capital’s Legislating for Sustainable Development new museum rejects a 74. Demographics Friday 27 January 2012 10am – 5.00pm, comfort zone of the distant of the language Swansea Metropolitan University, Swansea past and is not afraid to Hywel Jones explains how A Sustainable Development White Paper will appear in the autumn of 2012, with a Bill will be laid before the National Assembly in the autumn raise controversial issues we are losing 3,000 Welsh of 2013. This conference addresses what the proposals should speakers a year contain, how they should be implemented and their likely impact. Keynote speakers: Jane Davidson, Director Inspire, Trinity St David’s 79. Reviews University; Clive Bates, Director General, Sustainable Futures, Welsh Government; Peter Davies, Sustainable Development Commissioner for Wales; Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Chair, Environment and Sustainability Committee, National Assembly; Emyr Lewis, Partner, Morgan Cole; Peter Roderick, public interest environmental lawyer. 5 £70 (£56 IWA members) Media • IWA National Education Conference Vocational Pathways for 14 to 18 year olds in Wales 64. Needed – Tuesday 21 February 2012, 10.00am – 4.00pm, WJEC, Llandaf, Cardiff a broadcasting In the debate over educational attainment there is evidence that new deal Wales compares well with other parts of the UK in academic Ron Jones calls for a wide- National Museum still GCSEs, but underperforms with vocational qualifications. This ranging review of television stranded on the M4 conference addresses this critically important policy area. How can we improve the curriculum offer in vocational pathways for provision for Wales Osi Rhys Osmond 14 to 18 year olds, and how can we enhance the esteem of  vocational subjects? Can the Welsh baccalaureate be developed A fifty year shift to square the circle of this acute Welsh problem? £70 (£56 IWA members) Peter Stead • IWA National Economy Conference When nationalism Getting Wales and Britain Moving trumps socialism Friday 9 March 2012, 9.30am – 4.00pm, Cardiff This conference will have sessions on a growth strategy for the UK David Melding and reviving manufacturing industry. It will explore what a national infrastructure plan for Wales would look like and examine the Welsh Lessons from Government’s sectoral approach to economic development. a secular rabbi £90 (£72 IWA members) John Osmond Just Published

69. News aggregator hits • Punching above its weight - IWA Review of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust in Wales 88. Last Word Report available free on the IWA’s website www.iwa.org.uk Rachel Howells explores the Out with our click on the Bookshelf tab on the Homepage aftermath of the death of a toxic brands • Taking responsibility for our media town’s local newspaper Peter Stead IWA response to National Assembly task and finish group into the future of the media in Wales Report available free on the IWA’s website www.iwa.org.uk • Work-life balance for men in Wales – capturing the benefits of flexible working by Stevie Upton, IWA Research Officer £10 in hard copy publication but free to download free from the All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval IWA website. Published in association with Chwarae Teg, the system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded or Welsh women’s economic development agency. otherwise without the permission of the publisher, the Institute of Welsh Affairs. ISSN 1464-7613 More information: www.iwa.org.uk Essay —Essay A 21st Century theatrical vision for Wales a John Osmond explores how National Theatre Wales has dealt with the metropolitan and the provincial in its first year The way National Theatre Wales chose only in the sphere of literature and to operate during its first year said the arts, then that literature and something very specific about the nature those arts will very quickly become of Wales. It declared that it did not want provincial and unimportant, mere to be metropolitan and, in a traditional echoes of the ideas and artistic sense, a national theatre. It did not want a movements of the neighbouring national headquarters, a grand building, and dominant nation. If they (the in Cardiff presumably, with which it would ) decide that the literary Articles be associated and in and out of which revival shall not broaden out into its reputation would be made. No, it political and economic life and the Essay: wanted to get out in the sticks and meet whole of Welsh life, then inevitably its audience on the ground, across the in our generation st A 21 Century country. And in its first year it put on 13 will cease to be living and viable.” theatrical vision productions – one a month – plus one for for Wales luck, in Port Talbot. Artistic Director John Of course, Saunders was making a McGrath, explained to me what they were claim for , for the need for Obituary: trying to do in the following way: a nationalist party to lead the nation From Leipzig to towards creating its own political Abercynon “We wanted to create a different institutions. But the interesting thing here, model of theatrical production, from the perspective of the first year of Henry Kroch’s a decentralised one if you like, National Theatre Wales, is that he was contribution to reflecting that Wales is a place made building his claim on the need for the Wales up of towns and villages. It was an arts in Wales - and particularly Welsh exploration of the nation through theatre - to continue to be, as he put it, Outlook: theatre and of the theatre through “living and viable” rather than “provincial Cymdeithas yr nation. It was important for us and unimportant, mere echoes of the Iaith at fifty take on the question of nation and neighbouring and dominant nation.” John Davies nationhood in some way. It would National Theatre Wales kicked off have been too easy for us to simply their season in what, on the face of Angharad Tomos say we were just going to aim to put it, was about as provincial a location Menna Machreth on good theatre in Wales.” you could find, the Blackwood Miners Institute. However, the venue was Simon Brooks In this deliberate eschewing of a brilliantly suited to Alan Harris’ play A Huw Lewis metropolitan way of looking at things did Good Night Out in the Valleys, which is John McGrath and his team come up about a crumbling miners’ institute in with a truly national rather than a merely a crumbling Valleys town. The play is provincial vision for Welsh theatre in the a mix of stand-up comedy and soap. 21st Century? My question was prompted Cabaret blends with stories as if we by a declaration by were watching a raucous version of who, in his Banned wireless talk on Welsh Under Milk Wood. The host is Con – Nationalism in 1930, said: played by Boyd Clack - a joke-cracking MC and manager of the ‘stute’, as it’s “If a nation that has lost its political affectionately known. He paints a vivid machinery becomes content to picture of a struggling town where the express its nationality thenceforward carpet shop is also the taxi office, the

4 | Essay

Michael Sheen takes the leading role in National Theatre Wales’ most high profile production this year,The Passion at Port Talbot over Easter – “72 hours in theatre heaven”. butcher’s is also a massage parlour, and roar of instant feedback? But, thanks and whets one’s appetite for its the café doubles as the undertaker’s. to the excellent acting, the canny upcoming programme.” The principal storyline stems production values, and my growing from the return of an ex-pat London appreciation of the ulterior motives, In the Daily Mail Quentin Letts was Welshman, Kyle, as a mineral I was, by the interval, entirely won equally enthusiastic: prospector, on behalf of an international over by the piece… the show does firm, for deposits. His plans what it says on the tin – it offers a “Alan Harris catches the lingering would involve demolishing the ‘stute’. good night out in the Valleys (there’s a wounds of the Scargill-Thatcher Moreover, his miner father was once band, bingo, likeably icky gags from a years, all wrapped up in a Welsh mix ostracised as a scab in the town, so has-been compère) while examining of melancholy and humour. This Kyle’s presence stirs up ancient hostilities why the culture that gave rise to cracking show moves on to four further as well. ‘The past is a trap’ is the play’s such community japes and jollities is community venues in March - and message. The Valley towns, it argues, endangered and perhaps rightly so.” after that, surely, it will be made into a have to move on, bury the mining myths hit film.” and redefine themselves. In the Guardian Michael Billington judged: Being National Theatre Wales’ A good night out in the Valleys was inaugural production, the play received “For all the unresolved tensions followed by Shelf Life, set in the reading a lot of attention from the London between past and future, the tone of room of Swansea’s old library, a press. Paul Taylor, writing in the John McGrath’s production is festive. collaboration with Volcano Theatre and Independent, said: Bingo, booze and songs blend with the . It follows social issues, and the cast of six swaps a choir of librarians, literally exploring “I’m ashamed to say that, up to and roles with furious and sometimes the noises that people make when including the preliminaries (some bewildering speed. Boyd Clack holds they are told to be quiet. In complete rehearsed argy-bargy on the Institute the show together as the MC, and contrast For mountain, sand and sea steps where it was hard to differentiate there are striking contributions from was an exploration of unusual people the audience from the ‘plants’), I Siwan Morris as the pugilist, Amy who have populated the seaside town thought that A Good Night Out in the Starling as a mutinous cake factory of Barmouth, curated by performance Valleys was not going to be a good worker and Sharon Morgan as a artist Marc Rees. Audiences who piece to programme for the opening dog-toting senior who is into heavy joined this production were treated shot. Rather than sending forth an metal. The show is torn between to a walking tour encountering such eloquent statement of intent, wouldn’t populism and preaching, but it gets characters as the Savile Row tailor this piece just deafen you with the the company off to an ebullient start Tommy Nutter, who dressed the Beatles

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 5 Essay for their famous Abbey Road album cover, and philanthropist Fanny Talbot, who donated the National Trust’s first piece of land in Barmouth. Meanwhile, The Beach, another outdoor production, was this time set on the seafront in Prestatyn. It asked audiences to get in touch with their inner child and recreate the games of yesteryear. Love steals us from loneliness, by playwright Gary Owen who was brought up in Bridgend was set in the back room of Hobo’s Rock Club in the town, partly Sian Thomas as Queen Atossa in National Theatre Wales’ production of The Persians, staged in the lost village because there was no conventional of Cilieni, high in the Epynt mountain range. Tracked by a TV cameraman, the audience could see in close-up her every flicker of emotion as news came in of the Persians’ disastrous defeat. theatre to hand. But the company wanted to set a play dealing with the outbreak of “I can imagine a more hospitable modern style, the event is punctuated suicides amongst teenagers in the area venue than the cavernous New by re-enactments of an appearance in a place where they would naturally theatre, but Elen Bowman’s Thomas made on the Michael congregate. The Telegraph reported production captures precisely the Parkinson show in the 1970s. It’s a that the production was saturated with a work’s mix of naturalistic convention salutary reminder that the world “boozy authenticity and clubby vivacity”. and poetic strangeness.” Thomas describes is not so far from us A number of other productions in in time as it now seems; a time when the course of the year were set in more Another revival in a sense was a working-class people in Britain both conventional theatrical locations. The production of The Dark Philosophers based endured the dramatic horror of a life Devil Inside Him was an early John on the stories of Gwyn Thomas. This at the coal-face, and yet had the self- Osborne play, put on in the New Theatre was first shown at Newport’s Riverfront respect, the organisation, and the hope, in Cardiff in May last year. It was originally Theatre in November 2010, but reprised to educate a son like Thomas to the performed in Huddersfield in 1950 and at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Here point where he became a mighty and then lost. Miraculously it was discovered is how the Scottish theatre critic Joyce eccentric voice for the Valley of his birth, in the archives of the Lord Chamberlain Macmillan described her impressions: wry, experimental, bold, and true.” in the British Library in 2008. On one level the play points the way “In a sense, in The Dark Philosophers – Undoubtedly, National Theatre Wales’s forward to Look Back in Anger, having co-produced with the London-based highest profile production was the at its centre a young male in a state of physical theatre group Told By An Idiot Passion, played out in Port Talbot over thwarted rebellion against all around him. – National Theatre Wales is carrying Easter weekend this year and starring the Huw, the son of the viciously religious out one of the most traditional tasks of a town’s celebrity actor . This Prossers, who run a humble boarding national theatre, exploring and restoring production, which involved an amateur house in a Welsh village, is Jimmy Porter the reputation of a neglected writer, army of over a thousand volunteers with in embryo - with all the rawness and whose short stories expressed a sharp, brass bands, choirs and street-dancing vulnerability that implies. Where Jimmy, surreal vision of life in the Rhondda in youngsters, put Port Talbot, literally on the in Look Back in Anger, directs his rage and the middle years of the 20th Century. world stage. The critical reception was frustration outwards, Huw in The Devil extraordinary. The headline on a piece by Inside Him is an adolescent malcontent “They do it, though, in a style that defies the Guardian’s theatre critic Lyn Gardner turned in on himself. The play unpicks dusty convention. Angela Davies’s was: “72 hours in theatre heaven” This is the repressed society of early 20th Century superb set conjures up the teeming how she opened her piece: religious Wales. miners’ terraces of a small Valley town, In his review of the play the crawling up the side of a looming “When The Passion finally drew to a Guardian’s Michael Billington remarked mountain, with a great heap of old close on Aberavon seafront in Port that Osborne hones in on “the fatal wooden wardrobes and tallboys, Talbot on Sunday evening, there consequences of a repressive religion reflecting both the intense respectability was a sense not just that the town of that turns the God of love into a figure and the heavy, Victorian morality of Port Talbot had been transformed by of hate”. No more quintessential domestic life in the Valleys… the experience, but also the future Welsh theme could be found than this. of large-scale participatory theatre. Billington concludes: “And just occasionally, in best post- Aside from its mix of tenderness and

6 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Essay

mucky grandeur, its majestic sweep setting, with the sun slowly disappearing acknowledged this himself, in an and careful attention to small, everyday over the hills, is overwhelming.” interview he gave in March 2010: details, one of the most thrilling things So, to return to my opening question, “If you’re going to have national about National Theatre Wales’ and in the terms set by Saunders Lewis, in theatres, theatres that enable Wildworks’ production was the way its first year did National Theatre Wales countries to think about themselves, that it operated in so many spaces achieve an output that was “living then Wales needs one. You could just simultaneously. It raised not just the and viable” rather than “provincial put more money into touring, but ghosts and future hopes of the town, and unimportant”. that wouldn’t have the same effect. but the spectre of how and where On the basis of the critical response The word national focuses everyone’s theatre happens – and how it might to these productions there can be no minds. With Wales, there’s an added connect with a hyper-connected doubt that the answer has to be yes. complexity surrounding language. 21st-century audience, particularly It is worth noting, too, that National There was a feeling that Welsh- those who seldom go anywhere near a Theatre Wales would not have come language theatre needed a scale it theatre building.” into existence without devolution. Its hadn’t had the opportunity to work £3 million Welsh Government grant on before. After that the question was: The most extraordinary location for a over three years has surely been a what about English language theatre, performance in National Theatre Wales’ good investment. Certainly in its short given that English is a language first year was the lost village of Cilieni, existence the theatre has put Wales virtually everyone in Wales shares?” high in the Epynt mountain range north on the theatrical map of the UK, if not of Sennybridge. Here in August last year the world. This is how the Guardian’s His reference to theatre the company staged the world’s oldest theatre critic Michael Billington put it: was, of course, to Theatr Genedlaethol surviving play Aeschylus’s 2,480-year-old Cymru that was launched in 2003. A The Persians. “One of their achievements is to have question for the future is whether we can Over a period of ten days around raised our consciousness about their or, indeed, should sustain two separate 180 people every night gathered in the country. A young Welsh critic asked me national theatre companies operating car park at the Sennybridge military how I, as someone based in London, separately in the two languages. Wouldn’t camp to be driven by coach into the reacted to the theatre company. I there be an opportunity for greater heart of the Mynydd Epynt training area. said, truthfully, that it had opened my communication and cross-fertilisation if Apart from the location and the play somewhat blinkered metropolitan the operations were combined, much itself, what was also remarkable was that eyes. In the past, I’ve paid random in the same way that the Academi, now it was a sell out. Indeed, John McGrath visits to Cardiff for Welsh National Literature Wales, combined its English and told me they could have sold 600 seats Opera and to north Wales to see the Welsh Language Sections a decade ago? for each performance if they had had work of Theatr Clwyd. I’m belatedly Then there’s the related challenge of the capacity. And again, the critical waking up to the rich potential of bringing together our urban and rural response was positive. Charles Spencer Welsh theatre and the variety of the cultures in Wales. This, it seems to me is in the Telegraph wrote: land itself. Driving to Blackwood to closely associated with the emergence see the company’s opening show A of Cardiff as a capital city with a real “This is extraordinary, one of the most Good Night Out in the Valleys, I saw for metropolitan feel in the past few decades imaginative, powerful and haunting the first time a Wales I knew only from – an emergence that has been built on the theatrical events of the year ... This is books, movies and TV programmes… back of the creation of the political nation great theatre – and a thrilling mystery National Theatre Wales, like its Scottish with the coming of the National Assembly. tour for its audience.” counterpart, is a consciously peripatetic Although I hope that National Theatre company that is using theatre as a Wales never loses its vocation to put down In the Guardian Michael Billington way of opening up the territory. In roots in communities across the whole declared: redefining what a national , it needs also to reflect and be means in this day and age, it is raising part of the continuing creation of Welsh “This is site-specific theatre with a our awareness of Wales itself.” metropolitan culture as well. vengeance. High up in the Brecon Beacons, in a mock-up village used It has also demonstrated, of course, that John Osmond is Director of the IWA. by the military as a training-base, we do, indeed, need a national theatre in This article is based on a presentation National Theatre Wales is recreating Wales. It seems to me that the challenge he gave to the annual conference of the oldest extant play in western now facing National Theatre Wales is to Creu Cymru, the development agency drama: Aeschylus’s The Persians. The help us understand and nurture what for theatres and arts centres in Wales, in combination of the story and the our nation means to us. John McGrath Caersws in October.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 7 Henry Kroch

Leipzigers bid for their freedom in the Augustusplatz during the 1989 East German revolution. They were demonstrating in the shadow of the Kroch Hochhau, Leipzig’s first tower block, built by Henry Kroch’s Uncle Hans in 1928 as the banking family’s headquarters. From Leipzig to Abercynon Mike Joseph offers a revolutionary autumn, Leipzigers engulfed the Stasi state and brought personal memoir of an streamed out of their homes in their down the second 20th Century German tens of thousands, parading around dictatorship. influential industrialist the city, demonstrating for freedom So it was that a few months later and gathering in Augustusplatz, which in 1990, I found myself visiting Henry the GDR in 1953 renamed Karl-Marx- Kroch, an old friend of my mother, for Platz. Here in 1989, half a million his advice on a question of plunder. The German revolution of November demonstrators dared the Stasi to use I remembered Henry from my 9th 1989 which brought down the violence on them as China had done Cardiff childhood in the 1950s, when Berlin Wall was forged in Leipzig, East months earlier on demonstrators in our families lived in the north of the Germany’s second city. Augustusplatz, Tiananmen Square. But Gorbachev city, and both were closely involved the great city square named after warned GDR General Secretary with the new wave of high-tech Saxony’s first king, framed by the Leipzig Honecker that there would be no industries in Cardiff and the Valleys. Opera House and the Gewandhaus, Soviet tanks this time. Leipzig would I recalled a kind and patient man, became the Tahrir Square of its day. not follow Budapest, Prague or Beijing. whose generosity extended to inviting Every Monday night during that And so the tide of demands for freedom me and my young brother to stay with

8 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Henry Kroch

Henry Kroch, pictured in front of the AB Electronics factory in Abercynon. them while our parents had to find a arriving in Wales in 1944. Henry came new home in Newcastle. But the family to England in 1939 and first found work “Wales had come to realise the relationship went much further back. in Manchester before moving to Wales disastrous consequences of Henry Kroch and my mother were in 1951. That they remained in regular dependance upon a few heavy both born in Leipzig in 1920. They might contact throughout the post-war years industries – depression which have expected successful, middle class is perhaps as much a sign of their joint brought in its train a complete lives and careers in that great city of involvement in changing the ‘face of collapse in our social structure, Bach, Mendelssohn and the Trade Fairs. south Wales’, as of their shared pre- represented by distress and poverty... Henry was a son of one of Germany’s war childhood. Both were involved It was not merely a case of a revival wealthiest banking families; Lilli, my in bringing the new wave of high of former peace-time industry... it mother, became a bacteriologist, the technology industries to a Wales that was called... for the creation of new and first in her family to gain university dangerously dependent on coal and steel. hitherto locally unknown industry.” admission, winning a medical My father, also a refugee from Germany, studentship at Bologna University. was technical director at Gnome Only two years after the war, 292 However, 1920 was a bad year to Photographic, one of Wales’ few optical factories had already been completed be born in Leipzig if you happened to enterprises, built with expertise gained in or approved in the Development Area, be Jewish. Instead of proceeding to the pre-war German optical industry. supporting 149,000 new jobs. “My Bologna, on 28 October 1938 (Henry’s The December 1947 edition of the colleagues feel that we are engaged in 18th birthday), Lilli and her entire family literary journal Wales has a photograph a real crusade”, Morgan wrote, asking were deported to Poland. Henry was of the Gnome factory on Cardiff’s almost as an afterthought, “And whence fortunate to find his way to Switzerland Caerphilly Road. A building of functional, were to come the employers to occupy to study mechanical engineering. But clean lines reminiscent of the German the factories and to offer work?” The his uncle, the banker Hans Kroch ended Bauhaus school, the factory was designed answer, to a significant extent, came in 1938 in Buchenwald, from where he (as she always proudly asserted) by my the form of refugees from Germany. gained his freedom in 1939 only by mother. The photo accompanies a piece Of all these enterprises, AB relinquishing his bank’s assets. I would by Dennis Morgan on The Changing Electronics was perhaps the most soon learn the true scale of that loss. Face of South Wales. Morgan was a prominent and most successful. Shortly before the outbreak of war, Board of Trade officer responsible for Henry Kroch joined what was a small the young Leipzigers left Poland and new factory building in the South Wales engineering company in Abercynon in Switzerland for England, my mother Development Area. He wrote, 1951, transforming it into one of Wales’

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 9 Henry Kroch largest manufacturing companies, block on Augustusplatz, built by Hans further complicating the picture: employing over 5,000 staff in its heyday, Kroch in 1928. The Kroch Hochhaus to become a major supplier to the radio, image had circled the globe as the “The city is bankrupt. They can’t afford television and computer industries. backdrop to revolution. One of these to pay compensation. So they will Henry became Managing Director and photos was taken from the twelfth floor hand back the property, with a huge then Chairman. On his retirement in of the banking tower, extorted from Hans backlog of repairs and improvements 1986 he was appointed President of the Kroch in 1939 to gain his release from that the GDR failed to do. You take company, and Freeman of the Borough Buchenwald. And half a century later, on the existing tenants, and they will of Cynon Valley, having already been Henry Kroch CBE could still say, “There is demand action. Instead of gaining awarded the OBE and CBE. no place for us Jews in Germany”. you lose. Some owners will be forced In 1990 Germany was suddenly Yet Henry Kroch’s was not the to part with newly-restored property and unexpectedly speeding towards only voice warning against pursuing below market price if they can’t afford reunification. After half a century restitution. Hinrich Lehmann-Grube, improvements.” of denial, the moment had come Leipzig’s SPD Oberbürgermeister (Social to address a historical injustice. Democratic Lord Mayor) condemned The situation was ripe for conflict Since the 1950s, West Germany had the principle of restitution as “a cul- between occupiers, the state and newly acknowledged its historic responsibility de-sac for Leipzig”. His Economic restored Jewish owners. And indeed to make reparations for genocide. Counsellor, Christian Jacke elaborated, The Guardian was reporting Kathrin But East Germany had denied all “The Jews have had plenty of from Leipzig saying, responsibility, and continued to enjoy compensation in the last fifty years, and the benefits of Nazi plunder. Having lost should not now make more claims”. He “… they come over here and start most of her family, my mother had tried forgot that in fifty years East Germany photographing people’s homes, in vain to recover her childhood home had paid no compensation and made saying it’s their property and they’re in Leipzig – not just a home, but a whole no restitution. It seemed that Henry getting it back. They just shrug their apartment block in the suburb of Gohlis. Kroch was absolutely right. shoulders if you ask what will happen East Germany knew she had inherited As the senior representative of the to the tenants.” her murdered family’s property, but she Kroch family, Henry had a claim for could not own property in a communist restitution which dwarfed my mother’s. “Unrest”, concluded Henry, “is state as she had chosen to live in His family had owned not only the unavoidable”. It had not occurred to capitalist Wales. Remarkably, in 1951 Kroch Bank, but an entire suburb of me that recovering my mother’s house the GDR regime tidied up this problem Leipzig – Neu-Gohlis. Completed in might be bad news. I had much to learn, by handing the apartments back to the 1930, this was a development of 1,018 and Henry Kroch had started to open same Nazi who plundered them in 1943 flats with central heating, running my eyes. The learning curve would and who still lived in Leipzig. Being a hot water, bathrooms, children’s become even steeper when, some Nazi was less of a problem to the ‘anti- playgrounds and green spaces – months later, I sat facing the Nazi who Fascist’ GDR than being a capitalist. altogether the most modern planned had taken my mother’s home in 1943, Forty years later it was my turn to development of its day. But that was and was now scheming to take it from challenge the new German authorities sixty years earlier. How would the estate me in 1991. But that is another story. about unfinished business, and I badly be after a half century of Nazi plunder My memoir of Henry Kroch ends needed advice. Coming from a family and GDR neglect? Henry told me how not in the smog-laden atmosphere of of former Leipzig bankers, Henry Kroch he had just returned from a company communist Leipzig, but in the clear air was surely the man to ask. One Sunday trip to West Berlin, and had then driven of a tiny bay on the north Pembrokeshire in August 1990 I visited him at home, to Leipzig. Arriving in the city, he asked coast. Like my parents, David and Mary explained my purpose, and was startled how to find his way to the Neu-Gohlis Edwards were among Henry Kroch’s by his immediate reply, “There is no estate? He was told to “ask any old close friends when they lived in north place for us Jews in Germany. What will person for directions to the Kroch Cardiff. Their son Phillip Edwards told you do if you do get the house back?” Siedlung” (Kroch suburb). His name was me “They would meet in Cwm yr Eglwys Consider how shocking his words still on the lips of Leipzigers. where Henry could relax. A gentle man were. If Henry Kroch was celebrated He found Neu-Gohlis “in a terrible in every sense.” in Wales, his name was even more state of repair”. Tenants’ rents had And that is my memory of the man prominent in Leipzig. The 1989 been collected but repairs had been too. When the country of his birth had revolution had taken place in front of the neglected for decades. Occupiers no use for him, he took another country banking family’s former headquarters, included tenants with good title and – Wales – to his heart, and it honoured the Kroch Hochhaus, Leipzig’s first tower squatters with none, with mortgages him. A gentle man.

10 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Henry Kroch’s contribution to Wales Keith James and Rhys David look back at the life of the IWA’s founding chairman Henry Kroch, the industrialist, who died in July at the age of 90, made a major contribution to the life of Wales, not least as founder chairman of the Institute of Welsh Affairs. German-born, he came to Britain in 1939, and helped to create AB Electronics. He transformed this small engineering business in Abercynon into one of Wales’ largest manufacturing companies, employing more than 5,000 the late 1980s. purchase restrictions and tax changes. staff in its heyday. Henry Kroch had become Expansion into Germany followed with When the IWA was launched in managing director of AB Electronics in the setting up of an AB subsidiary to 1987 by a group of leading Welsh 1964 and chairman in 1978. By then assemble components sent from Wales business people, Henry agreed to electronics was a booming industry and new sites were opened in other be its first chairman. He provided and his company built up an enviable parts of south Wales including Cardiff. inspirational leadership and ensured reputation as a reliable source of Henry Kroch was one of the first that firm foundations were laid during components, with a particular emphasis businessmen in Wales to champion the think tank’s first five years. At the on the then thriving UK consumer entry into the European Economic outset, weekly early morning meetings electronics industries - radio, television, Community, the forerunner of the were held in Cardiff to get the fledgling and record players. The company European Union. At AB Metal Products institution on its feet. These occasions later expanded into other sectors to he had begun to recognise the need for may have marked the first time power reduce the dependence on consumer much larger markets to justify the heavy breakfasts came to Wales. electronics, supplying Acorn and Sinclair capital expenditure required to automate Very early in its life the IWA in the nascent computer industry, and processes and remain competitive. “We recognised that revitalisation of the later becoming a major contractor to do many things by hand which it would Valleys of south Wales was a major the instrumentation and control gear, be better to do by machine but we could priority. In 1988 it produced its first and defence industries. At its height, not pay for the machines if they ran report The South Wales Valleys: An the company employed 5,500 people in for only half-an-hour, for example on Agenda for Action. Henry chaired Wales and across the rest of Europe but Monday,” he told the in an the Steering Group and became a an earlier period of defence cuts in the interview in 1967. passionate advocate for the report’s 1980s and 1990s saw the stock market As well as chairing the IWA, recommendations. As he said in the quoted company’s fortunes falter. It Henry Kroch also served on the boards report’s foreward: “Most of my working was acquired in 1993 by Surrey-based of the Welsh National Opera, the life has been spent in the Valleys and TT electronics but retains a substantial Welsh Chamber Orchestra and the nowhere is now closer to my heart”. manufacturing presence in Wales. Welsh Council. The report was well received and he Henry was also behind the took great satisfaction from the fact that company’s move into exporting which Keith James is a former Vice Chair and many of its suggestions were adopted was seen to offer a counter to the a Life Fellow of the IWA. by the then Secretary of State for Wales, fluctuations in demand in Britain as Rhys David is a Trustee and also a Life Peter Walker, in his Valleys Initiative of a result of economic downturns, hire Fellow of the IWA.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 11 Outlook Cymdeithas yr Iaith at Fifty

Half a century ago politics since 1943, delivered his radio Pontarddulais, I proposed the motion John Davies address (‘The Fate of the which was eloquently seconded by Language’), in which he foresaw that, if Tedi Millward, then a lecturer at the current trends continued, Welsh would University College of Wales. Conference cease to be a community language by enthusiastically endorsed the motion, the early 21st Century. but as many of us agreed with Gwynfor The restoration of the language, Evans and did not want to be members Lewis argued, would only come about of a party that had strayed from the through revolutionary methods. “This constitutional path, we invited those is not,” he stated, “a haphazard policy who were prepared to be summons- for isolated individuals. It is a policy for refusniks to discuss ways of fulfilling It is difficult to remember how invisible a movement, a movement rooted in Gareth Miles’s plan. the Welsh language was in the Wales of those areas where Welsh is an everyday From the beginning, therefore, a the early 1960s. It was seen on chapel spoken language.” The movement he separate organisation was envisaged. notice boards, on gravestones and at the had in mind was Plaid Cymru, and the Indeed, Saunders Lewis, in his Folk Museum in St Fagans, but virtually lecture gave him an opportunity to intemperate attacks on the Plaid Cymru nowhere else. Gwynfor Evans, who had pour contempt upon Gwynfor Evans’s leaders, ensured that his hopes of been elected to the Carmarthenshire leadership, particularly the primacy turning the party into a militant language County Council in 1949, persuaded the Evans gave to parliamentary elections movement were doomed. As early council to erect bilingual welcoming and his alleged pusillanimity over discussions were about summonses, signs on the county’s borders. Signs Tryweryn. As the party’s leaders were lawbreaking was built into the movement bearing Sir Gaerfyrddin caused much wedded to the principle of advancement from its inception. To some extent, that hilarity. ‘Why’. asked one commentator, through the ballot box and had high was accidental, for a wide range of wholly ‘have they knighted the county?’ hopes of winning support among Wales’ legal activities were under consideration. In the late 1930s, there had been a non-Welsh-speaking majority, they About a dozen people came to the massive petition in favour of official status rejected the role Lewis had sought to summons-refusniks’ meeting. When it for Welsh, but it resulted in litte beyond thrust upon them, because they could became clear that law-breaking was under the Welsh Courts Act of 1942 which not, as Gwynfor Evans put it “combine discussion, a few left. The majority stayed. allowed dependents and witnesses to an effective fight for the Welsh language Almost all of them were students. Indeed, use Welsh in courts if they declared on with being a political party”. students were central to the whole story. oath that they would be disadvantaged if Among the activities Lewis urged The early 1960s was a period of they were obliged to use English. A new militants to undertake was the rejection considerable expansion in higher militancy became apparent in the 1950s, of English summonses to court. Before education, and full employment for particularly through the efforts of Eileen the end of February 1962, Gareth Miles, students – even for those who had been and Trefor Beasley who in 1952 began then a student at Aberystwyth, refused involved in nefarious activities – was to refuse to pay rates to the Rural to attend court to answer for a trivial the norm. Many of them had travelled District Council until they received the offence; he refused to pay the fine and in countries such as Belgium and rate demand in Welsh. Their victory in suffered imprisonment. Gareth argued Switzerland where recognition of more 1960 infused new energy into the debate that the only way to secure summonses in than one language was wholly acceptable. about the status of Welsh. Welsh was to ensure that a considerable With access to cars a possibility for large The Beasleys’ campaign coincided body of people jointly committed trivial numbers, students were more mobile with the struggle to thwart the Liverpool offences and then insisted upon being than they had ever been before. Indeed, Corporation’s plan to turn the Tryweryn summoned to court in Welsh. it could be argued that it was not until the Valley into a reservoir, with the erosion I told him I would seek to get the early 1960s that a mass language protest of the Welsh language in many of its Aberystwyth branch of Plaid Cymru movement involving young people was heartlands and with a feeling that the to send a motion to the party’s practicable in Wales. constitutional path followed by Plaid annual conference to organise direct Tedi and I devoted much of the Cymru was yielding few results. On 13 action to compel recognition of the following months to planning. The February 1962, Saunders Lewis, who language. The branch did so, and at title Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg was had not publicly intervened in Welsh the 1962 conference, which was held at adopted, largely because of our respect

12 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Outlook for the of the a reporter from the Daily Mail telling annoyed by the decision to postpone late 19th Century, which had ensured at me that if nothing more exciting was a protest at the post office at Dolgellau least a toehold for the Welsh language going to happen, his paper would give because of fears that it would harm in elementary schools. Huw T. Edwards no coverage to the event. We all met Elystan Morgan’s bid to win Meirionnydd agreed to be honarary president and in the upstairs room in the Home Café for Plaid Cymru. Instead, much was done sent us a cheque for £5, all of which was in Pier Street, and it became apparent on issues such as persuading banks to quickly swallowed up by stamp purchases. that a more enthusiastic element wanted issue bilingual cheques, providing Welsh– Discussions were held with members further action. language notice boards to post offices, of the Law Deprtment at Aberystwyth, Members of that element went to ensuring that new-born babies could be in particular with Graham Hughes and Pont Trefechan and sat down to block registered in Welsh and checking claims Hywel Moseley, both of whom believed the traffic, a protest that was in no sense by local authorities that letters in Welsh that the current legal arrangements part of the original plan. That produced were answered in Welsh. (The clerk of did not preclude the issuing of some dramatic pictures, especially that the Llanidloes Urban District returned summonses in Welsh. We wrote to all of Rhiannon Silyn Roberts knocked out the letter I sent him with the note that the magistrates’ benches in Wales asking by a car driver and lying supine in the correspondence with the council was for their views and began to work out snow. Some of the drivers who were only accepted in English. A friend in Paris how many summons-refusniks could stuck on the bridge began dragging sent him a letter in French which was reasonably be recruited. the protesters away. Those dragged lay courteously answered.) By the end of the autumn term of supine; the possibility of punch-ups was A plan was launched to Cymricise 1962, it seemed likely that there would be avoided, for the principle of non-violence public houses, but a scheme urging large some 25 volunteers at Aberystwyth, and was built into the movement from the numbers of society members to sit for an equal number in Bangor, where Robert beginning. Virtually all the leading British three hours slowly drinking half a pint Gruffudd, later of the Lolfa, proved an newspapers gave extensive coverage to of Hancocks bitter gained little support. effective recruiter. Names were collected the events, with the Guardian providing The Hancocks brewery did however at Swansea, Cardiff, and Carmarthen, and a headline exulting in the fact that ‘A emblazon their pubs with splendid by January 1963 we thought we might Whole Town was Welshed On’. Saunders welcoming notices in Welsh. The absence have as many as a hundred protesters. Lewis was delighted and sent a cheque of militant activity was increasingly Gareth Miles suggested that we for two guineas to the movements’ criticised by the membership, criticism should all plaster public buildings nonexistent account. which was somewhat stilled by the with posters bearing suitable slogans. The following months were launching in August 1964 of the roadsigns Posters were ordered, buckets of paste quieter. Organisation was necessary. A campaign. The first venture was the produced and 2 February 1963 was meeting in Aberystwyth in May 1963 replacement in Pembrokeshire of signs chosen as the day of action. I was then led to the formal establishment of bearing the word Trevine on the borders delving into the Bute archives at the the society. Membership cards were of the village of Tre-fin. and staying with printed, a membership fee of half a The election of a Labour government the Tucker family in Grangetown. It was crown was decided upon and John in October 1964 and the subsequent from Road, Grangetown, that Daniel, a lecturer in philosophy at establishment of the Welsh Office were the call went out for protestors to gather Aberystwyth, was elected chairman. widely welcomed. Indeed, some of the at Aberystwyth on two/two/six-three. Cardiff magistrates were the first to issue society’s leaders urged a further lull in February 1963 proved to be one of summonses in Welsh, and within a very lawbreaking activities in order to allow the coldest months of the 2oth Century. short time they became available on the Labour government to show that Glaciers were forming in the upper Dyfi demand virtually everywhere in Wales. it was far more sympathetic to Welsh Valley, small iceberrgs were floating in the The establishment of a network of aspirations than the outgoing Conservative sea near Clarach and the townspeople of branches proved more difficult, largely government had been. However, Aberystwyth were reliant on stand-pipes because almost all the society’s members approaches to the Post-Master General for their domestic water. Nevertheless, were living away from the areas in (Tony Benn) on the use of Welsh in post the law-breaking did occur. Buildings which they were brought up. However, offices brought a wholly negative response. – the Post Office, the Police Station, at Bangor, a very effective branch was It became generally accepted that further the Town Hall and the County Council established by Owain Owain, who was lulls were pointless. The post office, Offices – were all plastered. also responsible for the launching of the car licensing and roadsigns campaigns The police took no notice at all, society’s periodical Tafod y Ddraig. became increasingly vigorous and by 1965 for Aberystwyth’s magistrates had With a general election due to be the society had entered a new phase. decided that the entire protest should held in 1964, leaders of Plaid Cymru be ignored. We had contacted a urged the society’s members to avoid John Davies is author of the Penguin number of newpapers and I remember militant action. Activist members were History of Wales and Hanes Cymru.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 13 Outlook

A lifetime of campaigning 21st birthday. We were back to square the situation got no better. However Angharad Tomos one. The campaign for a Welsh TV hard we tried, the Welsh speaking channel still hadn’t been won. I was now communites kept rapidly declining. eligible to hire a car – just that I had not “Every time we give you a passed my test. Whitelaw had decided concession, you just want more,” said that the Fourth TV channel would not Wyn Roberts, then Minister of State at be allocated to the Welsh language. We the Welsh Office. That’s right we agreed. went back to the drawing board and Rhaid i Bopeth Newid er mwyn i’r threw ourselves back into campaigning. Gymraeg fyw. In the end, Gwynfor Evans put the In the end, another dream became a trump card down. reality, Thatcher left 10 Downing Street. I didn’t see prison as a sacrifice. It was Suddenly, everything was dead We celebrated the much anticipated a Monopoly card that was an inevitable serious. For the first time ever, there was event by catching a boat to Britanny. part of direct action. It suspended the no shortage of activists. I started a list of However bad it was in Wales, it was campaigning, but only for a while. Once people who refused to pay the licence. always worse in Britanny. By the mid- you’d done your time, it was a matter I called a meeting of activists in my nineties, we’d got rid of the Tories as well, of taking up from where you’d left off. It parents living room. Twenty four people and a mood of optimism spread through was something you had to do, for Wales. turned up, and we hadn’t enough the land. We marched for a i And it was much more exciting than chairs for them all. We went down to Gymru, and by the Autumn, we’d won attending lectures... London to protest, and after failing to the referendum (by a hair’s breadth). I smile as I remember the difficulties, get arrested, two of us went to Trafalgar It actually did come, not some old and the frustation. This was the Square and painted a slogan on Nelson’s offices given a new lease of life. We neolithic age before photocopying Column. My main problem was spelling had a brand new building to house machines, computers, e-mails, mobiles, – how did you spell ‘Tory Betrayal’ with the National Assembly. It didn’t have and texts. You got by with typewriters, Japanese tourists taking your photo? the powers Wales needed, but we felt kiosks and stamps, and it all took so In the end the police came and took us that we’d achieved something historic. much more time. Just that was the one away. They took it personal, and asked It was high time that I settled down; I thing we didn’t have – or the Welsh me how would I like it if they came to got married. By 2003, I’d produced my language would die. Wales and destroyed the most precious finest work – a Welshman. We’d done the research on the mast, thing we had. “You already have” we Maybe this is the hard bit. Bringing we’d rustled up the money to pay for replied. I was given a three month up a child and hearing him talking after some gear, we’d even got the activists – prison sentence for my artwork, and I coming from school. This wasn’t the or, rather, we carried on re-cycling them. missed the summer of saving Gwynfor. standard of Welsh that I’d spoken. If this The one thing we did not have was a One Novemeber night, we went is how it is in the most Welsh parts of driver to take us to our destination, a TV next door to see the magic words on the Wales, God help us. Maybe this is the transmitter north of Manchester. It was TV screen – Sianel 4 Cymru - we didn’t sacrifice that they spoke about. Living easy enough to hire a car, but you had have a TV ourselves. I remember my in 21st Century Wales and pretending to have a 21-year-old person to drive feeling at the time. Direct action really that things are improving. Knowing one. This was a mythological character, does work. It’s not all idealism. Slogans that tens of thousands of people are a figment of the imagination. I remember can become a reality... leaving Wales every year because of agonising one night, if only I’d been born But the Eighties weren’t so idealistic. unemployment. A new nuclear power two years earlier... Mines were closed, workers lost their station is on the horizon. A developer Thinking of that, my one great fear jobs, men went to war, women went to wanting to build six thousand houses in was that it would all be over too soon. Greenham, policemen got tougher, and one go. In whatever part of Wales I go I That we’d achieve our aims, and that I hunger strikers died in jail. We carried see the gradual decline of Welsh. This is would have missed out on the fun. I’d on. The needs of the language created a not the new Wales I’d envisaged. missed the Sixties by being a child, and long list that kept growing – a new Welsh Then I look in the mirror and tell I’d been too young to take an active part Language Act, a body to develop Welsh myself off for being so downhearted. in the roadsigns campaign. I didn’t want Medium Education, the requirement Things have been this bad before. It’s it all settled before I’d played my part. to consider the Welsh language as a a Welsh past-time to think that you’re Maybe this was how the fifteen-year-old factor in council planning decisions. I the last generation. We’ve been doing it lads felt before running off to war. attended more council meetings than a since 1282. I needn’t have worried. The great councillor! We gained experience, we Time I got into gear. I went to the debacle of 1979 came, just before my were known to people in power, but Cymdeithas AGM. We’ll be 50 next year.

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

There were difficulties and frustation, letters and policies, organizing gigs - as decrease in civil disobedience. Even so, wild dreams and impossible demands. non-violent direct action. I view it not the last year has seen Cymdeithas return There were visions in plenty and only as a method of campaigning, but to these methods as Westminster and not enough workers. Unexpectedly, more importantly as an attitude of life. the BBC in London took decisions on someone came up to me, a fresh young In its more open sense it is making S4C’s future undemocratically. face, and asked if would I come on a a stand for justice in every situation. Since the 1970s, we have produced protest. Me? A middle aged lady with Sometimes, that means deciding to a great deal detailed policy papers responsibilities? “Maybe I’m a bit old for take part in a sit-in as part of a strategic as part of our campaign. These days that kind of thing” I explained, tactfully, campaign. Most of the time, however, I can present a new policy proposal then felt the familiar surge of guilt. “But it means doing the little things, working we’ve developed as part of a campaign tell you what, I would be willing to help. together for change. directly into the hands of a Welsh If you’re stuck, I’m willing to help out The hypocrisy of governments and Government minister, which is a very with my car.” big business has wrecked communities different experience to previous leaders The fresh young face looked up at throughout Wales and has tied people of Cymdeithas. The campaign for the me. “We’re going by bus,” she said. to the system. People of all ages and Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol was a “Are you coming or not?” backgrounds have joined Cymdeithas good example of how we, as a group yr Iaith Gymraeg over the years of students within Cymdeithas, made Angharad Tomos is a novelist. because it encourages questioning the a difference to public policy in Wales. system around us. Cymdeithas offers It was a joy to see all our campaigning an alternative viewpoint based on come to fruition and seeing some Non-violent direct action freeing oneself psychologically from of our suggestions being adopted. Menna Machreth fear and selfishness. Without campaigning by many groups I learned this lesson when I realised in Wales, there would be no institution that campaigning was not something dedicated to securing Welsh medium I could be self-righteous about. Why higher education in the country. campaign in the first place? The Some people may think that the answer, simply, is love. As clichéd as it only future for Cymdeithas is inside the sounds, longstanding active members establishment. I believe Cymdeithas has of Cymdeithas yr Iaith, like Siân an important role in setting expectations Howys and Ffred Ffransis and many for the place of the Welsh language In its most conservative sense more, have exemplified that their within Wales, but we need to be in non-violent direct action means campaigning is driven by a love to see a position where we can constantly withdrawing from using violence in any justice and freedom in this world - by re-evaluate the campaigns and call for form and also taking full responsibility equipping each other with active peace. a radical vision. Cymdeithas needs to for one’s actions. All members of Their integrity is powerful. Dwi wedi increase its work on policy and lobbying, Cymdeithas yr Iaith know they must penderfynu bod yn rhydd (I’ve decided but it also needs to be in a position to adhere to this principle if they wish to to be free), as the song says, is a state make radical calls for change. Civil take part in any activity on behalf of of mind, an alternative to the violence disobedience must be an option for a the society. As a strategy it has proved exemplified by the powers of this world, campaign. If it is deployed it is a sign of the best way to yield concessions and an attitude which can be adopted the severity of the situation. from the authorities since the 1960s. now to bring change to society. Although there is a new context It has been very successful in drawing Whether I’m writing e-mails to AMs following the creation of the National people together, and should be praised or holding a sit-in at a phone shop, Assembly in 1999, members of for ensuring that the only valid forms non-violent direct action is a way of Cymdeithas yr Iaith do not see devolution of activity for the Welsh language life. Organising gigs and raising money as an end in itself. The struggle for the organisation were peaceful ones. are also important contributions from language and our communities since It succeeded in preventing violent people who aren’t able to campaign 1997 has only confirmed this. It has strategies from gaining credence. publicly. After devolution, Cymdeithas become clear that we are still striving Non-violent direct action is yr Iaith Gymraeg has gradually gained for freedom, mainly to free the new usually associated with peaceful civil more access to politicians, enabling us to Wales from the old British bureaucratic disobedience - sit-ins, painting road convey our view on matters concerning way of thinking. We have devolution on signs and so on. However, Cymdeithas the Welsh language and communities. paper, in constitutional terms, but not also considers the other 99 per cent of Naturally, having our own government in the mind-set of the people of Wales. its work - lobbying, petitioning, writing means there has been a substantial If we are to fully realise devolution we

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 15 Outlook need to release our nation from forever civil servants and the Wales Director of strike, which delivered the language mimicking Westminster. , jailed for conspiracy in 1978. movement’s most unexpected success, the Our main campaign from now on To this might be added innumerable establishment of S4C. is to encourage communities to free councillors, ministers of religion, However, devolution has made themselves from being controlled and academics, company directors, school Welsh Government a reality, and shaped by the desires of the market. teachers, journalists and literary figures. turned Plaid Cymru into a party of In north Wales we are re-visiting an If, as Mao said, revolutionaries need to Government, rather than a body seeking old slogan Tai, Gwaith, Iaith (Housing, swim among the people as fish swim to lobby Government. On the other Work, Language) to try and envisage in the sea, then Cymdeithas yr Iaith hand, Cymdeithas yr Iaith has remained how sustainable communities can fits . It has been a revolutionary at arm’s length from the Assembly, be realised and stop the building movement of and for the people. still capable earlier this year of the of thousands of unwanted houses. Notwithstanding this, if not in crisis, distinctly non-parliamentary wrecking of In order to re-think Wales and free the Welsh language movement is at Conservative Party offices in Whitchurch. ourselves from hypocrisy, non-violent least in need of an overhaul. The reason A litany of Welsh-speaking direct action as a way of life is as is clear. The language movement has intellectuals, from to Richard relevant as ever to get to grips with the fundamentally misread its founding Wyn Jones, have made something of a task in front of us. text, Saunders Lewis’ seminal 1962 cliché of accusing Cymdeithas yr Iaith of lecture, Tynged yr Iaith (The Fate of failing to adapt to devolution. Whether Menna Machreth is Chair of the Language). The lecture is best right or not, the reality is that currently Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg in understood as a treatise on the nature of the Welsh language movement has no north Wales. a future Welsh State. If any future Welsh dedicated and effective constitutional polity were not to use Welsh in its civic wing. If, as Tynged yr Iaith states, it is “by core, wrote Saunders, it would not be revolutionary means alone” that the Language needs worth having. This, by the way, gives the Welsh language can be saved, today constitutional current debate on a bilingual Record of this must mean direct engagement pressure group Proceedings its poignancy. with the Welsh State. There can be Simon Brooks Consequently, Plaid Cymru was the no revolution on the streets in post- real target of Lewis’ infamous appeal devolution Wales. Democracy has done that the Welsh language was “the only for that. The argument that Cymdeithas political matter it is worthwhile for a yr Iaith should respond to devolution by Welshman to concern himself with metamorphosing into a constitutional today”. The belief that politics alone pressure group is superficially attractive. could make the Welsh State Welsh Yet it is doubtful whether Cymdeithas (and that Plaid Cymru might fail to yr Iaith is capable of making this shift. deliver on this) is inherent in Tynged yr It remains a leftist radical organisation Iaith’s argument that “language is more with its roots in 1960s protest. There is Any organisation celebrating its important than self-government”. For a an emphasis on the innate morality of anniversary should be self-critical. non-parliamentary pressure group like civil disobedience, driven by Christian Cymdeithas yr Iaith has not saved the Cymdeithas yr Iaith, the dichotomy and pacifist convictions, which was not Welsh language - the continued decline has little meaning, at least in any part of Saunders Lewis’ worldview, and of Welsh-speaking communities attests strategic sense. which is peculiarly unsuited to the task of to this. Yet it remains the most energetic In practical terms, however, the influencing Government. All this makes and historically important part of the distinction between political party transformation into a constitutional ginger language movement. Despite this, it faces and pressure group was of marginal group extremely difficult. An ideological enormous challenges. significance in late 20th Century Wales. blood transfusion of this severity carries Cymdeithas is synonymous in the There was no Welsh Parliament, nor with it the very high risk that the patient public imagination with direct action. much hope of one. Plaid Cymru was itself will die on the operating table. Without This has played a significant and little more than a pressure group on the direct action as its guiding moral compass, honourable role in recent Welsh history. Westminster stage. Moreover, the dangers the Cymdeithas yr Iaith activist base may Men and women with a Cymdeithas yr which Saunders Lewis saw of nationalists simply fade away. The drive for justice Iaith track record are prominent in public in Government failing to promote the and ethics which defines the Cymdeithas life. They include a serving Minister in Welsh language were not immediately vision is not best satisfied by the thought the Welsh Government, several AMs, apparent. Indeed, it was Plaid Cymru, of wining and dining Tory backbenchers former heads of BBC departments, senior following Gwynfor Evans’ threat to hunger in Odettes restaurant in Primrose Hill, as

16 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Outlook good as the food may be. Three questions by significant internal conservatism. Neverthless, somebody has to do the Huw Lewis I should hasten to add that guinea fowl circuit. Maybe a new group Cymdeithas is not alone in this respect. is required. It could exist in addition to, Moreover, having spent a long period rather than instead of, Cymdeithas yr acting as a member of its senate, Iaith. Comparison with other equality including two years as chair, I know campaigns is useful. There’s no need to better than most how difficult it can be dislike Peter Tatchell to believe that there to find time to stand back and engage is a place for Stonewall in the campaign in discussions of a more strategic nature for gay rights. Nor is it necessary to in which traditional assumptions and dismiss events like Slutwalk as street Wales is a country that witnessed a range ways of working are questioned. It is easy theatre to realise that establishment of far-reaching social changes during the to get lost in the minutia of particular figures like also second half of the 20th Century - some campaigns - how does one ensure that contribute to Welsh feminism. positive in nature and others negative. the next public meeting is a success or There will always be a role for civil On the positive side, there was arguably that the next publicity stunt receives press disobedience within the counter-culture no greater change than that which attention. This is particularly true when language movement: the sit-in, the vigil occurred in relation to the fortunes of the movement is a relatively small one, and the non-payment of the BBC licence the Welsh language. In linguistic terms, which still depends largely on the efforts fee. Protest like this is proportionate today’s Wales is very different from the of volunteers. and just, especially within the context of Wales of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yet, the truth is that any movement non-devolved decision making (such as While it would be a step too far to that does not take the time to reflect on broadcasting), where Welsh speakers suggest that this linguistic transformation critically on its own performance and form only 1 per cent of the electorate resulted solely from the efforts of to ask itself uncomfortable questions and Jeremy Hunt destroys television Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, it is certain runs the risk of falling into a rut, which, channels as Henry VIII dissolved that the movement’s active and persistent in turn, can mean that important monasteries. However, these are not a campaigning was a key driving opportunities are missed. Given this, I the best ways to influence the Welsh factor, and that a number of positive wish to propose three key questions that Government, the Welsh civil service and developments would not have occurred I believe need to be considered carefully Assembly Members. had it not been established back in 1962. by Cymdeithas yr Iaith as it enters its sixth We should wish Meri Huws well as Indeed, I believe that it is important that decade of campaigning: the first Language Commissioner, but one we acknowledge this fact as Cymdeithas individual can never be a replacement approaches its fiftieth birthday. 1. Organization: How much emphasis for civil society. The ill-conceived However, despite the progress made should be placed on the task of abolition of the Welsh Language over recent decades, it is generally developing a network of active Board raises the probability that agreed that questions still remain local branches? language politics will now be polarised regarding the long-term sustainability between the Welsh Government and of the Welsh language. Given this, it is Over the years Cymdeithas has its bureaucracy on the one hand, and important that Cymdeithas itself does consistently seen the task of developing a direct action group on the fringes of not treat this significant milestone as a network of active local branches as policy making on the other, and never solely an occasion to acknowledge past a priority. The importance assigned the twain shall meet. Has Wales won achievements. It should also use it as to this task is reflected in the fact that self-government for this? With the ascent an opportunity to reflect critically on employment strategies have regularly of Welsh democracy, the language contemporary sociolinguistic and political emphasised the need for a number of movement must reinterpret the meaning trends and their implications for the full-time field workers who can facilitate of the word revolution. We need a manner in which it organises itself and activity among grass-roots members. constitutional group to put the language its campaigns. However, questions need to be centre stage in the nascent Welsh State. Many - including numerous members raised regarding the extent to which this and supporters - would probably agree grass-roots work should still be prioritised. that such critical self-reflection has not Firstly, despite significant efforts, and always been one of the movement’s main also despite the use of a significant strengths. Indeed, ironically, a group that amount of financial resources, attempts Simon Brooks is is a lecturer at the has been extremely radical in terms of its to develop an active and sustainable School of Welsh, Cardiff University. political agenda has been characterised local network have, thus far, proved

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 17 Outlook largely unsuccessful. Secondly, and more Put simply, while in the days language can flourish into the future must importantly, it could be argued that of the Welsh Office direct include efforts to sustain such ‘Welsh- developing a stronger central structure, speaking communities’. This is deemed and in particular, employing a handful action served as a means to vital, as it is only in these areas where we of individuals who can develop real force open doors that were can say that there is a sufficient density expertise in relevant policy areas, would tightly shut, today it possibly of Welsh speakers for the language to be a better use of resources and would only serves to close doors be used on a daily basis as the normal allow for tangible gains in relation to the language of interaction. movement’s current campaigns. that are already open. It is striking that in recent years In raising this issue, I am not these claims regarding the centrality of suggesting that there is no need at all as a means of ensuring that the issue could community sustainability for the future of for a pool of local supporters. What I not be pushed off the agenda completely. the Welsh language have been advanced do ask, however, is whether the focus However, the establishment of without any serious consideration of the should always be on the local level when the National Assembly has led to new manner in which structural changes have it comes to questions regarding how the opportunities. It is now possible to transformed the manner in which people movement is to be structured. engage on a regular basis, not only with live their lives and interact with one government Ministers and opposition another. By today, the idea of a defined 2. Methods: What role, if any, AMs, but also with various civil servants, territorial community - rural or urban - should direct action play in efforts and by doing so, ensure that informed that acts as the main locus for the lives of to advance the movement’s debate on language related matters takes individuals is one that does not hold the campaigns? place. Yet, it must be questioned whether same significance as it did a decade or so such opportunities can be exploited fully ago. Without a doubt, this is an issue that There is no question that the willingness if one is also engaging in direct action has serious implications for the arguments of Cymdeithas yr Iaith to make use against the offices occupied by these same traditionally advanced by members of direct action techniques has led, over individuals. Put simply, while in the days the Welsh language movement, and the years, to a number of significant of the Welsh Office direct action served as a result, it calls for much greater gains. And yet, despite this, it would as a means to force open doors that were consideration than it has received thus far. be a mistake to treat the movement’s tightly shut, today it possibly only serves to Given recent changes, is the traditional campaigning methods as an issue that is close doors that are already open. local community (defined in most cases by beyond any critical evaluation. either parish or council ward boundaries) At the very least, the particular direct 3. Policy: What are the implications of still a meaningful unit on which to base action techniques that are employed recent changes in patterns of social the majority of our revitalization strategies? are surely due for revision. Over the interaction for traditional arguments If not, how should we seek to ensure that years, these techniques have remained regarding the importance of ‘Welsh- the Welsh language possesses the kind of relatively consistent, mainly comprising speaking communities’? territorial base that will allow it to flourish? painting slogans, occupying offices and, Unfortunately, there is nowhere near at times, breaking in to certain buildings. This final question is one that should not enough space here to begin the process However, all this seems to have become only concern members of Cymdeithas yr of considering appropriate answers to rather stale. It might be time to take a Iaith, but also those of the wider Welsh these questions. In many ways this is leaf out of the book of a group such language movement. Over the years fortunate. At present I have nothing close as Greenpeace, where the actions many have argued that when assessing to fully formed answers, particularly prioritised seem to be ones that have the the language’s prospects we need to look in relation to the third question. I am, potential for visual impact, rather than beyond national figures regarding the nevertheless, certain that engaging material damage. numbers of individuals across Wales who with such questions should be seen as a It might even be time to go even report that they are able to speak Welsh, priority by Cymdeithas yr Iaith if it wishes further and ask whether direct action - in and focus in more detail on the situation its contribution over the next fifty years any form - still represents an effective at the community level. to be as significant as it was during the means of promoting the movement’s In particular, it has been emphasised preceding fifty. goals. Back in the days when all we had that a proper assessment of the was a Welsh Office run by a succession language’s health needs to include an ‘Conservative Viceroys’, the opportunities analysis of the number of communities in Huw Lewis is a lecturer at Aberystwyth for constructive discussion regarding the which it is spoken by between 60 and 70 University’s Department of International nature of language policy were extremely per cent of the population. Moreover, it is Politics. He is a former chair of rare, and as a result, direct action served argued that any effort to ensure that the Cymdeithas yr Iaith.

18 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org

Wales faces choice between 1 Northern Ireland and Scotland Economy on tax powers

Gerald Holtham finds the Silk Commission has a wider canvas than was envisaged when it was first proposed

Big decisions lie ahead for the nations the Silk Commission must therefore be to of the . The extent and reach as full a consensus as possible among direction of devolution and the shape of the Welsh parties and the UK government Articles the United Kingdom itself are likely to be about tax devolution. That will not be Wales faces determined for a long time in the next few straightforward. While Plaid Cymru and the choice between years. In Wales, the Silk Commission has Lib Dems will presumably favour as much Northern Ireland been set up to consider these matters - tax devolution as can be obtained, Labour in and Scotland on financial devolution first and constitutional Wales is intensely suspicious of government tax powers matters next. It faces a bigger task than the motives and inclined to rule out substantial Recession Coalition government imagined when tax devolution unless there is an ironclad deepens north- they promised to create it, as the ground agreement to reform Barnett first. south divide moves under our feet. The Conservatives’ position is the most I am sometimes asked how the first opaque at present. The Secretary of State Skills gaps part of its mandate differs from the work has been talking about accountability, revealed in of Commission on suggesting she is in favour of the Welsh Welsh workforce Funding and Finance for Wales that I Assembly having responsibility for How we chaired and which reported last year. setting some taxes rather than being reproduce The most obvious difference is that Silk funded entirely by a block grant. The gender disparities is reporting to the British government accountability argument was the one that and is a representative political body. My the Calman Commission used in Scotland Commission, as the name implies was an to justify more tax-varying powers there independent group of specialists reporting and our Welsh Commission also found to the Welsh Government. We could the argument convincing. It is a general examine the technical arguments, set out argument – a body spending public alternatives and make some proposals but money should be responsible for raising then it was up to the politicians to act or at least some of it - and if that applies in not as they saw fit. There was complete Scotland it applies in Wales as well. consensus in Wales on a number of our If accountability requires a proposals: replacing of Barnett with a government to raise a reasonable succinct formula based on relative needs proportion of its revenue, the options In association with and limited borrowing powers for Wales. in Wales are limited. Only three taxes There was some agreement but certainly raise really big revenues: VAT, national less than complete consensus on our insurance and income tax. VAT cannot findings about tax devolution. easily be devolved. It would lead to The things on which Welsh politicians cross-border smuggling and, anyway, it agree – reform of Barnett and borrowing is contrary to EU law to have different –are being pursued separately in inter- VAT rates within a single country. governmental talks, and Barnett reform National insurance is seen as part of has been explicitly excluded from Silk’s the welfare system, what people pay in terms of reference. The first objective for to earn benefits. The benefit system is not

20 1/Economy Produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers

indeed, be a form of fiscal federalism. ’s plan is to hold a referendum offering three choices to the Scots: status quo, independence or devo-max. At present, the betting is the electorate will opt for devo-max. That raises the question: what then would the fiscal framework be for the other devolved territories and what, in particular, would become of the Barnett formula? In considering this it might be helpful to consider the difference between a union arrangement and a federal arrangement. In a union state nearly all taxes are centralised and raised by a single government agency. Once an allocation Paul Silk, photographed on the stairway in Gwydyr House, the Wales Office’s headquarters in Whitehall - has been made to different departments, his Commission will no doubt strive to rise to what Nye Bevan called “the imperious needs of the times”. the geographical distribution of that devolved so it seems coherent to leave that are grounded in our political spending within departments is decided NI un-devolved too. That only leaves preferences. Instead, we take the by formulae, usually based on estimates income tax as a big revenue source current constitutional position of of relative need. No one asks where the although there are other smaller taxes Wales as given. Our recommendations revenue comes from and, indeed, those that could be devolved to give the Welsh are intended to be appropriate for data are not collated. Needs, not revenue- government some more policy levers. It is devolution as it currently operates in raising, determines relative expenditure. quite likely that Conservative AMs would Wales... For that reason we have not Devolution modified that but did be content to back the Secretary of State attempted to trace what a consistent not change its essence. Westminster and call for income tax devolution but scheme for fiscal federalism would asked which departments or functions they will surely be cautious since the look like in Wales.” were devolved and allocated a block policy will not be attractive to many of grant to the territories based on English their rank and file supporters. The Calman Commission approach was expenditure on those departments. To So last year it looked as if the Silk not very different and it represented a be sure the block grant was anomalous Commission would have the essentially consensus among the UK government and because it was set historically to grow by political task of hammering out a deal the three unionist parties in Scotland which the same per capita amount each year as among those various points of view, controlled the Scottish Parliament at the expenditure in England. That meant as helped, we hope, by the analysis in the time. That, in the words of the poet Yeats, functions were devolved, their allocation earlier Commission’s report. However, has now “changed, changed utterly”. The ceased to be determined by relative need. it now it begins to look as if some bigger current Scottish Parliament has a large SNP This anomaly is at the heart of the case for issues will have to be addressed. The majority that rejects the Calman report and Barnett reform. political situation has changed radically is demanding changes to the Scotland Note that tax devolution, too, need and is throwing up some wider questions. Bill, currently before the Westminster make only a moderate change to this Both the Calman report in Scotland and our Commission’s report in Wales If it cannot have independence, the SNP wants something were expressly unionist documents. They called ‘devo-max’. Essentially that means full fiscal asked what fiscal arrangements made autonomy for Scotland, which would levy its own taxes and sense in a union state. In our report we keep all the revenue. were quite explicit: Parliament, that was based on its findings. system and our report, like Calman, “As an apolitical Commission If it cannot have independence, the SNP worked out how to devolve taxes keeping independent from the Welsh wants something called ‘devo-max’. upheaval to a minimum. Some taxes are Government, it would be inappropriate Essentially that means full fiscal autonomy devolved and the revenues, assuming a for us to make recommendations for Scotland, which would levy its own standard UK rate is levied, are deducted for the funding model for Wales taxes and keep all the revenue. That would, from the block grant. Assuming the

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standard rate is important, that fixes the Why, then, do the Scots want devo- a whole. In 2007-8 its revenue was a shade deduction which does not change then max? And if it’s good enough for them, over £52 billion. The UK’s revenue was if the devolved authority varies tax rates. should we want it too? £549 billion. So if Scotland’s population Therefore any change in tax rates has In union terms Scotland gets a very is about 10 per cent of the UK and it got an effect on the total revenues at the good deal from the Barnett formula. We a revenue equalisation grant, it might get disposal of the devolved government – an calculated that a needs-based formula another £2-3 billion. That would mean absolutely necessary condition; otherwise would give them expenditure of around its position was little different from the the tax devolution would not be ‘real’. £105 a head for every £100 spent in current one or only slightly worse - and The system still means that if taxes are England. Barnett gives them £120 a head, no-one would be moaning about it. kept at the standard UK level, a territory a 15 per cent premium of about £4 billion In practice, if recession is prolonged and has similar expenditure possibilities to a year. No English government wants to the oil price goes down, Scotland could be the rest of the UK, irrespective of its own tackle that excess allocation, fearing that to very much worse off. Its balanced budget tax-raising capacity. If the grant were on do so would increase support for the SNP. could go the same way as Alex Salmond’s a proper needs basis each area would Nonetheless, the grumbling in England notorious “arc of prosperity”. But then if have potentially the same public services and Wales is getting louder and that is you believe that more autonomy would as the rest of the UK. Devolution means uncomfortable for the Scots. Get well- confer extra policy levers and enable the they could opt to have more or less of informed Scots in private and you don’t Scots to stimulate growth, you might be public services but only by raising or need to ply them with too many whiskies prepared to run that risk. At the moment lowering taxes. before they admit that they are doing many Scots seem ready to do so. On the other hand, in a federal system relatively very well. They justify it by saying, What of Wales? The situation here is people are not blind to the geographical “you get what you negotiate”, but they more obscure because we do not have origin of taxes. A record is kept of tax know there is no principled basis for their the data we need for careful assessment. collected in each region and that region position. With devo-max they would be Comprehensive figures for Wales do not keeps its own revenue to spend. Since able to justify matters on a principled basis exist and what follows are estimates. most federations have some areas more though, to be sure, a different principle In the same pre-recession year, my prosperous than others there are usually from “to each according to his need”. Commission estimated that total some compensating transfers for poorer Yet would they really be no worse off? identifiable expenditure in Wales was regions. However, these are usually The SNP believe that the mere fact of about £25 billion, exceeding Welsh tax modest, doing no more than equalise getting so much autonomy would enable receipts by £6 billion. This was a fiscal revenue per head. them to release new energies in Scotland deficit above 10 per cent of Welsh GDP. Consider what that would mean that would drive the economy and make On the face of it a revenue equalisation for Wales. We currently have public current calculations irrelevant. grant would boost Welsh revenues expenditure in Wales at about 112 per Let’s assume Scotland gets its to some 5 per cent of the UK, some cent of the English average. A needs- geographical share of North Sea £27.5 billion for the year in question, based formula based on those in use oil. According to the Government which would have more than made up within England would give us about 115 Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland the gap. But Wales would presumably or 116 per cent, an increase of some £400 statistics, in 2009-10 the country had a have to pay extra contributions towards million a year. But if we just had revenue net fiscal deficit of nearly £14 billion, 10.6 UK-wide expenditures, on defence, equalisation, that could mean we would per cent of its GDP. However, that reflects foreign policy and debt service. And the have the same spending per head as the economic downturn and the fact that comparison between 112 and 100 per England, a drop of some 12 per cent from the UK as a whole had a similar deficit. So cent of English expenditure per head the current level, or about £1.6 billion a look instead at 2007-8, the last year before suggests Wales could lose out compared year. In principle, a federation could have recession when revenues were at a peak. with the current situation. more generous transfers, but it is unusual. In that year the statistics show a deficit of So if Scotland gets devo-max, what Only Australia attempts equalisation based £3.7 billion (2.6 per cent of GDP). So in a should Wales do? Should it ask for on expenditure needs rather than revenue good year, with high oil prices, Scotland the same arrangement, with revenue and that involves a substantial public body would be in much the same boat as it equalisation or insist on remaining within independent of government to carry it would under the present system if Barnett a union system with a block grant? With out. There is no British precedent for such was reformed and it lost £4 billion. Scotland federated and not receiving a a body and you can bet your last penny However, revenue per head in Barnett-based grant, there could be even the Treasury would fight it to the death. Scotland is a little below that for the UK as less resistance to replacing Barnett with a

22 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Economy Produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers

needs-based formula. It is possible Wales would thereby benefit from Scotland getting devo-max. However, I would not Recession bet on it. The Treasury will still resist and Welsh bargaining power would still be pitifully small. deepens north- In my opinion, the Silk Commission should liaise with the Scottish government and other interested parties to try and south divide understand exactly how they think devo- max would operate. Then it should demand some detailed work on the Welsh expenditure and revenue accounts. That Rob Lewis on why Wales is performing worst in the would allow an informed comparison to UK according to a new household financial index be made among the different possibilities. Some people are worried that Wales The historic north-south divide has widened further since the start of the will not get a choice. If English politicians recession. This pattern is likely to continue against a backdrop of continued see it as a way to save money, could they very modest UK average growth of only around 1 per cent in both 2011 and not insist that Wales has the same federal 2012, according to a new regional household financial stress index published arrangement as Scotland and look to in the PwC’s latest UK Economic Outlook report. reduce the scale of subsidies from the Wales and the North East have suffered the greatest increases in household centre? I do not think that is a risk for financial stress since the recession began, followed by the West Midlands. A one reason – Northern Ireland. The Irish mixture of relatively large increases in unemployment and economic inactivity unionists will fiercely resist anything that rates, marked falls in house prices, and significant increases in personal makes it look as if the ties with Great Britain insolvencies have all contributed to these results. are being weakened. English politicians In contrast, the South East, the East and particularly London have suffered will not disturb the fragile equilibrium in less since the onset of recession. This pattern echoes the long term trend in Northern Ireland. If they do not push the UK regional development of a widening north–south divide that has existed Irish into federalism it would surely be for a period extending well before the recession (although London continues impossible to push the Welsh. We can be in a federation, like Scotland, or a union, like Northern Ireland. Our future is surely Figure 1: Regional Household Financial Stress Index in our own hands. Source: PwC index calculations using data from ONS, Nationwide and Insolvency Service The probability that Wales would indeed be initially worse off under its own version of devo-max, plus the innate conservatism of Welsh politicians and the electorate will presumably mean Wales opts to stick with union arrangements. Nonetheless, the situation remains open-ended and is not easily predictable, as with constitutional developments in the UK more widely. We live in an interesting period. The Silk Commission will no doubt strive to rise to what Nye Bevan called “the imperious needs of the times”.

Gerald Holtham was Chair of the Independent Commission on Funding and Finance for Wales.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 23 1/Economy

Figure 2: Unemployment rates in 2007 and May-July 2011, with numbers showing percentage changes between those periods

to score badly on some measures such as UK employment, started to cut back and personal insolvency rates, house relative unemployment rates). severely on jobs. Wage growth has been prices and public sector employment. It Straddling this geographical divide, subdued for some years relative to price focuses primarily on changes since late the East Midlands region has performed inflation, while taxes have risen. All of 2007, just prior to the onset of recession. more strongly than the West Midlands on these things mean that households are Figure 1 summarises the resulting these measures of household financial facing increased uncertainty and stress regional rankings. stress since the start of the recession. about how they will meet their future Increases in unemployment and Unemployment in the UK stood at 8 financial obligations. personal insolvency rates were the per cent in the second quarter of 2011, To measure how these recessionary greatest contributing factors to Wales’ relatively poor performance compared Increases in unemployment and personal with the other economic regions across the UK. The unemployment rate, as insolvency rates were the greatest measured by the Labour Force Survey, increased across the whole of the UK contributing factors to Wales’ relatively regions between the fourth quarter of poor performance compared with the other 2007 and the second quarter of 2011. Figure 2 shows the unemployment rates economic regions across the UK. in the two periods, ranked from left to right decreasing in the percentage point change in unemployment. The North East suffered the greatest increases; the unemployment rate has almost doubled, up by 2.8 percentage points from the pressures have varied across UK regions, now surpassing London, which had the end of 2007. UK house prices have fallen PwC’s new household financial stress highest unemployment rate in 2007. by 9.4 per cent on average since their index combines publicly available data Yorkshire and Humberside, Wales and the peak in the third quarter of 2007. This on key drivers of regional household West Midlands have also seen relatively year the public sector, which currently financial stress such as unemployment large increases. accounts for around 20 per cent of total and economic inactivity, earnings growth The number of personal insolvencies

24 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Economy Produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers

was increasing year on year for some Increased financial stress caused by the time before the recession. The change between 2005 and 2009 (the latest year recession is a concern for households, for which regional data is available) government and business. reflects the impact of the recession on the financial health of individuals. We use 2005 as a reference point to ensure Uncertainty about money leads people that for both England and the devolved to stop spending, reducing overall regions we take a point before the step demand and growth. change in insolvency that accompanied the recession. In England the significant increase in insolvencies happened in 2006, preceding the economy entering recession, perhaps because household debt levels were already high by that time. general pattern of regional development early end to the financial pressures on Figure 3 shows Wales and the North East that existed before the recession. households across the country, while our experiencing the greatest increases in Our research also highlights how regional growth estimates suggest some insolvencies and, as Figure 2 also shows, different London’s experience of the further widening of the north-south these two regions also saw relatively large recession has been from the rest of the divide next year. rises in unemployment rates. London and economy. London performs worse than Closing the north-south divide Northern Ireland have experienced the many other regions on measures such is becoming ever more difficult for lowest increases in personal insolvencies, as unemployment rates. However, our government. Money is tight and the scope despite having relatively high increases in index demonstrates that the impact of the for significant transfers to more highly unemployment rates. recession on household financial stress stressed regions is therefore limited. Increased financial stress caused by has been less in London than in other Businesses selling to households need the recession is a concern for households, regions, although it remains a region with to consider how their strategies can be government and business. Uncertainty high unemployment. tailored to these regional differences in about money leads people to stop We expect UK GDP growth to remain financial stress, which look set to persist spending, reducing overall demand and subdued at only around 1 per cent in for some time to come. growth. In general, the regions of the 2012, with consumer spending flat in South East and the East of England fare real terms next year and unemployment better on the index compared to those of likely to edge up as public sector job the North, the Midlands and the devolved cuts outweigh private sector job gains. Rob Lewis is Chairman of PwC in territories. This is consistent with the Unfortunately there will therefore be no Wales.

Figure 3: Change in number of personal insolvencies 2005-2009

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 25 1/Economy

Skills gaps revealed in Welsh workforce

Kevin Thomas reports on a new survey of the food and drinks industry in Wales

Service at the Chandlery restaurant in Newport – creating a ‘sense of place’ when promoting Welsh food and drink is an important element of enhancing the customer experience.

Food and drink is the biggest industry Growth 2011 report, which surveyed there had been an occasion when their in Wales. From farming through to food 2,000 businesses in the food and drink workforce did not have the necessary and drink manufacturing, hospitality and sector across Wales is the largest ever skills to satisfy the needs of their business. retail, it employs 226,900 people - 18 research study undertaken to investigate This equates to 14,000 workers with skills per cent of the Welsh workforce - and employers’ perceptions of current and deficiencies across the sector in Wales. generates about £6.5 billion in sales a year future skills needs. The survey demonstrates that sales and (see Figure 1). Little wonder therefore The survey demonstrated skills gaps merchandising skills, including branding that Business Minister has in a number of key areas. Forty-five per and promotion, will grow in importance identified food and drink as a key priority cent of the businesses surveyed stated over the next three years. An additional for her Economic Renewal policy. that there was a technical skills gap 8,000 workers will need sales and The results of a major new survey among their workforce, mainly relating merchandising skills training to meet the of the sector, revealing skills gaps at key to business, sales and merchandising growing demand. Currently, the number strategic business levels, are of some skills, food technology, and operating of learners undertaking comparable skills consequence for the Welsh economy as and maintaining equipment. training in Wales stands at about 3,000. a whole. The Delivering Skills for Future A further 22 per cent indicated that Recruitment was another problem with the report noting that the sector suffered from ‘poor career perception’ Figure 1: Employees, business and turnover in the Welsh food and drink sector exacerbated by short term seasonal employment, mainly undertaken by Sector No. of No. of Turnover higher and students as employees3 businesses3 (£millions)5 a stepping stone to other employment. This was especially the case in the Primary Production 56,600 13,790 1,752 hospitality sector where more than 40 per Manufacturing 21,200 560 467 cent of respondents noted other problems, Wholesale 8,800 695 567 including ‘a lack of right attitude’ amongst Retail 62,500 3,805 1,440 job seekers, leading to unemployability Hospitality 77,800 8,665 2,292 and unfilled vacancies. In many cases, poor standards of basic literacy and numeracy skills were issues among job Total 226,900 27,515 6,518 candidates. Figure 2 summarises the

26 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Economy Produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers

Figure 2: Reasons for recruitment difficulties in the Welsh food and drink sector

difficulties employers experience in to come by. A number of commentators development. The report has five key recruiting appropriate staff. reported reluctance amongst managers recommendations: The research found that training levels to organise staff training because it varied greatly across the sector. Some was not remunerated or staff were not 1. Raise awareness and develop greater managers suffered from ‘widespread provided with time-off to undertake it. understanding of cross-sectoral skills apathy’ toward training amonst their The Delivering Skills for Future Growth within the Welsh food and drinks workforce. Others felt that further report highlights the importance of industry. education was failing to equip students producing greater added value within 2. Increase the profile and with the necessary skills needed by their the sector for it to compete with the rest understanding of careers within businesses, while information regarding of the UK. This points to greater emphasis the sector private training providers was difficult being given to training and business 3. Develop a greater understanding of non-accredited training 4. Improve links between education and industry. 5. Enhance conditions that enable cross- sectoral business to take place.

The research provides a robust evidence base from which to develop strategies and secure the necessary funding needed to achieve these objectives.

Kevin Thomas is National Director Wales of Lantra which provides training and skills development in the land-based and environmental sector. Delivering Skills for Future Growth can be accessed at www.foodanddrinkskills.co.uk

Teifi Davies, farmer and owner of Llwynhelyg Farm Shop in Ceredigion. Adding value to primary production, such as diversifying into farm retail is one of the recommendations in the Delivering Skills for Future Growth report.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 27 1/Economy

How we reproduce gender disparities

Alison Parken highlights new ‘quality’ jobs in knowledge economy Transfer Partnership funding. An analysis sectors, whilst the majority of the 15,000 of named lead researchers awarded the pitfalls of sidelining the new low-hours, low paid personal services funding in this area in Wales between contribution women can make jobs in Wales have gone to women. 2003-2007 reveals that only 11 per cent to the knowledge economy Higher Education Statistics Agency (£413,000) went to women. Men in lead full-person equivalent figures for staff research positions received the remainder in Welsh universities in 2007-08 show which amounted to £3.5 million. There that women were just 11.7 per cent of was no funding for women in ICT, design At present, a narrow focus on the professoriate. In addition to vertical or high value manufacturing, and just gaining intellectual property rights segregation, there are clear patterns one woman in bioscience. for technological innovation misses of horizontal gender segregation More women need to be enabled to much that women do, and could by academic discipline. There are reach lead positions so that they can make do, in universities, the professions, fewer than three women professors funding applications in STEM subjects. management and businesses to of physics, and no women professors There needs to be more interaction contribute to economic growth. The recorded in mathematics, electronic and between women in the research teams Economic Renewal Strategy’s focus electrical engineering, pharmacology and business owners who tend to focus on innovation in the STEM subjects - or microbiology - even though women attention on lead researchers. We should science, engineering and technology - predominate at undergraduate level in also consider why economic renewal where few women are employed, is also the latter two subject areas. and innovation is not associated with the likely to have the effect of increasing Fewer women professors than men sectors and occupations where women gender income disparity. in economics, management studies, currently lead. The result will be continuing and accountancy, law and marketing suggest Outside the academy, the ‘knowledge reinforcing gender divisions of traditional their lower participation in establishing new workers’ in the other two parts of labour markets in the emerging knowledge Knowledge Intensive Businesses. Nursing the economic renewal mix will be economy. Employment growth data for was the only academic subject in which professionals, senior managers and the last decade shows the gendering of women professors outnumbered men. officials, and associate professional and occupations is moving into new economy The result is that men receive a technical staff, in business and government. areas. Men have obtained the majority of disproportionate share of Knowledge Table 1 shows that management and

Table 1: Gender and Occupation in Wales, 2008 Men Women Total Women as % of total Managers and Senior Officials – All industries 111,400 62,800 174,600 35% Managers and Senior Officials – Agriculture, fishing; energy and water; manufacturing; construction 39,200 8,000 47,400 17% Managers and Senior Officials - Distribution, hotels, restaurants; transport and communication; banking finance and insurance etc.; public administration, education and health and other services. 72,300 54,800 127,200 43% Professionals – All industries 87,800 70,500 158,300 45% Professionals – Agriculture etc. 20,500 2,300 23,100 10% Professionals – Distribution etc. 67,400 67,700 135,100 51% Associate Professional and Technical – All industries 79,300 93,500 172,800 54% Associate Professional and Technical – Agriculture etc. 16,200 6,500 22,600 29% Associate Professional and Technical – Distribution etc. 63,100 87,000 150,200 58%

Source: Annual Population Survey, January to December 2008.

28 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Economy Produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers

Table 2: Gender Balance in Public Bodies, October 2011

Body Men Women Women Total

Ministerial Advisory Group for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills 3 3 6 Economic Research Advisory Panel 5 1 6 Wales Employment and Skills Board 10 2 12 Economy and Transport Ministerial Advisory Group 4 0 4 Design Commission for Wales 4 1 5 Enterprise Ministerial Advisory Group 5 2 7 Social Enterprise Ministerial Advisory Group 5 2 7

Total 36 11 47 Source: Public Appointments Division, Welsh Government

professional occupations in agriculture, phase of new knowledge. He also says An evidence-based approach to manufacturing and construction are that innovation means the application of funding innovation and knowledge largely a male domain. No women were existing knowledge to new contexts, in transfer is needed. It should be one that recorded as senior managers in the sub- either different places or different business includes customer-facing public, voluntary category ‘energy and water’. sectors from their origin. and market services. Policy needs a more Although there is gender balance of If government investment in sophisticated approach that recognises professionals in the Distribution sector, economic renewal is to be wider than the different kinds of knowledge in play 82 per cent of women professionals in the six sectors originally identified, to in the route from universities to markets. this category work in occupations in now include food and tourism, and It should also do more to equitably serve public administration, education, health innovation in management and services Wales’ diverse populations. and other services. A similar pattern is also recognised, then many more Here the legal requirement, is observable within the associated women could be brought within the which behoves the Assembly to professional category. funding frame – particularly in their ‘promote equality’, applies. Equality Women are also under-represented considerable numbers in the value- impact assessments are intended to on government advisory boards where adding areas of brand building and acknowledge and analyse data such as decisions are made regarding economic marketing in the exploitation phases. that presented here, and use it to produce strategy (see Table 2). Is this perhaps why Women’s businesses operate across the inclusive growth policies. This means women’s innovation work in customer industry spectrum but, as with those of we need policies to prevent gender facing businesses, health, education, and men, choice of business enterprise is disparities in the distribution of low service industries is less considered for influenced by employment experience. and high quality jobs from continuing. investment funds? Given the extreme patterns of gender Businesses recognise that the ‘who’ in The Economic Renewal Strategy must segregation, and the influence of innovation is significant as they attempt, be responsive to the impact of social and anticipating the need to mix paid work through diversity management policies, economic divisions on its plans, and the with caring on choice of business start- to apply tacit and professional knowledge effects of its policy decisions on reducing up, women are much more likely to run to products, services and markets. Public or further exacerbating existing disparities. consumer-orientated businesses. These policy needs this kind of flexibility too. Such divisions can be cemented by narrow are sometimes pejoratively termed definitions of ‘innovation’. Indeed, in the ‘lifestyle’ businesses. Although they Spring 2010 issue of Agenda, John Ball accounted for £8.6billion in UK sales Alison Parken is Senior Research Fellow suggests the current approach is ‘overly in 2009 they are not considered to be at Cardiff University School of Social associated with technology’. He helpfully in the frame for research, development Sciences for the EURODITE research notes that much of the added value in and investment funding under economic programme on knowledge transfer, and innovation is achieved at the exploitation renewal. is a freelance equalities consultant.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 29 2 Wales in a two Politics circle Europe

David Marquand queries what the non-English nations will do if the UK opts to stay outside a newly integrating European Union Articles Wales in a two According to the pundits, Britain is not going drastically than it was by the devolution statutes circle Europe through a ‘constitutional moment’ and is of the 1990s. Less obviously, a vote for the status not about do so. For the foreseeable future, quo would be equally portentous. It would be a The best and they conclude sagely, there is no chance of a vote against more powers, not just for Scotland, worst of times comprehensive change in the constitutional but for Wales and Northern Ireland too. Opening a architecture of the United Kingdom. More small- The long-term constitutional implications of window on scale, piecemeal changes can be expected, but the crisis of the Eurozone are harder to read, but Welsh politics a constitutional Big Bang of the sort Charter 88 they, too, are likely to be more portentous than Boundary once dreamed of is for the birds. And what is most people on the British side of the English obsessions true of Britain is, by definition, true of Wales. Channel yet realise. Built into the very structure I am not so sure. Two crucial developments of the Euro was a deadly flaw. Monetary union Assembly denies have called the pundits’ conventional wisdom without fiscal union was always a nonsense. international role into question. The first is the SNP’s staggering As far back as mid-1970s, when what is now Our central success in the recent elections to the Scottish the EU was still the European Community, the organising Parliament; the second is the current crisis authoritative MacDougall Report showed that principle of the Eurozone. Whatever may be true of monetary union would be unfeasible over the Glancing back England, Scotland is most certainly approaching long term without fiscal transfers from the more to look forward a constitutional moment of some sort, and to the less advanced and competitive parts of no matter what happens the rest of Britain, the Community. This is what happens more including Wales, is bound to be affected. or less automatically in modern nation-states It is now virtually certain that the Scottish by way of the national budget. I suspect that Government will hold a referendum on Helmut Kohl, the chief political architect of the independence before the end of the current UK Euro, knew this perfectly well. He didn’t say so Parliament, and only slightly less likely that the because he didn’t want to frighten the horses, will be able to vote, not just on and thought monetary union would in any case full-scale independence, but on ‘independence evolve into fiscal union as time went on. lite’ or ‘devolution max’ – in other words on Unfortunately, he didn’t anticipate the fiscal autonomy within the United Kingdom. If heady boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Scots vote for full-scale independence, the or the frenzied euphoria that accompanied it. constitution of the rest of Great Britain will be up While the boom lasted, complacency reigned. for grabs, with results that no one can foresee. Everyone (notably including the British political But even if they reject full-scale independence class) thought the cycle of boom and bust, and settle for independence-lite, the structure of which has been intrinsic to capitalism for more the British state will be transformed – far more than 400 years, had miraculously come to an

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Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s “staggering success” in this year’s May election has changed the terms of the constitutional debate in Britain – “Scotland is certainly approaching a constitutional moment of some sort.” end. The Eurozone seemed to be in conceivably the Czech Republic and even themselves outer-circle countries would robust health, and it would have seemed Spain. There, the always inherent political almost certainly engage in competitive indelicate to point to its in-built flaw. logic of monetary union would finally devaluations and resort to de facto Then came the crash and the flaw was prevail. Fiscal union would accompany protectionism. An impoverished, resentful exposed. Another flaw came into view as monetary union; for all practical purposes and fragmented group of countries in well: the yawning economic and fiscal gulf so would political union. Europe’s periphery would contemplate between weaker, largely Mediterranean The loose outer circle would consist a tight group of rich neighbours across countries on the southern periphery of the of the rest of the current EU. Moderate a gulf of jealousy and incomprehension. EU, and the stronger, more competitive euro-sceptics in the outer-circle countries In the outer circle, the dynamic of the heartland. Whatever may be in doubt would probably rejoice at first. They would European project would go into reverse. about the current crisis, it is clear that it look forward to a future of continent- The miracle of 60 years of peace in what won’t be resolved without significant wide free trade without tiresome Brussels had previously been a blood-soaked transfers from the richer heartland to the poorer periphery. And in a crisis An impoverished, resentful and fragmented when everyone feels poorer and more group of countries in Europe’s periphery would vulnerable, voters in the heartland jib at that suggestion. contemplate a tight group of rich neighbours across That is where we are now. Assuming a gulf of jealousy and incomprehension. Europe’s rulers don’t want to plunge the continent, and perhaps the world, into a crisis of mammoth proportions, they have two choices. The first is a two- circle Europe, with a much more tightly rules or supranational institutions. But continent would be in jeopardy. It would integrated inner circle and a less integrated the rejoicing would not last. The tight be an unmitigated tragedy for the whole outer one. The tight inner circle would inner circle would necessarily determine of Europe, and perhaps the world. consist of the original ‘Six’, minus Italy, the fate of the entire internal market, The other choice is to use the but plus Austria, probably Poland and including the loose outer circle. To protect opportunity created by the second

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 31 2/Politics most shattering crisis in the history of Deal was impossible before it got going. place of the present uneasy half way house capitalism to launch a European New Sceptics in Europe thought the same between federalism and confederalism. Deal, based on the principles of solidarity before Monnet and Schuman launched Probably the UK would stay out. and justice, covering the entire territory their plan for what became the Coal and The great question is what the non- English nations of the Kingdom would At the moment, all the main European capitals are do. Would they allow England to exclude dominated by latter-day incarnations of Herbert them from the European destiny to which their histories and cultures entitle them? Hoover. It’s time for European Franklin Roosevelts Or would they embrace Europe and to take over. escape from the decaying hulk known as the British state? These questions are not on the political agenda now, but the odds are that they will sooner or later reach it. It of the enlarged EU. It would be designed Steel Community and later the Economic is time they figured in the conversations of to combat the deepening depression Community. Such a New Deal offers the all the nations of the Britannic Isles. through an enlarged European budget, only real opportunity to create a social on Keynesian lines, and to replace the Europe able to counter the toxic mix of depression-fostering fiscal orthodoxy that euro-scepticism and racism that now now reigns almost everywhere. At the threatens to tear the Union apart. moment, all the main European capitals It would obviously necessitate fiscal are dominated by latter-day incarnations union, governed and legitimised by Professor David Marquand is a political of Herbert Hoover. It’s time for European democratic institutions in place of the writer and historian. His latest book Franklin Roosevelts to take over. technocratic ones that run the EU at is The End of the West: The Once and Sceptics will say this is impossible. present. That, in turn, would involve a Future Europe, published by Princeton Sceptics thought the American New giant step towards European federalism in University Press earlier this year. 2/Politics

The best and worst of times

Q1

Roger Scully asseses the impact of the May Assembly election on the fortunes of the four main parties

For two of Wales’ main parties, May 2011 witnessed their Q2 strongest ever performance in a National Assembly election. Labour won their highest vote share yet on both the constituency and regional ballots, while equalling their 2003 performance in winning 30 seats. The Conservatives also gained their largest ever vote share, and reached a new high of 14 AMs. On the other hand, both Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats experienced their worst devolved election yet. Both sunk to new lows in terms of vote share and seats won – Plaid Cymru 11 seats (down 4) and Liberal Democrats 5 seats (down 1). How can we explain these contrasting fortunes? Elections are complex things, inherently difficult to understand. However, there are some valuable insights in the 2011 Welsh Election Study, the most detailed examination of a devolved election so far. For Labour, 2011 was the election where they had just about everything going for them. They were no longer tarnished by association with an unpopular Labour UK government. Indeed, they were able to run largely in opposition to a deeply unpopular London government. Q3 Yet Labour was not simply the beneficiary of an anti-UK government protest vote. In , the party had by far the most popular leader, someone whose standing in Wales was much stronger than any of the other UK or Welsh party leaders. The party also ran the most visible campaign – more voters recalled being contacted by Labour party workers than those from any of the other parties. Moreover, the party ran the most effective campaign. It did better than any other in converting positive sentiments about itself into actual votes in the ballot box. With all these strengths behind it, Labour enhanced its position as by far Wales’ leading political force. Possibly the

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only dark cloud on it’s horizon is this: option, limiting the party’s potential exist offer significant potential for Plaid’s if they can’t win outright majority in future growth. With austerity likely to new leader who will be elected in the circumstances as favourable as those of bite ever harder over the next few years, New Year to increase the party’s level of May 2011, then when might they ever 2011 may be as good as a devolved support. However, in 2011, Plaid Cymru’s do so? election gets for the Conservatives for campaign offered voters no convincing The Conservatives’ strong some time to come. reason to convert positive sentiments performance in the election might In many respects, Plaid Cymru’s into votes. be taken as proof that Cameronite election performance is the most difficult On paper the 2011 election result ‘decontamination’, and Nick Bourne’s to reconcile with much of the evidence looks a considerable disappointment for long-term Welsh strategy, had reduced produced by the our survey. This shows the Liberal Democrats. In fact, it should traditional hostility to the party in Wales. substantial positive sentiment towards be a substantial relief. Public attitudes Yet our evidence suggests that the the party, and very little hostility. Most towards the party had become Tories’ success in 2011 came despite voters think that Plaid is focussed on the substantially more negative in the year considerable – indeed, in some respects concerns of Welsh people, and react since the UK general election, while evaluations of the performance of Whatever his other strengths, in 2011 Ieuan its Ministers in the London coalition government were scathing. Wyn Jones was no great electoral asset While the net loss of one seat was hardly a triumph, things could easily have to his party, as throughout his leadership. been much worse. Two factors saved The substantial well of positive attitudes the result from being a total disaster. The first was sheer luck. The party won four to the party that now exist offer significant of its five seats through the regional lists. In all four cases, they won the final list potential for Plaid’s new leader who will seat allocated in that region. In two of them the marin was exceedingly close – be elected in the New Year to increase the in Mid and West Wales they won by 198 party’s level of support. votes, and in and South-West Wales by just 54 votes. It was bad, but it was so nearly very much worse. That it was not so should be credited, at least in part, to the party’s growing – hostile sentiment towards positively to this. They also believed Welsh leader, . Amid a the party persisting among much of the that the party had performed capably in tide of ill-will towards her party, Williams’ Welsh public. The blue tide also flowed government. Yet, very few make the step relative leadership ratings – running despite rather negative evaluations by from having broadly positive attitudes to ahead of those for both Nick Bourne and most people of the party’s performance actually thinking of themselves as a Plaid – stand out as virtually in government in London, and despite supporter, or going out and voting for the only positive feature for the Liberal neither nor Nick Bourne the party. Democrats. Leadership, and luck, limited winning much affection from the voters. A number of factors explain this. the damage suffered by the Lib Dems, The Conservatives’ success this year Perhaps in part because it had expended and have created the opportunity for the speaks to some very effective on-the- much of its limited resources on the March party to re-build in better times. ground campaigning – possibly helped referendum, Plaid was out-campaigned by the simultaneous AV referendum by Labour in the following election. motivating Conservative grass-roots But there also remained a problem of supporters to get out to the polls. This leadership. Whatever his other strengths, made the most of the Conservatives’ in 2011 Ieuan Wyn Jones was no great rather limited potential support base electoral asset to his party, as throughout Roger Scully is Director of the in Wales. For most of the public, voting his leadership. The substantial well of Institute of Welsh Politics at Tory still appears to be not a serious positive attitudes to the party that now .

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Opening a window on Welsh politics Nick Bourne reflects how over the past decade have come to terms with devolution

“The past is a foreign country, they do could have given us more of a bridgehead backdrop of criminal charges and a court things differently there” says Leo Colston than the nine seats that we ultimately case, Rod Richards resigned, making in the Go Between, and certainly the 1999 secured on a very different manifesto way momentarily for David Davies who Assembly election campaign seems many which certainly did not ‘Spare the Rod’ he had made Deputy Leader. Ultimately, continents away. David Melding, William even if it did spoil our chance. This was however, after a membership election I Graham and I had been tasked by Rod the low watermark of our performance took over the reins. Richards with writing the manifesto electorally in the National Assembly. It was clear to me that we needed for the campaign. We duly did so. We Nine members and no women delivered not just to accept the new topography formed a harmonious triumvirate and any on a manifesto and an approach which of Welsh politics but to embrace the new differences were fairly easily ironed out. the other political parties could easily settlement. We duly did so. We played We spent some considerable time working hang round our necks as being out of a full part in the politics of devolution. on a detailed prospectus to put forward touch, reactionary and unpopular. They There was no talk of putting devolution to the electorate. This was no easy task duly did so. into reverse gear or scrapping the after the rout of the Conservative Party Discussion was heated. I said I was Assembly. That didn’t, frankly, make any in 1997 and the unsuccessful ‘Just Say unable to support a manifesto that sense politically, not in terms of the needs No’ campaign, largely but not exclusively referred to linguistic apartheid and which and aspirations of people in Wales. Conservative-led, of the same year. sought to make the Welsh language a At the same time it was clear to me The manifesto was duly handed to the divisive issue. Glyn Davies did similarly. that we needed, in that dreaded word, Leader and summarily consigned to the The manifesto had sadly closed the to ‘Welshify’ the Conservative Party. The waste paper bin of what may have been. windows and drawn the curtains on the Party was still the Conservative Party ‘in It was a moderate manifesto, but given new world of Welsh politics. Wales’. Less than a generation before it the difficult circumstances of 1999, it A few weeks later, and against a had regularly held its Welsh conferences

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 35 2/Politics caption

The Conservative Group, pictured in the Senedd during the Third Assembly 2007-11 – back row (left to right): Mark Isherwood (North Wales), the late Brynle Williams (North Wales), (Clwyd West), (Preseli), and Andrew R.T. Davies (South Wales Central); front row (left to right): (), Alan Cairns (South Wales West), David Melding (South Wales Central), (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire), Mohammed Asghar (South East Wales), Nick Bourne (Mid and West Wales), Jonathan Morgan (Cardiff North), and Williams Graham (South East Wales). in Ludlow. Party Leaders. William Hague understood transforming nature of the new seating Although it would be impossible to Wales. He had fallen in love with Wales plan that Labour had proposed to the identify a birth date, during this period as Secretary of State, and then fallen in opposition parties, and initially fought the Welsh Conservative Party was born. love with Ffion, and his interest remained against, can scarcely be overstated. I The wider Party accepted this fairly constant and unswerving. Iain Duncan cannot now recall why the opposition readily. Perhaps all of this was more Smith ensured that I attended Shadow parties were so against sitting together. It easiily achieved by an adopted son of Cabinet to raise and discuss Welsh issues. seems very obvious now, but sit together Wales from the other side of Offa’s Dyke. He also regularly held meetings with the we did and from this stage co-operation We also changed our tone and our Leaders of Scotland, Wales, the Lords became real. Familiarity did not breed approach towards the Welsh language and European Parliament to discuss how contempt, instead it bred respect and and Welsh culture in particular. It has things were going. joint working on many areas. always astounded me why a Conservative Indeed, it was when Iain was Moreover, beneath the mask of co- Party would not want to protect and Leader that we made our first advance operation, there was much talk of a enhance the language of Wales. We duly electorally, gaining two extra seats and stronger formal between the sought to do so and crafted policies for a returning with two women members parties, and also with Peter Law and Welsh National Gallery, a separate Welsh in the 2003 election. We were now in , during this period. There Archive in Aberystwyth, and generally serious danger of becoming the second was the chance of a non-Labour alliance strong Welsh institutions within a strong Party of Wales rather than the third. It was in government in Wales within eight United Kingdom. proof that our strategy was delivering for years of the Assembly being created, Through all this time I should say the Conservatives and for Wales. something which would have been that I always enjoyed strong support and The next four years represented solid unthinkable under a Conservative Party encouragement from a succession of progress and much joint working. The that had not moved with the times.

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Alas it was not to happen, although time going up to twelve seats. as Jonathan Morgan’s in Cardiff Central, I can confidently say, and I don’t think Throughout this period we had been were a casualty in this campaign. anyone would disagree, that this was attracting people from other parties to our The history of this period not through any failing of the Welsh cause, both as voters and as politicians. demonstrates to me the importance for Conservative Party. We had real and demonstrable appeal. my successor keeping his foot on the The Welsh Management Board Familiar names on the Welsh political accelerator within the Party to ensure unanimously backed a ‘Rainbow’ alliance scene rallied to our standard – Guto Bebb we continue to embrace a Welsh agenda and discussions were held at Westminster and Mohammad (Oscar) Asghar from and make necessary changes to address with David Cameron, and difficult issues Plaid, Alison Halford from Labour, Rene the concerns of the electorate. There were thrashed out. If it had been down Kinzett from the Liberal Democrats, and will always be a few dissentient voices, to us it would have happened. Nothing John Marek as well. though thankfully fewer now. There will that has happened since makes me We had become a Party on the move. always be those who having seen the believe that this is not the way forward. This was true of our entire period in the verdict from the electorate in successive In the short term a broadly based alliance third Assembly. Although the chances elections at Westminster that they didn’t of parties other than Labour is the only to defeat the government were few want ‘ham and eggs’, believe that ‘double ham and eggs’ will be attractive for the electorate. Of course, this is neither a We had become a Party on the move. recipe for electoral success, nor sensible for the Welsh electorate. Such posturing This was true of our entire period in the is self-indulgent nonsense. The approach pursued by our Group third Assembly. Although the chances over the last twelve years has been to defeat the government were few and correct. A mixed economy, progressive social policies, embracing the green far between following the Labour-Plaid agenda and generally putting forward a moderate centre-right alternative to the alliance, Conservatives remained a relevant credo that has failed to deliver for Wales and combative force in the Assembly. is the right approach. The Welsh Conservative Group in the Assembly is talented, energetic realistic way of achieving a different and and far between following the Labour- and pragmatic enough to know this. more beneficial approach in Wales. Plaid alliance, Conservatives remained We have amongst the ranks of our During this period a relevant and combative force in the members an extremely talented team, had become Leader with his Welsh roots in Assembly. The energy and drive of our with virtually every member considered Llanelli and strong family and friendship ties five new Assembly Members contributed to have credentials strong enough to be with Wales. Michael needed no instruction significantly to this. leading the Group. This all augurs well in Welsh concerns. He was similarly In the 2011 devolution referendum the for the future. supportive and helpful. However, by late entire Party in the Assembly supported a A key feature of the recent leadership 2005, a transforming event had happened ‘Yes’ vote for additional powers and many election between Andrew R.T. Davies to make life easier for Conservatives of the team vociferously so. Wisely, the and Nick Ramsay was the good natured throughout the United Kingdom – the Party itself took a neutral stance, strongly tenor of the campaign, particularly given emergence of David Cameron. backed by myself and Cheryl Gillan, the the closeness of the result. Both will play At an early stage I declared my supportive Secretary of State. Tolerance a key part in the future of the Party in the support for him. He visited the Assembly within the Party was to cause little or no Assembly and more widely. They now and it was clear that we could work well problem during the campaign. have the opportunity to make the next together on the Welsh approach that So arrived the 2011 Welsh Assembly decade of the Welsh Conservative Party was needed. Indeed, his approach at campaign. On this occasion we emerged even brighter and better than the last. Westminster chimed readily with me and as the second party in Wales, increasing my Assembly colleagues. David visited our seats to fourteen, this time with regularly and was always ready with a swathe of talented women as well. Nick Bourne was leader of the Welsh support and encouragement. In 2007 Admittedly it didn’t all go to plan and my Conservatives in the National Assembly we advanced electorally once more, this own seat in Mid and West Wales, as well from 1999 to 2011.

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Boundary obsessions Paul Griffiths says we should put away our local government reorganisation maps

When we are at a loose end we turn The 22 unitary local authorities of events lies in the different positions to a Welsh pastime at least as old as the have been exhorted to work together taken to the various reorganisations of 13th Century - we ever since they were created in 1994. Welsh local government across the 19th debate our boundaries. Sometimes we It has long been argued by some that and 20th Centuries. Democratic local argue about the regions of the Welsh they are too small by the standards of government first arrived for the whole of Rugby Union, sometimes the federations metropolitan England. Others have Wales in 1888 when the fabric of county of the Women’s Institute. As often as not said they could only justify their size administration was made subject to the we debate the boundaries of our local and accompanying closeness to their control of 13 elected county councils. authorities. I have no doubt that the communities if they combined active This was supplemented in 1894 by the Welsh passengers on the Titanic debated community engagement with a capacity creation of 165 municipal councils. the appropriate number and location of to share scarce and specialist resources. The great radical Liberal MP for lifeboats even as the vessel tilted markedly. This was the argument made in Making Meirionnydd, Tom Ellis, saw these This national pastime was given the Connections the Welsh Government’s two Acts as the means whereby the much impetus last July when the first foray into public service common people of Wales could wrest Minister for Local Government, Carl reform in 2004. It was also a major control from the unelected ‘Anglican Sergeant, published a paper entitled recommendation in the 2006 Beecham Establishment’. Ever since, that Approaches to regional collaboration: Report Beyond Boundaries. In each case ‘Establishment’ and its successors have promoting coherence. It was not a title we were being told that we should stop continuously sought to emasculate local likely to disturb the deluge of wood pulp obsessing about boundaries and learn to democracy and return political control that emanates from all governments. make the connections across them. to professional men of substance. The However, because it contained it a map Judged by the reactions to Carl 1972 Local Government Act reduced with boundaries the paper was marked Sergeant’s map, these erudite and well the number of Welsh councils from 178 out as different from others of its kind. considered reports appear to have to 45. The 1994 Local Government When it appeared the map triggered had as much impact on the psyche (Wales) Act reduced the number still a series of debates at the National of Wales’ chattering classes as a fresh further, to 22. If the enthusiasts for the Assembly and no doubt in every fruit stall in an alcoholics’ convention. Sergeant map were to have their way common room of the Welsh crachach. Notwithstanding everything the Minister then the number will soon be reduced Was the Minister reorganising local says in explanation of his map, it has led to a mere six. government? Should he do so? What to both an assumption and a clamour Those who present the Sergeant map should the new boundaries be? Yet the that local democracy in Wales should as the precursor of six local authorities paper’s title indicates that the map is now be diminished and made more are queuing up to argue that the creation about promoting collaboration between detached from local communities of 22 local authorities was the personal local authorities rather than changing through a substantial reduction in the aberration of the notably aberrant John their boundaries. Repeatedly the Minister number of local authorities. Redwood. This is a remarkable rewriting has insisted that this is his intention. A deeper background to this turn of history as Redwood inherited the

38 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 2/Politics reorganisation bill from his predecessor Wales David Hunt with no enthusiasm. Insofar as there was any Parliamentary Proposed alignment of collaborative organisational areas enthusiasm for the Bill it came from his Labour shadow, Ron Davies. The declared policy of the Wales Labour Party at the time was to create between 20 and 24 unitary authorities alongside a new National Assembly. Davies saw the passing of the Redwood Bill as a means of clearing the decks for a Devolution Bill as soon as Labour won the next general election. In his mind the merger of county and district was necessary to avoid the well rehearsed argument that an Assembly would introduce too many tiers of government. Crucially Davies conceded a committee guillotine to this Bill in return for Conservative support for a Labour amendment which created separate local authorities for and . Welsh local government continues to be deeply divided over the last reorganisation. Many of the members and officers of the eight former counties have never been reconciled to the current arrangement. They continue to conspire for the return of the counties of that short period, 1974 to 1996, just as part of the populations of all the Turkic ‘Stahns’ have a continued nostalgia for the Soviet Union. They suggested to Carl Sergeant that a map would be useful and whatever he might say about its intended purpose they see it as a precursor to the return of those counties. There are also many in the Assembly and the Welsh Government who see collaboration as a messy interim, pending the money becoming this assertion, so regularly repeated, is are able to engage with local people in available for the inevitably expensive not backed by any evidence. shaping and delivering local services. business of reconstructing the counties. In fact, there is no evidence from Finnish local authorities work together The refrain is that Wales has too across the world that larger scale in sharing specialisms as a matter of much local government, too many local government is better or cheaper course - it is not regarded as exceptional directors and chief executives, and government. Finland, for example, or difficult. above all too many councillors. The has local authorities with an average The Welsh Government claims assertion is that Wales is too small for population size of 15,000. These deliver that its map is not a precursor to such a fabric of local government. It is an education and health care system of reorganisation but is an aid to achieving all too expensive and could be done higher performance than anywhere else cohesion and accountability in the better with fewer local authorities. But in Europe and they do this because they collaborative networks that Wales

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Local Government Minister has any number of preoccupations to take his mind off local government reorganisation. Here he is pictured campaigning against speeding in the village of Higher Kinnerton near Chester, a stone’s throw from the Welsh border, in his Alyn and Deeside constituency.

needs. It would have been good if this officer is connected to the school which our maps and boundaries and other claim had been tested in public debate is connected to the social worker who is childish things. We should seek to learn before the map was produced. We have already in place effective collaborative Local authorities need to change. They need to be far networks for transport planning, waste more engaged with their citizens, supporting them to facility and social care procurement, and share responsibility for their health, their learning and school improvement services. None of their environment. these networks conform to the map and all would be less effective if they were connected to the GP and health visitor. not so much from metropolitan England made to conform. We do not achieve cohesion in the but rather from the smaller countries of We do not make these networks strategies of distant bureaucracies. mainland Europe. There we will find a accountable by fitting them into a map. Local authorities need to change. wonderful diversity and complexity of We achieve public accountability by They need to be far more engaged municipal democracy, large and small making sure that each collaborative with their citizens, supporting them councils adapting organically as they use enterprise has a clear agreement with to share responsibility for their health, their traditions and local roots to engage each local authority. They should specify their learning and their environment. with local people in shaping services the service that will be provided at They need to be far more engaged with and communities whilst always looking what cost. Such service specifications business to develop the jobs that local for collaborative advantage in working allow responsible officers and members people need. They need to be far more with their neighbours. This is what the in each local authority to hold the engaged with their staff helping them Minister says he wants to achieve and shared enterprise to account. The to re-shape their own workplace as we should support him. I am just not citizen continues to engage with the they face difficult times. They need to sure that another map helped. local councillor and the local authority, improve their performance, matching knowing that it is they who continue and learning from the best. Inevitably, to be responsible for the delivery they will have to achieve more with less. of any shared specialist service. We Making these changes happen is not Paul Griffiths is a Public Service achieve cohesion at the front line in helped by another boundary debate. Consultant and a former Senior Special communities by ensuring that the police It is time that we in Wales put away Adviser to the Welsh Government.

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Assembly denies

international role responsible for “developing, monitoring, Francesca Dickson queries the National Assembly’s reviewing and updating the Scottish abandonment of its European and External Affairs Committee Parliament’s European strategy”. In Wales, on the other hand, this In 2009 the Welsh Government Affairs Committee’s remit in ensuring job of coordination and rallying the published its first strategy for Europe, the legality of all Assembly legislation Assembly in its approach to Europe is emphasising the need for increasing is already so extensive that it calls not clearly assigned to anyone. Rather, levels of engagement and recognising into question its ability to develop the it is the responsibility of all members that “the European Union is integral required expertise on European issues. of the five ‘thematic’ committees to to our policy ambitions”. Meanwhile, It is indicative that in Standing Order ensure that they are aware of any through its European and External 21, which sets out the Committee’s developments in European policy that Affairs Committee, the Assembly has functions, the specifically European might impact on their field, and to be also ‘reached out’ beyond its borders, aspects of its role, particularly part of communicating Welsh policy undertaking substantive enquiries into subsidiarity monitoring, are given a preferences to the EU level. European policy, most notably the minor weighting. Moreover, nowhere in Although the Assembly’s research subsidiarity protocol, structural funds the description of the Constitutional and service has launched a series of helpful and cohesion policy. The Committee has Legal Affairs Committees’ functions is ‘EU policy-updates’, the lack of a more also been a forum for working closely external affairs even mentioned. systematic on-going review of wider trends with Welsh MEPs and members of the As for how coherent the attempt to and potential challenges in European Committee of the Regions. According ‘mainstream’ European issues is likely policy by a dedicated Committee leaves to the Committee’s 2011 Legacy to be, a comparison with Scotland open the possibility that important issues Report, this approach allowed for the raises serious doubts. There the will simply pass the Assembly by. “early intervention” and “high visibility” Scottish Parliament’s European and There was a clear need to redress required in order to exert influence on External Relations Committee remains the Assembly’s unwieldy committee policy at the European level. in being and a more robust approach structure, but this particular change It is therefore perplexing that to EU affairs is being developed. The may well prove a false economy. With following the May election the National Parliament is also improving its capacity the Assembly’s enhanced law making Assembly has abandoned European and for both scrutinising and engaging powers, following the March referendum, international affairs as a distinct policy with European policy by formally the role of the European and External and scrutiny area. Instead, in the Fourth designating EU ‘reporters’ on its subject Affairs Committee was becoming more Assembly they are to be “mainstreamed committees to complement the work and not less important for Wales. into the work of the Constitutional of the European and External Relations Not only is the Assembly adopting Affairs Committee and the five Committee. The job of the Committee a divergent stance to the Welsh ‘thematic’ committees”. But is this simply is described as “horizon-scanning on Government, which shows no sign of a veiled diminution of the Assembly’s behalf of the Parliament, acting as an minimizing its external profile, but it is European and international vocation? informed and competent conduit for the also swimming against the swelling tide The new Constitutional and Legal subject committees”. In addition it is of opinion in other European legislatures, which are seeking more engagement beyond their own territories. In the void created by the Committee’s dissolution, who is going to be scrutinising the Welsh Government’s European and international policies? Who is ultimately responsible for the Assembly’s external engagement? The answer is ‘everyone’. The danger is that in practice that will mean no one at all.

Francesca Dickson is a PhD Candidate at the , , Labour’s AM for Cynon Valley (second from right) in Brussels earlier this year in her role as the Committee of the Region’s rapporteur on the EU budget. Cardiff University.

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Our central organising principle

Jane Davidson describes the legislative journey that is putting sustainable development at the heart of the Welsh Government

When the National Assembly for Wales came into being in 1999 it had a new and unique duty to make a Scheme on how it proposed to promote sustainable development in the exercise of its functions. This was seen as an extremely innovative and exciting duty, representing a new kind of democracy. Jane Davidson promoting the Welsh Government’s One Wales One Planet scheme in 2009 when she was Minister However, there was no definition for Environment, Sustainability and Housing. of sustainable development to limit members’ interpretation of the duty. put it, they could: • Has healthy, biologically diverse Although the 1987 ‘Brundtland’ definition and productive ecosystems that are was a starting point – that sustainable “… bring all the relevant stakeholders managed sustainably. development should meet “the needs round the table, and grasp the of the present without compromising linkages between production, • Has a resilient and sustainable the ability of future generations to meet consumption and wellbeing that economy that is able to develop their own needs” - it took a decade are at the heart of a rigorous whilst stabilising, then reducing, its for successive Welsh Governments to understanding of unsustainable and use of natural resources and reducing develop a greater understanding of how sustainable forms of development.” its contribution to climate change. this should be recognised in the Welsh context. Over that time the Bruntland It wasn’t till 2009, with the publication • Has communities which are safe, general definition gave way to the of the Government’s current One Wales sustainable, and attractive places development of high level indicators on One Planet scheme, that there was a for people to live and work, where the economy, social justice, environment, specific attempt to explicitly bind the people have access to services, and the ecological footprint and wellbeing. whole government into the duty. In that enjoy good health. We recognised that we needed metrics Scheme, a more sustainable Wales was against which real performance could being described as a country which: • Is a fair, just and bilingual nation, be measured. in which citizens of all ages and The journey was helped by the • Lives within its environmental backgrounds are empowered to work of the well regarded and sadly limits, using only its fair share of determine their own lives, shape their now defunct Sustainable Development the earth’s resources so that our communities and achieve their full Commission. Its chair, Jonathan Porritt, ecological footprint is reduced to potential. suggested that Wales and Scotland the global average availability of might well be close to the Goldilocks (just resources, and we are resilient to the One Wales One Planet was a seminal right) scale for achieving sustainable impacts of climate change. document. Since the introduction of development. This was because, as he the duty ten years earlier, it was the

42 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 2/Politics first scheme that articulated a collective the Government of Wales Acts was Welsh Government’s central organising commitment from all Ministers to use inadequate. Effectively, there is no duty principle by: sustainable development as the central on the government to have a ‘good’ organising principle of government. Scheme. As a result, in its manifesto for • Introducing a legal framework for Framing the debate in sustainability the last election, outlined a sustainable development strategy terms certainly assisted the cross- its vision for: which requires specified public party, cross-sector Climate Change bodies to refer to it in the context Commission as it wrestled with the all- “A sustainable Wales to become of their sustainable development party commitment on how to deliver a ‘one planet’ nation by putting objectives. 3 per cent annual greenhouse gas sustainable development at the emission reductions. A similar focus also heart of government; creating a • Auditing its delivery through the assisted the making of legislation around resilient and sustainable economy usual audit mechanisms. recycling. that lives within its environmental To make sustainable development limits and only using our fair share • Establishing the office of a real, it must focus on outcomes. The of the earth’s resources to sustain Commissioner for Sustainable Assembly’s Sustainability Committee our lifestyles.” Futures as a strong and investigated the Government’s delivery independent champion of on two occasions. In addition, two That commitment is now being taken the environment and future external investigations tested both the forward. In June the First Minister generations with significant practices and the policies: announced that the Government of powers and duties.

We’re now at the beginning of the next stage of the journey, Using a sustainability lens improves which has the potential to completely transform the way the decision-making and provides the moral compass linking our activities with our public sector operates in Wales. effects across the world. Committing to sustainability as the Welsh Government’s Wales would, “Legislate to embed ‘central organising principle’ can 1. The Welsh Auditor General sustainable development as the underpin a new Welsh identity based investigated whether the concept central organising principle in all our on clear underlying values. Wales may was adequately embedded in the actions across government and all be a small country but it has strong Government’s own business practices. public bodies”. Further, there was community values. It is the first Fair 2. WWF Cymru commissioned a a commitment for the legislation to Trade nation in the world. It has a strong piece of independent research “be monitored externally by a new notion of fair play. looking at whether Ministers’ policy independent sustainable development Wales has led the way on sustainable commitments were actively delivering body for Wales following the demise of development to date. Its journey can on the overarching agenda. the UK wide Sustainable Development help others. A Sustainable Development Commission.” Bill will be produced next year with Both reviews found a mixed picture, We’re now at the beginning of the legislation delivered in 2013. When the although for the first time, key policy next stage of the journey, which has the world meets in Rio for the Earth Summit decisions taken in Wales on waste, climate potential to completely transform the in 2012, a summit specifically focused change, retro-fitting housing, planning, way the public sector operates in Wales. on developing a global framework education, and health were directly This will put the focus clearly onto for sustainable development and linked to sustainable development and taking actions which contribute to wider promoting the green economy, the were inherently different from decisions community well being. A decade of Welsh experience can set an example to being taken elsewhere in the UK. learning and review has brought Wales the world. Two key lessons came out of the to a new understanding. First, defining first decade on delivering the duty. sustainable development in law will First, that the existence of the duty was make it real. Secondly, by also defining Jane Davidson is Director of INSPIRE supported across all parties and seen as the necessary indicators to track progress at Trinity University. beneficial, as were the regular reporting in law we will create an effective process She will be speaking at the IWA’s arrangements which kept the issues in for managing conflicting priorities. sustainable development conference front of Members. Secondly, although Above all, we need to make a reality Wales’ Central Organising Principle in innovative, the existing legislation from of sustainable development being the Swansea on 27 January 2012.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 43 2/Politics Glancing back to look forward

Meirion Thomas and Martin Rhisiart argue that today’s era of economic difficulty should prompt some fresh blue sky thinking

We did it once… almost 20 years ago and discussion under the auspices of Surely, something was wrong here. in fact. That’s when the Institute of a Ministerial ‘strategy group’ tasked Who had the correct sense of their Welsh Affairs published a report titled with prioritising investment in science, priorities? This got us thinking. Why were Wales 2010: Creating our future, one of technology and innovation research our Celtic cousins engaged in long-range, its earliest publications. Many people where commercial and social returns can long term thinking while back in Wales from different parts of Welsh society, best be achieved over the next 10 years. we were are not at all similarly engaged? organisations and businesses contributed A particularly rich irony was not lost The IWA coordinated the Wales 2010 to the development of the report. Wales on us in all of this. Here we were, Welsh report in the pre-devolution age, a time of 2010 did not seek to forecast the future. consultants and advisers working in a the Whitehall-respectful Welsh Office. In Rather it sought to provide answers to country that, at the time, in late 2010, today’s age of Welsh democratic politics the challenging question: was on a day-by-day basis collapsing and policy-making, surely the time should into economic and financial turmoil. be ripe for a little blue sky thinking, some “What should we, the people of Not only that, but we were sitting down gentle horizon scanning or at least some Wales, do to enable Wales to be one every day with politicians, civil servants creative and open dialogue about the of the most prosperous regions in and business leaders discussing medium future direction of and priorities for our Europe by the year 2010?” to long term futures and getting active economy and society? and engaged inputs and ideas while Sadly, the opposite seems to have That year came and went without all around us things seemed to be been the case. Dialogue, discussion and a considered retrospective on the recommendations of the report and how Why were our Celtic cousins engaged in long- Wales has fared over the intervening years. This article is intended both as an initial range, long term thinking while back in Wales assessment of the report and a critique of we were are not at all similarly engaged? recent and current approaches. As that 2010 horizon passed from view, we were commissioned by Forfás, Ireland’s main economic policy body, increasingly hopeless for the country openness to new ideas seem to have to develop a ‘catalogue’ of materials and its people. almost totally closed down. It probably summarising the global drivers and Meanwhile, back Wales our will be argued by some that long-term trends that the Irish economy will need conversations with similar senior thinking is an expensive luxury. However, to react to over the next 10 to 15 years. people were dominated by worries compared with much of the research and The catalogue’s scope is wide, covering about internal re-organisations, the analysis commissioned by Government, potential global political, economic, loss of economic development funding the costs of Foresight exercises, which demographic, technological and and doubts about whether European use a range of materials published environmental changes. Its purpose Convergence money could be spent and internationally, are quite reasonable. is to stimulate and inform debate if it could be, would it be worthwhile. Others might say that Ministers need

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We don’t have a lot of natural economic assets any more but we do have lively and creative minds.

The Welsh Baccalaureate was a major innovation stemming from the IWA’s Wales 2010 report – “a ground-breaking initiative… which has received good results and international acclaim.” to focus on the short-term needs of the Another major innovation engaged many people without vested economy at a time of financial constraint. emanating from the 2010 report was interests, spawned widespread debate Whilst Governments need to react to the Welsh Baccalaureate, a ground and enthusiasm for thinking about our current events, they also need to instil breaking initiative that many people in collective long term future as a country. clear, strategic thinking into their decision- the education and political world got As a result it achieved a great deal. making, and take account of the long behind and which has received good If the Irish can still recognise that they view. While ‘short termism’ is apparently results and international acclaim. need to revitalise their thinking as a key unacceptable when applied to bankers, Two other significant long term part of revitalising their economy, how plc’s and their shareholders, it is an strategic initiatives and exercises also much more is it vital for Wales at this time. acceptable defence in policy making. began their progress within the pages We don’t have a lot of natural economic Yet, as the Old Testament prophesised, and discussions around Wales 2010, the assets any more but we do have lively and ‘Where there is no vision, the people Wales Information Society Programme creative minds. Let’s try and get back to perish’ (Proverbs 29:18). We cannot not and the Entrepreneurship Plan. Both a position where we can engage them in think and debate our future. were regarded almost universally the art of thinking about the future openly The Wales 2010 report called for as bold activities and followed the and honestly. We did it once. a Wales technology and innovation Regional Technology Plan format of strategy to help decide on priorities and open discussion, debate and consensus to establish innovation as a key driver building before being put into action. Meirion Thomas is the Cardiff-based of growth and prosperity. The outcome Sadly both initiatives faded in the period Director and UK partner of the CM was the Wales Regional Technology Plan up to 2005 and have largely been left International Group, a European which has since been emulated all over behind by the current Welsh Economic strategy consultancy. the EU. Following the development Renewal Programme. of that Plan, Wales’ performance in The point here is not that these Martin Rhisiart is the Director of the innovation and R&D improved until the initiatives, plans or strategies were Centre for Research in Futures and millennium. However, since then it has perfect and that we should revive Innovation at the Glamorgan Business fallen away. The response? There has them, far from it. They had their day School, University of Glamorgan, and been no sign of a Wales Innovation Plan and the world has moved on. The real Chair of the UK Node of the Millennium since 2003. point is that the Wales 2010 exercise Project, a global futures think-tank.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 45 3 Welsh forestry could become Environment collateral damage

Jon Owen Jones questions the projected merger of the Forestry Commission with Environment Agency and Countryside Council for Wales

Articles Welsh forestry There are considerable risks with merging Let me illustrate this with two examples. could become the cultures, pensions, estates, IT and The Welsh Forestry Commission has collateral branding of three organisations into one. spent five years getting an agreement damage There are dangers that that costs will not with the Countryside Council for Wales be controlled, that cultures will clash rather over the appropriate extent of Pine Forest Environment than meld, that focus and purpose will as opposed to open sand dunes on the Agency and become blurred and that a new identity Anglesey coast. I am not alone in thinking Countryside will be slow to form whilst the old brands that an agreement could and should have Council in wither. For these reasons restructuring been reached in a speedier and less costly planning collision should not be considered lightly. fashion. This dispute had little or nothing to In the Treasury’s cautionary warning, do with the economy. Rather, it was about there needs to be a ‘compelling case’. trying to balance the interests of local You have to be convinced that the new people who were largely in favour of the organisation will be better and more trees, red squirrels (I think you can guess efficient than the old ones. This could be whose side they are on) and European because you know that the new system directives on restoring sand dunes. will work superbly or because you know My second example is current and that the existing one is broken. has great economic importance and So far the team responsible for you may find it passing strange that it is making the case for a merger between never mentioned in any documents on the Environment Agency, Countryside the merger proposal. The largest power Council for Wales and the Welsh Forestry station built in the UK in 25 years is almost Commission is afraid to publically base completed in Milford Haven. It is due to their argument on the idea that the current open next year but that is now in doubt system is broken. Instead they are forced because the Countryside Council for to take a heroically optimistic view of the Wales opposes its cooling system. Our new body’s future. In doing so, they hope other regulatory body, the Environment to construct a solution to a problem that Agency gave the developers a green light they are loath to acknowledge. some time ago. However, the Countryside That problem is that environmental Council is firmly signalling red. regulation in Wales does not work well. Now, there may be some who regard In general it finds it difficult to balance a disagreement between the Countryside wider benefit against specific threat. Council for Wales and the Environment This is partially the result of European Agency as constructive tension. However, legislation but it is also magnified by our that would not be the view of anyone institutional structures. in the Welsh Government who had

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This analysis of Wales’s ecosystem, produced by Forestry Commission Wales, shows that, in contrast to other landscapes, woodland scores well in most assessment categories. responsibility for infrastructure planning social and environmental pressures whilst over our estate is entirely devolved or inward investment. By the way, the gaining and keeping the confidence of and the costs shared across the rest of company involved - RWE - has not only the Welsh Government in its decisions? the UK are good value and in any case invested £800 million in this project, it is Even without a merger there are two are entirely voluntary. We play no part also considering spending billions on new strong arguments in favour of breaking in wider Environmental Regulation nuclear power at Wylfa. up the England and Wales Environment so why are we included? What do we Whatever your view of these Agency. Financially, Wales appears bring to the table? I heard a senior civil developments it is not difficult to to get a poor deal. As things stand we servant answer this by saying “forestry understand why the Welsh Government make little use of the services for which is collateral damage in a wider cause”. Perhaps it would be more accurate to The board of the Forestry Commission in Wales finds think of us as a dowry to sweeten the the case for its inclusion in the merged body a very merger for the weaker partner. What makes us desirable is our land, optimistic assessment of the benefits and risks. six per cent of Wales. This land asset is already managed on behalf of the Welsh Government and its foresters are would prefer a different system we pay. Also it makes sense to devolve answerable to the Minister for the care of regulation. A merger between control of water resources to Wales, a of that estate. Where is the benefit in the Countryside Council and the power that is likely to be of increasing transferring the land to a new body? The Environment Agency would result in a importance in future. board of the Welsh Forestry Commission single voice. Its governance would be But why include the Welsh Forestry finds the case for its inclusion in the crucial. How will it balance economic, Commission in this merger? Control merged body a very optimistic assessment

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Woodlands are generally improving. Why would anyone therefore conclude that the body responsible for the management of woodlands needs to be abolished?

management of woodlands needs to be abolished? Space doesn’t allow me to detail other arguments against our inclusion, save to mention that the Commission is an unusual public body in that it trades in the market place. We sell wood and always have. As a result there is, in part, a commercial culture in the Forestry Commission. In my view this is a considerable strength. It helps us of the benefits and risks. be in a marginal seat in an election gain the trust and respect of the wood In particular, there are risks to the year. Imagine the clamour for action. industry and of farmers and landowners estate itself. Unless the IT, Pensions, and Moreover, the merged body would have in general. It is the base on which we VAT costs all prove to be as optimistic as the capital assets to get the work done. develop our increasing interest in hoped, the new body will quickly find it All it would have to do would be to sell renewable energy. It reminds us that the has a difficult decision to make. It will some forests. countryside is not only a place to visit, have to cut back its services or sell some Set against these risks are the alleged it also needs to generate an income for assets - the main asset of course being benefits to environmental stewardship those who live there. the forests. gained by having one environmental The Forestry Commission isn’t perfect In addition to the possibility that we regulatory body for Wales. The and I am not complacent. There is far may need to underwrite revenue costs, objective case for this is that measured more we can do, especially in helping there are also significant capital costs in by results, as opposed to aspirations, our to develop employment opportunities. the new body. It would be responsible environment has supported a declining However, I cannot see how this merger for flood prevention. What happens biodiversity over recent years. However, would help. In fact, I think it is likely to do if, as is quite likely, a major flooding a closer analysis of these results shows the opposite. incident occurs in the next few years? an exception to this adverse trend. There could then be a call for a flood Woodlands are generally improving. prevention scheme for which there Why would anyone therefore conclude Jon Owen Jones is Chair of the Welsh would be insufficient capital. It could that the body responsible for the Forestry Commission.

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Environment Agency and Countryside Council in planning collision Gordon James says a nearly built power station in Pembrokeshire is testing the Welsh Government’s commitment to sustainable development

The Milford Haven waterway has been granted one power station will cause has been a major factor in of the highest forms of international legal protection the dogged disagreements between the Countryside as the Pembrokeshire Marine Special Area of Council for Wales and the Environment Agency Conservation under the European Union’s Habitats over the project. Directive. Yet, a major gas-fired 2000MW power Despite its protected status, the Milford Haven station, near Pembroke on the Haven’s southern waterway already has a sub-standard conservation shore, is being allowed to use a water cooling system record, with just a third of the fifteen “protected” RWE npower’s almost that will threaten millions of fish and other species. habitats and species in a favourable condition. completed Pembroke power station which was This is the view of the Countryside Council for Friends of the Earth Cymru has become increasingly allowed an environmental Wales which is opposing the development. The concerned over recent years that significant industrial permit by the Welsh Government in almost completed power station’s ‘once through’ developments which affect the Haven have been November 2011. water-cooling system would extract 3,456,000 cubic approved by various authorities without adequate metres of water from the Milford Haven waterway appropriate environmental assessments being each day. This is equivalent to three times the undertaken, as required by the European Directive. combined average flow of the two Cleddau rivers When Friends of the Earth Cymru first opposed draining into the estuary. The (often bleached) water the power station, its main complaint was that the would then be discharged back into the Haven at waste heat being dumped into the Haven should 8oC above ambient temperature. A court ruling in and could have been used in a combined heat the USA has concluded, “The environmental impact and power system. The quantity of waste heat is of these systems is staggering.” vast, equivalent to 40 per cent of Wales’ electricity While the US Environmental Protection Agency demand. There is a ready demand for the heat on no longer regards once-through cooling as Best the shores of Milford Haven where the imported Available Technology for coastal power stations, the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has to be heated from Environment Agency in Wales is willing to permit minus 162oC to return it to its gasified state. it in this magnificent location. It appears that the The power station should have been sited close Environment Agency made a major error when, to the LNG terminals on the other side of the Haven in 2008, it rejected the advice of the Countryside and suitably sized to generate electricity for the grid Council for Wales and granted the company an and provide heat for the terminals. It seems that abstraction licence for the power station’s cooling the only reason we now have an over-large power system. By doing this, it impaled itself on a bad station in the wrong location is that the site, which decision that set it on a disastrous course. used to be an oil-fired power station, was already The substantial harm to aquatic life that the owned by the power company, RWE npower.

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Peter Roderick, pointing to apparent breaches of European environmental law. The main points of the complaint related to:

• The failure by the Department of Energy and Climate Change to undertake an Appropriate Assessment of the impact of power station on the Milford Haven waterway. • Benefit of doubt under the Habitats Directive must legally be given in favour of ‘protection’, and not in favour of ‘operation’. • Cogent reasons had not been given by the Environment Agency for rejecting Countryside Council for Wales’ advice. • Direct once-through cooling is not the ‘Best Available Technique’.

When it is up and running the new Pembroke power station will extract 3,456,000 cubic metres of water from the Milford Haven waterway each day – equivalent to three times the combined flow of the two Cleddau rivers. Friends of the Earth Cymru also wrote to Wales’ then Environment Minister, If we look east to Kent, which our energy needs are overlooked by Jane Davidson, asking her to call-in cannot boast a marine environment politicians dazzled by the gleam of RWE npower’s application to determine comparable to Milford Haven, we can corporate promises in the new not-so- compliance with European law. see how things should be done. At the green Wales. While the lure of ‘jobs’ is The response of the Pembrokeshire new gas-fired 1275MW Isle of Grain understandable, it’s hugely embarrassing press to the complaint was predictable, power station, waste heat is piped that ‘sustainable’ Wales has been eclipsed with both the Western Telegraph and the almost four kilometres to re-gasify LNG by Kent in the use of a basic combined Milford Mercury leading with ‘Threat to at the importing terminals. This reduces heat and power technology that brings Jobs’ headlines. Little attention was given emissions of carbon dioxide by 350,000 environmental and economic benefits. to the threat to fishing, to the economic tonnes a year, increases the efficiency of Permission to construct and operate value of a healthy natural environment, the power station by around 20 per cent, Pembroke power station was granted by or to the fact that combined heat and and avoids harmful impacts to the local David Miliband, when he was Minister power systems create more jobs per unit marine environment. It will also provide for Energy and Climate Change, on of energy generated than conventional many long-term jobs. 5 February 2009. He did this without power stations. Yet here in Wales, where we pride ensuring an Appropriate Assessment of The complaint was backed by Jill ourselves on being a world leader in the impact of the project on the Milford Evans MEP, triggering angry responses sustainable development, a wasteful Haven’s Special Conservation Area, from AM and the deputy and environmentally harmful power which Friends of the Earth Cymru believes leader of Pembrokeshire County Council, station has received considerable is required, by the Habitats Directive. Cllr John Allen-Mirehouse. Friends of political backing. The previous local MP, Indeed, this was also advocated by both the Earth Cymru hit back by accusing the Labour’s Nick Ainger, and the present the Countryside Council for Wales and county councillor of supporting a second- incumbent, Conservative , the Welsh Government. rate technology for Pembrokeshire. have both supported its construction. In April 2010, the Environment On 21st February this year, the Disappointingly, when he was former Agency announced a public consultation European Commission announced First Minister, , with on an application by RWE npower for that it had taken up Friends of the echoes of his backing of the grotesque an environmental permit to operate the Earth Cymru’s complaint and will be Ffos-y-Fran opencast site just 35 metres power station. Friends of the Earth Cymru conducting a rigorous inquiry. The from homes in Merthyr Tydfil, also gave was so appalled by what the consultation group responded by calling on the the decision to build the power station a revealed it was compelled to submit a Environment Agency to put on hold the warm welcome. complaint to the European Commission, approval process and by asking the Welsh It seems sustainable solutions to prepared by environmental barrister Government’s Environment Minister

50 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 3/Environment to direct it to do so. Both requests were Commission and the courts to Council for Wales, the Environment refused. However, the Minister made it intervene.” Agency in Wales and the Welsh Forestry clear that the Welsh Government would Commission. In a unified body, it is “keep under consideration its powers to Within a few days, the Minister intervened, difficult to see how the independent recover the RWE npower application for directing the Agency to suspend voice of the Countryside Council would decision by the Welsh Ministers and to determination of the environmental be heard. Strong objections from the issue directions to the Agency”. permit and raising two pages of questions government’s environmental scientists might have to quietly acquiesce within This case is proving to be a huge office walls to the regulatory priorities of the Agency. embarrassment for the Environment Under the heading ‘Standing up for the Environment and Sustainability’, the Agency in Wales and will be a stain on its Welsh Labour Party’s Manifesto for the reputation for many years to come. Assembly election in May stated:

“Welsh Labour’s vision is for a Despite continuous strong in relation to the assessment. The Agency sustainable Wales to become a opposition to the proposal from the has, as a result, undertaken an extensive ‘one planet’ nation by putting Government’s environmental advisers at re-write of its assessment and, although sustainable development at the heart the Countryside Council for Wales, the this has addressed some of the many of government; creating a resilient Environment Agency announced that “it concerns raised, the main grounds for and sustainable economy that lives was minded” to issue an environmental objection remain. within its environmental limits and permit but that it would submit its draft We were not surprised to learn that only using our fair share of the earth’s response to a public consultation process this ‘re-write’ has been sufficient to resources to sustain our lifestyles.” beginning on 17th May. The Countryside persuade the Welsh Government, once Council remained unimpressed. In a it had given the appearance of flexing The Pembrokeshire Marine Special letter to the Agency on 15t July, it stated: its muscles, to revoke its blocking of Area of Conservation is already in an the environmental permit. Allowing ‘unfavourable’ conservation status, “The Countryside Council for Wales the power station to go ahead in this despite many years of supposed strict legal objects to, and continues to oppose, manner will surely further antagonise protection. The Welsh Government’s this development in its present the Countryside Council for Wales. failure to ‘call-in’ the power station form. Our main concern continues This case is proving to be a huge application, and possibly force a re- to be the use of once-through embarrassment for the Environment engineering of the cooling system, will direct cooling and its consequential Agency in Wales and will be a stain on make its on-going degradation more likely adverse impacts. We therefore its reputation for many years to come. and the achievement of a sustainable object to the granting of this permit.” Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Wales even more remote. Agency has rejected, with some arrogance, When tough decisions are needed to Friends of the Earth Cymru’s response the advice of the Countryside Council for deliver sustainable solutions, ‘Aberthaw’, to the consultation was scathing. Its legal Wales on environmental matters. The ‘Ffos-y-Fran’ and ‘Pembroke’ show that adviser Peter Roderick stated: Council’s calls for stricter controls on actions in Wales are falling well short of nitrogen oxide emissions, which fuel acid the rhetoric. The proposed Sustainable “The Environment Agency’s rain and climate change at Aberthaw Development Act must ensure that assessment of the power station’s power station, have been ignored. As shameful episodes such as these are a impact on the fragile Pembrokeshire a consequence, Aberthaw is one of the thing of the past and that Wales reaps coast is inadequate, incoherent and largest emitters of nitrogen oxides in the economic and environmental unlawful. It accepts that there will Europe. The German owners of Aberthaw, benefits of embracing the cleanest and be more negative impacts on the RWE npower, would not be allowed to get most efficient technologies. Haven, but is trying to wriggle out away with such environmental negligence of the legal consequences. Welsh in their own country. Minister John Griffiths must step in to These disagreements raise serious Gordon James, former Director of protect this precious part of Wales for concerns about the effectiveness of the Friends of the Earth Cymru, now future generations - if he won’t, we proposed body that will emerge from campaigns with Pembrokeshire Friends may have to rely on the European the amalgamation of the Countryside of the Earth.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 51 When Wales was imagined as one gigantic chapel

4 Prys Morgan looks back at a 19th Century figure who Heritage gave Welsh Nonconformity its national personality

When Dr Thomas Rees died in Swansea in the pulpit celeb was ready to utter. 1885 aged seventy, his funeral was the largest Thomas Rees’ family persuaded him to go ever seen in the town. Shops were shut, to work in the mines in . He loved the streets draped with black crape, mayors buzz and liveliness of Aberdare and Merthyr, and MPs, secular and religious bigwigs from but hated the hard slog of work underground. across Wales, and from academic and Although he had had little formal schooling, nonconformist circles in England, wound their and had had to learn English from Gypsies way from Walter Road Chapel, where there passing by, he went to Craigybargod in 1836 Articles was special music composed and played by to open a school. This was a period when When Wales was Joseph Parry, all the way to Bethel, , the chapels large and small were opening at a rate imagined as one main nonconformist cemetery. of at least one a fortnight all over Wales, and gigantic chapel The bier was arriving at Sketty just as the Rees was offered a part-time ministry by twelve last of the hundreds of mourners were leaving members for ten shillings a month. Blaenafon’s Walter Road. Although Swansea, led by In 1838 he married in Tredegar the daughter forgotten Rees, had lost the battle to Cardiff to found of a local farmer who persuaded the young landscape a university college in 1883, Cardiff sent a couple to run a general stores at Aberbargoed Heritage and the delegation to the funeral. The late Dr Tudur which the family owned. It turned out to be a new experience Jones said that the great Welsh Victorian disaster. This was a period of economic crisis economy preachers needed to have the constitution of in south Wales, and the village was one of Telling an ox. Rees, a pulpit giant in an age of pulpit the centres of Chartists who took part in the Cardiff’s story giants was indefatigable as lecturer, writer, Newport Rising of 1839. Rees complained that translator, journalist, historian, member of Chartists thought they were above needing innumerable committees, twice president of to pay shopkeeper’s bills. Creditors closed in the Union of Welsh Independents, and as he quickly, Rees was arrested for debt, and ended died, president-elect of the Congregational up in Cardiff jail. Union of England and Wales. He was the He was bailed out by his in-laws, and then subject of a massive but highly readable (and invited to take up a ministry in Aberdare. In 1842 often surprisingly critical) biography by his he was called by his old friend to take friend John Thomas of Liverpool in 1888. And on the ministry of Siloh, Llanelli, and help with today he’s wholly and totally forgotten. his journal Y Diwygiwr (The Reformer). Rees’s Rees, though born to a background of mid- bad tangle with the Chartists in 1839 made him Carmarthenshire rural craftsmen - makers of a lifelong believer in constitutional Liberalism. In straw ropes and beehives - spent his ministry the 1840s he became deeply worried about the in industrial towns, Aberdare, Aberbargoed, disorganised nature of Welsh nonconformity in Beaufort, Llanelli and, from 1862 for the rest of general and his own denomination, the Welsh his life, Swansea. Part of his appeal to his listeners Independents, in particular. was that they came from this background too, Rees envied England which had much richer and had moved from country to industrial ports Independent causes and already a Congregational or valleys. A local evengelical revival in 1828 Union by 1833. He had a Victorian concern for seems to have triggered a desire in him and efficiency, and began a lifelong struggle to build other teenagers to preach, and by the age of up a central organisation for the Independents. eighteen he was working as an assistant to the This was to make him many enemies among his famous David Rees of Capel Als, Llanelli. His fellow ministers, but it culminated in the Union of role was to warm up the congregation before Welsh Independents in 1872.

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In the 1840s Rees also became a busy Image of Thomas Rees, as shown on the cover journalist, pamphleteer, and historian. He of John Thomas’s 1888 wrote several biographies of preachers, biography Cofiant y Parch T. Rees DD, and discovering manuscripts of the Abertawy. 17th and 18th Centuries in the process, gave him a real taste for history. He realised that only by studying manuscripts could he sort out the early history of the Independents from that of the Baptists and Presbyterians in Wales, and only by reading church history in general could he sharpen his arrows in his fight with Anglican journalism. He needed to define the cause he was fighting for, as well as the ‘ cause’ in the religious sense, by defining its origins, sufferings and progress. He returned to the industrial hills in 1849 becoming minister of Beaufort. It was now he began to display his sympathetic concern for the vast hordes of English workers pouring across the industrial Valleys of eastern Wales, estimating that they formed about one in ten of the population of Wales. Not only were they unlikely to attend Welsh chapels, they might (horror of horrors) attend an Anglican church. He organised success, and he was given a doctorate Merthyr in that election) by publishing, two conferences on ‘The English Cause’ from Ohio University in 1862. There had one year after Richard had published in 1853 and 1860. He also visited rich been sectarian histories before, and one a collection of essays seeking to define cigarette manufacturers such as the Wills or two histories of religion, but this was the Wales as a nonconformist nation, his own brothers of and the owners of the first attempt to define Nonconformity as a Essays on the Social and Moral Condition huge Crossley carpet factories in Leeds, to whole, and in a national Welsh context. of Wales (1867). elicit funds for building English-language When he published a second, augmented These essays, based on lectures chapels and to support ministers’ widows edition of the history of Nonconformity he gave the length and breadth of and children. in 1883 he added towards the end a Wales, and on letters sent to friends Hobnobbing with the Nonconformist wonderful picture of the working class and adversaries, offer a real insight into ‘Rich List’ allowed Rees a chance to work of Wales, civilized and educated by the Welsh Victorian mind. Rees argued in the archives in London, Oxford and schooling and chapels. that reports of Welsh indiscipline and Cambridge on his great work The History In 1861 Rees answered a call to take anarchy had been greatly exaggerated. of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales up the ministry of Ebenezer Chapel, Unfortunate violent movements such (London, 1861). Written in English, it was Swansea. His energy made Swansea as were all vile imports from meant to impress English nonconformists, the centre for the Welsh celebrations England. The true Welsh working class and British Liberal opinion in general, in 1862 of the 200th anniversary of being entirely lamblike and respectable. with the amazing history of the immense Nonconformity – it was considered to The essays include a remarkable lecture recent growth of Nonconformity. The have started with the ejection of Puritans on ‘The alleged unchastity of Wales’, religious census of 1851 had shown that from the in 1662. the allegations coming from the Blue the great majority of worshippers in Wales He became active in Swansea Liberal Books of 1847. Rees was able to show went to nonconformist chapels of one circles and worked to get his friend, the how much more unchaste the women of sort or another, and Rees was sure there Swansea builder Evan Matthew Richards, many English counties were. There are had been great advances in the ‘chapel elected as MP for Cardiganshire in the essays, too, on education and revivals cause’ in the years fom 1851 to 1861. election of 1868. He imitated Henry and, of course, ‘The English Cause’. Rees’ book was unrivalled, had great Richard (another minister, elected MP for When I first came to Swansea fifty

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 53

4/Heritage years ago, the older generation told me the sects themselves. Sects needed to be identify with and fight for. their parents remembered Rees very told about each other, so as to be readier To some extent Nonconformity well. Above all, they recalled his regular to present a united front in the battles went on expanding until the First World commercial breaks in the sermons when that lay ahead. Although their numbers War but, according to Dr Tudur Jones, he would admit to being a heavy smoker had rapidly expanded, until that period it was seriously challenged from the himself, and add, “You young lads on they were people of little or no status in 1880s onwards. The modernising forces the gallery, I’ve seen you smoking after society. In the early 19th Century the of popular culture, entertainment and chapel, well, always remember to smoke Anglicans had often been the leaders of sports, joined with the secular educational Wills’ tobacco”. Of course, Wills brothers Welsh culture, and that position needed system to confront the ethos and mores of financed many of Rees’s pet schemes. to be usurped. There was a serious need the Nonconformist outlook. Then, like all He never lost sight of his aim of to show the Welsh themselves as well religious movements at the time, it found it welding the separate local churches of as outsiders, that they were no longer difficult to meet the crisis of faith presented the Independents into a Union, which violent, like the previous generations by the cataclysm of the Great War. was founded in Swansea in 1872, in disturbed by Scotch Cattle, Chartists or Many will argue that religion has taken the teeth of opposition from many of Rebecca Rioters. all sorts of new pathways since 1914-18, the traditionalists. From 1870 to 1875 There were the needs of Welsh but most of them have led away from the Rees and his friend Dr John Thomas Liberalism, and the need to put pressure world of Thomas Rees and made his image of Liverpool ( great-uncle of Saunders on future MPs from Wales to attend to of Welsh history seem more alien and Lewis) published four volumes in Welsh Nonconformist demands. There were irrelevant. His part of Victorian Wales has on the histories of each Independent the needs of the Welsh themselves, to probably become the most unrecognisable cause in Wales. This great work, which is find a more modern and progressive self- for modern Welsh people. still indispensable for historians, arose from image to replace the outdated Romantic However, I feel strongly that he needs Rees’s desire to publish all the material he picture created by wrirers and artists in to be rescued from the ignorance and had gleaned from manuscript collections, the 18th Century. Rightly or wrongly, the condescention of posterity. Thomas Rees and from Thomas’s good knowledge of Welsh Nonconformists imagined that the was a very clever practitioner of history, recent developments. Was this perhaps a Blue Books of 1847 attacked not only and in his own times one of the most well- timed sop to the old guard of Welsh the nation, but Welsh Nonconformity successful. When I came to Swansea fifty Independency, since it was written in for causing the backwardness of Welsh years ago, the novelist Penelope Lively Welsh and concentrated on the minute society described so unflatteringly in the was the wife of a University colleague of details of each local church? commissioners’ reports. mine. In her superb novel The Treasures John Thomas himself brought out a The generation of nonconformist of Time she remarks, “Private distortion fifth volume some ten years later, providing leaders of the 1860s such as Thomas we all indulge in, in our private lives. further statistics about the apparently Rees, David Rees, Henry Richard and Collective distortion must be left to the unstoppable advance of Nonconformity. others, wished to create a new image of professionals”. In his day writers like Rees Thomas said that he always feared an a businesslike, disciplined, progressive were in many ways the nearest thing excess of chapel building, and rather Wales led by the Nonconformists and that Wales had to professional academic doubted whether so many resources their Liberal allies. Thomas Rees was well historians. With the benefit of hindsight should be given to the reduplication of aware that for their aims to succeed they we can see that he distorted Wales’ image chapels by the ‘English Cause’. would need the help of Nonconformists for his own purposes, turning the whole The Welsh Victorian press published and Liberals in England. Writing these of the country into one gigantic chapel. enormous numbers of biographies of works in English was a canny gesture, He made a remarkable contribution in ministers, the celebebrities of that period, carefully designed to appeal to them for his day to Welsh historiography. And, and of histories of dissenting causes in generosity and cooperation. collective distortions or no, we forget areas and counties in Wales. What is so Rees’s biographer John Thomas says people like him at our peril. striking about Thomas Rees is that he that he was a great man, and yet confesses wrote a history of the whole of Welsh that he cannot exactly put his finger on Nonconformity, and backed it up by a his greatness. I should think that it must series of polemical essays, all in English, to be something to do with being such a Prys Morgan is Emeritus professof argue the importance of Nonconformity symbol of an age when Nonconformity History at Swansea University. This essay in Welsh society. and Liberalism were coming to a peak is based on a presentation he gave at a There were many causes for Rees’ of success. His part in the success was to Bangor University event in July: Writing view of Welsh history, in which Welsh define Welsh Nonconformity, to give it a Welsh History, 1850-1950 - a conference nationhood is expressed through ‘national’ personality, and to create an to mark the centenary of J.E. Lloyd’s Nonconformity. There were the needs of image of Wales the Welsh felt they could History of Wales (1911).

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 55 4/Heritage Hill’s Tramroad which allowed pig iron from the Blaenafon to be taken to the forge at Garnddyrys (established 1817) for conversion to wrought iron. A network of these primitive Blaenafon’s railways allowed the transportation of raw materials from quarries and mines to the ironworks and finished forgotten goods to the canal at Llanfoist for distribution to markets. Drawing by Michael Blackmore reproduced by kind permission of landscape Books.

Steven Rogers explains how sustainability has been built into a three-year heritage project

Nature is slowly re-greening Blaenafon’s Much of the site’s industrial such as the red grouse, and bring previously barren, black and disfigured archaeology, including mine shafts, about sustainable grazing. uplands, while the common land is buildings, water features and transport • Tackling illegal off roading, fly tipping gradually reverting to agricultural use. routes had survived. It was this and arson by a police officer seconded Yet during the 18th Century Blaenafon which made the case for Blaenafon from Gwent Constabulary. was one of the most productive being designated as an industrial • Family friendly trails with high quality ironworks anywhere in the world. Mines landscape World Heritage Site in 2000 interpretation focusing on the area’s were sunk, tram roads, tunnels and so compelling. It was designated by heritage. canals were built, vast areas of spoil UNESCO as a ‘cultural landscape’, a • Education programmes targeted at appeared and slowly the ‘iron mountain’ relatively new concept at the time that local schools to support the National was transformed into a ‘man made’ acknowledged the Site’s largely man- Curriculum and raise awareness of industrial landscape. made character. the global importance of the heritage Nearly a century after mining came In 2010 a three-year £2.5 million landscape. to an end it is easy to forget just how Forgotten Landscapes scheme was • An outreach campaign to raise important Blaenafon was as an iron launched to conserve and promote awareness of the project. making and coal producing town. this heritage. Funded principally by the • A volunteer ranger group to continue Fortunately, in the late 1980s, a few Heritage Lottery Fund this is delivering delivery of the scheme when the three visionaries realised that the ironworks the following projects: year programme ends. provided the most complete example of early mining technology anywhere in • Conservation of the many industrial By 2020 it is envisaged that Blaenafon the world. Moreover, the landscape had artefacts in the landscape. will have become an internationally not been significantly altered by land • Restoration of the upland grouse recognised visitor attraction. In addition reclamation as had happened across moors to conserve valuable habitats, visitor numbers will have increased most of industrial south Wales. encourage the recovery of species significantly; the commoners will

56 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 4/Heritage have achieved a level of sustainable commons management, the scourge of bracken encroachment will have been addressed and the heather moor land will be well on the way to recovery. The plan is for local community groups to be involved in developing and maintaining their own heritage projects and for the volunteer ranger group to be operating as a not for profit company. To support the ongoing management a £200,000 micro hydro system is being installed on the Afon Lwyd. This is projected to earn £30,000 Bracken management on Coity Mountain using tractor pulled bracken bruisers. a year from green energy payments. Other renewable energy technologies are being explored with the aim of making the Blaenafon World Heritage Site financially self sustaining. The budget for archaeological and geological work is £109,000. One of the key projects is the unearthing of the two- and-a-quarter mile Pwll Du tramroad tunnel which was a vital element in the transportation of raw materials to the ironworks and exporting iron to the outside world. This important feature has been buried under spoil for over half a century. The work is now near completion and the site will soon be open to visitors. Remains of Blaenafon ironworks, photographed during last winter’s snow. Coal spoil is another example of industrial archaeology with great heritage value. However, it is difficult development of the area as a heritage money and motivation dissipates. The to manage and interpret. Not only tourism destination. Several community underpinning vision of the Blaenafon is it inherently unstable, it is also an groups intend to develop their own Forgotten Landscape scheme is to unwelcoming environment. Big Pit’s heritage trails, publish and sell books on build in sustainability beyond the Coity Tip has been chosen to present local history and conduct archaeological three-year life of the funded project. coal spoil as a heritage feature. At a cost research. So, for example, the continuation of £37,000 this will include improved This holistic approach also extends of the ‘heritage labour force’ will be access, a nature trail and research into to the relationship between the World resourced by income generated by the restoration methods. Other big budget Heritage Site’s principal partners. micro hydro scheme. Through forward projects include: Blaenafon Ironworks (), Big Pit planning all of the interventions initiated Mining Museum (National Museum by Blaenafon Forgotten Landscapes • Access and interpretation, £450,000. Wales), County Borough project will be underpinned by the • Education, £168,000. Council and the Brecon Beacons ongoing work of the volunteer rangers. • Commons management and wildlife National Park Authority. Together they conservation, £641,000. have developed ideas collectively, share • Developing the volunteer workforce, responsibility for maintenance of new £148,000. facilities such as access improvements, reprinting trail guides and the like. Steven Rogers is Partnership Scheme In addition, many of the low cost Grant aid for ambitious projects Manager for the Blaenafon Forgotten projects will also have a significant often results in short term and dramatic Landscapes project impact on the conservation and gain followed by gradual decline as the www.visitblaenavon.co.uk

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 57 4/Heritage View of the site of White Rock copper works established at Pentrechwyth in the Lower Swansea Valley in 1737.

Heritage and the new experience economy

Huw Bowen explains how the Lower Swansea Valley’s industrial past is providing a catalyst for inward investment and new jobs

The Lower Swansea Valley Project was a remarkable served to place Copperopolis at the heart of a world- achievement. Begun exactly fifty years ago, it wide network of commercial connections. As an transformed Europe’s largest post-industrial early crucible of innovative economic activity, the wasteland, and made the Swansea Valley green Lower Swansea Valley was as important to Britain’s again. Where once copper slag heaps and mile-after- industrialisation as Coalbrookdale, and by 1880 the mile of derelict buildings had littered a moonscape, Valley was one of the most intensively industrialised there is now an environment that is fit for people to parts of Britain. live, work, and play in. Swansea can rightly be proud However, with the decline of the copper, coal, of the partnership between its University and local lead, zinc, and tinplate industries came rapid authority that first drove this unique experiment in de-industrialisation. By 1960 the Valley was left in a landscape engineering. But what happens next? poisoned, polluted, and deeply scarred state, with This question raises interesting issues about what little remaining of the heavy industrial activity that happens to regenerated areas in their post-project had shaped its development. At this point, the Lower phases, which in the case of the Lower Swansea Swansea Valley Project intervened. Valley now extend for some thirty years or more. Of To those aware of the international significance course, good regeneration schemes become self- of the history of the Lower Swansea Valley, today’s sustaining, with growth and further development primary challenge arises from the uncomfortable occurring as a result of conditions created by a fact that most of the historic environment has been particular project. But only rarely is there no further destroyed during the course of successive regeneration need at all for further intervention from external projects. In a sense, this wholesale destruction is quite agencies, especially during periods when entirely understandable. During the 1960s regeneration new forms of regeneration are developed to address the primary aim was to create an environment that redefined economic and social agendas. was fit once more for economic and social activity. As an economic historian I stumbled almost by Consequently, the most urgent priority was to clear accident into the Lower Swansea Valley through away waste tips and abandoned works, which was an academic interest in the historic copper industry done in vigorous and systematic fashion. Indeed, and the impact that it had on the development of the Territorial Army was used to blow up industrial Asia. Around Swansea was located the first globally buildings, which to many people symbolised the integrated heavy industry, which from 1720 onwards excesses of unregulated industrial capitalism.

58 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 4/Heritage View of the Liberty Stadium from the Hafod copper works whose bicentenary is being celebrated this year.

Such extensive destruction of ‘heritage assets’ is also understandable because • Bring the River Tawe back into regular during the 1960s there were only sketchy use as a key transport route, connecting notions of what is now routinely described the maritime quarter with the area as ‘heritage-led’ regeneration. Indeed, at around the Liberty Stadium, and that time the word ‘heritage’ had not yet providing a location for water-based come into usage in the way that it is widely leisure and sporting activity. used today. No protection of important industrial buildings was offered by any • Facilitate the development of an listing procedures or protection policies. imaginative programme of building The valley floor was cleared along the and environmental restoration. stretch of the River Tawe that extends from St Thomas near the present-day • Attract incoming commercial SA1 development up as far as the M4 at investment for housing, businesses, and Llansamlet. So complete was this clearing, social amenities. reshaping, and greening of the landscape However, a sudden and unexpected little is left today to indicate that the Valley broadening of the project beyond its • Provide an integrated site for the was once an industrial hotspot. virtual dimensions has occurred. Last year development of traditional industrial It is only by accident that 179 copper- the City and County of Swansea issued and craft skills, as well as new ‘green related sites or structures of international a marketing brief aimed at attracting skills’ centred on a land and marine significance have survived in and around commercial developers to the former environment that is slowly coming Swansea, and the situation is particularly Hafod works. With an attractive river back to life. bad in the Valley itself. There, shamefully, frontage, the site lies just to the south of there isn’t even any basic signage pointing the Liberty Stadium. It is 12.5 acres in size, • Attract cultural tourists and promote to the scattered and often hidden remains and contains 14 listed historic structures, the social, cultural, and educational of copper works and other industrial sites. including the iconic Vivian engine houses, regeneration of the local community. Nothing explains the importance of the one of which contains the ruined remains Valley to the development of the modern of a rare Musgrave engine that once • Help to create a stronger sense of world economy. powered the rolling mills. ‘place’, local-global identity, and civic So, in the absence of historic Swansea University emerged as the consciousness among those who live buildings to see and visit, an important City’s preferred development partner and work in Swansea. first step has been to create a virtual and we are now engaged in a 12-month historic environment through the use feasibility study to create a restored and • Provide the city with a unique of computer models and animations. sustainable historic environment that will marketing tool, using the Cu@ This work lies at the core of a project be fit for people to live and work in, and Swansea! brand. funded by the Economic and Social visit. At the core of the project lies the Research Council to facilitate a restoration of the site’s historic structures, As we move towards the emergence of what better understanding of the historic but also the embedded use of digital is now being described as an ‘experience environment. In partnership with the technologies. economy’ in Britain, it is clear that, even in Royal Commission on the Ancient One key aim is to create a digital arts/ a recession, heritage can act as a powerful and Historical Monuments of Wales humanities/science hub in what might be catalyst for inward investment, the creation and other project partners, Swansea described as a ‘Living History Laboratory’, of jobs, and the development of old and University has been developing a digital conceptually connected with the existing new skills. Of course, the pump usually has reconstruction of the Hafod copper Laboratory Building on the site. Here to be primed through grant income. The works. This will soon be available for a range of digital, virtual reality, and challenge we are facing in Swansea is to see viewing and use online, and ultimately hand-held mobile technologies will if a major heritage-led regeneration project via hand-held mobile technology. be applied to the interpretation and can breathe new forms of economic life In a sense, therefore, this is a project clearer understanding of Swansea’s into the Lower Swansea Valley. whose initial phase has not been defined multiple contributions to Britain’s by traditional forms of property-led . The research and regeneration but by an approach that uses associated educational possibilities are Huw Bowen is Professor of Modern new technologies to raise awareness of a very considerable indeed. However, the History at Swansea University and sense of distinctive place and identity for project is more than about the use of new Director of the Swansea’s copper the Valley. technologies. It also has the potential to: project www.welshcopper.org.uk

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 59 4/Heritage Telling Cardiff’s story Neil Evans finds the capital’s new museum rejects a comfort zone of the distant past and is not afraid to raise controversial issues

No aspiring town in the 19th Century would be without a museum if it wanted to prove its civic respectability and cultural credentials. However, Cardiff’s museum was the victim of the town’s success when it won the contest to be the location for Wales’ National Museum in 1905. Its collections and even its director, John Ward, a notable if untrained archaeologist, moved across to Park. This was to the infinite benefit of the new Replicas from the ’s , designed by William Burgess in 1866 national institution, but to the sad impoverishment but not built until 1890. The original nine animal figures were the hyena, wolf, apes, seal, bear, lioness, lynx, and two different lions. In 1931 six further animals were of popular appreciation of the way the city itself added - the pelican, ant-eater, racoons, leopard, beaver and vulture. had developed. However, after a century Cardiff now has a museum again and it is a spectacular one - The Cardiff Story, located in what was the old era. Its position within Wales varied considerably pre- library in the city centre. industrialisation but sometimes showed signs of the Cardiff has a relationship with Wales which dominance which it would later achieve. presents both a gift and a challenge to those who On the other side of the great Victorian boom is want to tell its story. The gift is the drama of its the problem that the story of Cardiff’s development 19th Century growth from 1,870 people in 1801, to as a regional centre and capital of Wales might seem roughly 18,000 in 1851, to roughly 180,000 in 1911. like an anti climax after what had gone before. The The figures are easy to remember as they simply current population level is around 336,000 meaning mean the addition of noughts. The reality was of it hasn’t quite doubled in size in the present century. course a hundred-fold increase in population in Professional historians have paid a good deal a century. There was much diversity, conflict and of attention to its 19th Century growth but have achievement in that century and soon after its end neglected to chart its more recent development. Cardiff became a city in 1905. Then there is the issue of Cardiff’s relationship Everything before 1800 might be written off as the with Wales. In the first place the town was the story of an insignificant village. Of course, this was not creation of conquerors – the Romans and the true as the new museum demonstrates. It was probably Normans - and also landlords who have usually the biggest town in Wales in the early 14th Century had a bad press in Wales. It was burned down by (2,000 people in 1307), and it had an international Owain Glyndwˆr. Sometimes it was dismissed in trade even before its great take-off in the industrial racist terms in rural Wales - a fitter capital of China

60 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 4/Heritage according to one comment - and still suffers from image problems in the north and west of the country. The uneven development of contemporary Wales, with investment heavily loaded on to the southeast compounds the problem. The Cardiff Story has to confront such issues as well as celebrate civic virtues and achievements. Cardiff’s Story is located in a darkened room penetrated by multiple bright lights from exhibits and displays. It takes you into a world removed from Island outside and back through multiple paths into the city’s past. First of all the visitor sees an array of storyboards, which form a kind of vestibule. Each deals with a different period in the city’s history: The storyboards with datelines that greet the visitor to Cardiff’s Story. • Down to 1794 - when the Glamorgan Canal was constructed. Brunel had diverted it. In the process Walden’s painting of the docks animated • 1794-1850 - by which time the first he created the space for the Arms Park by steam power in 1896, taking us back dock and railways had arrived. and later, today’s . into ‘the awful sublimity of the Victorian • 1851-1913 - the boom years as ‘coal On the right of this entrance are exhibits city’, the world of Atkinson Grimshaw’s metropolis of the world’. showing the present position of Cardiff. art. It pulses with the steam power of the • 1914-1955 - an era of wars The visitor can take their own coal Cardiff exported to the four corners and depression but ending with paths and these lead in many different of the world. Even those who knew the recognition of capital of Wales. directions. Aiming for my areas of greatest docks at ground level will better grasp • 1956 to 1999 - becoming the seat of ignorance I went for the archaeological their immensity from this representation, devolved government while losing exhibits and found them not only well which is rather more tangible than an much of its industrial base. displayed but also beautifully explained aerial photograph. in accompanying folders by people I It is right to make the docks so central Each of these panels has a time line for its recognise as experts in the field. Some since they are the reason Cardiff became period and a changing screen showing street names are explained, though such a big place in so short a time. Today, individuals and a sequence of events. So (rightly) with variant attributions given of course, they have been more-or-less if you want to start at the beginning and prominence. To an outsider in this field it obliterated by . Nevertheless, work through to the present that can be seems that scholars never agree on this! the docks will always be central to done. But equally the visitor can chose a Going to areas I knew rather more Cardiff’s story. It is capital of Wales simply period of interest to them and start there. about I was just an impressed. There is because it was the largest town when the To the left of this is an interactive an interesting section called ‘Fight for 19th and early 20th Century processes of screen showing locations in the city your Rights’ with many photographs of nation-building took place. The docks offering a trip though time at each of the often bitter strikes and conflicts which underpin Cardiff’s recent history. them. I chose the River Taff and St Mary marked the modern history of the city. I have a rather old-fashioned Street (there are several others) and These tend to be eclipsed by the even approach to museums in general. I was treated to five views of each from more turbulent history of the Valleys. like them to be structured and can a series of different times. These showed Behind the introductory screens the find the leaving of visitors to fend for the changes at particular parts of the structure of the museum becomes more themselves something of a postmodern cityscape, which will be known, to all apparent. The exhibits are dominated cop out. There is a danger of dissolution locals and many visitors. The technology by a huge model of the docks at their into the solipsism of individual stories. can be stunning. I particularly liked height, which vividly communicates One museum I visited (not in Wales) seeing the River Taff snake as rapidly as their scale and importance. Behind had won an award for its interactive a Sidewinder to show just how much this is a massive reproduction of Lionel displays. I decided I’d add ‘interactive’

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 61

4/Heritage to my Thesaurus under ‘witless’. But parts of the city’s experience while the as both a regional centre for south east this museum shows the virtues of recent projected displays for upstairs will deal Wales and as the national capital. The approaches. People can genuinely find with intangibles – notably culture and museum enables people to understand their own way without being confused communities. In what exists at present and the city and its hinterland as a part of or lost and left to fend for themselves. in what is projected a decision has been Wales, but also with its own narratives, There is a genuine sense of a search for made to integrate ethnic diversity into the which are worthy of respect, and not involvement which breaks the barrier story rather than to place minorities into a simply subsumed into Wales. between visitor and professional. People corner where they may be forgotten. This It is not afraid to raise controversial are encouraged to leave their own is laudable, though I hope some space is issues and rejects a comfort zone of the memories, artefacts and comments. found for the distinctively diverse people- distant past. “Has Cardiff used the Valleys?” Did I have any regrets? Only that scape of Butetown - perhaps pointing asks the welcome acknowledgement of I wished I’d been able to take my visitors to the admirable Butetown History the symbiotic relationship – and further, grandchildren. The museum has and Arts Centre. “Do the Valleys need Cardiff?” Museums an excellent educational facility to Museums were established as ways in should promote civic belonging and encourage children to see history as a which civic, regional and national pride citizenship, and active citizenship at that. process of detection and set them on could be fostered and developed. How When the museum comes to engage with the path with magnifying glass in hand. does this one serve its community? Very the intangibles of the city’s experience it is I might have had difficulty prising them well, I think. It displays a changing and to be hoped there will be some prolonged away from the giant doll’s house used to vibrant place, gives some prominence engagement with its relationship with the show the changes in usage of a house to the struggles for freedom and justice rest of Wales. After all, for more than a century this is what has given the place its meaning and place in the world. Memory plays tricks but I remember no great emphasis on the Butes as creators of Cardiff. I mean this as no criticism. Rightly this is a people’s museum and gives us less pampered stories. This is appropriate in the building which houses it – the old Central Library which was built in defiant opposition to the Third Marquess who was a considerable scholar but no believer in the republic of letters. It was intended to have a tower high enough to rival that on Cardiff Castle and thereby cock a snook at it. Sadly the council couldn’t afford it. But one imagines that John Batchelor, who still stands (in Milo Griffith’s statue) outside the building, would have been pleased with its current use and to see A huge model of the docks at their height dominates the exhibits: “It is right to make the docks so central since local government, to which he devoted they are the reason Cardiff became such a big place in so short a time.” so much of his life, being so imaginative. He and his supporters always said the in Cathedral Road and persuading them which have been so much a part of its Bute Estate ruined both his business and it was not possible to buy it so it could history, and offers an overall vision which his life in revenge for his fight for civic be taken home. But adults will find this encourages people to act in the future: freedom. The museum continues the equally revealing. “Cardiff never stands still. It is constantly tradition in the much-changed city. Otherwise there is a slight regret reinventing itself to fulfil the needs of a because we currently see about half wide range of people that use the city”. the museum as it is intended to be. Its That final verb is significant. Cardiff Neil Evans is an honorary research completion could be delayed by the matters to more people than live within fellow in history at Cardiff University. He savagery being inflicted on the public its boundaries and it always has: as a was an (unpaid) advisor to the Cardiff sector. The downstairs portion which market town taking the produce of the Story but played no role in the design is now open deals with the tangible eastern Vale, as a coal port and now and presentation of the museum.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 63 5 Media Needed – a broadcasting new deal Articles Needed – a broadcasting new deal News aggregator hits Port Talbot Ron Jones calls for a wide-ranging review of television provision for Wales

Broadcasting is not a devolved issue. consultation, reviewed by elected Parliament guards this responsibility and politicians and transparent to all. in Westminster there is no appetite for It is widely accepted that Wales change. However, there is pressure for suffers a worrying lack of plurality in new structures to accommodate post- media. This extends to media outlets, devolution Britain, especially in Scotland. ownership and control as well as an In practice the lack of accountability to imbalance between media generated Wales is unsustainable and new structures in Wales and provided from elsewhere that accommodate the needs of the UK in the UK. Since devolution the lack of and Wales have to be found. coverage of our politics has become a Regardless of whether broadcasting danger to our democracy. should be devolved, there is a compelling Cuts in ITV and BBC news provision case that the interests of all involved for Wales and the lack of consultation on - Welsh Government, the Assembly, the Department of Culture Media and broadcasters and the audience - require Sport’s proposals for local news are clear better local engagement. After all, culture, warnings. Coverage of the Assembly education, heritage and language are all and of Welsh affairs in Parliament devolved matters, and all are at the heart has diminished in range and depth. of public service television. ITV’s financially driven cuts are well Sir Jeremy Beecham’s report Making understood, so its recent announcement the Connections: Delivering Beyond that local news is to be given a higher Boundaries talks about the role of the priority is welcome. Welsh Government in non-devolved The BBC provides S4C news. Our services. Broadcasting seems a prime newspapers continue to weaken, leaving candidate for this approach. Clear lines the BBC as the primary provider of political for democratic accountability need to coverage. This is an unhealthy trend. be put in place, to be open to public Meanwhile, the BBC has reduced

6264 | 5/Media

BBC Wales’s £10 million Drama Village in Cardiff Bay - an 180,000 square foot building stretching along the Roath basin. Casualty moved across from Bristol in September and Dr Who will start production next spring. Other productions will include The Sarah Jane Adventures, , Sherlock and Upstairs, Downstairs. Nevertheless, compared with the BBC’s investment of £150 million in its relocation to Salford, the outlay is modest. its commitment to Wales as a matter of opportunity to fill this void. Radio Wales, its online services and choice. Despite the corporation receiving Children are even more promiscuous programmes produced for S4C under its favourable licence fee settlements well than their parents in their choice of statutory obligations. ahead of inflation in recent years, it has content. For them language and whether Wales has not done well from the chosen to reduce its spending on English it’s Welsh are secondary considerations. BBC’s devolution of services. Under and Welsh programmes for Wales quite Meanwhile, there is a shortage of modern pressure from the Labour government significantly. Although the cuts for BBC educational provision in Wales, both the BBC announced a large-scale Wales and S4C to 2017 are now known, in television programmes and on-line restructuring of its activities to the nations discussions on the new Charter will be content. Our new Welsh curriculum is a and regions. There has been massive starting soon. Dangerous times are ahead. huge leap forward but it needs materials spending on its two major projects outside There is a consensus that Wales is not using the new technologies. As a matter of London, at Pacific Quay in Glasgow getting the television it needs. Not since policy, our broadcasters do not match their and Media City in Salford. Despite the the days of the last ITV licence award has output to our education system. As well as developments in Cardiff Bay, Wales has there been a coherent attempt to assess being politically naïve, this has also been a had nothing similar in scope or value. what Wales needs. The Ofcom UK review betrayal of Welsh children’s needs. Wales also has a weak television and of local services some two years ago Our broadcasters have not risen to film industry. The natural dynamics of was useless. these challenges to the extent needed. the industry are in London. This is true There are new challenges as well. Despite its recent announcement to of all English language broadcasters and There is a shortage of on-line content continue its regional news service, ITV of all distributors and agencies. Market and services for Wales. The BBC has Wales is a shadow of what was envisaged conditions are not going to change become the most popular provider of on- by the original licence. The commercial this and only the BBC and S4C are in a line services in the UK. In Wales, not only radio licence holders in Wales are all in position by social engineering to help are there very few services but also we financial retreat and Ofcom has gradually create and sustain the industry. know there is permanent market failure. eased their licence commitments. BBC S4C’s priorities will rightly be to These services can only be provided by Wales has cut the hours of television for service the needs of Welsh-speakers, and the public purse and no institutions other Wales in English, and also significantly cut not pretend to be a global or commercial than broadcasters have the money or the the allocation of money to Radio Cymru, player. This role provides an invaluable

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 65 5/Media underpinning of the business models requirements and few of the workers have ask for and what can the broadcasters of producers working in a protected the necessary skills. The BBC’s view is that deliver? market. However, there is little evidence going native with the drama village in Our priority for ITV should be to that the companies are able to compete, Cardiff Bay is a long-term project to which ensure that the new licence or licences other than occasionally, outside Wales. they are committed. Experience suggests for ITV from 2014 are Wales-friendly. An The BBC could use its commissioning this is not going to be easy. aim might be to ensure that: muscle in Wales and its route to market to As a country we need to identify operate more effectively than at present. those elements of television that we • There is an all Wales licence. This was Wales is poorly served for news and need for specifically Welsh cultural, the case under the present regime but current affairs. Uniquely amongst the linguistic, social or democratic reasons. was lost through corporate takeovers. devolved nations, Wales has neither an Public service broadcasters should make • Wales has appropriate service levels indigenous news industry nor significant explicit commitments defining their consistent with the industry-wide coverage in the UK media. We are now responsibilities and commitments to review of needs I envisage. over-dependent on the BBC that is looking Wales. Then we need to ensure that these • The Welsh licence is protected from at 20 per cent cuts for its news coverage. are developed through an open and takeover, maybe by creating an ownership structure for it such as Glas Public scrutiny will prioritise needs. Cymru. The service could then be sub- contracted to suitable operators more It will not be a guarantee that everything tightly than the existing DCMS/Ofcom/ ITV arrangements. we want can be delivered. • The economic impact is maximised.

The present DCMS proposals for local TV Whilst many of the criticisms of BBC public discussion of the issues involved. are not a good fit for Wales and are probably Wales news coverage concern its quality Such a review should be agreed after unsustainable financially. However, public and focus, it is unlikely that these issues full public consultation and involve all money is being made available, and Wales can be addressed at a time of significant the key stakeholders. Ideally these would must make the best of what is on offer and cuts. S4C is a high risk organisation for include the Department of Culture, make it work for us. We need to find ways Wales. Whatever its recent failings, S4C Media and Sport, the BBC Trust, S4C, to engage in local TV developments and is an important part of Welsh national life the Welsh Government and its agencies search for innovative ways to do so. If local and is a key driver in safeguarding the with relevant responsibilities, as well as television and the important web-delivered language and the television industry in the Assembly and Welsh MPs. In practice elements are not a commercial proposition Wales. Over the next months discussions some will elect not to play but the politics can they be made to work by integrating will continue between the BBC and S4C would be against them. local television with the government’s that will define its future. The result of such a review should commitment to delivering public services Until Doctor Who, and now inform our policy for public service and education over the Internet? Casualty arrived in Cardiff, little network broadcasting. In addition we should Devolution means the BBC is now production was made in Wales. The ensure that it is structured to provide the one of Wales’ most important public target has traditionally been to achieve maximum economic benefit. A needs- service institutions. Economically, a level of five per cent of UK network based analysis will prioritise news and journalistically and culturally the BBC programming and at first sight the BBC news-based programmes, current affairs, is the biggest beast and in its refocusing is well on its way. However, the BBC’s events and sport. When you add a range is the potential for the biggest wins for approach has not been to our advantage. of public service programmes from history Wales. The BBC plays a significant role Firstly, they have chosen high cost to culture, many genres as well as some in providing the television, radio, on-line drama that produces few hours and little sport and entertainment may have to go. and learning content that conventional network portrayal of Wales. Secondly, Public scrutiny will prioritise needs. It will markets cannot supply. It also develops the absence of most other genres creates not be a guarantee that everything we creative talent and underpins the creative an industrial monoculture that precludes want can be delivered. economy of the nation. a balanced television economy. This needs-based approach should This role has been made even more A side effect will be largely to exclude not be tainted by a search for simple important by the UK government’s local production companies and local viewing numbers. We will need to decision that S4C is a UK service priority talent. The companies do not have the develop an appraisal system based on funded from the television licence. scale and the experience to meet the BBC’s public service purpose. What can we One way forward would be the

66 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 5/Media creation of a BBC Trust Service Licence • The number of hours to be broadcast of non-devolved matters and the need Agreement for Wales. The BBC Trust on television and radio. to find a way through the constitutional authorises and monitors services through a • The types of programmes to be made, morass. Fans of the American constitution series of Service Licences. There is one for potentially defining the news services will be aware of the concept that express each channel and service. These Service required. responsibilities bring with them implied Commitments need to comply with the • An on-line service. powers. Under the Crown this is an alien BBC’s Public Purposes under Article 3 of • The portrayal of Welsh people and life concept. As subjects we only have those its Royal Charter - although there is public on network. rights that are granted to us. consultation the Trust basically decides. • Commitments relating to the In the real world we have to make the In the case of S4C the new partnership relationship between the services and best of our constitutional arrangements. arrangements will almost certainly follow the education system in Wales. In the case of broadcasting there is a way the Service Licence approach. In that • Commitments relating to the forward that is democratic, sensible and case the present thinking is that this will relationship between the S4C services in the best interests of our people, and be agreed by discussion between S4C, the and Welsh Government policy on the governments in Cardiff and London BBC Trust and DCMS after consultation promoting and safeguarding the Welsh – oh, and in the long term interests of our with the Welsh Government in recognition language, plus the UK’s international broadcasters as well. of its statutory obligation to support and legal obligations. develop the Welsh language. • Value for money in terms of producing This opens the door to a similar affordable quality content. Ron Jones is Executive Chairman of approach being taken with English • Contribution to the . Llanelli-based Tinopolis, one of the language services, with the devolved UK’s largest independent television governments assessing national needs. Before the next Charter is granted to production companies. This article Service Licences that describes the the BBC, there would need to be an is based on the presentation he gave responsibility of the BBC Trust to Wales independent external impact assessment at the IWA’s national broadcasting and to S4C could include: of how these services have measured up. conference An agenda for the coming So there it is, the timeless problem decade, in October.

If the IWA and what it represents are important to you, IWA Legacy please consider remembering the IWA in your will. For nearly quarter of Your generosity will allow us to continue promoting the a century the Institute economic, social, environmental and cultural well- being of Wales for our future generations. of Welsh Affairs has helped raise the level Whether large or small, a gift of this kind can have an important practical impact on our work as well as of public debate on motivating others. It is also a way of extending your own issues affecting Wales, generosity beyond your lifetime. If, therefore, you decide by placing quality to remember a charity in your will, please consider us. information in the Naturally, a decision of this kind is one that you will public domain. wish to consider carefully, and even to take professional advice. It is always important for you and your family and for any other recipient that the wording of a will expresses accurately your own wishes.

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5/Media

News aggregator hits Port Talbot

Rachel Howells explores the aftermath of the death of a town’s local newspaper

Although the Port Talbot Guardian had newspaper circulations and the number been in business since the 1920s, declining of journalists employed by the local press, circulations had made it a target for and what this might mean for the way cutbacks by owner Trinity Mirror, eventually news and democracy work together. leading to its closure in 2009. For the first I am attempting to answer these time in more than 80 years, Port Talbot was questions by carrying out four different without a dedicated newspaper. pieces of research. The first is an The population of Port Talbot is analysis of printed news provision in around 35,000. It boasts many famous the town since the 1970s, looking at sons and daughters – Michael Sheen, how journalism has served the local Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Rob Brydon and Di Botcher amongst others. The population of Port Talbot is It is Wales’ most polluted town, having lived cheek by jowl with heavy industry around 35,000. It boasts many for more than three centuries. Today it is famous sons and daughters – Michael home to a large steelworks, a gas plant, and a power station. Now permission has Sheen, Richard Burton, Anthony been given for Europe’s largest biomass plant to be built here. These are good Hopkins, Rob Brydon and Di Botcher indicators that this town is prospering, amongst others. and so a newspaper should be a natural part of the mix. Why, then, did it close? And what does community, and examining indicators the story of this town, and its experiences of ‘localness’. The second will apply of life without a newspaper, tell us about the same measures to a modern day the future of the media? Does Port sample, which will include television, Talbot’s fate await more towns and cities radio and Internet news alongside the in Wales? Should we be worried? press. The third will be a large survey These are the questions I am of local people, examining their news attempting to answer as part of a consumption habits. Lastly I will carry European-funded research project out focus groups and interviews. at Cardiff University - funded by the The first two of these pieces of European social fund distributed by the research are underway. It is too early Welsh Government, Cardiff University to draw any firm conclusions, but a and the Media Standards Trust. It fits few things we probably all suspect are into a wide jigsaw of other research that observable. Across the Western world, reflects deep concern with declines in newspapers are in serious decline:

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 69 5/Media

Some of the team at Port Talbot’s Magnet co-operative news service, from left to right: Simon Davies, a former sub-editor on the South Wales Evening Post who is now a Policy Officer for Rathbone; Ken Smith, a former sub-editor on the South Wales Evening Post who is now a communications officer with the National Trust; Andy Pearson, a former editor of the Llanelli Star and Features Editor of the South Wales Evening Post who now works for the PR agency Effective Communication; Rachel Howells; and Mike Witchell, a former sub-editor and columnist at the South Wales Evening Post who now writes humourous sketches and plays.

Circulations are falling, as they have been University, I am also a journalist and We have had several boosts along for decades, far longer than the current a director of the Magnet co-operative the way, not least becoming community economic troubles. In Wales, the picture news service, porttalbotmagnet.com. In partners of the National Theatre Wales is as bad, if not worse, than elsewhere in fact, both projects feed into one another, production, The Passion, starring Michael the UK. meaning research and the real world are Sheen. We have a working partnership On the ground in Port Talbot, the both benefiting. with local community radio station XS, Guardian’s closure has made it much The news service was started in 2009, which sells some of our advertising. harder for local people to publicise back when the Guardian was bidding We have also been supported by a their events and find out what’s going farewell to its readers. A group of us, all community development organisation, on. On the other hand, social media is journalists, had come together via our NSA, which has been generous with expanding and to some extent filling the National Union of Journalists’ branch to advice as well as giving us an office space gap in community life. In place of a news find a new way to make a living outof in Port Talbot. vacuum, there has been a flowering of our profession. Most of us had been made We have applied for funding, but independence, experimentation and redundant, many from the Northcliffe- have not, so far, been successful. innovation on the Internet. owned South Wales Evening Post. Instead we have run the service with The news aggregator porttalbot.co.uk Others were finding it difficult to sustain goodwill, volunteers, partnerships with was quick to move in, but two other themselves as freelancers or struggling to other organisations and cash donations, professional-led projects also arrived get work as the industry tightened its belt. mainly from the directors. We have sold after the closure. The first was Port We realised we had to do something. a limited amount of advertising, and Talbot News [port-talbot-news.co.uk], Starting a co-operative seemed an some of our video footage has been sold run by a former Guardian photographer. obvious move, and the seven of us, to outside organisations. A second project, Port Talbot Magnet, with the help of the Wales Co-operative These are heartening commercial started shortly after. Centre, established a limited company. steps forward. But we do not yet have I have an interest here, because as The company is also a co-operative and a working business model. The Magnet well as being a PhD student at Cardiff social enterprise. is not sustainable in its current form, and

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we know it will be difficult to fulfill our the Board’s willingness to divert advertising employed centrally by government ambitions to provide dedicated, hard news revenue into neglected areas where or paid for out of the public purse, for Port Talbot without a serious injection crowd-funding is not bringing investment. who could travel to new projects and of cash or a decent, steady income There are of course practical concerns that provide them with intensive support and stream, or even better, both. We know readers will not pay for news in this way, expertise to get them up and running that, in common with many other social and only marketing and time will answer would be top of our list. The developed enterprises and charities, we will need to this question. world often sends media experts to help be flexible and innovative in bringing in Is this the future of journalism? It establish independent media where new revenue from many different sources. would be nice to think so. To think that democracies are flourishing – why not In September, we launched an people will take up the challenge we start a similar scheme in the UK, where appeal for the site Pitch-in! which uses have set, involving themselves actively in our own democracy is now under threat crowdsourcing and crowd-funding collaborating with the news, and thereby because of media cutbacks? models. The appeal asks local people in the processes of democracy. Surely We have other suggestions as well. A central fund rewarding media innovation A network of media hubs where journalists could would be of enormous benefit. An collaborate with colleagues from across the industry effective way of putting philanthropists in touch with grass roots projects would be to produce news for all outlets is a suggestion made fantastic. Affordable legal and financial by a team of academics at Goldsmiths University – advice and access to affordable insurance would be gratefully received – perhaps and we would support this kind of solution. using the benefit of the wisdom of procurement officers in government. A to pitch in to help the news service by this fulfills journalism’s prime, fourth network of media hubs where journalists offering cash donations, volunteering, estate, function. It is early days to talk could collaborate with colleagues from or by telling us about what’s going on in about how likely Pitch-in! is to make this a across the industry to produce news for all the local area. But it goes a step further reality in Port Talbot. Nonetheless, simply outlets is a suggestion made by a team of than this, by breaking down editorial by framing the question in this way, we academics at Goldsmiths University – and objectives into micro-targets and offering have received donations and help that we would support this kind of solution. people the chance to sponsor journalists we would not otherwise have received. An understanding and promotion of the or pitch in towards a story they are After a few weeks of posting Pitch-in! wider benefits good journalism can bring interested in seeing a journalist write. The on our website, during which time we to society would also improve our chances appeal also asks freelance journalists and have not publicised it in Port Talbot, we of gaining funding. An accreditation system members of the co-operative to suggest have had £32 in donations from readers for quality local news websites would be a stories that can be made into a target and we have sold three adverts. This valuable service to quality hyperlocal sites, on the site, and then help raise money feels like a positive move forward, and and help new projects gain traction in a for it. A similar model has been tried in though these are very modest gains, world where content written for the internet America with the website Spot.Us. there is enormous potential for growth. is, in our experience, viewed with suspicion Crucially, this model puts payment for Innovation, goodwill and journalists by companies and public bodies. journalists at the heart of the enterprise. committed to promoting local news for If government is serious about We provide a framework, a mechanism for no pay are what got our project off the addressing the problems facing the media news to be produced and supplied for the ground. We always hoped we could find industry the answer is simple. We need community. In theory, too, we will see what a blueprint for local news production that a national debate about why the media kind of editorial local people are willing to would help fill news gaps in other areas is important for democracy, and real, pay for – if any. That aside, there are, of as well, and bring services or plurality tangible support for the organisations at course, other problems with this kind of to a sector where the larger media the coal face. Port Talbot is already offering model. Bias is one – where those with the corporations are withdrawing investment. lessons from which we can all learn. deepest pockets can afford to push forward In time, we would like to take a functioning their own agendas. Rigorous, transparent Magnet model to other communities processes about how stories are agreed where there is no local newspaper. Rachel Howells has worked as a and paid for and an adherence to the There are some things we believe current affairs journalist for more than usual journalistic mantras of balance and government could do to make this easier ten years and is a former editor of Big independence will be essential, as well as for us. A crack squad of media experts, Issue Wales.

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6 Fishlock’s File Culture How heraldry prospers in today’s Wales Trevor Fishlock on the extraordinary survival of an invented tradition

Articles As genial as he is erudite, Tom Lloyd of In the Senedd we see another example Pembrokeshire is one of the five men in England of pageantry’s power and adaptability. The Fishlock’s File: How heraldry and Wales officially classed as extraordinary. In Queen arrives with the Duke of Edinburgh and prospers in the hierarchy of heraldry the senior officers of the Prince of Wales and opens proceedings today’s Wales the College of Arms in London work full-time with appropriate ritual. The Wales Herald and their status is classed as ordinary. Others Extraordinary is there to form a bridge Demographics of are consultants appointed as honorary and between old and new. A tradition is invented the language unpaid heralds - that is, as extraordinaries. before our eyes. Since August of last year Tom Lloyd has Tom Lloyd’s tabard was made originally for Book reviews: been the Wales Herald Extraordinary. You may the first Wales Herald, Major Francis Jones, National Museum have glimpsed him in the flesh, or on television who was appointed in 1963 in anticipation of still stranded on at the royal opening of the Senedd. On such the investiture of the Prince of Wales six years the M4 ceremonial occasions he walks in procession later. That was only the second investiture ever wearing a black velvet Tudor cap, breeches, held in Wales. The first was in 1911. Before that, A fifty year shift elegant black tights and buckled shoes, a white Victorian and Edwardian royalty rarely visited When nationalism stave of office in his hand. Wales. However, Wales itself, in its growing trumps socialism The distinctive glory of his get-up is the sense of nationhood, responded to its need tabard, a short coat of medieval origin. Such is for pageantry and ceremony in its own way. Lessons from a its weight he needs a temporary Jeeves to help The modern became a tradition secular rabbi him put it on. Front and back it is a dazzle of complete with robes, regalia, crowns and scarlet, gold and blue, adorned with heraldic thrones, poet-princes, music and a beloved lions and richly furnished with gold wire. A story anthem. University, library and museum were relates that heralds at a state ceremony sat so part of the same national flowering. closely together that their gold-wired tabards Tom Lloyd sees modest Senedd ceremony tangled and stitched them one to another. They as an expression of pride. “Heraldry helps to had to shuffle out like a chain gang to be freed. preserve a memory of Wales which had a Few writers resist noting that a herald in long and independent history,” he says. “It tells his tabard is a playing card on legs. But the wonderful stories and is part of our culture and presence of the Wales Herald Extraordinary sophistication.” At 56 he is a devoted history in full fig in the Senedd says something about man, steeped in architecture and the stories the remarkable persistence of heraldry. An of historical buildings, a contributor to the arcane art, a language, an identity system, a Pevsner Buildings of Wales series, author of storyteller and a practice with medieval roots, The Lost Houses of Wales, and currently High it does more than survive in the 21st Century, it Sheriff of . positively flourishes. It is bound to be irritating As a storehouse of Welsh history and to some, but it’s an old magic. heraldic knowledge he works closely with

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the College of Arms, founded in 1484. Thomas Woodcock, Garter King of Arms, the principal herald, told me, “We are technically part of the royal household but we’ve not had a pay rise since 1618. We don’t cost the country anything because we are self-supporting on the fees from new grants of arms. “So we have a vested interest in social change. If the same families remained prominent from generation to generation there would be no business for us. But there has always been a tremendous social mobility - as our records show. And we need 120 grants of arms a year to pay our way.” A coat of arms for a male peer costs £4,400. A woman pays just over £3,000 because her arms are simpler. A peer also pays extra for supporters, the heraldic figures or beasts holding his shield. During his consultations with new peers Mr Woodcock tries to steer them away from illustrating their arms with anything that would date quickly, a computer for example. A coat of arms is unique. Tom Lloyd agrees that it is a bit of showing-off, but believes strongly that it is there to be enjoyed as a part of family history. Heraldry is rooted in the bloody scrums of medieval warfare, in the badges and banners which enabled soldiers to tell friend from foe. Armoured knights adopted brilliant symbols and designs Tom Lloyd, Wales herald Extraordinary, pictured at the royal opening of the Senedd in June. for their shields and clothing as identity The weight of his tabard, a short coat of medieval origin, means he requires assistance to put on. cards. Heralds, the messengers and diplomats between opposing armies, important records of descent and land shared. “It drove the London heralds identified dead knights by their insignia. ownership. Tom Lloyd himself has a mad,” Tom said. Between wars heralds administered pedigree considerably longer than his He is currently advising on an jousting tournaments, the popular and arm. His family history and changing amendment to the royal badge of Wales, highly dangerous extreme sport of coats of arms are inscribed on a roll of used by the National Assembly since medieval knights. They registered each vellum made to last for centuries. 2008. It is based on the four-lion arms man’s coat of arms and ensured that it Heraldry in Wales differed from the of Llywelyn the Great and Llywelyn was unique. Sir Rhys ap Thomas staged English brand. Welsh heralds looked the Last. These date only from the 13th the last great tournament at Carew castle back to a golden age of chieftains before Century. The Red Dragon, the badge of in 1507, a five-day bash and a farewell to Wales was conquered. Those chieftains Wales since 1807 and the the middle ages. had no coats of arms, but Welsh heralds since 1953, was carried by Henry Tudor. Tournaments passed into history but later invented arms and awarded them He claimed it as the flag of his supposed heraldry prospered. Heralds evolved into to the chiefs’ descendants. The result was 7th Century ancestor , ‘last genealogists to the gentry and compiled that many Welsh families shared coats king of the Britons’. And that was before histories and pedigrees of noble families, of arms, unlike the English who never heraldry was even invented.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 73 6/Culture

Demographics of the language

Hywel Jones At the National Eisteddfod this year Huw Jones, of the position in 2004 and shows my estimates of explains how the new chair of S4C and a member of the Welsh the main components of change. we are losing Language Board, quoted some work that I produced The usual demographic model of total back in 2004 using the newly released results of population change distinguishes ‘natural change’, 3,000 Welsh the 2001 Census. It suggested that the number of defined as the difference between the number of speakers a fluent Welsh speakers in Wales was falling by 3,000 deaths and number of births, and change due to year a year. A couple of years later another measure of migration. A model for change in the numbers the change in the number of fluent Welsh speakers of speakers of a language also has to account for became available which lent weight to my earlier intergenerational transmission, that is the extent to estimate. Comparing the results of the Board’s which parents who can speak the language transmit Welsh Language Use Surveys of 2004-06 with those it to their offspring, and the effect of education. of the 1992 Welsh Social Survey undertaken by the Crucially too, one has to consider what constitutes Welsh Office, showed the numbers of fluent Welsh ‘Welsh speaking’. The flow chart accompanying speakers dropping from 363,000 in 1992 to 317,000 this article is headed ‘Annual change in the number in 2005, equivalent to a loss of 3,500 each year. of Welsh speakers’. Subsequently, I have changed The flow chart below illustrates my assessment this to say fluent Welsh speakers. I think the input

Annual change in the number of Welsh speakers (not to scale)

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For natural change, Estimated percentage of people aged 3 and over who said they and from education, my could speak Welsh 2001 Electoral Divisions (2003) – Wales figures gave a net loss of 1,400 fluent speakers. In fact, there will also be some adults learning Welsh. Though their contribution can be massive, unfortunately the numbers reaching the stage of fluency in one year are probably very low.

figures relating to children make it pretty clear that the concept underlying those calculations was always of fluent Welsh speakers. The total number of Welsh speakers may include many with a limited capability in the language. Fluency in itself is not a clearly defined concept but we do know that self-assessed fluency is correlated with active use of Welsh. The number of fluent Welsh speakers is in my view therefore likely to be of more or fifty years ago. Out-turn figures for per cent of them, giving 6.9 per cent in significance for the vitality of Welsh than 2002 were the most recent available the population. Taking that percentage the total number. at that time. 33,200 died in that year. I of the Government’s projection for So, let me explain how I derived assumed the percentage speaking Welsh the number of three-year-olds in 2002 the figures in the illustration, starting amongst 77-year-olds (19.5%) would be (30,200) gave me 2,100. Explicit figures with probably the most firmly based roughly the same percentage found for three-year-olds which came available considerations. We know how many amongst those dying in 2002. That gave from the Census after this derivation was people die every year. The 2001 Census 6,500 Welsh speakers dying. made showed that the actual figure for gave for each age group the percentage Next in terms of reliability are the 2001 was in fact 2,300. able to speak Welsh. In the case of the input figures of children speaking Welsh. In 2002, 6,563 pupils were assessed elderly I assumed that there was little The Census told me that of the three in as having Welsh as their first language difference between being able to speak to four-year-olds able to speak Welsh, for the national curriculum assessments Welsh and speaking Welsh fluently. Most 46 per cent were living in households at the end of Key Stage 1 (aged about 7). of the elderly who could speak Welsh where both parents, or the sole parent in They represented 18.9 per cent of pupils, could be assumed to have been brought single-parent households, were able to but only 16.9 per cent were considered up within Welsh speaking families, given speak Welsh. I assumed the percentage to be fluent according to the Schools that Welsh medium education in the would be the same amongst just three- Census’s figures. That would equate to more anglicised parts of Wales was not year-olds. In 2001 14.9 per cent of some 5,900. In the same year, only 5,389 widely available much more than forty them could speak Welsh, so I took 46 were assessed as having Welsh as their

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 75 “The IWA occupies a unique “In a time of transition for “The IWA is a quite place in welsh public life. Its wales, politically, the Institute extraordinarily valuable analysis of current issues of Welsh Affairs provides a body, and I am very proud is always professional and vital forum for all sides to to be a member of it.” extremely helpful.” come together over both Lord (Kenneth) Morgan Lord Richard of Ammanford strategically important and One of Wales’s leading historians Chairman of the Richard Commission contentious issues.” Baroness Ilora Finlay of Professor of Palliative Medicine, Join the IWA and Cardiff University support our work.

The work of the IWA depends I wish to become a member Please send me details about on the support and contribution and enclose a cheque for £40. becoming an IWA Fellow. of individual members across Wales and beyond who share I wish to become a member Name: and pay by credit/debit card our determination to mobilise Title: the sum of £ the nation’s human and social Address: resources in order to face the Account Number challenges ahead. By bringing _ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ Post Code: together partners in business, Tel: Fax: academia, and the public and Expiry date _ _ /_ _ voluntary sectors, the IWA is E-mail: helping to shape economic, social, I wish to pay by Direct Debit educational, environmental and (This will help us keep our costs down) Return to: Freepost cultural policy across Wales. INSTITUTE OF WELSH AFFAIRS Please send me a Direct Debit Institute of Welsh Affairs, 4 Cathedral application form. Road, Cardiff CF11 9LJ 8/Culture

first language at the end of Key Stage 3 Welsh speakers and 3,600 in-migrating therefore on the balance of in and out- (aged about 14). and so a net outflow of 1,600. migration. Unfortunately, there is little Trying to form a view of what the The situation will have changed data available on which to base a new situation was in an ‘average’ year since 2004. The number of people dying estimate. I think it reasonable to assume and bearing in mind that births were per year is lower now: only 30,600 in that there will usually be a net outflow. projected to fall, I concluded that it the year to mid-2011 compared with There is a substantial population of Welsh was reasonable to assume an inflow of 33,200 in 2002, so maybe only 6,000 speakers in England - I’ve estimated some 5,100 a year to the total number Welsh speakers died compared to the them to number 110,000, ignoring of ‘fluent’ Welsh speakers. 6,500 I showed. And more were born fluency considerations. But given that For natural change, and from - 35,300 - but that is unlikely to lead to the number in Wales is several times education, my figures gave a net loss a significant increase in the number of larger, and given a similar propensity to migrate, one would always expect the The education system is ensuring a slightly outflow to exceed the inflow. The only real question is the size of larger proportion of children are becoming the loss. I think it unlikely to be less than at least a few hundred, a figure which fluent speakers though actual numbers are gains support from the results of the not substantially different. Higher Education Statistics Agency’s Destinations of 2006-07 Leavers from Higher Education Longitudinal Survey, published at the end of August. They showed that 32.6 per cent of students from Wales who graduated with a first degree in 2006-07 and who were employed in November 2010 were working (and of 1,400 fluent speakers. In fact, there children raised at home to be fluent. presumably usually living) outside Wales. will also be some adults learning Not only is the number of homes where Given 5,640 Welsh students started on Welsh. Though their contribution can both parents, or the sole parent, speak first degrees in England in 2009-10, and be massive, unfortunately the numbers Welsh, almost certainly on a long-term assuming 15 per cent could speak Welsh reaching the stage of fluency in one year downward trend (again a result of this would suggest a net annual outflow are probably very low. They will in any demographic change) but the growth approaching 300 of Welsh speaking first case be balanced to some degree by in the proportion of births to mothers degree students alone. some people previously fluent becoming born outside the UK accounts for the I conclude that the number of fluent less so. My sums assume the balance is largest part of the increase. In 2010 10.4 Welsh speakers in Wales is still falling. exact and the net effect of both is zero. per cent of births were to mothers born The older speakers, raised to speak The estimates of the migration flows outside the UK, around twice the level Welsh at home, are being partially are much less reliable. However, in 2004 at the start of the decade. replaced, mainly by speakers produced I had at least the figures from the 2001 The education system is ensuring a by the education system. Annual net Census relating to flows in 2000-2001. slightly larger proportion of children are migration to Wales has been positive for Those moving into Wales were asked becoming fluent speakers though actual decades. Even stable numbers of fluent about their Welsh language ability by numbers are not substantially different. Welsh speakers in these circumstances the Census in Wales. Those moving to At the end of Key Stage 1, 6,728 were means that as a percentage of the entire England weren’t asked so I had to make assessed in 2011 compared with 6,563 population they are decreasing. The some brave assumptions about the in 2002 while at Key Stage 3 5,862 were effect of teaching Welsh as a second percentage speaking Welsh amongst assessed in 2011 compared with 5,389 language in schools may mask that those aged 15 to 29, most of whom were in 2002. So maybe my input figure of when the simple percentages from the likely to be students who came to Wales 5,100 would be more like 5,600 now. 2011 Census are reported. to study and were returning to England Thus, natural change (and education) after their studies. The assumptions may give a net loss now of -400. needed concerning the in-migrants were Whether the total number of fluent only slightly more firmly based. These Welsh speakers in Wales is increasing or Hywel Jones is a statistician at the Welsh workings gave me 5,200 out-migrating decreasing at the moment may depend Language Board.

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to undertake all of these duties. This a deal about the thinking that prevails at Reviews difficult, if not impossible task. the National Museum of Art, about the Additionally, Wales is not and never target audience for this book, and what is has been in a social economic sense, a considered a suitably representative image National Museum still wealthy country. When money was being from the national collection. stranded on the M4 generated on a large enough scale it did One of the important questions in Osi Rhys Osmond not enter the public realm in sufficient the establishing of a national collection amounts to initiate the institutions is, just how national do the acquisitions necessary to display the art produced in, need to be? In the case of Cardiff much or brought to Wales. Significantly, neither of the collection has grown in response was the authority to create institutions to art and objects that were gifts. Some of vested in the Welsh cultural community. these are extraordinary works, particularly The question of autonomy is reflected by the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist the invitation to Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, paintings that came in the various Davies the National Assembly’s first Presiding bequests. But what these gifts have done, Officer, to write the introduction, an as Peter Lord so ably describes in his acknowledgement of the recent relocation writing on , is create tensions of power to Cardiff Bay. between scholarship, curatorial ambition The history of the national collection and and the task of building a truly national of the museum itself is thoroughly described collection that still appear to be exerting an in the first chapter,Building a National Art influence on acquisition and display. Collection. In it Oliver Fairclough - who The publication effectively illustrates makes many of the more lucid contributions the evolution of our visual high culture Companion Guide to the Welsh National to the guide- tells the fascinating, but rather over the period considered. From work Museum of Art convoluted tale of the museum’s difficult collected, and/or commissioned by Oliver Fairclough and protracted birth, and of its patrons, noble families, like the Williams-Wynns of National Museum Wales, £16 99 enthusiasts and benefactors. Wynnstay, the Mostyns and the Mansel’s, In this review I discuss work illustrated to the tastes of a bourgeoning merchant in the publication and examine ways in class and later industrialists, steel and This publication celebrates exemplary which the collection itself is representative shipping magnates, coal-owners and their work from our official national collection of the history of our visual culture. descendants, of financial and legal wealth of art illustrated in colour and discussed The cover has a painting from 1911 as the industrial revolution entered its with a brief biography, history and by one of our most well-known artists, late stages when collectors and important provenance by the museum’s resident , 1878-1961. His second patrons such as James Pyke Thompson experts and the principle curators of the wife Dorelia, poses dreamily as a domestic supported the museum’s early ambitions. collection. Published to coincide with bohemian, staring out at the viewer while Each of the five chapters, beginning the opening of the new modern and leaning nonchalantly on a long handled with the 16th Century, has an instructive contemporary galleries, the re-hang of the implement in an English garden. This descriptive inventory outlining the latest current acquisitions, and to act as is an interesting choice, somewhere in museum’s holdings in art and artefacts an instrument for the rebranding of the the middle ground of taste, history and from that period, some from private collection as the National Museum of Art, acceptability, although the text published collections in Wales, others purchased the guide takes us through the collection in alongside makes rather dubious claims for between the 1950s and 1980s. In Virgin a synoptic journey from the 16th Century John having been influenced by French and Child by Giovanni Battisata, c.1500, a to the present day. Fauvism. If he was influenced by Fauvism, typical 16th Century Madonna and child, National Museum Wales is, by its the evidence is stronger in some of his has a meticulously painted Mary tenderly remit, permanently positioned in a difficult Arenig landscapes. Here he has reduced holding the infant Christ, her left hand expository role. London has official the directness of Fauvist colour to the drab gently cupping his naked foot while her and specific galleries to show historic, tertiary tones of suburban England, rather right supports his body in a pious and modern, and craft and than the hot hues of southern France. meditative composition. design, while in Cardiff one institution has The choice of this image tells us a great Applied arts objects enhance our

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comprehension of the culture from which artistic tourist. Simultaneously, influential romantic construct, the foregrounded the visual art emerged. They include European artists like Claude Lorraine figures converse, and eerily, almost bring Majolica plates and dishes from Italy, (c1600-1682), Landscape with St Philip the sound of voices to a silent scene. a beautiful silver ewer and basin from Baptising the Eunuch (1682) and Nicholas His Italian travels infuse this work with Bruges, the latter acquired by the Mostyns Poussin (1594-1665), The Finding of Moses elements of the idealised classical tradition. during the reign of Elizabeth I. They have (1651) were referencing classical Rome to The dark foreboding cliffs and pale sky a Welsh history and are a part of our locate their religious subject matter. conspire to theatrical effect. By identifying story as is the 1568 portrait of Katheryn of By now Welsh artists were travelling to the Welsh landscape with the classical Berain by Adriaen van Cronenburgh. A England and in the case of Thomas Jones values of the Roman Campagna, the seriously beautiful painting commissioned (1742-1803) and others, further afield to the Wales of the bourgeoning while she was living in Antwerp with her continent, particularly Italy. Most admired for becomes physically imbued with innate second husband, the merchant and royal his almost abstract renditions of Neapolitan and honourable cultural respectability. agent, Denbigh born, Sir Richard Clough. walls, in Buildings in Naples 1782, Jones J.M.W.Turner (1775-1851) took his Welsh Beginning several important dynasties acknowledges the formal beauty of the excursions as the century closed. Wales – bearing six children to four different regular geometry and pale sun-bleached was then safer than Europe and the ruins husbands, all prominent Welshmen- hence harmonies of the crumbling masonry and his Ewenny Priory (c.1797), captured her soubriquet ‘Mam Cymru’ (The Mother stucco of those ancient walls. His was a in pre-CADW chaos resonate with his of Wales). She is portrayed showing the prescient aesthetic with an increasing appeal famously luminous light. hesitant apprehension of someone living to modern sensibilities. These walls echo The 19th Century saw the emergence in interesting times, her hand on the skull the austere forms of the whitewashed farm of a number of Welsh artists who achieved a very obvious reference to mortality, buildings of his mid-Wales upbringing. This widespread recognition, among them the the prayer book offering the promise of highly restrained approach contrasts with sculptors John Gibson (1790-1866) and salvation by piety. This is an important Jones’ earlier and highly melodramatic William (1860-1952) acquisition affirming a European dimension painting The (1774), a re-imagining of who was to become an important patron to Welsh life, the influence of Spain in the the legendary story of the last bard, from of the museum. Gibson had studied in Low Countries and the dangerous rivalries Thomas Gray’s poem. In a wild Welsh Rome, as had a number of Welsh painters, between Canterbury and Rome. landscape a lone figure standing among the where as Welsh speakers, they became The powerfully dramatic double slaughtered prepares to throw himself the object of cultural curiosity as bearers portrait Sir Thomas Mansell and his wife from a Snowdonia mountain ledge to his of an ancient tongue. Gibson’s Aurora Jane, c.1625, is starkly beautiful in its certain death below. (1841-48) a carving in marble, a skill for stiff formality. Painted in predominantly Interestingly, hanging in the new which he was renowned, exhibits that stiff black and white it has an almost metallic galleries and illustrated later in the book, formalism soon to be eclipsed by the more sheen of immutable propriety. Attributed the work of Bedwyr Williams (b.1974) immediate responses that developed as to the British School the meticulous one of the newest stars in the Welsh the industrial revolution gathered pace. details of the couples’ clothes, the arching arts firmament takes the same subject, Naturally, the new age led to profound geometry of their ruffs, lace trimmings although William’s bard in Bard Attitude changes in the making and appreciation and embroidery create a sense of three (2005) is taken from a copy of Phillipe of art, as radical artists reacted to the dimensionality that goes past mere Jacques Loutherbourg’s (1740-1812) new experiences and opportunities representation to become physically version of the same legend. Being presented by the advance of steam driven iconic. This is a very powerful couple photographed, as he says, as “a cursing industrialism. Turner embraced these indeed, and their descendants remained muppet, fiddling with a harp on a rock” directly in his encounters with nature and prominent among the gentry of Wales. undermines the idea of defiant nobility the mechanical age, as did David Cox The English topographical artist in the face of immanent death. Williams’ (1783-1839) in his 1850 watercolour, Train Francis Place (1647- 1728) drew the work regularly inclines to the cheerfully on the coast. The romantic classicism of ruins of Pembroke Castle in 1678. These sardonic as he wittily demolishes cherished Goscombe John and the high academics drawings - among the earliest Welsh stereotypes of Welsh history and identity. lasted well into the next century. landscape studies - are concurrent with (1713-82), one of the However, change was inevitable and the Enlightenment enquiry and a growing great figures of Welsh art, often described collection contains seminal work by Degas ambition to map and record the landscape as the father of English , and Rodin, artists who were to profoundly of Britain for aesthetic, geological, Pembroke Town and Castle (c.1765) affect the way sculpture would be made. geographic and strategic purposes. As takes a similar viewpoint to the earlier The acceleration of industrial power and England’s nearest piece of exotica, Wales work of Francis Place. Here, however, consequent increase in wealth allowed became a popular destination for the accurate topography is secondary to patronage to take a more direct role in the

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making and accumulation of art in Wales. The Davies bequests form the core of the 19th and early 20th Century collection and the work of artists like Daumier (1808-1879) and Millet (1814-1875) suggest a concern with social issues that were to become the preoccupation of writers as well as artists and patrons as the century unfolded. The pre- Raphaelites are here, as are Manet (1832- 1883) and the celebrated Impressionists and post–Impressionist paintings of Monet (1840-1926), Cezanne (1839-1906), van Gogh (1853-90), and Sisley (1839-99) - who painted in Wales - all reproduced in excellent colour. Work by Lionel Walden (1961-1933) J.M. Whistler (1834-1903) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) also substantiate the rich diversity of the collection. Sir Thomas Mansell and his wife Jane, c. 1625, painter unknown: “… the arching geometry of their ruffs, lace The first half of the 19th Century trimmings and embroidery create a sense of three dimensionality that goes past mere representation to become physically iconic.” includes examples of work by Kandinsky (1866-1944), Max Ernst (1891-1976) and The work he exhibited In the house of my However, all in all this is a valuable Rene Magritte (1898-1967), also a crucial Father (1967-7) is a poignant image and an and well-produced publication, reflecting recent acquisition, the obligatory Picasso valuable and courageous acquisition. an extraordinary collection of art and (1882-1976) Still Life, purchased with the Strangely, but unsurprisingly, objects and confirming, contentiously assistance of the National Art Fund and the Welsh artists are in the minority in the perhaps, the official status of art and artists Derek Williams Trust. To be credible every final chapter,Art after 1950. This is a in Wales. It will be of great practical value gallery needs its Picasso, and this is ours. disappointing, though consistent feature of to the serious gallery visitor, the student There are large holdings of the discrete, the museum’s policy. However, Tim Davies and those interested in Welsh history. The gentle paintings and drawings of Gwen (b.1960), our representative in this year’s quality of writing varies, generally scholarly John (1876-1939) and the more flamboyant is here, with one of his and fluent but occasionally sliding into work of her brother Augustus. Paul Nash surgically deconstructed postcards, where workshop kids-speak. (1889-1946), Graham Sutherland (1903- an absent figure, silhouetted in Welsh The guide contains enough applied art 1980) and English romantics like John national costume questions assumptions of to sometimes feel like a saleroom catalogue. Piper (1903-1992) hang alongside Cedric culture and identity in a globalised world. It faithfully follows the strands of accepted Morris (1889-1982) and Stanley Spencer Perversely, there is no place for Iwan history and official policy. It has its glories, (1891-1959). links Dylan Bala (b.1956) which given his enormous considerable glories, although the brighter Thomas’s poetry to the visual art of Wales. contribution to the development of Welsh they shine the more dramatically they Josef Herman (1910-2000) and Martin art, both critically and materially during illuminate the vacant spaces in what is Bloch (1883-1954) represent a powerful the last 20 years is a serious oversight. meant to be a national collection. and influential group of Jewish refugee Validation by London is everything and Ultimately the effectiveness of a artists who found inspiration and a new life those included usually pass that test. worthwhile national collection depends on in Wales. The book includes illustrations of Also among the missing are: Anthony autonomy, an autonomy of mind that comes their work and that of Francis Bacon (1909- Shapland, Ivor Davies, Brendan Burns, with the acceptance of the new conditions 1992), Peter Lanyon (1918-1964), and other Sue Williams, Catrin Webster, Christine of engagement. For, although the political post-war British painters. Kinsey, John Selway, Phil Nichol, Maggie power base has shifted to Cardiff Bay, the There are images by Philip James and Cerith Wynn Evans, even curatorial philosophy of our newly branded Jones Griffiths (1936-2008) our most though he does pass the test. The missing National Museum of Art remains stranded distinguished war photographer, and people are augmented by absent artefacts; somewhere along the M4, probably, sadly, paintings by David Hockney (b.1937), and among them the quilt, carthen and on the other side of the Bridge. Lucien Freud (1922-2011). In the year Japanware, these wonders of 2000, British Art Show 5 brought Donald Welsh creativity surely deserving of a place Osi Rhys Osmond is an artist, writer and Rodney (1961-1998) to the museum. in a survey of our visual culture. cultural activist.

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A fifty year shift newspaper that he was a barrister first and important chapter on Kosovo, for Peter Stead and a politician second. He now admits at this time the Prime Minister of the day that from the outset his parliamentary was not getting the legal advice that he ambition was to be a law officer. His wanted from his Attorney General. This reward finally came 38 years later in book leaves us in no doubt that earlier in 1997. In the meantime he had served as his career the author had been highly adept Shadow Attorney General for almost 18 at using the parliamentary situation and his years in Opposition. What those bare facts ministerial links to achieve real benefits for disguise is the enormous physical effort steelworkers, the voters of Aberavon and required in sustaining a political career as a the people of Wales. He has provided a text- constituency MP, as a junior minister in the book for all those MPs who feel only their 1960s, as a Cabinet minister 1974-79 and as own impotence. a practitioner at the criminal bar - he had Lord Morris has written a book about taken silk in 1973. He talks of being a circus being a successful and professional artist riding two horses and at times during practitioner rather than being a polemicist the reading of this book I found myself or ideologue. Nevertheless he helps exhausted by the sheer logistics of a man to explain the rebirth of Wales that has running two homes, bringing up a family, occurred in his political lifetime and, of forever on the motorway and reading course, his own role in that story. Without Fifty Years in Politics and the Law constituency mail and either parliamentary any great fanfares he simply explains that John Morris papers or court briefs into the early hours. from his student days his aim was to work to University Of Wales Press, £24.99 The qualities needed to be a good establish all-Wales political institutions. From politician are very similar to those needed the moment that he took the surprising by a good attorney. An attention to detail decision to work for the Farmers Union There is a touching and revealing passage and an eye for the salient points are crucial, of Wales, right through to the moment at the end of Lord Morris’s autobiography as is the gift of being able to persuade when he stood alongside the Queen as she in which he hopes that his grandchildren others of your argument. These skills sanctioned the Welsh Assembly, he was to will read the book and accordingly formed the basis of his career but to them experience the fulfilment of his ambitions. appreciate the breadth of his interests. He Lord Morris added a consummate ability As he tells it the rebirth of Wales appears wants them to know that the man who of being able to use the system. A politician almost inexorable and inevitable. once had to persuade his Glyncorrwg constituents to re-align their rugby pitch to provide space for an advance factory, He talks of being a circus artist riding two on another day found himself attending an International Parliamentary Union horses and at times during the reading of Conference in Cape Town and having to this book I found myself exhausted by the persuade the delegates of over a hundred nations to support a report condemning sheer logistics of a man running two homes, torture that he had co-authored. In recommending his recollections to his bringing up a family, forever on the motorway grandchildren and other readers John and reading constituency mail and either Morris, quite appropriately and modestly explains, that his book is essentially parliamentary papers or court briefs into the a portrait and a record of a working career. With a peerage and double early hours. knighthood rounding it off, the former MP for Aberavon became perhaps the most highly decorated of recent Welsh who has mastered the papers then needs In 1957 the young John Morris failed parliamentarians. Primarily Lord Morris is to be fully aware of how parliament and to secure the Labour candidature for telling the story of how fifty years of hard the civil service work and must combine the Carmarthenshire constituency and work culminated in deserved recognition. that with an awareness of how the Prime he now speculates whether his success Following his election to Parliament Minister of the day is thinking.One note in that selection meeting would have in 1959 John Morris had told a Sunday of irony comes with his carefully written meant that the world would have heard

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less in later years about Gwynfor Evans. When nationalism leaves a lot of space for other potentially Thereafter, he has little to say about Plaid trumps socialism core beliefs. Nationalist parties in Europe and its aspirations for the new Wales David Melding have in the past absorbed hard right wing that John Morris was to experience was beliefs (Eastern Europe in the 1920s), overwhelmingly a creation of the Labour or religious practices (Eire until the Party. He acknowledges Jim Griffiths, 1950s). However, since the 1960s and Gwylim Prys-Davies, Cledwyn Hughes, the emergence of liberal nationalism it is Elystan Morgan and Emrys Jones as the socialism that has been most prominent in Welshmen who made devolution possible. nationalist parties. He expresses some mild displeasure at Plaid Cymru’s intellectual history itself the manipulations of George Thomas, but illustrates this eclecticism, starting with sees no need to spend any time analysing Saunders Lewis’ interest in the ideas the views and tactics of those dissenting of key European and often Catholic Labour colleagues whom he quite rightly nationalists and moving on after the War implies had failed to interpret the times to Gwynfor Evans’ more stolid advocacy through which they were living. The truth of decentralised socialism. Sandry was that events in Scotland, by-election is fair and tactful in examining these results and Labour’s inability to win trends, particularly the question of the effective parliamentary majorities had authoritarian nationalism that prevailed in made some form of devolution inevitable. many European states between the Wars The major lesson to be learnt from this that inevitably influenced some nationalist book is that it was Harold Wilson and Jim Plaid Cymru: An Ideological Analysis thought in Wales. Callaghan who made devolution possible. Alan Sandry So has Plaid Cymru gorged or just was left to round things off. Welsh Academic Press, £48.00 nibbled on the ideology of socialism? Many readers will be left wanting a Sandry believes that Plaid’s socialist repast political commitment to Wales, and indeed has been so complete that it makes more to the Labour Party, to be wrapped up in Alan Sandry has given new voice to the sense to refer to Plaid first and foremost more ideological terms. However, Lord interesting question: what is Plaid Cymru as a socialist party. This is not to say that Morris is not that kind of Welshman - he for? Sandry utilises the concepts of the no eclecticism remains. There are more once described his main interests as fishing political theorist Michael Freeden to centralist and even right wing elements in and shooting. He has upheld the values of a examine Plaid Cymru’s core, peripheral Plaid Cymru, but they are marginal. Sandry rural Welshman forced to earn his living in and adjacent beliefs. This leads Sandry to makes a bold assertion when he says we an urban world. conclude that is a thin can describe “Plaid Cymru’s ideology His career reminds us of those heady ideology which, to be politically effective, as being akin to socialist ideology”. days when the best talents of a generation has been fattened up with policies from While it does not convince me, he presented themselves at Welsh Labour the more comprehensive menus of should be thanked for providing such a adoption meetings. It also clearly illustrates socialism and environmentalism. provocative conclusion. that politics is a human business in which So far so good. Few would disagree Classifying nationalism as a ‘thin’ success goes to the best lobbyists and that the core concept of nationalism (that ideology in need of greater policy operators. At one point he explains how nations and states should be coterminous) substance runs the risk of portraying informal and fortuitous was the emergence of an expedient that became graced with the title the ‘Barnett-Formula’. Everyday politics is rarely about ideology, it’s far more Sandry makes a bold assertion when about being able to be in the right position at the right time. Lord Morris has written a he says we can describe “Plaid Cymru’s story for his grandchildren and a text-book ideology as being akin to socialist ideology”. for our aspiring politicians. While it does not convince me, he

Peter Stead is a cultural historian of should be thanked for providing such a 20th Century Wales. provocative conclusion.

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modern liberal politics as an aggressive generation of Plaid thinkers. Independence Lessons from contest where little common ground is back in fashion and past attempts to a secular rabbi naturally exists. Surely one of the reasons theorise it away find little favour. Does John Osmond that nationalism is enjoying a resurgence anyone remember ‘free association’? around the world is because key concepts Sandry does not fully address two such as democracy and welfarism are important developments that surely accepted. This has allowed the age of impinge heavily on Plaid’s identity. First, ‘small worlds’ to develop according to to what extent has Plaid adopted socialist the Canadian thinkers David Elkins and rhetoric principally to compete with Richard Simeon. Labour? If Plaid has responded to the Here the very size of political Welsh political climate in this fashion, and communities is seen to have a direct I think it has to some degree, it remains Even if we accept that a fierce ideological battle continues to rage in modern democracies, why would socialists have wanted to join Plaid Cymru when, for much of its history, it was very distant from power?

impact on the success of public policy in more eclectic than socialist in motivation Old Testament stories with a largely democratic but post ideological and, at its core, still a nationalist party. a Freudian twist world. Many core beliefs in politics Of course we cannot run a random trial Leo Abse are now shared by socialists, liberals, where Plaid would also have to compete Karnac, £20.99 nationalists and even conservatives. It in a Wales dominated by a centre-right would seem that most political ideologies political culture. However, one has only have slimmed down from the fat and to look at Ireland to see how nationalist I may be among the last generation in intolerant days of the 1930s. parties respond in more conservative Wales to have been brought up on tales Even if we accept that a fierce environments. Sandry has not provided of the Bible, drawn mainly from the New ideological battle continues to rage in enough evidence to convince me that Testament to be sure, but with a fair modern democracies, why would socialists Plaid Cymru is essentially a socialist party. sprinkling of the Old as well. My early have wanted to join Plaid Cymru when, for Secondly, this interesting study devotes imagination was bound up with stories much of its history, it was very distant from too little time to the Rainbow coalition that of Abraham being commanded to kill his power? It seems more plausible to argue so nearly appeared in 2007. True, those only son Isaac, of Moses being placed in a that, while socialists have undoubtedly on the left of Plaid were horrified by the wicker basket and let drift down the Nile, joined Plaid Cymru, they have been more prospect of sitting in government with ‘the of the tribes of Israel freeing themselves powerfully motivated by the prior idea Tories’! Yet Plaid’s leadership was ready through the parting of the Red Sea, of of nationalism. to do a deal. A party that was dedicated bushes catching fire, golden idols, graven The difficulties with Sandry’s central above all else to socialism would surely not images, fatted calves, and of the lands of thesis are clearly seen in the political have entertained the prospect of working Canaan, Samaria and Judea. character of Plaid Cymru’s leaders. Only with Conservatives with equanimity. It has often been said that the Welsh Dafydd Elis Thomas could be viewed In the end, this work raises some know more about the geography and without contortion as a socialist. And, important questions without quite providing history of Israel than they do of their own of course, Dafydd Elis Thomas often answers of equal substance. However it is a country, and that was certainly true when made himself unpopular with activists by welcome addition to the literature and may I was growing up in the 1950s. But those advocating a very nationalist lite but pro- inspire others to tackle the question, ‘what days are long gone. And, although our socialist agenda. is Plaid Cymru really for?’ young people today are in many ways Plaid’s members seem gripped by the more sophisticated and worldly wise, I can’t national question above all else. In recent help but feel that they have lost touch with years the neo-nationalism of Dafydd Elis something primordially precious. Thomas and Cynog Dafis (which has A reading of Leo Abse’s last book, hinted at a federal option for Britain and David Melding is Conservative AM published posthumously earlier this year, an autonomous but not independent for South Wales Central and Deputy will tell you why. As he was coming towards Wales) has been repudiated by a new Presiding Officer. the end of his long and remarkable life,

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the nonogenerian returned to the Talmudic done in Parliament on what are called that the daughter erased references to her roots of his childhood in early 20th Century ‘political issues’.” mother in her entry in Who’s Who, ceased south Wales where he was brought up in Typically, Abse quotes this accolade in all communication with her when she was the orthodox faith. He tells how he would his book – not, he claims, out of conceit, a teenager, and in later life only referred sit at the knee of his grandfather, who had but because it shows that to her in deprecatory terms. Abse says the migrated to Wales from Russian Poland, and relationship provides a modern illustration hear tales from the Midrash Haggadah, the “it is possible for a politician to engage of the myth of Demeter and Persephone, of rabbinical commentary on the legendary in successful counter-cultural assaults the destructiveness that can be unleashed parts of the Scriptures beginning five in our country and, although within when mother and daughter struggle centuries before Christ. He recalls how “in a the culture of, in particular England, unforgivingly with each other, when the grubby ante-room of the local synagogue” he there are few more undesirable resentments and hostility within the dyadic was taught to read Hebrew fluently and to motifs than an indifference to relationship are never assuaged, and when translate the texts of the Pentateuch. “There I or antagonism to children, it is there is never a reconciliation between the discovered for the first time how the dramatic nevertheless challengeable.” two. As he also declares: lives of the patriarchs were punctuated by awesome parricides and infanticides.” Abse singles out England in this judgement “Thatcher took that battle with her It is clear that here also began Leo as a place where children are emotionally mother into the public arena; traditional Abse’s life-long fascination with the starved on such a routine basis that ‘Old’ Labour was a party identifying internal psychodramas that determine the 2007 report of the United Nations with the mother, a party whose self- the development of our personality, Children’s Fund found them to be the most perception and ideals were essentially our relationships and behaviour. In this neglected and unhappy in the western mother-orientated, even as yesterday’s endeavour, later in life he was much world. However, he acknowledges a Conservative Party was father-orientated. informed by the insights of Freud and his contrast with Wales. As he puts it, when he The Labour Party was the ‘welfare party’, followers who in turn depended on the began his campaign to reform the adoption maternally concerned, the provider, the bountiful caring one, the party that The significance of all this for us today is that it provided Abse with a created the tendering National Health profound understanding of human nature. Service and gave the protection to the stumbling in our society of the National texts and myths of the Bible and ancient laws he was confident of a speedy and Insurance Act, the creator of the 1945 Greece. For Abse, the autodidact, his positive response. However, his optimism welfare state. With great effect, Thatcher reading of Freud only confirmed what he was misplaced: displaced all her rage against her mother had absorbed unconsciously as a youth in an onslaught on what she described from his study of the Book. “I was making incorrect assumptions as the ‘nanny state’, stigmatizing it as a The significance of all this for us today about England that were based on the cultivator of dependency and a subverter is that it provided Abse with a profound warmer and more affectionate family of individual effort and aspiration. understanding of human nature. In turn units of the Welsh Valleys when I was Margaret Thatcher was engaged in this explains how he was empowered a lad, and upon the passionate Jewish matricide not politics, and the uncaring to take on fearsome opponents and family life with which I was so familiar.” Thatcherite society we now have in place obstacles in his efforts to civilise the proclaims her victory.” way society deals with such matters as Nonetheless, England was to benefit divorce, homosexuality, adoption and enormously from the impulses that derived This passage is worth quoting at length suicide. As Pontypool’s MP from 1958 from Leo Abse’s blend of Jewish and because it illustrates the insights that can until 1983, and for Torfaen until he Welsh consciousness. They also profoundly be gained from a lifetime’s study of human retired from Westminster in 1987, he informed his insights into the UK’s present behaviour, sourced in a culture deeply was extraordinarily successful as a back political predicaments. These, he judges, imbibed with the lessons from millennia of bencher in putting reforming social are largely the result of Margaret Thatcher’s generations recorded in ancient texts such legislation on the statute book. Following legacy, carefully nurtured by Tony Blair as the Greek myths and the Old Testament. the 1975 Children’s Act that regulated and New Labour. He recorded them at We lose touch with that inheritance at our fostering and adoption, Home Secretary length, in two highly controversial psycho- peril. Leo Abse’s bequest, now from beyond Jim Callaghan wrote to him: biographies, Margaret, Daughter of Beatrice the grave, is to warn us of the dangers of “This is another reform that your (1989), and The Man Behind the Smile: Tony the loss. In his later years he seems to me to own activity and zeal has been largely Blair and the Politics of Perversion (1996). have become a kind of secular rabbi. I think responsible for. You will have a wonderful Thatcher was the more significant in the he would have liked that decription. collection of worthwhile scalps under impact her personal predicaments made your belt before you finish. And you do upon public policy. Abse believed this to much more good in terms of human be the consequence of her antagonism happiness than 90 per cent of the work towards her mother, Beatrice – so much so John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

agenda winter 2011—issue 45 | 87 Last word Out with our toxic brands Peter Stead

The new Wales the National Eisteddfod. Rumour has it No recent event has been as saddening offers rich veins that a BBC Wales investigation will reveal as the way in which the University of Wales of gossip and that Eisteddfod officials have accepted has been dragged into the public eye. rumour. I only have to sit anonymously (it hospitality packages at the forthcoming Whatever the cases of mismanagement and pays to come from Swansea) in a Cardiff London Olympics. Furthermore, at recent negligence by the University, the allegations wine bar to find myself adjacent to legions of eisteddfodau there were cases of individual were never publicly discussed in any kind of the hangers-on: aides, advisors, consultants, choristers singing in at least two choirs in context. The original accusatory television and aspiring candidates, all of whom have the same competition and of cornet players programmes were essentially tabloid in stories to tell. This was how I learnt that the switching bands on the day of competition nature. There was no attempt to outline the First Minister intends to take his Cabinet to in transactions in which Swansea City complexity and range of the University’s the same toughening-up facility in Poland season tickets changed hands. work, nor was there any effort to explain that was deployed so effectively by Warren ‘Augean stables’ comes to mind. Perhaps the degree to which all universities now Gatland. How wonderful that snaps of Wales is in need of an effective toxic detector have to trade in the international market Cabinet members, dressed only in swimwear (TD). But careful reflection might lead us place. The paramount need was for a and plunging into sub-zero temperatures, to consider whether it is wise to rush to a fuller public debate on higher education will be used to indicate their dedication to demolition of our hard-fought-for national in Wales. Certainly the University of Wales the regeneration of Wales. We will soon institutions. should have provided fuller explanations have the fourth best economy in the world. This autumn has revealed the fragility but from the outset the BBC, the Press, “If only we can kick-start it”, someone of Western post-industrial society. The university leaders and politicians should cruelly joked. sheer impotence of the world’s leaders in have ensured the widening of the debate. More worrying was the gossip from the the face of economic crisis has forced all It became a season of knee-jerk reactions, office of , the Minister of us who care about our own particular cheap comments and hasty improvisation. often referred to as the dynamic, hard- national identity to have a clearer notion of At times of crisis someone has to identify tackling midfielder in Labour’s team, our relative strengths and weaknesses. In the fundamental points. We have wasted the the Welsh Nobby Stiles or Billy Bremner that respect the first priority is to ensure the advantages a national federal university had as it were. What I hear is that, following quality, depth, sophistication and absolute offered us. At any time in the last 30 years Sam Warburton’s infamous tackle and honesty of the manner in which we debate Wales could have planned a fully integrated Gatland’s admission that he subsequently major issues. In that respect this has not been system with a variety of different institutions contemplated cheating, Leighton now an encouraging year in Wales. within a clear hierarchy. In the USA several regards the century-old WRU brand as Only slowly has the realisation dawned state systems provided the classic models toxic and has recommended its abolition. that in post-industrial Wales, education has to that we should have copied. Having missed He firmly believes that Regional Rugby be the major priority. During 2011 we have that opportunity we were left with a situation represents Wales’s best hope and wants debated education furiously and we always in which metaphors like musical chairs and the four Welsh Regions to compete in a end up listing some real achievements, even in the bag come to mind. new European Nine Nations competition. as we confess our relative failure compared Inevitably, and ironically, our best Regular international fixtures at four to other countries. All too often there is universities, having gone their own way, will Welsh venues will transform the south more waffle than substance in our education have to work together more closely whilst Wales economy. Moreover, he is pressing debates. A welter of management-speak and other institutions will have embarrassing for a fifth Welsh region that will bring hollow social-science jargon has blunted our moments looking at the annual league international rugby to Wrexham. educational cutting-edge. Our nurturing of tables. The University of Wales brand still has It was said of Lloyd George that he was the humanities and science within a national great potential and we should wish it well. the first British Minister to actually search system of schools and colleges had once Some will come to regret abandoning it. The through filing cabinets looking for things given the nation a sheen and distinction. great danger now is that we might lose some to do. Leighton has clearly learnt that Inevitably, the shrinking of industry and of the drive to bring business and industry lesson for I heard his aides mention that he financial constraints have created pressures into academe. In the modern era universities does not intend to stop at the WRU. He is but it is nevertheless a scandal that, given are too important to be left to bureaucrats already looking at the relative toxicity (RT) devolution, Wales has not sustained a clear and politicians. We have collectively made of the Welsh Baptist Union, the Farmers’ guarantee of an education allowing both fools of ourselves this summer. These are Union of Wales and most controversially individual and national fulfilment. dangerous times to be playing games.

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