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Home , Chapter Arts Centre, Curran Steels, Eurfyl ap Gwilym, Huw Lewis, Keith Davies, Learned Society of Wales

+ Peter Lord Restricting access at the National Library Rosemary Butler Why we need more AMs Eurfyl ap Gwilym Taxing powers for Assembly Peter Riddell EU referendum threatens UK Stuart Cole Bypassing the tunnels Kevin Morgan Age of the City Region Michael Sullivan Labour’s co-option of nationalism Welsh way for delivering post How Aled Eirug The language’s biggest challenge sustainable Maggie Cullinane Quilting for Africa Deian Hopkin is Bevan’s Remembering the trenches Alice Entwhistle Award winning Rhian Edwards NHS?

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the welsh How sustainable Editorial Manager: John Osmond Editorial Board: is Bevan’s NHS? , Geraint Talfan Davies, Kirsty Davies, Rhys David, Gerry Holtham, Jessica Blair, Marcus In our interview with Adam Cairns, chief The reality is, however, that whatever Longley, Clare Critchley executive of the Cardiff and Vale Health government is elected at Westminster in Literary Editor: Peter Finch Board on pages 25-27 he says the Welsh 2015, financial pressures on the Welsh NHS Office Manager: NHS can be insulated from the increasingly will be inescapable. Last September a Wales Laura Knight market-driven health service in England. As Audit Office report revealed that if the Design: he puts it, “Although they’re commissioning ’s spending allocations [email protected] more and more of their services from the continue unchanged then health spending private sector, at the end of the day the state will rise from 42 per cent to 57 per cent To advertise, tel: 029 2066 0820 still pays the bill.” of its overall budget within a decade. The publisher acknowledges the The problem with this is that the amount In his article on page 20 David Phillips, financial support of the Welsh Books Council. the state will be paying in future is likely an economist with the Institute of Fiscal to fall substantially. There will then be a Studies, sets out in stark terms what this Institute of Welsh Affairs knock on impact on the Welsh block grant would mean for spending on other areas 56 James Street, , Cardiff, CF10 5EZ as a result of the way the Barnett formula, such as local government and economic Tel: 029 2066 0820 which determines the amount the Welsh development. The Welsh Government has Email: [email protected] Government receives, is calculated. These changed tack in its budget for 2014-15 and www.iwa.org.uk implications were made transparently clear is planning to increase real-term spending The IWA is a non-aligned independent think-tank and research institute. in a speech Prime Minister on health and social services by 1.3 per Members (annual subscription £40) gave to the Lord Mayor of ’s banquet cent. But that means spending on local receive agenda three times a year, can purchase reports at a 25 per cent in November. He said his government was government will fall by 9.1 per cent and reduction, and receive discounts when sticking with the task of bringing down the education by 11.5 per cent. If this were attending IWA events. deficit, and then added, “But that doesn’t just to continue for a decade then the Welsh mean making difficult decisions on public Government’s budget would be distorted Branches spending. It also means something more beyond recognition. North Wales Secretariat profound. It means building a leaner, more In their interviews with us both Adam c/o efficient state. We need to do more with less. Cairns and acknowledge this 6 Maes yr Haul, Mold, Flintshire CH7 1NS Not just , but permanently”. reality. Drakeford has some interesting ideas Tel: 01352 758311 This is a significant change of emphasis about how health and social services could be that will have major consequences for redesigned to deliver services more cheaply Gwent Secretariat c/o Rob Southall Wales. When he became Prime Minister and efficiently. Tackling the 20 per cent or University of Wales, Newport, three years ago David Cameron said he so of medical interventions which he says Campus hadn’t come into politics to make cuts. They have little or no benefit is one. Recalibrating PO Box 179, Newport NP18 3YG were being forced on him by circumstances. waiting lists so that a points system is deployed Tel: 01633 432005 Now, however, he is talking about a to prioritise patients is another. Adam Cairns West Wales Secretariat permanent project of building a smaller is thinking about alternatives to the way the c/o Margaret Davies state. Certainly, that is what Welsh Health market is used in England to produce health Principal’s Office, Trinity University College, Minister Mark Drakeford believes. As he efficiencies and drive down costs, suggesting Carmarthen SA31 3EP tells us on page 25, if David Cameron wins more transparency and reporting of results – Tel: 01267 237971 the general election in 2015, he will have a competition of naming and shaming Swansea Bay Secretariat another five years to pursue a smaller state, between . c/o Delith Thorpe after which “the NHS in Wales will be a If they are to work such ideas will 38 Southlands Drive, very different organisation to the one it is demand a major culture shift in the way Swansea SA3 5RA ”. That is why he believes the general the Welsh NHS is managed. Some heroic Tel: 01792 404315 election will be decisive in influencing future optimism is required to envisage that IWA Women planning of the Welsh NHS. For, as he says, the necessary savings will be achieved c/o Kirsty Davies if Labour wins, although austerity measures without making the service unrecognisable [email protected] would have to be continued for a while, compared with the one we have today. But Tel: 07900 692898 at least there would be a UK government at least we should welcome the fact that key in power that believed in growing state leaders in the Welsh NHS are facing up to services rather than reducing them. the difficulties they face.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 1 Contents Agenda 51 Winter 2013/14 35. Loose ends of 50. Why Labour could First Minister pictured alongside Robert J.R. Thomas’s statue of Aneurin Bevan, asymmetrical lose half its income erected in 1987 at the west end of Cardiff’s a Queen Street. Photo: Natasha Hirst constitution building Mark Lang examines the James Mitchell asks how implications of a fundamental the Scottish referendum will shift in the relations between 4.  Essay affect Wales the trade unions and the party Clouds of witnesses they created Peter Lord takes issue with the National Library’s new policy of restricting access to its collection 3 9.  News Economy 5 10. ClickonWales Education 38. Newport’s blue route 12. Outlook Stuart Cole examines 52. PISA challenge to Dreaming fiction in options for by-passing the Welsh education the Valleys Brynglas tunnels on the M4 Philip Dixon says seeing Welsh –-Peter Stead north of Newport GCSE-drilled youngsters – Jane Aaron performing in Pisa is like –-Daniel G. Williams 41. Age of the City Region watching a rugby league side –-Angela Graham Kevin Morgan explains why playing rugby union 2 Wales is finally coming to Changing Union terms with connecting the 54. Power play in growth Valleys with the coast of Welsh medium 1 28. Tax powers would education enhance the Assembly’s 44. How housing can Aled Eirug finds a major

Health engagement with the boost rural economy challenge for the language is electorate David Goodwin advocates a that it continues to be used 20. Sustaining spending Eurfyl ap Gwilym unravels scheme to provide an answer outside the school gates on the NHS will hit what the UK government is to the need for affordable rest of the budget saying in response to the Silk homes in the Welsh countryside David Phillips analyses Commission the Welsh Government’s change of priorities in 31. Irish referendum vote 6 health funding shows way for Wales Environment Rosemary Butler welcomes 4 23. Demand and budget a new report advocating an Politics 56. Sustainable cuts will force health increase in the number of development slips change AMs in the National Assembly 46. Carwyn’s ‘’ down Welsh priorities Marcus Longley argues that we philosophy spikes Gareth Wyn Jones reflects on need to organise NHS Wales Plaid’s guns a paradox that while evidence in a radically different way Michael Sullivan argues we for climate changes gets ever are witnessing the rebirth of more stark politicians side 25. The dilemmas social democracy as a result with the sceptics of Welsh health of Labour’s co-option of decision-makers Welsh nationalism 60. Wales hit by quotas John Osmond interviews extended to under ten Health Minister Mark 33. Instability beckons 48. Welsh Water can metre fleet Drakeford and Cardiff and beyond the Scottish vote provide a model for Jeremy Percy explores the Vale Health Board Chief Peter Riddell warns that the real Royal Mail dilemmas facing our fragile Executive Adam Cairns about threat to the union could be Peter Hain says a Labour inshore fishing industry the stark choices they face in posed by the 2017 referendum government should adopt sustaining the NHS in Wales on EU membership a Welsh ‘not-for-dividend’ model for our postal service

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Newsflash

• A Citizen’s Service for Wales 74. ‘Don’t hate the media, Wednesday 22 January 2014 12.30pm – 2.00pm be the media’ Media Briefing Room, , Cardiff Bay 7 Simon Roberts asks The first in the IWA Senedd Papers series will propose an innovative scheme to tackle the dual problems of youth International whether the internet can unemployment and an ageing population in Wales. plug the democratic deficit Entry free but booking essential. 62. Small-scale in mainstream Welsh press • Inspire Wales Awards launch, beekeeping in the and broadcasting sponsored by Western Power Distribution developing world Thursday 23 January 2014, 11.00am Martin Jones describes Marble Hall, City Hall. Cardiff. how a Welsh-based In conjunction with the Western Mail the Inspire Wales Awards are a national Awards scheme that honours and celebrates those charity is making a big who have made a significant contribution to Welsh life. impact in Uganda 10 Booking essential - visit www.iwa.org.uk Culture or call 029 2066 0820 64. Quilting for Africa • Pints, Poems and Pies with Owen Sheers Maggie Cullinane explains 76. Fishlock’s File Thursday 20 February 2014 6.30pm how she became involved How a corkscrew and Millennium Stadium, Cardiff in a project to support honey saved a royal line Owen Sheers in conversation with Felicity Evans On the eve of Wales’ crucial match against France the IWA invites mothers at risk from dying of Trevor Fishlock describes you inside the players dressing room of the Millennium Stadium complications in childbirth how a former Prince of for an evening with WRU writer-in-residence Owen Sheers. Wales survived an arrow IWA members: £60 + VAT; Non-members: £75 + VAT through his head To book please call 029 2066 0820 • Robert Peston Gregynog Series Lecture 78. Live wire act Thursday 3 April 2014 6.30pm 8 Alice Entwistle profiles a poet Great Hall, Aberystwyth Arts Centre Robert Peston is the BBC’s Economics Editor and an honorary Heritage who says the Welsh want to fellow of Aberystwyth University. Prior to joining the BBC, he suck the marrow out of life was and financial editor of the , 66. Wales remembers City Editor of and a columnist for the New the trenches Statesman and Sunday Times Deian Hopkin outlines the 82. Reviews • IWA Annual Business Conference - City Regions: activities being planned An oblique glance Aspiration or Reality? to commemorate the at a cloud of artists Friday 28 March 2014, 13.30pm centenary of the Great War Osi Rhys Osmond Venue to be confirmed Speakers include Roger Lewis, Group Chief Executive of the Welsh Rugby Union and Chair, South East Wales City Region 68. Ghostly imprints of A problematic Board; and George Ferguson Mayor of Bristol, first independent an epicentre of the Zionist role model mayor to lead a major city in Britain. Booking essential. Visit www.iwa.org.uk or call 029 2066 0820. maritime age Naomi Jones Peter Finch looks back at a time when Cardiff was the Portrait of an Just Published coal of the world elusive bohemian The Blue Route – A cost-effective solution Huw Osborne to relieving M4 congestion around Newport By Stuart Cole Published in association with the Chartered Institute Wells we should know of Logistics and Transport 9 Barry Morgan Digital download at www.iwa.org.uk Communications Size Matters: Making the National Assembly more effective Published by the Changing Union project (IWA, Wales 88. Last Word: Governance Centre and Cymru Yfory/Tomorrow’s Wales) in 70. Magazines forced to Random association with the Electoral Reform Society. grasp funding nettle supernumeraries in a Free digital download from Changing Union website Michael Ballinn reports Commons of lost souls www.changingunion.org.uk on radical changes to the Peter Stead The Reformed Union: the UK as a federation future support for Welsh By AM writing in English Digital download price £5 at www.iwa.org.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication Free to members may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded or otherwise without the permission of the publisher, the Institute of Welsh Affairs. ISSN 1464-7613 More information: www.iwa.org.uk Essay —Essay a Clouds of witnesses

Peter Lord takes issue with the National Library’s new policy of restricting access to its collection

My new book Relationships with Pictures is a debate banned. sort of autobiography, though an oblique one, The Museum’s pretext was that the since it’s built around a discussion of fifteen publicity material produced by the Academy pictures, most of them from my own collection. had referred to certain unfortunate events ’ve tried to explain why they are important concerning the Art Department that were sub Articles to me individually, but also collectively as the judice at the time. Two policemen ascended environment within which I function every day. the stairs to the office of the Academy in Mount Essay: Their physical presence represents the inner Stuart Square and informed the Director of reality of my identity. They are the equivalent of the position. When this fact emerged, even Clouds of the cloud of witnesses to faith spoken of in the the Western Mail was moved to describe the witnesses bible, through which people ‘seek a country’, as Museum as “paranoid”. Eventually, the police expressed by St Paul. agreed that as long as the participants in the News Not everyone is lucky enough to be event didn’t mention the sub-judice issue, surrounded by paintings in their home, and the Museum would have no case against the Outlook: that is why we need art museums – places that Academy, and the debate could proceed. Dreaming fiction belong to us all, where we can experience In the absence of a representative from the in the Valleys the presence of our collective cloud of Museum - the Director refused to participate - Peter Stead witnesses. However, in public institutions, and most of the ‘debate’ was pretty dull. However, especially in places like Wales, where identities ten minutes before the end the Curator of Jane Aaron are conflicted and contested, the choice of Art, Timothy Stevens, wandered in and the Daniel G. witnesses is often problematic. atmosphere changed. He was identified by one Williams In 1993 I published a short volume The of the audience, who asked him if he would care Angela Graham Aesthetics of Relevance in which I analysed the to comment on the criticisms being made of his myth that Welsh cultures were in some way policies. His peremptory response – “Not really” congenitally unvisual. I argued that the Art – was followed by a stunned silence. Recovering Department of the National Museum reinforced her composure, the person who had asked this damaging myth by showing too few Welsh the question pressed Stevens specifically on his pictures in its galleries. Worse, it interpreted hanging policy: “Well, you’ll just have to wait those that it did display as marginal contributors until the new galleries open in October 1993, to English high art tradition, rather than as won’t you,” was his reply. expressions of Welsh cultural identities. The debate and the reaction of the Museum, In short, the argument was that we were at first paranoid and then arrogant, was taken being presented with the wrong witnesses, and up in newspapers and periodicals for a time. that the reason for this was ultimately political. People on both sides became rather angry. It was a manifestation of internal colonialism. The point is that pictures matter, because This accusation annoyed the Museum, and they come to represent, through interpretation when the Welsh Academy decided to pursue in historical narratives, particular identities. the matter in public through a debate at the They differentiate, and so become a focus of Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, they became allegiance, especially in contested political even more annoyed. In an extraordinary contexts – or they did at that time. It was a move, the Museum approached the Crown time when, in this country, the political status Prosecution Service in an attempt to have the quo was under challenge in many fields.

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Furthermore, in the particular field of homogenisation visual culture, throughout Europe and through the infiltration the United States it was also a time of English and, when established historical narratives indeed, of new kinds – connoisseurial, élitist, and sexist of language that are narratives – were being challenged by technologically rather sociological and political readings of than psychologically pictures. As John Berger expressed it in structured. History Ways of Seeing, in 1972: has been revealed as mutable – as a “A people or a class that is cut off retrospective construct from its own past is far less free to of justification, rather choose and to act as a people or than as a guiding path class than one that has been able to of truth. situate itself in history. This is why In this changed – and this is the only reason why – context, my impression the entire art of the past has now is that psychological become a political issue”. security is located largely in detached and At that time I conceived of the ephemeral superficialities construction of human identities in terms of appearance and of a matrix of three co-ordinates: place, behaviour, that we language and history. It seemed to me might describe as that only within a coherent matrix of this fashion-identities. To demonstrate the relationship between virtual and physical reality Peter Lord has in kind was it possible for the individual They are chosen – the his hands the frame containing the picture shown on the screen in front of him, Young to achieve the psychological security mantra of ‘choice’ Woman with Ringlets, an 1847 painting by the Welsh portrait artist William Roos. necessary to contribute to a confident being a characteristic and creative culture which could develop manifestation of the capitalist myth that through the apparently familiar imaging political, economic and artistic aspirations. drives it all – from a digital catalogue that of photography, and especially since Everything flowed from that. is territorially unlocated, that transcends photography no longer necessarily However, I think are now particular language, and that is devoid of involves a dedicated camera, but rather so changed that a different focus on a sense of historical context. Of course, a multi-function device, such as a phone. these questions is required. The debate fashion-identities have always been a It is this aspect of the phenomenon that at Chapter was not quite pre-digital. part of human personality, but in the past I would like to develop a little further, as However, it certainly took place in a they have overlaid deeper and constant representative of the wider question. period when the extent to which the resources of location which the individual Recently someone stated that more emerging digital technologies would could access when necessary. I suspect photographs were taken last year accelerate and intensify dysfunctional that the ability to resort to such underlying alone than in all the previous history of tendencies in personal identification realities is severely impaired by life in photography – a history now approaching had yet to become apparent to most of a dematerialised cyber-space to which two centuries. The urge to record visually us. It seems to me now that the use of many people presently seem addicted. has reached that, as another these technologies is undermining the The ability simply to be present is commentator rather concisely put it, “No co-ordinates that appeared crucial in apparently in terminal decline. Fixated interaction is deemed to have happened the 1970s and 1980s. A rift has opened on a screen, rather than looking out of unless someone has taken a picture of it”. between people for whom such co- the train window and contemplating I would say that we are fast approaching a ordinates remain fundamental, and those the meaning of the passing landscape, state of image dependency – that we are for whom the matrix of identity that they or plugged into an i-pod when walking, becoming image junkies. create is remote. rather than listening to the sound of the The condition is manifested in For many people, especially in urban wind in the trees or the sound of feet trends that might seem to amount to a life, place has become de-particularised on a pavement or of other voices, the paradox, though I regard them as two to a point beyond restoration. Language materiality of place and time is wilfully – sides of the same coin. To give you a as a marker of identity is decaying, not or perhaps just habitually – denied. commonplace example of the first, I only because of language extinctions Much of the catalogue of fashion- notice that many people now, when they but also because of structural identities is presented visually, even get married, apparently do so largely

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 5 Essay for the purpose of creating a vast set of as well as the sight of it. Perhaps alone, this problem is beginning to affect us wedding photographs, or a wedding perhaps in company, we experience through the attitude of some museums video. Creating the record of the event it in physical space, not imagined, not to their collections. An assumption is has become the meaning of the event. reproduced in a book, and certainly beginning to be made that pictures – the It is for this reason that I have never not conjured in the virtual spaces that physical pictures themselves – no longer habitually carried a camera, so that the presently threaten to loosen our grasp of matter, other than as the starting point for chief responsibility for memory is retained tangible reality. History is the after-image the creation of digital images. In a parallel by recall through imagination. The ability of that reality – an elusive phenomenon, retreat from tangible to virtual reality to to recall the past through imagination difficult to focus upon, as it so rapidly that represented by social media, some diminishes if it is not exercised, and its fades. But in an artefact, the after-image of museums are apparently of the opinion loss has implications not only for the a vanishing moment of human existence is that the materiality of their collections is understanding of personal experiences of captured – the lost maker and the maker’s now irrelevant. The real stuff has become the past, but also for the understanding of lost world seem within reach. As Walter the image presented on screen. This is not history as a concept. Benjamin put it in his essay The Work of Art a speculation but a fact, and to illustrate On the other hand, very few of the in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: it I’d like to conclude by telling you about millions of photographs taken each day what has happened in the last two years at ever achieve materiality, in the sense “The presence of the original is the the National Library of Wales – though this of the pictures that frame my sense of prerequisite of authenticity… The is not a parochial argument. The National identity at home. The way that they are situations into which the product Library rightly advertises itself as “one of used – their meaning, in fact – is quite of mechanical reproduction can be the great libraries of the world”. different. Their ephemeral nature suggests brought may not touch the actual Some time ago, I needed to see the words and phrases of a casual if not work of art, yet the quality of its two 19th Century steel engravings – trite conversation – trite because it is a presence is always depreciated. unremarkable and commonplace works, kind of conversation that takes place only This holds not only for the work of no monetary value, rarity or fragility. I because it can do so, and whose purpose of art but also, for instance, for a ordered the pictures from home on line is to demonstrate the speakers’ access to a landscape which passes in review and received the usual message that my technology which is in itself an important before in a movie. request was accepted and that the works part of their fashion-identity. At the press In the case of the art object, a would be available at a particular time. of a delete button, the pictures, like the most sensitive nucleus – namely, I drove to the Library, and went to find words, are lost in the moment in which its authenticity – is interfered the engravings. I was told by the person they are spoken or, rather, transmitted. with whereas no natural object on the desk that I could not see them. I The pictures with which I live is vulnerable on that score. The was taken a-back by this response, and everyday are an expression in material authenticity of a thing is the when I enquired why, I was told that the form of the arguments that I made in essence of all that is transmissible works were available on line and so I must the 1980s, which were directed towards from its beginning, ranging from look at them there. If I wished to see the reinforcing the matrix of the identity of its substantive duration to its engravings themselves, I would have to fill my place. As a tangible manifestation testimony to the history which it has in a special form, giving a specific reason of an idea of history, I hoped they made experienced. Since the historical why I should be allowed to see them, and a contribution towards its evolution – testimony rests on the authenticity, that it would have to be sent to a senior towards finding St Paul’s country, in the the former, too, is jeopardized by member of staff for consideration. form of a collective particularity, of a sense reproduction when substantive The National Library presents to the of distinctness, that would invest with duration ceases to matter. And public its policy on access in a document meaning the actions of the everyday life of what is really jeopardized when the entitled ‘Our expectations of readers individuals. In this respect, the materiality historical testimony is affected is the and visitors’. The title alone signifies a of the past seemed – and still seems to me authority of the object.” developing institutional arrogance, an – to be crucially important. assumption of power and control, which Artefacts witness the ability of human Walter Benjamin wrote this in 1936. echoes that of the National Museum in beings to find meaning through making. So it is not a new worry, but it one that the 1980s: Often, it is the humanity of the artefact has been exponentially intensified in that fascinates or moves us most – simply a generation. The significance of the “The Library will offer access to its the realisation that it was made, and materiality of pictures is now all but lost collections subject to constraints of outlives its maker. From his or her hands because of the ways in which we use security, data protection, copyright, it comes for a time to our hands, and we digital technologies. and any special conditions. In certain experience its feel, its smell, its sound, I want to draw your attention to how circumstances (e.g. where the original

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has been microfilmed or digitised), of collections on line. I am not making staff at the Library can present a very the Library will not make the original a Luddite argument. Web-sites such good reason for restricting access to available for consultation unless there as ‘your paintings’ are very valuable in a particular work, then it should be are compelling reasons for doing so.” widening awareness of the range of public available for inspection . The collections and in facilitating research. present policy reverses this presumption. Already, the ‘certain circumstances’ However, digitisation is an additional The situation now, whereby members cover all the oil paintings in the research tool, and is not a replacement for of the public may not experience the collection, and a vast number of prints direct access, and contact with pictures. pictures that they own, unless they can and drawings – a number which will Under the present policy at the Library, give a reason deemed satisfactory by a increase steadily as the whole collection digitisation is being used as an excuse to senior member of staff, is unethical. moves towards digitisation. restrict, rather than to widen access. It is I do not suggest that there are no Since December 2011 I have pursued a profoundly oligarchic tendency, hiding instances in which there may indeed be the implications of this policy privately under the cloak of democratisation. a reason for restricting general access, with the National Library, in the hope of The first issue that arises is one of such as in the case of exceptionally persuading those in charge to change principle, and it derives from the idea fragile works. However, the fundamental direction. However, since there seems to of collective ownership. Works in the presumption must be, as it always has be no intention to do so, it is appropriate National Library are the property of been until the last couple of years, that now to open the debate. Firstly, it is the public, not of the institution, which works are available on demand for the important to say that I am unreservedly in merely holds them on our behalf. inspection of the public. If staff at the favour of the digitisation and presentation The presumption must be that, unless National Library feel that there is good reason to withhold a particular work, then An image from Peniarth 28, a 13th Century Latin text of the Laws of Hywel Dda, held at the National Library in Aberystwyth. The original is now locked away “to preserve it for posterity”. However, in 1982 Peter Lord was able to hold it is for them to make the case, not the the original in his hands “with no questions asked”. other way around. The second reason why open access to works in a visual culture collection must be the presumption derives from the purpose of making such collections in the first place, which is to meet our intellectual and emotional need for location. In a sense it is a practical argument. Visual culture is material culture – pictures are not images, but things. We are dealing with objects, the understanding and enjoyment of which depends on the ability to experience them in the original, and to handle them. The people among whom I move tend to describe the need to experience pictures materially as a ‘no-brainer’. They regard the revelation of the National Library’s present policy first with incredulity, and then with incomprehension. My sense is that most people involved in this field, whether as researchers or simply as lovers of visual culture, will confirm that understanding a picture involves experiencing it. Restriction of that experience seriously damages the quality of understanding and, indeed, of research. Certain kinds of information can be gleaned from looking on screen at a photograph of an object. If that is sufficient, there will be no need to visit the holding institution to inspect the original. An institution may safely

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and constraints. However, the fact that denial of access to works in a public collection can be presented as if it were a normal evolution of policy reveals the emergence of a different and more problematic state of mind. It appears that for some people the crucial importance of the experience of the past and of human creativity manifested in the materiality of an object is an impossibly difficult concept. It seems to me that this degree of incomprehension arises from the increasing dominance of virtual experience over tangible experience in a digitally mediated world. It Hywel Dda memorial at Whitland - designed by Peter Lord to celebrate the codification of in the 10th Century. has led to a gulf in understanding between assume that anyone who goes to the Century and illustrated with drawings in materialists and image-dependents. The trouble of turning up in person, asking black, red and green ink. I wanted to see example of the National Library suggests to see a picture, has a good reason for it because I was preparing an application that power now lies with the latter – with doing so. The reason may be simply to for the commission to design the Hywel a group of people who have difficulty experience the work, and that is reason Dda Memorial at Whitland, the purpose in conceiving of pictures as witnesses to enough. Simon Garfield, in a celebration of which was to celebrate the codification anything beyond their current ‘status’ in a of the printed word called Just My Type, of Welsh law in the 10th Century. I was moment that disappears without trace at expressed this deeply serious point with directed to a table and the manuscript the press of a delete button. a light touch, in his comments on the was brought to me, with no questions The context in which we discussed Guttenberg Bibles at the British Library: asked or eyebrows raised. the relationship between pictures and I was familiar with the pictures from identity in the argument with the National “These days, digitization enables us photographs, but the physical experience Museum a quarter of a century ago to view the copies online without of turning the pages of this ancient has changed fundamentally. I fear that the need for a trip to the Euston document and examining at first hand image dependency is now leading us to Road, although notto do so would drawings made over 600 years earlier a condition of even more fundamental be to deny oneself one of the great completely changed my perception of the psychological fragility than we have pleasures in life. The first book ever significance of the commission. I am not previously experienced. The argument is printed in Europe – heavy, luxurious, given to spiritual hyperbole, but it was a no longer simply about the selection of pungent and creaky – does not read transformational moment – and in effect witnesses appropriate to particular cultural particularly well on an iPhone.” it was the moment that both secured for histories – a selection which proved me the commission and subsequently vulnerable to change through argument Those involved in digitisation deceptively generated whatever quality there is in and campaign. It is now about our more refer to these screen images as ‘facsimiles’. the memorial that resulted. Everything fundamental relationship to the materiality, This is a bastardisation of language. They was changed by my intellectual and which is to say the very reality, of the past. are photographs. As recently as twenty emotional reaction to that contact with years ago, if anyone had proposed that Peniarth 28 as an object. Needless to say, research for a thesis or a book about in 2014, I would not be allowed anywhere Peter Lord has discussed related visual culture could be carried out on near it. The manuscript is locked away, issues in his essay ‘Homogeneity or the basis of looking at photographs, they ‘to preserve it for posterity’, as the Individuation? A Long View of the would have been dismissed as ridiculous. disingenuous institutional justification Critical Paradox of Contemporary Art in It has now become the ‘expectation’ at the has it – disingenuous because, of course, a Stateless Nation’, in Jonathan Harris, National Library of Wales. posterity is a mythic generation of the Ed., Globalization and Contemporary In 1982 I made my first working future that will never be born. Art, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 56- visit to the National Library. In what There are probably a variety of 70. His latest book, Relationships with would presently be regarded as an act of motives for restricting access to collections Pictures: an Oblique Autobiography remarkable naivety, I approached the desk at the Library, age-old curatorial élitism is reviewed on page 82. This essay is in the Manuscript Department and asked and saving money being among based on a lecture given at Chapter to see a medieval law text called Peniarth them. Digitisation has provided a new Arts Centre in July 2013 for the IWA 28. The text had been written in the 13th justification for acting on these inclinations ‘Coffee Shop Debates’ series.

8 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org New team at the IWA: from the left, Deputy Director Kirsty News Davies, Policy Analyst Jessica Blair, Events Manager Jessica Davies-Timmins, Director Lee Waters, Office and Finance Manager Laura Knight, and IWA Chair Geraint Talfan Davies.

New team takes charge at IWA

The Institute of Welsh Affairs is changing. Office and Finance Manager. their terms of office next year. Three new appointments complete the Jessica Blair completes the new team The IWA is also relocating to a new, changes to the small professional team as Policy Analyst. Formerly a researcher smaller, office at 56 James Street in following the appointment of Lee Waters with the Conservative group in the Cardiff Bay at the end of 2013. as Director in the spring. National Assembly, she has worked in “These are exciting times at the Jessica Davies-Timmins has joined as Brussels and has recently completed an IWA” said Lee Waters. ”After reaching Events Manager, with responsibility for a MScEcon in Welsh Government and the milestone of 25 years as the leading busy year round programme, including Politics at Cardiff University. independent voice in debates about the IWA / Western Mail Business Awards The trio join Kirsty Davies, deputy Wales’ future, it is vital that we regenerate. and the Inspire Wales awards. Former Director of the IWA since 2008. Former “The new team is up for the challenge, Marketing and External Relations Director John Osmond continues to edit but we can’t do it alone. It is essential that Manager at the University of South the Welsh Agenda and Click on Wales. we draw on the strength of our members, Wales, Jessica brings rich experience in The changes at the think tank are set as well as increasing the number of people marketing and events. to continue with the search on for a new who support us. Everyone agrees that the Laura Knight also has a strong track Chair of trustees. Geraint Talfan Davies is role of the IWA is crucial, but we cannot record in commercial events management, to step down in early 2014 after having take our future survival for granted”. organising conferences internationally for led the board of the charity since 1992. Six Automotive World. She joins the IWA as of the board members are also due to end

Launch of Senedd policy papers

The IWA is launching new series of The first in the series will be A Citizen’s unemployment and an ageing population. discussion papers early in 2014 to spark Service for Wales by Andy Bevan, founder Along with Andy Bevan speakers debate about important policy issues. of ICP Partneriaeth which promotes will be Simon Thomas, AM The Senedd Papers will be launched European Voluntary Service activity for Mid and West Wales, and Christine with a lunchtime panel discussion in the in and from Wales. The paper will be Chapman, Labour AM for Cynon Valley. National Assembly, which members are launched on 22 January with a discussion free to attend. on tackling the twin challenges of youth

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 9 News

Plug in daily to the IWA network at www.clickonwales.org

Here’s what some contributors Nobody would under-estimate the —2/9/13 have been saying in recent difficulty of moving towards regional Peter Stead paid tribute to a Welsh months... government for the North. Yet the need to rugby legend who died that month counter, on the one hand, the economic and political dominance of the south- Sport for Cliff was largely a matter of east, and the increasingly confident personality. It provided an arena for his —24/7/13 and autonomous Scots and Welsh, is own athletic and social skills whilst at the Calvin Jones wanted a Welsh stock becoming increasingly urgent. An ‘English same time allowing him to fraternise with market to promote co-operatives and Parliament’ is not the answer to the a rich cast of wonderful characters whose mutuals North’s problems.....We’re interested in humour, slyness and opportunism he came It is this uneven access to money that has developing links with activists in Wales to relish. As a grammar school boy he loved seen government-sponsored regeneration whose vision of a decentralised, inclusive that mix of teachers, policemen and miners and development programmes spend and co-operative future fits with our own. that peopled the Welsh game and he hundreds of millions to arguably limited relished the company of Irish story-tellers, effect. It has seen multinational energy —16/8/13 Scottish worriers and English toffs that companies almost completely monopolise Guto Bebb MP was not impressed made the international game so fascinating. renewable installation in the UK, at the with our use of EU funds same time as communities have done very —11/9/13 little to increase their own energy resilience. When I discuss my concerns about Geraint Talfan Davies reported from By excluding organisations solely purposed this issue the answer I get from many Barcelona on Catalan national day at enriching shareholders, a Welsh stock politicians is that the situation would have market could be specifically aimed at been seven times worse without such Symbolic declarations of sovereignty may linking quality projects with a social return funding. Although there is a smidgeon of be water off a ducks back to Westminster with interested potential investors……It factual justification for such a statement, politicians delighting in our largely unwritten is an area where Wales could steal a real it is a weak argument in response to our constitution. However, Catalonia’s 2006 march on the rest of the world. failure to do better....The plain truth is that Statute of Autonomy – despite being Wales’ economic performance since 1999 accepted by the Madrid Government of —7/8/13 has been so disastrous as to prove without the time – has now been referred to Spain’s Terry Stevens said tourism should doubt to me that our use of European constitutional court. Welsh jurisdictional not be afraid to backing winning funding has been an unmitigated failure. rows between Cardiff Bay and Westminster destinations might well be labelled ‘Spanish practices’. —23/8/13 In Wales, we now have to tackle the John Kay argued that that the —23/9/13 structure and organisation of tourism at economic question should not be the Richard Marggraf Turley looked at the destination level if we are to achieve key to the Scottish referendum the Welsh role in developing military the ambitions for growth. We must drones identify and focus our efforts on a limited Scottish independence is not primarily an number of leading destinations that are economic issue. Anyone who goes to the A fortnight ago 100 campaigners staged a most likely to be able to deliver the new ballot box in 2014 believing either that they protest outside West Wales Airport, timed to tourism vision for Wales. This is exactly should vote ‘no’ because independence for co-incide with the DSEI arms fair.....The issue what has happened in Scotland, Denmark, Scotland would be likely to be an economic is how we choose to project Wales into the Austria and Switzerland to great effect. disaster or vote ‘yes’ because they believe world. To be sure, the Watchkeeper drone We must not be afraid of backing winners. it is likely to lead to an economic bonanza, doesn’t itself carry missiles – as its name That means prioritisation and a process has failed to review the issues sensibly. This suggests, the system is used for intelligence, that inevitably leads to some casualties. is not, in my view as an economist, a debate surveillance and target acquisition. However, However, ‘rising tides do lift every boat’. which should be conducted primarily its specifications include a laser designator, on economic issues; any more than the synthetic aperture radar/ground-moving —14/8/13 independence debate in the United States target indicator and range finder. The lingo Paul Salveson spelt out the vision or India or Ireland was primarily about is that of precision, of pinpoint accuracy. We of a new foundation to promote the economic issues. should suspend what Coleridge called our North of England “believing minds”.

10 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org News

—26/9/13 —30/10/13 4/11/13 Thomas Hall examined how Wales Tim Williams was unconvinced Sarah Stone wanted health and could meet its recycling targets about teaching Welsh in English- social services to be brought together medium schools If Wales is to successfully tackle its waste We have a big opportunity to create a issue, and turn the food waste stream into The same problem applies to Mandarin coherent structure, which would give critical something positive with great potential, in our schools as to Welsh or German for mass to local government, better to meet whilst meeting the public’s expectations in that matter. Schooling alone has never the many challenges which face it, to link providing a sustainable, environmentally been effective as a vehicle of language health effectively with social care, to have friendly solution then Anaerobic acquisition. And for those who ask why a far more consistency across Wales, and Digestion facilities need to be a key part cannot we emulate those primary schools to tackle the many unjustifiable postcode of the mix. Suitably sized facilities need to in Shanghai spending much of their lotteries. Underpinning this would be local be established close to the source of the afternoons immersed in English medium democratic accountability working with and waste in order to minimise the carbon tuition, I say: even in Shanghai English has supporting public engagement on a range of footprint of the process. The aim must a compelling economic rationale which levels. Change is going to happen, structural also be to treat a local problem for the appeals to ambitious families. It is now reform is a necessary bridge to the future. It benefit of the local economy. everywhere, on the internet, in business is an enabling step for the major work which and in popular culture. And by the way, lies on the other side. —1/10/13 the Chinese are not sentimental about Jamie O’Hara sang the praises of language, with Cantonese now giving 6/11/13 Wales’s new Active Travel Act way to Mandarin and English as spoken Keith Towler said low household income languages. They are rigorously instrumental should not be a barrier to adoption There have been attempts to increase about language. As the majority of the cycling levels before, but all too often Welsh have always been, apart from a It is the responsibility of the Welsh Government money allocated to cycling has been linguistic minority unfortunately over and adoption agencies to support prospective allocated from end of year underspend. represented in public life. adopters from the beginning and to ensure That means that what has been built has children are listened to and their needs are been the easiest, rather than the most —1/11/13 handled in the correct way. Placing a child with useful….Legislation will not only mean that Robert Jones was sceptical about the right family is crucial and should always every Welsh council will have a duty to Wrexham’s proposed new super- be highest priority in the adoption process. deliver on active travel, but they will have prison However, the shortage of adopters in Wales is a planned network of routes to ensure that a growing challenge that prevents deserving available money is spent much more wisely. Studies have shown they generate few children and young people from finding a linkages to the wider economy. This includes “forever home”. —3/10/13 a failure to attract “significant numbers of David Melding AM was adamant associated industries” to the local area. 12/11/13 that Welsh public services cannot So whilst an auto plant may attract the David Llewellyn saw the landscape thrive without the market development of electronic companies, as a source of economic renewal radio assemblers and delivery companies In setting itself against market mechanisms – research suggests that prison’s often fail The most recent data provides evidence the Welsh Government faces an enormous to generate such similar levels of economic of significant health benefits from challenge in maintaining a rather 20th development. Likewise, other studies engaging communities in outdoor ‘green’ century view of the state. The lack of choice have failed to find any positive relationship exercise, which is more easily accessible and competition in the delivery of public between prison building and a growth than traditional gym-based exercise services in Wales must end. A radical in retail development….In view of such and hence overcomes many reported re-think in the way we fund and manage findings, the UK government’s efforts to barriers....The unique natural, and indeed public services, like health and education, promote the Wrexham ‘super’ prison under cultural, landscapes of south Wales afford is urgently needed to deal with profound a veil of economic advantages and increased magnificent opportunities for the proposed financial pressures we are facing…..The employment is, at best, misleading. city region. In conjunction with major Welsh Government have up until now been projects such as the Metro, innovative almost devoid of competition in their public strategic approaches to work with our services, this needs to change. natural assets can help address major issues in housing, urban renewal, and health.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 11 Outlook

is followed by a personal romantic Dreaming fiction memory and a smart joke about ‘taking our longings’ with us which eclipses any ideological considerations. in the Valleys This is charming fiction but surely we are being offered more. Is the author Chinatown set in Ton Pentre. Surely the offering an interpretation of his own years of instruction were to be rounded career and especially his relationship off by a dose of entertainment. with a South Wales to which he We should have known better. returned after studying at Oxford? How Dream On is certainly entertaining but will his service in championing his own equally it is nothing less than a sequel to, society be judged? There had been a partner of In the Frame. They should no ‘major practical achievements’ but stand next to each other on the shelves had his chosen path of writing essays and be read in association. What the and biographies been sufficient? Had Imaginative writing author is doing here is taking us into he sufficiently justified his technique of that illuminates our future those areas which were not public, not dealing with ‘not the leaders but the Peter Stead a matter of record, places where the led’, with ’Voice Off’ and ‘Vox Pop’, historian, the memorialist, traditionally those who ‘waited in the shadows’ and For more than forty years Dai Smith could not travel. who lived in what Gwyn Thomas called has been helping us understand and For decades historians and writers ‘The Terraces’? appreciate the importance, complexity of fiction have been mutually suspicious So pointed and thought-provoking and vibrancy of industrial South Wales and indeed hostile as they have is this c.v. that quite possibly we are through the era of Coal – and for him jealously guarded their sacred rules not merely being asked to consider the capital ‘S’ is essential. and jurisdictions. In fact a minority of the career of a fictional politician or In his In the Frame. Memory in scholars and most readers have always even that of the author of this book but Society: Wales 1910 to 2010, truly his known that in understanding any culture rather how a culture as a whole has magnum opus, Dai Smith brilliantly fiction and histories have to be taken performed in judging itself. The full examined all those influences that together. Only very occasionally has an poignancy comes as we contemplate had allowed him to understand and individual writer taken the plunge and those things that our culture has failed to appreciate the full cultural texture of the opened up that debate by decisively achieve. The ex-MP to whom we have society of which he was a product. At illustrating the need for language to be been introduced is dying but the wider the same time he confronted the issue used imaginatively as well as a matter question is whether we ourselves have of how the values of that culture could of record. With Dai’s twin books we the time to put things right. From the be transmitted to a new generation. can enter a new era in which we can outset the author is setting a challenge. His answer, of course, was to show discuss the political and cultural values of In these initial nine pages he sets an how the story and manifestations of Wales in a richer and more sophisticated agenda for the rest of the book. They that society had been written into our manner, one which may well allow the define the context which enables a set of consciousness. It was a book that fully values of the past to permeate our future. short stories to become a novel. explained and justified the notion of a To negotiate the transition from The stories authentically fill out a writer, in this case a cultural historian, as history to fiction Dai opens with a South Wales culture. In a prose that the true leader and guide of a country short chapter in which a dying Labour is occasionally and not surprisingly that was in danger of losing its soul. politician studies the proof of his press epigrammatic, frequently poetic, Even as we were relishing what obituary which had been sent to him by often amusing and always compelling, some had interpreted as ‘the last word’, a friend. It prompts him to reflect on his we are guided through a society came the news that Dai Smith had a career and, in particular, his relationship that lived with the memory of war, novel in the pipeline. We all knew of with the Valleys constituency which survived major strikes and lock-outs, his literary training and love of fiction he had represented. Readers should experienced deprivation and affluence, but the general assumption was that not rush too quickly through this on- was fascinated by America and which his enthusiasm for his mentors Gwyn the-face-of-it simple nine-page tale, a sustained an intense participation in Thomas and Alun Richards, and his brilliantly bold literary device. In it Dai popular culture with music, film and passion for Raymond Chandler and has accomplished many things, to begin rugby vying for precedence. This Chester Himes could only result in with a poignant short story. A reflection may sound like familiar territory. Yet an exercise of spoof Valleys-noir, a on possible political under-achievement the essence of Dream On is that all

12 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Outlook these themes are worked out in terms Changing the dream into ‘Simeon’) this sequence employs the of relationships, the bonds between a wakened reality remains grotesque to symbolise the rifts opened erstwhile friends and even more within a Welsh project in communities as a consequence of war. families between parents and spouses. Jane Aaron Yet this is the generation expected to bring Smith himself talks of “a jumble of into full realisation their returning fathers’ relationships to be savoured”. dream of a post-war , rooted as That process of savouring however it was in a coherent communal political does not preclude dishes that leave a consciousness now lost to their offspring. nasty taste in the mouth. Dai Smith does In ‘Who Whom’, the middle not do bland and in several stories there sequence, the class struggle has been are expressions of disappointment and transmogrified into the game of rugby anger at the mediocrity, opportunism which now provides the community with and self-promotion that he suggests its only available working-class heroes. has occurred in our public-sector Richie ‘Gravedigger’ Davies has acquired dominated public life, whether it is in Dream On is an injunction, an exhortation his nickname because of his propensity politics, education, sport or the Labour to the reader not to give up on the in his 1970s heydays to pummel his movement. It is almost as if the author socialist aspirations which in the first prostrate opponents on the field with has taken his texts from Nye Bevan who half of the 20th Century characterised such calculated ferocity that it looked as warned about “imprisoning reality in the communities of the south Wales if he was burying them. This technique our description of it” and the dangers of Valleys. Tripartite in form, with three was encouraged by his rugby coach who, “exchanging the inspiration of a pioneer central fictions, each divided into three “when the Valley was still littered with for the rewards of a lackey”. Dream sequences, and the whole framed by the useless dicta of its political past” had On will occasion many blushes, further a prologue and epilogue, it asks what heard of Lenin’s dictum ‘Who Whom’ emotional spasms, and perhaps even a happened to the spirit of 1945, who (that is, know your enemy, and prevail few telephone calls to solicitors. prevailed over whom, and what, now, is over him before he prevails over you), All this admonition and anger is to be done. “and re-applied it to the mechanics of well integrated into the story telling. Experience recollected in bafflement back row play”. But an older Richie is There is never any danger of the book’s rather than tranquillity is of the essence aware that he has lost sight of the ball, predominant mood being threatened. of each sequence. In ‘Never Felt More’, that he had once known “who the Its ambience might well surprise those as in the introductory piece, a World who was who did it to others” but now who only know Smith from his more War II baby in late adulthood recalls “somehow, the who was us doing it to us. academic texts. All the values, personal his childhood in the Valleys, and the And not understanding it”. or public, that are lauded in these stories experience of a haunted generation In the book’s last, more extended are manifested in personal relationships which “had been spared war but not sequence, ‘No Photographs of Crazy that are overwhelmingly parental or the consequences of war”. Two of the Horse’, however, the “us who are doing it romantic. Tears may well come to the central protagonist’s friends are the to us” understand with perfect clarity what eyes of some readers, but Dai cleverly children of American G.I.s billeted in the they are doing. A gang of five once active avoids sentimentality by trusting in his Valley, and both are lost to him and to supporters of the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike story-telling powers as he rounds off in their community. The first is a black girl, have become the movers and shakers true crime-thriller style. He has learnt after her persecution by a schoolteacher of 21st Century south Wales, intent on from the great Ross Macdonald that it affected by his Japanese prison of war directing into their own pockets the flow is ultimately women who make most experience, and the second the victim of European money entering the Valleys things happen. Any History that excludes of his mother’s attempts to mould him for the intended purposes of community them is a crude over-simplification. into a bizarre reincarnation of his dead regeneration. But they are foiled by Billy They are right at the of things here officer father. Maddox, another former activist who had carrying the banners of our identity and In another tale the narrator and his left the Valleys in dismay after the failure our hopes for the future. widowed mother are patronised by a of the Strike, and now returns to clean moneyed garage owner, ‘Uncle’ Jack, up its corruptions at the call of his much who showers on them rationed treats and younger half-sister Haf. This is a novella à grooms the mother into performing semi- clef in which much of the humour resides erotic masquerades for his voyeuristic in guessing at the possible real-life models pleasure, which the boy inadvertently for the characters and institutions satirised Peter Stead is a cultural historian of witnesses. Reminiscent in tone of Gwyn in the tale. 20th Century Wales. Thomas’s early short stories, (for example, Eventually Haf and Billy, through

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 13 The Institute of Welsh Affairs would like to thank all our supporters,* partners and sponsors over the past year and wish everyone Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year. * * ** * * * * – ACCA Cymru Wales – First Impressions – The co-operative – Agored Cymru – Gap Personnel Cymru Wales * – BBC Cymru Wales – Gocompare.com * – The Waterloo Foundation – British Gas – Gorwel – University of Wales Trinity – CAD Centre * – Leadership and Saint David – Cardiff City Hall Management Wales – USW Commercial Services – Cardiff University * – Morgan Cole LLP – Wales and West Utilities – Chapter Arts Centre – Native HQ – Welsh Government – Changing Union – Orchard Media and Events – Western Mail * – CILT Cymru The National – Park Plaza – Western Power Distribution Centre for Languages – PwC – WJEC – Coleg Morgannwg – Sport Wales – Young Enterprise * – First Great Western * * Outlook threatening the exploiters with exposure, Welsh devolution is of surprisingly little account here either. succeed in transforming their plans for a head of the Valleys gated tourist resort, The existence of the National Assembly is not looked to as with the locals serving only as domestics, potentially helpful in the region’s development. into “a new city on the hill for ourselves”, to which “our young musicians and film-makers and writers and dancers can come, on generous bursaries” to young green hope, Haf. As it is, the reader seems to have got the better of fiction- study in “Institutions of Learning that can is barely allowed a glimpse into her mind; writer here. envision not just administer or tinker with, she is not a fully-rounded character, for all Nonetheless, precisely through its a future... Let it be open, let it be young, her importance in the plot and in the aims combination of tongue-in-cheek romp and let it be ours”. But as these words are of the book as a whole. and serious reflection the book succeeds spoken by the charismatic but profoundly Moreover, one aspect of Billy in its aims of celebrating the continuing self-centred Sir Ceri Evans, public Maddox’s character makes it difficult to vitality and potential of the Valleys spokesman for the gang of five, a measure see him as the steady aider and abetter of communities, for all their current loss of of doubt remains as to whether the plan Haf in the task of leading the Valleys on to committed political activism. No thanks will be fulfilled. So Haf persuades Billy to a new dawn. At one point in the text, he to the rest of Wales, though, which has stay in the Valleys to help her ensure that arranges a meeting with his opponents, very little part to play in this profoundly this time “it is done differently. Slowly. buys a hammer with cold intent on his regional fiction. No reference is made With no let-up”, thus indicating her astute way to it, and smashes the weapon into here to the possibility that Welsh socialism awareness of the perpetual vigilance the genitals and face of one of Maldwyn’s ever drew strength from any Welsh needed to maintain and advance the bodyguards. Though an act of revenge for resources outside the Valleys. The notion goals of socialism. a beating he had formerly received in the that those internal migrants into the area However, Haf, the figure of hope attempt to silence him, this is gratuitous from rural Wales might have brought with and youthful promise, is problematic. violence, unnecessary in terms of the them community values bred by rural She has been reared by two of the most plot, as Billy already has the documentary traditions of co-operation, long centuries corrupt characters in the text, Branwen evidence needed to bring to a halt the of resistance to Anglicised landlords, and and Maldwyn, who left her to the mercies gang’s activities. It hardly seems an ideal the democratic self-authorizations of the of a nanny and a boarding school - example of the kind of model of leadership religious nonconformists, is never mooted. presumably not in the Valleys. So where he will provide for the Valleys youth in Welsh devolution is of surprisingly has she acquired her rooted sense of their ongoing struggle. little account either. The existence of values? One can hardly suppose, at least So is this tale intended primarily as a the National Assembly is not looked from the evidence of this text, that it was sardonic version of Raymond Williams’ to as potentially helpful in the region’s from her nanny, for every other female The Fight for Manod, written up in hard- development. Yet if, instead of focusing his character in the book is either avidly nosed detective noire style? Surely we attention on impressing the cosmopolitan materialistic and intent on weaning their cannot be intended to take seriously world with his coal empire, D. A. Thomas menfolk away from the camaraderie of the sudden revelation that Billy’s and had thrown in his lot with Lloyd George the mine or the rugby club to a white- Haf’s grandfather, and the father of and the Cymru Fydd movement in 1896, collar job and do-it-yourself tasks in the ‘his old man’ the Communist collier, those returning World War II soldiers temple of the home, or lost in sensuality, is none other than D. A. Thomas, the would surely have found it far easier to either as the helpless victims of men or coal magnate? As history the disclosure establish a truly democratic socialism in their would-be enticers. has a point to make. The creator of the an already devolved Wales than they did For example, when in his Communist Cambrian Combine could indeed be still yoked to a Tory England biding its youth Sir Ceri spoke to the masses, said to have inadvertently fathered the time to rid itself of Aneurin Bevan and his “women generally just wanted to fuck syndicalists that arose to defend the followers. But that is to “dream on”. How him”. Apart from Haf they seem as a body workers against his monopoly, and thus to change the dream into an awakened incapable of political thought. The central acted as catalyst in the formation of reality is, of course, the problem shared sequence of ‘No Photographs of Crazy Welsh socialism. But it would have been alike by all Wales’ regions. This book Horse’ is made up of series of maxims. The more in keeping with the general tenour certainly helps in revitalising a sense of wisdom of Billy’s father, ‘his old man’, a of the text to have created fictional future potential rooted in past realities. Communist collier turned WEA lecturer, counterparts for these historical figures is telling and thought-provoking. But it rather than have the old man sit down Jane Aaron is a literary critic and would have been interesting to have it with Margaret, Lady Rhondda, to discuss Professor of English at the University of matched by a series of reflections from the their common parent. The historian South Wales.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 15 Outlook

Lingering melancholia life: “something had fled. Had drained The free libido ...was withdrawn into of the coal age away. Something had been beheaded. the ego ... to establish an identification Daniel G. Williams Something had been killed”. If the of the ego with the abandoned father’s spirit cannot be captured, then object. Thus the shadow of the object neither can that of his generation. Crazy fell upon the ego ... The ego wishes to Horse seems to stand allegorically for incorporate this object into itself, and any society which cannot be captured the method by which it would do so, in conventional narratives of history or in this oral or cannibalistic stage, is by of fiction. In fact, the ‘old man’ questions devouring it.” whether the history of his Wales can be accessed at all, and in one of several Is this not the process being enacted by passages that could be read as acerbic Billy in taking photos of his father for the self-critiques by the author, the father exhibition which he ultimately names ‘No In probing the meaning of Welsh lives is described as despising the post-war Photographs of Crazy Horse’? Consider in the 20th Century, Dai Smith’s fine generation’s “parasitical identification the following passage: novel Dream On offers sophisticated with others who would be made mere meditations on history and community, ciphers in the subsequent drive to “His old man submitted to one last the past and present. Indeed, despite harvest their experience”. photograph. It was of his clasped disagreeing with this or that emphasis, Gwilym, “a railwayman’s boy” with hands. The veins were bunched it initially seems hard to say anything a PhD, is available for “blithe comment and somehow pulsing, even in about 20th Century south Wales that the on TV and radio on ‘Our People’s their stillness. ... Photographs were novel doesn’t say better itself. In trying to History’”. This is a Welsh industrial a piled-up detritus of humanity. approach the novel from a less historical version of Sollors’s ‘Indian Melancholy’; A tangle of hair. A sullen neck. angle, what strikes me is the profound a ‘proletarian melancholy’ in which An arthritic knee ... He called the sense of melancholia that pervades much the industrial past is consumed and exhibition and the book of it he of the characters’ lives and thoughts. represented in ways that legitimise made ‘No Photographs of Crazy In his study Beyond Ethnicity, Werner the emergence of a post-industrial Horse’. And when it was finished, Sollors talks about ‘Indian Melancholy’, generation. The old man barely conceals he said goodbye to the old man referring not to how Native Americans his contempt for his son’s occupation as and left. He never saw him again. process their history of genocide, but a photographer, and draws attention to He carried him inside himself, and to how dominant American culture the fact that photos offer a wholly false, would now forever.” romanticizes and naturalises “the cult ‘celebratory’ view which ignores “the of the vanishing Indians”. The rhetoric ineffable melancholy of life”. Human bodies are broken up by the of the ‘vanishing Indian and his fate’ In his 1917 essay on ‘Mourning and photographs in preparation for the final serves to legitimize the future of the Melancholia’, Sigmund Freud identifies ‘cannibalistic’ image of the son carrying white conqueror. It is at those moments two kinds of grief. According to Freud the father “inside himself”. But this when America is most shamefaced and ‘mourning’ is a healthy response to loss; process of devouring and swallowing, traumatised by its betrayal of its own it is finite in character. Freud tells us “we to which the old man ‘submits’, is not democratic ideology (in slavery, in the rest assured that after a lapse of time” a straightforward process. Freud notes genocide of Native Americans) that it mourning “will be overcome”. On the that as the libido turns back on the most virulently espouses human values other hand, melancholia is pathological; ego, so do feelings of guilt, rage and and a national community. it is interminable. Freud describes punishment. Implicit in Freud’s essay is The most substantial, interesting melancholia as a kind of consumption: the profound ambivalence that continues and successful section of Dream On to be generated around the ‘swallowed’ is entitled ‘No Photographs of Crazy “An object-choice, an attachment object. The melancholic’s relationship to Horse’. The reference, as the novel of the libido to a particular person, the object is now no longer just love or tells us, is to the Oglala Sioux war chief had at one time existed; then, owing nostalgia but also profound resentment. who was assassinated in 1877. In the to a real slight or disappointment As the contemporary critic Anne Anlin symbolic world of Dream On, Crazy coming from this loved person, the Cheng notes, the “melancholic is not Horse approximates the narrator’s father. object-relationship was shattered. melancholic because he or she has lost The father’s photo is captured by his The result was not the normal one of something but because he or she has photographer son, Billy. However, an a withdrawal of the libido from this introjected that which he or she now art of surface observation fails to grasp object and displacement of it on to a reviles”. The melancholic subject is the essence of the ‘old man’ and his new one, but something different ... therefore stuck in more ways than just

16 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Outlook temporally; “he or she is stuck - almost Parry as she turns to her possible father Trying to forge a future choking on - the hateful and loved thing and “spoke the sentence I knew I had that’s worth living he or she just devoured”. The hateful and to hear. ‘Do you want to fuck me, too’”. Angela Graham loved thing which chokes the narrator In a final twist it transpires that the ‘old of Dream On is the ‘old man’ and the man’, Billy’s father, is in fact Haf’s father unrecoverable Wales that made him. too. Thus the past literally by-passes one The ‘old man’ represents a Wales generation to embody itself in the future. where coal was king, a Wales where The generation of men represented titans of capital such as D. A. Thomas, by Billy, Gwilym, Ceri and Maldwyn Viscount Rhondda, on the one hand, and is rendered impotent and obsolete as giants of trade unionism and radicalism the patriarchal figure who hovers over such as Noah Ablett on the other, the novel’s events returns to father the reflected a self-confident Wales whose generation after their’s. loss can only be lamented in nostalgic This is, surely, one source of a I was very struck by sentences early terms: “How large their lives were. How barely articulated resentment towards in the book. Of children born ‘in the central was their Wales. How significant the ‘old man’, but also a powerful Valley’ near the end of the Second was coal itself. How it all still lingered”. representation of his lingering presence. World War we read: Dream On broods self-reflexively on The underdeveloped female characters the effects of that lingering presence. make Dream On an intense meditation “What we knew inwardly was more Billy is representative of the post-war on masculinity, and it seems that than what we saw. And what we generation. The generation that “sucked men formed by coal mining and saw was invariably damage... the welfare tit with astonished gratitude” war are more potent than the artists, our lives were formed less by but who, in adulthood, “opened the academics, unprincipled politicians, the endlessly fresh discoveries door” and let themselves out “into the and arts administrators of the post of one thing after another which world which our fathers had left for us war generation. The section ends with children must make, and much to die in”, a world where there “was less Haf telling Billy that “you need to be more by having to absorb, without and less to be representative about more here”. But “caught between the icy apparent resistance, the dead and more of the time”. These are the dismissiveness of my old man and the weight of lives soaked in their own keynotes of the novel’s melancholia. The despair at our generational failure”, it’s unwanted experience. Lives which old man feels that his son’s generation no surprise that Billy lives in New York. had led to us. We would be spared consumed the strikes of the early 1970s The late American historian war but not the consequences of as “an orgasmic shudder orchestrated Christopher Lasch once noted that war. That single fact permeated by the pimps of history”, a view that is “a denial of the past, superficially and tethered our lives.” given some support when the narrator progressive and optimistic, proves on notes that the 1970s strikes offered the closer analysis to embody the despair of On re-reading the book I found that I upwardly mobile post-war generation a society that cannot face the future”. had mis-remembered the phrase that a “credibility” which ignored the fact Dream On does not deny the past. It made most impression on me. I had that they had the “bonus of not being does not ask how we as a nation might remembered the phrase, “unlived life” personally doomed thereafter”. ‘get over’ or ‘go beyond’ our industrial whereas Dai Smith has actually written Like the works of Alun Richards history. It asks us what it means, as social, “unwanted experience”. This made me and Raymond Williams, whose very political and subjective beings, to grieve think. I cannot give the source for the different voices seem to echo through for a past that is ‘lost’ but ‘still lingers’ famous Jungian phrase about nothing this novel, the broader observations on having a stronger effect on children history are related to individual stories than the unlived life of their parents, and psychologies. The narrative of ‘No and I can’t argue convincingly that Photographs of Crazy Horse’ is driven there is nothing that outweighs this by a plot of unknown parentage. The effect. However, I do believe, from narrator, Billy, is unsure as to whether experience, that the assertion that a he’s the biological father of Haf, the child parent’s unlived life weighs on the of his contemporary and past-lover, Bran. child is true. If, following an extended conversation Daniel G. Williams is Professor of Both phrases carry a sense of he realises that the young woman Haf English and Director of the Richard experience which is rejected in such a is “more stone than flower”, she is also Burton Centre for the Study of Wales, way that the individual never comes to more Ann Summers than R. Williams Swansea University. terms with it. “Unwanted experience”

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 17 Outlook suggests a lack of choice. But all lives and a kind of inverted snobbery the means of challenging the erstwhile contain “unwanted experience”, bamboozle right and left. revolutionaries of the Miners’ Strike unavoidable circumstances. Why does History is touted as the key to era in their plots to enrich themselves such “unwanted experience” loom so future prosperity through exploitation while doing some patronising good for very large in this community? Is there of heritage. Yet though the people the plebs. Ultimately, among sub-plots something which makes it particularly of the Valley can be commandeered to do with illegitimacy and who’s-the- difficult for this community to properly to help sell their history, they have father? conundra, we are offered the embrace and master experience that lost the ability to forge a present or conclusion that what it’s all about is: was never sought? future that’s worth living. And, in any The weight of a community’s case, it isn’t the people who are at the “Home, yes. But a kingdom yet past on its future is a key theme in forefront. The people of the present, to come. Or if not, what had the book. Its title, Dream On (which as a cohesive unit, are absent from been the point of lives that were manages to be at once cynical, the novel, though here and there the otherwise mere existence... ? soporific and idealistic) points to the work of artists springs up to, somehow, ...No... Nothing worth having dangerously binary nature of dreams. blazon that somebody somewhere sees was worth repeating but passing If you want to annoy idealists, tell them what’s going on and going wrong: through wasn’t the same as they’re dreamers but then, famously, passing over. You could not the delineation of a dream of change “It had been seen, then. The answer by default. What was is one of the most powerful means of structure of that culture which I, singular, as experience, still had to inspiring action and commitment. too, had once had inside me, and be connected if meaning was to Since this is an unconventionally- held and let fall. It had been seen, be derived.” structured novel - the publisher’s blurb here, variously, and transfigured calls it a “composite novel” – a term I into something it was not other It’s connection that matters. More than don’t find enlightening other than as than as a vision that was as that, it’s one-ness between people that a way to describe the twists in style unmistakably real as it had once matters. A one-ness that is presented via a film scene watched by a father and son. The father says: If you want to annoy idealists, tell them “See. That’s not acting, boy. That’s they’re dreamers but then, famously, the for real. That’s what I’ve been telling you. That’s to come... See. delineation of a dream of change is one And he did. It was registered with of the most powerful means of inspiring him. How to live a life. Or try. From birth. With or without a certificate.” action and commitment. At the end there’s the slender hope that a young woman will be able to and protagonist between the book’s been actual... In all this work there unseat the villains by working “... sections - there is no simple, single path was not a trace of the identikit differently. Slowly. With no let up.” trod from cover to cover by a central Valleys, stereotyped and drooled This is a hard message for Dai figure. It is a book that has to be read as over in words and images by force Smith’s Welsh readers and a subtle it comes and time is needed to let the of their once eccentric particulars message. Who is the messiah of the pieces fall into a graspable pattern. and through a vestige of falsely kingdom yet to come? Not Sir Ceri Here’s how it looks to me. There’s assembled narratives... If the past Evans, suave man-of-the-people something rotten in the state of the was a place that made the present politician. Yet it is politics that will Valley. There’s a sentimentalising, a prison for the mind then this save. Politics of a new kind in which gullible streak in the people; a blotchy capture of living was a everyone of us takes responsibility readiness to trust “those who are one signal for release.” for dealing with our own “unwanted of us” no matter how patronising and experience” but – crucially - takes it on the make they are. The people and The artists have done their part but together. Somehow. their lower-level representatives have who has any power to make the vision been battered about the head so often a reality? Dai Smith chooses a Sam with the term “regeneration” that they Spade-like, hard-bitten, insider/outside Angela Graham is a TV producer can’t resist it any more. Bureaucracy photographer (a man who sees) as and writer.

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

Sustaining spending on the NHS 1 will hit rest of the budget Health David Phillips analyses the Welsh Government’s change of priorities in health funding

The UK government is part way through at least relatively, this has not been the case significant cuts in spending on public services so far in Wales. Instead, by cutting health as it attempts to deal with the large hole in the spending, the Welsh Government has been public finances. As part of this, grants from able to impose smaller cuts on other services the Treasury to the Welsh Government have than is the case in the rest of Great Britain. Articles been reduced in real terms each year since For instance, the cut in its Local Government Sustaining 2009–10, and look set to continue to fall until budget between 2010–11 and 2013–14 has spending on the 2017–18. This would mean an unprecedented been 4.7 per cent, compared to cuts of 6.2 per NHS will hit rest eight years of retrenchment in public services cent in Scotland and 9.7 per cent in England of the budget spending in Wales. It is in stark contrast to the for broadly comparable departmental budgets. first ten years of devolution, when the Welsh The Welsh Government’s draft budget for Demand and Government enjoyed substantial year-on-year 2014–15, published in October, represents a budget cuts will real-terms spending increases. major change in priorities. Next year, despite a force health One of the biggest beneficiaries of the real-terms reduction in its overall budget of 1.2 change years of plenty for public services before the per cent, the Welsh Government is planning to The dilemmas financial crisis was the NHS. After accounting increase real-terms spending on its Health and of Welsh health for economy-wide inflation, the Welsh Social Services by 1.3 per cent, with spending decision-makers Government increased spending on health on the day-to-day management and provision How to save by almost two-thirds between 2000–01 and of services up 0.7 per cent and investment in money and 2009–10. During the same years, the increase new facilities and equipment up 14.5 per cent. improve health in health spending was a bit larger in England Small spending cuts planned for the following outcomes and a bit smaller in Scotland, but it is clear year mean spending on the Health and Social that governments across Great Britain were Services is set to be at a similar level in 2015–16 prioritising increases in spending on the NHS. as today. This stands in stark contrast to the However, as it has grappled with austerity average 3.3 per cent reduction in spending since 2010–11 the government in Cardiff Bay in each of the last three years. So, although has made rather different decisions about NHS it is not planning to undo the cuts to health spending to the governments in Edinburgh spending already made, the Welsh Government and Westminster. Despite substantial cuts to is planning to protect the Welsh NHS from overall spending on public services, both the additional cuts over the next two years. Department for Health which funds the NHS in This change in priorities was not England and the Scottish Department for Health unexpected. There has been growing have seen their budgets roughly increased in evidence that the Welsh NHS has been line with economy-wide inflation. In contrast, struggling with its financial straightjacket between 2010–11 and 2013–14, spending on and there is political pressure from the the Welsh Health and Social Services Main Conservatives to protect health spending. But Expenditure Group – of which almost all goes there is rarely such a thing as a free lunch. In towards health – is set to have fallen by 9.7 per order to protect health spending, the Welsh cent, which is actually slightly larger than the Government has had to impose deep cuts overall cut to the Welsh Government’s budget. on other services, with the budget for local In other words, while spending on the NHS government set to fall 9.1 per cent over in England and Scotland has been ‘protected’, the next two years, and the budget for the

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Education and Skills set to fall 11.5 per However, it is possible that the UK government decides cent. ‘Protecting’ an area of spending during an era of austerity – especially against further tax rises or benefit cuts, and feels that one as big as the NHS – inevitably the large cuts already imposed on unprotected services involves more difficult choices for other mean that it is not possible to continue protecting the spending areas. In a report published earlier this year English NHS and schools from cuts. the Institute of Fiscal Studies analysed the prospects for the Welsh Government’s health spending from cuts for all four in these circumstances would require budget over the next 12 years, and years would require cuts to other services cuts of, on average, 15 per cent to other explored the trade-offs that would need that average 9 per cent. Extending spending areas. Extending protection to be faced when allocating spending protection to schools and social services to schools and social services too to different service areas. This showed spending, which the Welsh Government would increase the cuts to unprotected clearly that continuing to protect the NHS has also listed as priorities, would mean services to an average of 24 per cent. from further cuts would likely necessitate cuts of 13 per cent to remaining areas For instance, coming on top of the cuts further substantial cuts to other budgets. over the next four years. already delivered, this could take the Under our baseline scenario, where However, it is possible that the UK amount spent on the Department for the the UK government is able to find a government decides against further Economy, Science and Transport, for further £10 billion in benefit cuts or tax tax rises or benefit cuts, and feels that instance, to 40 per cent below its 2010– increases, the UK’s deficit is reduced the large cuts already imposed on 11 level. These are large cuts indeed. as currently planned, and where unprotected services mean that it is Unfortunately even when its Budget spending on health and education in not possible to continue protecting the starts growing again, increasing spending England continue to be protected after English NHS and schools from cuts. In on the NHS at a rate required to meet 2015–16, the Welsh block grant would this case, the Welsh block grant would the projected rises in costs and demand be approximately 5 per cent lower in real be 9 per cent lower than today in would mean very difficult choices terms in 2017–18 than today. Protecting 2017–18. Protecting health spending elsewhere in the budget, unless those

Figure 1. Scenarios for the Welsh block grant to 2025–26, £ billions, 2013–14 prices

Notes: Welsh block grant includes the Welsh Government’s resource and capital DEL. Source: Authors’ calculations

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 21 1/Health

pressures can be reduced, providing the necessary funding for health, social services and schools will mean austerity for other departments will become a longstanding feature of the budgets of many Welsh departments, even when the overall Welsh budget returns to growth. If this looks difficult, under our most pessimistic scenario for the Welsh block grant, where further spending restraint is required after 2017–18, the difficulties the Welsh Government would face in trading off spending on different services are difficult to comprehend. Providing the same kinds of increases in the health, social services and schools spending as set out above would imply cuts to areas Figure 2. such as transport, culture, and housing The trade-offs facing the Welsh Government between now and 2017–18 that would have to be implausibly large. Setting out these scenarios serves Notes: Figures for social services and schools refer to Welsh Government funding for these services via funding support for local government and the Health and Social Services MEG. the purpose of focusing minds. To help Locally-financed (via council tax) spending on schools and social services are excluded from ameliorate such difficult choices, it is these figures. vital to get a better understanding of the Source: Authors’ calculations demand and cost pressures facing public services in Wales, and to develop policies to try to reduce those pressures. The Welsh Government - and indeed, governments pressures can be ameliorated. estimated to be needed to cope with the in Westminster and across the developed Our baseline scenario does show the ageing population, and the tendency for world - will need to develop long-term Welsh block grant 16 per cent higher productivity growth to be relatively low strategies for improving productivity in the than today by 2025–26, and 5 per cent in labour intensive sectors such as health. provision of public services and managing higher than in 2010–11, which may seem The Welsh Government is planning on the demand for those services. Even then, like a significant increase. However, once the basis of cost-pressures of about 2 per the choices will be difficult. But without you start thinking about what this might cent per year in real-terms between 2013– such a long-term and strategic approach, imply for different service areas you can 14 and 2015–16, a period during which the challenges will be harder still – and see that this is not the case. public sector wages are being held down harder than they need to be. For instance, imagine that the (which cannot continue forever), while Welsh Government protected health, the Nuffield Trust identifies longer-term schools and social services from further cost pressures of about 4 per cent per year cuts between now and 2017–18, and for England – unfortunately, longer-term David Phillips is a Senior Research thereafter increased spending on all estimates do not exist for Wales. Economist at the Institute for Fiscal services in line with the increase in Raising the average increase in Studies. He is author of its recent report the overall Welsh budget. This would the health budget to 2 per cent per Scenarios for the Welsh Government allow health, social services and schools year – the lower of these cost pressure Budget to 2025–26, commissioned spending to rise by 22 per cent in real figures – for the period between 2010–11 by Wales Public Services 2025–26, terms by 2025–26, while allowing a 6 per and 2025–26 would mean real-terms and funded by the Society of Local cent average increase in the budgets of increases in health spending of around Authority Chief Executives, the Welsh other service areas. But over 12 years, 5 per cent per year after 2017–18. Local Government Association and this equates to an increase of just 1.7 Combined with the need to increase the Welsh NHS Confederation. Wales per cent a year for health. And given spending on social care for the elderly, Public Services 2025 is an independent the cuts already made to the NHS such increases could leave spending on programme, based at Cardiff budget in Wales, the increase would be unprotected areas almost a quarter lower Business School, looking at the fiscal, just 0.7 per cent per year over the 15 than today in 2025–26, and still falling demographic and other pressures which years between 2010–11 and 2025–26. thereafter by over 1 per cent per year. public services in Wales face over the This is far below projections for what is All this means that, unless cost next decade and beyond.

22 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Health

The Welsh NHS does lots of great things. Every day it sustains a hugely complex service which astounds thousands of people with its technical expertise and disarming acts of kindness and compassion. It takes all comers, without judgement or awareness of means. It provides access to the most complex care through a simple, modest local front door, staffed by doctors and nurses who field every complaint and actually handle 90 per cent of all patient contacts. And its 75,000+ staff are undergoing a safety revolution, as they increasingly challenge themselves to provide care more safely, and reduce the several thousand preventable deaths each year. But there are three major challenges where ‘more of the same’ would be disastrous. First, we need a new compact between personal and social responsibility for health. I suspect that most adults in Wales “There is no compelling case to screw up Bevan’s blueprint and consign it to the bin of history ...” know what constitutes a healthy life – no smoking, moderate alcohol, some exercise, weight control, and Demand and budget cuts five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. They certainly should do, given that each year we spend in excess of a will force health change third of a billion pounds informing and persuading them to lead such a life. And Marcus Longley argues that we need to organise NHS Wales in a yet, almost three quarters of us regularly radically different way achieve just two or fewer of these five requirements, a figure which work by the pioneering epidemiologist Peter Elwood in Caerphilly suggests may barely have Strategy is all about choices, and 2013). Even if health spending in Wales changed in the past 30 years. choices are hard. In health, there is no is protected as much as is humanly Put simply, we all now have a choice. escaping the need for choice. In the possible, this will leave the Welsh NHS We can continue like this. If we do, first decade of this century, spending facing a radically different future. That we will need to find a lot more money on health increased by about 7 per rate of growth will not keep pace with every year for the NHS to keep us alive, cent each year in real terms. This was demographic change, and a huge gap will and voters don’t seem keen on this. Or an unprecedented period of growth opened up between supply and demand. we need a completely new approach which took the UK close to the average So we need to choose a different to ‘nudging’ people to be healthier. health spend of comparable countries NHS, or endure one which struggles Over decades it took a combination in Europe. more and more with each successive of education, opportunity, incentives, But in the future it is likely that the budget settlement. But in what way will sanctions, and legislation to shift our Welsh block grant will grow by no more the NHS be different? Certainly, there is smoking habits. Are we ready for a dose than an average of about 0.5 per cent no compelling case to screw up Bevan’s of libertarian paternalism when it comes above inflation each year between blueprint and consign it to the bin of to obesity and exercise? Wales needs 2010 and 2025 (Scenarios for the history. We want to keep our baby, some truly radical thinking here. Welsh Government Budget to 2025-26, but we must change the bathwater in Secondly we need to think about Institute for Fiscal Studies, September which it lies. improving efficiency in the NHS. No

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 23 1/Health one would argue against this, but until sometimes sceptical and demoralised A new strategic direction for recently we have turned a blind eye to workforce that change actually is possible. health in Wales would need to start underperformance. All too often data in Many staff in the NHS will have by protecting and nurturing all those key performance areas is poor and not experienced working for an organisation design features which are timeless. believed, or kept behind closed doors, that all too often failed to tackle the This is a major challenge, maybe even encouraging the public to become really ‘wicked’ problems. The NHS an overwhelming one as budget cuts complacent. Examples of variations seemed to work really well at the level bite. The most successful organisations between hospitals include: of the team or department, where seem to be able to reduce their costs by problems seemed to be tractable. But perhaps as much as 5 per cent a year, • Death rates at weekends. those issues which crossed several while maintaining output levels over an • Differences in mortality rates. departments, or linked the ambulance extended period. We are asking more • Lengths of patient stay. service and the hospitals, or even than that of our Health Boards. • Sluggish responses to patients who (heaven forbid) required the NHS and NHS Wales must tackle the three need to move on. Social Services to work together – forget great challenges simultaneously. Each it! There is little more depressing than have this much in common – previous Increasingly the NHS is facing up to its an organisation which has come to approaches have all failed to deliver inadequacies, and most importantly is believe that some problems simply the scale and pace of change we now realising that it can actually get better. cannot be solved. desperately need. So for each, we need Reliable data, measuring things that The third great challenge is a completely new approach. matter, and always in the public domain, integrating health and social care. Most On public health, we either decide to are effecting more change to the NHS of modern healthcare depends upon will the collective change, or we must in Wales than barrow loads of central several professionals working together as will the extra NHS expenditure entailed. directions and political exhortation ever a team around the patient. The complex We need a national conversation on could. There is something irresistible NHS sometimes struggles to achieve this this, which starts with a recognition of about like-for-like comparisons which feat. Social Services, the NHS and the past failure. show you in the bottom half of the third sectors together really struggle. It On efficiency, we need much more league table. seems that the easy option – the default information – reliable, relevant, and right in your face. I don’t think that a market in healthcare is the necessary corollary, partly because of the complexity and The NHS seemed to work really well at the level unintended consequences of such of the team or department, where problems ‘fake’ markets. But we do need to design and create our alternatives to seemed to be tractable. But those issues which market mechanisms, including a clear understanding of relative costs between crossed several departments, or linked the different service providers. ambulance service and the hospitals, or even On integration, we need ambitious targets and a national will. In Scotland, (heaven forbid) required the NHS and Social the consensual approach was tried and failed, and now all health and local Services to work together – forget it! government are marching to the same drum beat. Let’s learn the lessons. Am I optimistic that these challenges will be addressed? We are a small, But we are still in the foothills, position – is to cooperate with others homogenous nation, wanting the same pulling on our walking boots. So, we only to the extent that it doesn’t interfere things. Anyway, what’s the alternative? need internal challenge – an internal with one’s own objectives. ‘commissioning’ function in every We have had exhortations to do better Health Board that refuses to tolerate in this area for years. There will soon be a mediocrity. We need to provide services new law which can compel it. But what Marcus Longley is Professor of Applied in the optimal configuration, not the one we still struggle to identify are effective Health Policy with the Welsh Institute for bequeathed by history. And we need incentives, sanctions and enablers to Health and Social Care at the University public service leaders who can show a overcome the default position. of South Wales.

24 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 1/Health The dilemmas of Welsh health decision-makers

John Osmond interviews Health Minister Mark Drakeford and (overleaf) Cardiff and Vale Health Board Chief Executive Adam Cairns about the stark choices they face in sustaining the NHS in Wales

We’re facing a fork in the road at the election his job will be made a lot 2015 general election,” the Welsh Health easier. He is in no doubt that pressures Minister declared. “The government on spending would continue for about at Westminster has an ideological view two years, but at least there would be a that the state is too big. By 2015 they will UK government in power that believed have spent five years reducing it. If they in growing state services rather than are presented with another five years of reducing them. doing that, the NHS in Wales will be a He acknowledges, however, that very different organisation to the one it whichever way it goes the NHS in Wales is today.” will have to change. For instance, in These words, spoken in Mark September a Wales Audit Office report Drakeford’s office on the fifth floor of found that if the Welsh Government’s Ty Hywel in Cardiff Bay, were delivered spending allocations continued in measured terms. He reflected that unchanged health spending would rise the Conservative’s ideological position from 42 per cent to 57 per cent of the was perfectly defensible, though he budget within a decade. profoundly disagreed with it. Faced with an unsustainable Health Minister Mark Drakeford - “People have to be When Mark Drakeford became financial future Mark Drakeford says he persuaded to take responsibility for their own health...” Health Minster in Carwyn Jones’ reshuffle has three options - to make the NHS do last March he set himself three immediate less, to charge for some services, or to the line, so driving up costs in other tasks. They were to see his part of the re-design the way services are delivered. parts of the service. In any event, while legislative programme – in particular He says there is very little scope for significant, a saving of £30 million would the Organ Donation Bill – through the making any significant savings from not be a solution to the funding crisis Assembly; to prepare for the coming the first two. In terms of reducing NHS facing the Welsh NHS. winter pressures; and to achieve a interventions he mentioned treatment Which leaves redesigning the Welsh resolution of the reconfiguration for infertility or for varicose veins. NHS so that it delivers in a completely changes underway in north, mid and Neither condition was life-threatening different way. How can this be done? west and south-east Wales. To a large and so it could be argued that the Mark Drakeford suggested four ways, extent this agenda is now out of the way, NHS should not be involved in their two that he was following through in with the exception of a few decisions on treatment. However, retreating from the the immediate future, and a further two, hospital changes that will be resolved in provision of such services would achieve more visionary and longer-term ideas. the next few months. only marginal savings. First, and most immediate was What is increasingly on the Health As for charging, the favoured streamlining the delivery of hospital care. Minister’s mind is dealing with the candidate would be free medical He gave as an example the provision of longer-term funding crisis that is looming prescriptions that cost the Welsh stroke services that are currently delivered on the horizon of the Welsh NHS. For Government £30 million a year. at 17 separate sites around Wales. In gathering there is a perfect storm of a However, Mark Drakeford defended contrast London, which has three times sharp reduction in resources, coupled continuing with this policy because Wales the population of Wales, delivers its stroke with rising demands from an ageing and is a low-income country. If charges were services out of just seven centres and increasingly unhealthy population. introduced many people would simply achieves better outcomes. Mark Drakeford fervently believes fail to pay for the medicines they need Secondly, people had to be that if Labour wins at the 2015 general that prevent more serious illnesses down persuaded to take more responsibility for

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 25 1/Health their own health. There was little point ‘Prudent’ or ‘parsimonious’ medicine such difficulties but said he would not in the health service providing people similarly requires a cultural shift amongst flinch from making hard decisions. His with a hip replacement if they were so NHS staff and will be opposed by some strategy appears to be operating in two overweight as to make the procedure as the introduction of overt rationing phases. The first takes the Welsh NHS ineffective. “People already know the into provision. Equally, to the 2015 general election, and he health risks from behaviours such as replacing lists with a points system could is confident that the system is robust smoking or drinking immoderately,” said lead to doctors ‘gaming’ the system or enough to survive intact until then. Mark Drakeford. “We have to explain even judicial review of decisions. After that, it all depends on which the implications for NHS treatment in a Mark Drakeford acknowledges fork in the road Britain takes. If Ed more direct way than in the past.” In the longer-term he is contemplating more far-reaching strategies. The first is a concept of ‘Prudent Medicine’ being developed by the Welsh Government’s How to save money Bevan Commission that advises on long-term health policy. Based on what and improve health is known in Canada as ‘Parsimonious Medicine’, this refers to delivering appropriate health care that avoids Adam Cairns, Chief Executive of the fundamentally, ways have to be found to wasteful treatments and interventions. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, improve the way services are designed Mark Drakeford estimates that as much is responsible for an annual turnover of and delivered. “We’re changing the way as 20 per cent of NHS treatment either £1.1 billion, which is about 7.5 per cent our doctors and nurses go about their fails to deliver any beneficial result or does of the Welsh Government’s budget. And business,” he said, pointing to 73 different actual harm. He mentioned the over- he’s overspending, a fact that’s been in schemes that are currently underway. prescription of some medicines and the the news. “We are demonstrating that we can hospital admission of some elderly patients In November he told the Assembly’s achieve improvements and save money who are then treated in an aggressively Public Accounts Committee he had at the same time.” medical way – “over days exhaustive to make savings of £56.7 million in this He gave two examples. The first was tests are undertaken and a list of ailments financial year, which means he will have to general practitioner prescriptions of produced for which little can be done.” reduce his workforce by around 380 posts cortisone inhalers for people suffering His second longer-term idea is to look by March, on top of 180 that have gone from asthma. It was discovered that 80 at the hospital admissions practice in New since April – out of a total payroll of 14,500. per cent of patients were receiving too Zealand where waiting lists have been It was an announcement that brought high a dose of the inhaler, and would abandoned in favour of a points system. Unison members on to the steps of be better treated by a lower dose. The GPs referring patients to hospital fill in a the Senedd in protest. But Cairns says prescriptions were changed accordingly, form listing the detail and severity of their we have to have a grown-up debate saving money and improving health condition. The forms are then scored about health spending. “In the past we outcomes at the same time. by a panel of consultants on the basis of have operated on annual budgets with The second was centralisation clinical need and admissions allocated pressure on managers to find artificial of treatment of cancer of the liver, accordingly, up to a number that can be ways of reducing costs as the end-of-year esophagus, pancreas and stomach. A trial accommodated by a set budget. approaches. So vacancies were held was undertaken involving 650 patients A problem with all these policies is over, training programmes were delayed to assess the outcomes of the change. that they are contestable in various ways. and so on, but ultimately savings weren’t The result was a 20 per cent reduction Few would argue that the concentration made and deficits grew. in mortality, a 50 per cent increase in of specialist services in a smaller number “In the past, too, the Health Boards curative results from surgery, a 70 per of centres can achieve more efficiency became used to being bailed out by the cent reduction in complications resulting and effectiveness. However, there is little Welsh Government which led to a culture from surgery, and a three-day reduction consensus about the centralisation of of dependence. Now we’ve agreed a three- in hospital stays. accident and emergency and maternity year plan with the Welsh Government and But will these kind of changes be services away from hospitals in places like with our own clinicians and other staff, to enough to keep the Health Board within Llanelli and Haverfordwest. put our budget into balance.” budget in the coming years? “It will be Dealing with lifestyle behaviours like He says reducing staff costs has to be a challenge but what are our choices?” smoking and obesity requires cultural part of this because they represent 60 per Adam Cairns asked. “The health shifts in society that can take decades. cent of the Board’s spending. But more service is in a different place from local

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Miliband is installed in Number 10 Mark will enable it to do the same. Wales, an edge of bitterness crept into Drakeford seems confident that the On the other hand, if the Mark Drakeford’s tone. “In England the health service in England will be brought Conservatives are allowed another five NHS is becoming a lottery, driven by the back from the brink of privatisation and years in power all bets will be off. A pursuit of profit,” he said. “In future, if this significiant new investment will be found more radical approach will be needed government are given another five years, to restore it to something that Aneurin to address the dilemma of funding an the bottom line for the NHS will be the Bevan would recognize. In which case unsustainable Welsh health service. extraction of profit.” The question will then the Welsh NHS will continue to benefit Contemplating this prospect, and the be how Wales can escape the same fate. from Barnett funding consequentials that potential it has for injuring the NHS in

Adam Cairns – “Wales health and social develop a different and better system is fulfilling the promise of integrated health care...” services. The two compared with the one across the local authorities border. “We can insulate ourselves from and the Health England,” he insists. “Although they’re Board In Cardiff commissioning more and more of their and the Vale have services from the private sector, at the come together end of the day the state still pays the bill. in a three- “In England the philosophy is to year project to use the market and competition to better integrate produce efficiencies and drive down the delivery costs. This implies a readiness to accept of health and that some institutions will go under, that social services. they will fail. But why should we work authorities when it comes to responding Teams are being located in the same a system in the expectation that part of to spending cuts. They can say, ‘Oh well, buildings, common IT systems are being it is going to fail? In Wales we need to we’ll just have to close our libraries’. But put in place, with greater collaboration find an alternative to the market to drive what service do we provide that we can between managers. As Cairns put improvement.” He suggested two ways: simply shut?” it, “People tend to leap to structural At the same time he conceded there solutions around reorganization of one • Transparency and a culture of would have to be structural change sort or another when what matters reporting results in collaboration with within the Welsh NHS. “We have 133 is professional integration of service Community Health Councils, and being hospitals in Wales for a population of delivery.” open about targets and how well they just over three million people. That’s not He has been in post 18 months. A are met. “The driver will then be a sustainable. But we have to get much law graduate he was previously Chief moral one,” Cairns said. “Clinicians, better at persuading people of the need Executive at the Shrewsbury and Telford doctors and nurses will not want to and case for change. You can’t do it if the NHS Trust where he led a consultation see their departments or parts of the doctors are against you. One man in a on a reconfiguration of hospital services. service failing to meet agreed targets.” white coat is better than ten men in suits “I’ve come to Wales because the system in making the case for change.” here operates on social democratic • Comparison with the highest standards The same was true of persuading principles – progressive universalism, around the world, which he says is people to change their lifestyles. For if you like,” he said “The system here the best way to measure levels of instance, Cardiff and the Vale Health is also much less complex than in achievement. Board has instituted a policy for England where it is fragmented by the persuading obese people to undertake commissioning split. He said we have to be more sophisticated a weight reduction programme before “Wales is fulfilling the promise of in finding ways of lowering our costs and undergoing surgery. “An obese person integrated health care. Here we put improving health gain. And he added, risks severe complications,” said Cairns. together GP services, primary and “I’m optimistic. After all, the intellectual “There is evidence that such people facing community care, hospitals and public heft of the health service is much greater surgery are much more receptive to taking health. We can have a whole system than most organisations enjoy. Virtually responsibility for their own weight. We approach which is potentially much all our staff have first degrees. My money should take advantage of that.” more efficient.” is on them finding creative ways for Another challenge is integrating He believes that in Wales we can figuring out how to change things.”

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 27 Tax powers would enhance the Assembly’s engagement with the electorate

2 Eurfyl ap Gwilym unravels what the UK government is saying in response to the Silk Commission Changing Union In November the UK Government finally gave to set differential rates of income tax is critical. its response Part 1 of Silk Commission’s report The Scottish model does not allow Scottish on tax and borrowing powers for the National Ministers to set different rates for basic, higher Assembly. Of the 31 recommendations to and additional rates of income tax. The Silk the UK Government it is claimed that 30 Commission gave the term ‘lockstep’ to this have been accepted in full or in part. One locking together of changes to the three rates. recommendation regarding air passenger The Commission examined the Scottish model duty was rejected and the remaining two in detail and concluded that “there was a were directed at the Welsh Government. convincing case for the Welsh Government Articles However, such a numerical approach to be able to vary the rates for each band of Tax powers misses the most important point. The Silk income tax independently”. would enhance Commission’s first report had the carefully The model proposed by the Silk the Assembly’s worded title Empowerment and Responsibility: Commission would allow political parties in engagement with Financial Powers to Strengthen Wales and the National Assembly to offer to the Welsh the electorate this has been reflected in the title of the UK electorate a wider choice of income tax Irish referendum Government’s formal response. One of the options. For example, one political party vote shows way guiding principles for the Commission was might propose cutting the top rate more for Wales that as well as having spending responsibilities than the basic rate while another party might any government worthy of the name favour cutting the basic rate and increasing or Instability should be accountable for raising a material leaving unchanged the two higher rates. beckons beyond proportion of its revenue. However, if the three rate changes are the Scottish vote Any government should also be locked together as in the Scottish model it will Loose ends of incentivised to grow the economy. Currently make it very difficult for parties to propose any asymmetrical the Welsh Government has no powers to material changes to the three rates of income constitution raise revenue. As such it is unique within tax. If a party wished to cut the additional rate building those OECD states that have a measure from 45 per cent to 40 per cent this would of decentralisation to ‘sub-national mean that the basic rate would have to be cut governments’. It is now clear that the UK Government accepts this important principle. It agrees that it should share income tax powers with the Welsh Government as well as being willing to devolve two minor taxes: stamp duty land tax and landfill tax. The Changing Union project is being Income tax sharing powers will give undertaken by the IWA in collaboration future Welsh governments responsibility for with the Wales Governance Centre at raising approximately £2 billion of revenue. Cardiff University and Cymru Yfory/ Without these powers, the two minor taxes to Tomorrow’s Wales. Funded by the be devolved account for only approximately Nuffield Foundation and the Joseph £200 million a year and set against the annual Rowntree Charitable Trust, the project is expenditure by the Welsh Government of tracking and influencing the devolution £15 billion fails the materiality test. Thus the sharing of income tax powers is central to the debate across the UK over three argument advanced both by Silk Commission years in the run-up to the Scottish and now accepted by the UK Government. independence referendum in September However, the question of whether or not 2014. See the project’s website future Welsh governments will have the power www.changingunion.org.uk

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from 20 per cent to 15 per cent - which would be far too costly in terms of lost revenue. On the other hand, if a future Welsh Government wished to raise either the higher rate or the additional rate by 5 per cent it would have to raise the basic rate from 20 per cent to 25 per cent. This would be far too high an increase to impose on the vast majority of Welsh taxpayers who pay income tax at a basic rate of 20 per cent. Thus the income tax varying powers of future Welsh governments will be severely circumscribed if the ‘lockstep’ Nick Clegg and David Cameron at their Press Conference in the Senedd in November 2013 when they agreed ‘in principle’ model is adopted. with the Silk Commission’s tax recommendations. It was for this reason that Silk Commission proposed a more flexible Government should retain the revenue The devolution of the minor taxes will model. When the Commission visited from such taxes without a deduction provide Wales with the ability to service Scotland many recognised that the from the block grant. This power will not a debt stock of approximately £1.5 billion proposed Welsh model was a superior one. only allow the introduction of innovative over ten years. To put this in perspective In its response to the Silk report taxes but will mean that Wales could the current capital investment budget of the the UK Government has rejected this be a test bed within the UK for such Welsh Government is £1.5 billion per year. recommendation and wishes to impose measures. Such a measure would, for Thus, while welcome, these borrowing a lockstep. It is to be hoped that this example, have made the introduction of powers are only a modest increase on the can be challenged and overturned in the plastic bags levy much easier. current position. This increase also needs Parliament. If there is a No vote in the As well as dealing with taxation the to be put in the context of severe cuts in Scottish referendum next September and UK Government has agreed to give the the Welsh Government’s capital budget a future UK Government decides to offer Welsh Government limited borrowing in recent years, with a real terms cut from more tax powers to Scotland it is quite powers. What they seem to have in £2.1 billion in 2009-10 to £1.4 billion in possible that one element of the package mind is that: 2012-13. Thus if the Welsh Government will be removal of their ‘lockstep’. seeks substantial borrowing powers it will One of the Commission’s • In the short term the Welsh need to support the devolution of some recommendations was that non- Government will be able to use its income tax powers. domestic rates should be fully devolved. existing borrowing powers, inherited While the recommendations of the This has been accepted by the UK from the Welsh Development Agency, Silk Commission were initially welcomed Government. Council Tax is already to fund certain major road investments by all four parties in the National devolved and fully devolving non- without an offsetting reduction to the Assembly, the Welsh Government has domestic rates together with the block grant - the amounts have not yet stated that it does not foresee calling a devolution of Stamp Duty Land Tax will been specified. referendum on income tax powers “any give a future Welsh Government full time soon” and sees the replacement of power over property taxation. This offers • In the longer term the Welsh the current funding arrangements (the the possibility of adopting a different and Government will have access to wider Barnett Formula) as a precondition. more holistic approach to such taxes in borrowing powers linked to the new The UK Government in its response the future. tax powers – the details are unclear has limited itself to the current agreement Another potentially significant at present but the UK Government whereby at each Spending Review it Commission recommendation accepted appears explicitly to tie the potential will review with the Welsh Government by the UK Government is that the levels of borrowing to the devolution the question of convergence. This is one National Assembly should be given a of income tax powers. As its response of the features of the Barnett formula power to legislate with the agreement says, “The precise levels of capital which means that, over a number of of the UK Government to introduce borrowing will therefore depend years, spending per head in Wales falls specified taxes and any associated tax on the outcome of the income tax to the England level irrespective of credits. Such a measure is included referendum…”. relative need. The UK Government’s in the Scotland Act 2012. The Welsh position sidesteps addressing any current

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 29 2/Changing Union underfunding of Wales. While most tune of £400 million a year. Perhaps between the two governments. However, observers believe that Wales has been the Welsh Government fears that the given the positive approach adopted by ill-served by the Barnett Formula since UK Government’s response to the the current UK Government to the partial its introduction in the late 1970s there is underfunding would be that the Welsh devolution of income tax it should not be no obvious linkage between the funding Government was free to raise income beyond the wit of the two governments to formula and the devolution of some tax to make good the shortfall. agree a fair way forward. income tax powers. The Welsh Government’s judgement A fourth concern is that Wales is poorer One concern advanced has been may be that it believes it can use the then England and has a weaker income the hypothetical case of a future UK referendum as a bargaining chip with tax base, which therefore provides a weak Government deciding to reduce spending the UK Government with respect to foundation for funding, unless the Barnett on the NHS in England and requiring reforming or replacing the Barnett formula is reformed to reflect needs. The people to pay directly, in part at least, for Formula. However, given its history Silk Commission was very much aware of some of the health services they receive. since the Barnett Formula was this argument. What matters is how fast the In such a case under the current funding introduced by Labour in the late 1970s income tax base is growing, not the size of formula there would be a consequential one wonders how much bargaining the existing income tax base. There is no reduction in the Welsh block grant. This power the Welsh Government reason to believe that the income tax base would leave the Welsh Government with has. Indeed the response of the in Wales will necessarily grow more slowly a limited number of difficult choices. It UK Government to the Silk Report than England, and indeed devolving taxes could either initiate a similar reduction in provides it with the leverage: if the will incentivise faster growth. health spending in Wales or maintain the Welsh Government wants substantial Over the coming months there will same level by raiding other programmes borrowing powers it will need to acquire be much discussion of the detail now funded by the block grant, such as income tax sharing powers. that the UK Government has given a education or housing. Of course, one step the current Welsh fuller response to the Silk Commission What would happen if income tax Government could take to address this report. It is to be hoped that sight is not powers were partly devolved? In such a issue is to get the Labour Party in London lost of the bigger picture. There is a need case the Welsh Government in addition to commit to replacing Barnett if it wins the to empower future Welsh Governments to the two options currently available next UK General Election in 2015. If the and to incentivise them to focus more would have a third: it could raise income lockstep model is passed into legislation by on improving the economic health tax to make up the shortfall. Whether the current UK Government then Labour of Wales. At present in formulating such a course of action was taken would could also commit to replacing it with the its polices and legislation the Welsh be a matter for the government of the more flexible Silk model. Government does not have to concern day and it would be accountable to the Another approach would be for all itself with their impact on its revenue. Welsh electorate for its decision. Thus four parties in the National Assembly to The crucial linkage between income in this case partly devolving income tax unite in pressing the UK Government to and expenditure, a hallmark of any powers would not leave Wales any worse review the current funding arrangements. properly empowered government, does off than it is now and does provide the Given that the principles underlying the not exist in the case of Wales. political parties in the National Assembly Commission’s recommendations have Such empowerment will also engage with an additional policy option. been accepted by the UK Government the citizens of Wales more closely with A second possible reason for insisting it should be amenable to reconsidering the National Assembly. It is noteworthy on the reform or replacement of Barnett the fair funding issue, although this is that citizens take a very active interest as a precondition for a referendum is the unlikely to happen until after the Scottish in the annual UK budget because they fact that Wales has been unfairly funded referendum in October 2014. know decisions on taxation and public over many years. That this is so goes back A third concern is that when Wales spending impact on their everyday lives. to estimates made by the Treasury at the has taxation powers there will be a When the National Assembly has income time of the formula’s introduction in the reduction in the block grant. As pointed tax sharing powers one would expect a late 1970s. The outcome of a relative needs out in detail in the Holtham Commission more intense engagement by the public assessment that showed Wales was indeed report, the way this reduction is quantified in the affairs of the National Assembly, a being underfunded was ignored. To add is of considerable importance. The feature that has been sadly lacking in the insult to injury in the sharing out of funds Silk Commission echoed the Holtham first fourteen years of its existence. the population of Scotland was rounded up Commission report and favoured the and that of Wales rounded down. index deduction method for reducing the More recently the Holtham block grant, which is being introduced Eurfyl ap Gwilym is Plaid Cymru’s Commission estimated that Wales in Scotland. Clearly this matter will have economics adviser and its nominee on was underfunded in 2010-11 to the to be the subject of detailed negotiations the Silk Commission.

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those meetings will require them to be on top of a large volume of complex Irish referendum legislation, evidence or draft reports on diverse and important issues. They need vote shows way time to read, digest, research alternative proposals and prepare their views. A handful of Members are also for Wales leading their own legislative proposals, Rosemary Butler welcomes a new report advocating an something which I have always been keen to champion. In addition to 12 increase in the number of AMs in the National Assembly committees, there are almost 50 cross- party groups engaging Members in The need for an Assembly with greater are facing today in Wales. varying levels of activity and numerous capacity, with more AMs, is the worst Week in, week out as Presiding events to attend both in Cardiff and in kept secret in Wales. It is welcome Officer I see the demands on Members’ our constituencies and regions. therefore that the Changing Union time, the breadth of issues they deal The scrutiny of the recent Human project and the Electoral Reform with and the multiple roles some have to Transplantation (Wales) Act 2013 Society have begun to lift the roof of undertake. For example, three Members demonstrates the significance of the the Senedd to see what is really going chair committees, in itself a significant work of Members and the ambition and on inside. It is the first time since the responsibility, but they also sit on two seriousness with which they approach Richard Commission that such detailed other committees. A quarter of those their responsibilities. We had marathon consideration has been given to the 42 members sit on three committees, debates on the Bill as it passed through number of Members the Assembly half sit on two. One would simply the various stages and there is no doubt needs to operate effectively. The not find the same level of committee that Members’ scrutiny of the legislation analysis draws on our experience in the workload on Members in Westminster, was rigorous – whatever their stance. Assembly to date and the operation of Holyrood or Stormont. Some Members The law was improved because of the similar parliaments and Assemblies from will spend a good day and a half of scrutiny of the Assembly. elsewhere, all of which points to the need their week in committee meetings, and As Chair of the Business Committee, for more Members. two afternoons participating in Plenary. which organises the business of the The Assembly has 60 Members, to That may sound perfectly reasonable. Assembly, I see first hand how the make laws and hold the Government to However, the reality is that each of Assembly is attempting to deal with the account. But the reality is, as the report rightly highlights, that once you take away The Senedd is already capable of seating 80 members. those who are Government Ministers and other office holders such as myself, only 42 Members are available to do the detailed scrutiny work in our committees. So, there are only 42 Members to scrutinise £15 billion of taxpayers’ money, and to scrutinise the government on the big issues of today - the future of our health service, our education system and the economy. On top of that they have to make sound, thoroughly scrutinised laws for our nation. In my evidence to the Silk Commission, I recommended 80 Members. The Size Matters report has gone a step further and proposes 100. This is based on an examination of a wide range of evidence that reinforces what we knew to be the reality of the demands on Members’ time and the challenges we

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Main recommendations of the Size Matters report

• Leaving aside Ministers and other office holders, only 42 of the present 60 AMs are available to hold the Welsh Government to account and scrutinise legislation. This compares with 113 in the Scottish Parliament and 522 at Westminster. It means AMs have to attend multiple committees. They are always in a hurry, constantly moving from one meeting or issue to another. Many say that they do not always have time to read, let alone reflect properly on their documents ahead of meetings.

• The present allocation of elected representatives between local authorities, the National Assembly and Welsh MPs and Peers at Westminster is poorly distributed. More could be made of existing resources if we had fewer MPs and Peers at Westminster, and fewer paid councillors, but a greater number of AMs in Cardiff Bay.

• A comparative analysis of equivalent small nation and ‘Regional’ legislatures elsewhere in the world indicates that 60 members are extremely few for a legislative Assembly that also provides an Executive. The analysis finds that for an institution with the National Assembly’s functions, at least 100 representatives is the norm.

• A history of the half-century leading to democratic devolution in 1999 illustrates the arbitrary way in which the number of 60 Members came about. In all previous proposals the recommended membership never fell below 75, and generally assumed a figure of around 100.

• To bring it into line with the capacity of other comparable legislatures the National Assembly should have around 100 members. This would add approximately £10.1 million to the Assembly’s current annual running costs of £49.5 million, which is a small price to pay for the benefits that would accrue.

pressures on its capacity, in particular, has created a Policy Research Fund to of the Seanad would save money and to ensure that detailed examination allow Members to commission their own mean fewer politicians. On the other of legislation and policy is the norm. research to support the development of hand, the opposing ‘Democracy Matters’ Members are becoming more vocal policy thinking. All of this is good, sensible campaign, focused on the importance in debates about the need to allow stuff, but it only masks the fundamental of scrutiny and holding the government sufficient time for robust scrutiny and issue – we have too few Members. to account, especially in today’s tough we have increased the number of The UK Government’s recent economic climate when it has such weeks when the Assembly meets. I announcement on the Silk Commission’s difficult decisions to make. It also stressed also Chair the Assembly Commission, Part 1 report means that greater financial the benefits of bringing diversity of views, which provides the support services the powers will be devolved to the Assembly new faces and fresh thinking into politics. Assembly requires. before the end of this Parliamentary term. I set out my case for more Members Recently I initiated a review of the Whatever the extent of these powers, this in my evidence to the Silk Commission support provided for committee work increase in responsibilities only serves to earlier this year. The Size Matters report with the aim of enabling our committees reaffirm the need for more Members, to adds welcome intellectual analysis to to be ‘world class’ in their impact and robustly scrutinise the Welsh Government the debate. More politicians in a time of influence. This has focused on tailoring on tough decisions around Welsh austerity is not a popular argument to our services – such as those of our taxation, spending and borrowing. make. But I believe it is a strong one and, excellent in-house research and legal In Ireland, too, there has been public as the people of Ireland have shown, an teams - to allow those 42 Members to be debate about the necessary number argument that can be won. as effective as possible in their committee of elected politicians. In a referendum work and to ensure they have the in October the people voted against Rosemary Butler is Labour AM professional development opportunities abolishing the Seanad, the Upper House for Newport West and the National to equip them with the requisite skills. of the Irish Parliament. The result was Assembly’s Presiding Officer. Size Matters Remuneration Board, close and the key arguments resonate - Making the National Assembly more which sets the financial framework here. Led by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the effective can be downloaded at within which Members must operate, Yes campaign was simple. Getting rid www.changingunion.org.uk

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Instability beckons beyond the Scottish vote

Peter Riddell warns that the real threat to the union could be posed by the 2017 referendum on EU membership David Melding AM - “Willing to think constructively about constitutional change”.

The future of the minister , and former face immediate existential challenges”. is not just about Scotland and the Plaid MP at the launch of This could affect the peace process in referendum on independence in the book in London in September. Northern Ireland while there would September 2014. The question involves Of course, David Melding is an be debate about creating a new union all three of the devolved nations. One unusual Conservative. Not only is he a between England, Wales and Northern of the bizarre legacies of the devolution very rare supporter of the Alternative Ireland, possibly on a federal basis, or a legislation of the late 1990s is that Vote, he is also willing to think Northern Ireland state or condominium. political developments outside England constructively about constitutional A No vote might not be decisive are largely ignored in London unless change, rather than just oppose most and, anyway, will probably only be something dramatic happens, like the referendum. It is almost as if the English, and, in particular, the London political As an Englishman, albeit with close Scottish ties and media worlds say that now that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland only two generations back, I have found that the have devolved powers, we no longer only time I hear a serious discussion about the have to be interested. As an Englishman, albeit with close future of the union is when the Scots, Welsh and Scottish ties only two generations back, Northern Irish are involved. I have found that the only time I hear a serious discussion about the future of the union is when the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish are involved. Apart from a few passionate advocates of an English parliament, the English are largely proposals He is a pro-Union federalist. achieved by proposals for enhanced uninterested. That was what made the Indeed, a key part of the Melding case Scottish autonomy on domestic affairs. IWA’s discussion on David Melding’s is that — Yes or No — the Scottish In Melding’s view it is more important new book, The Reformed Union: the UK independence referendum will have a to promote a new Union rather than as a Federation so interesting. It also lasting impact on the coherence of the just “obdurately defend the old”. Any explained why there was surprising multi-national state and hence for those coherent settlement needs to use more common ground on the issues, if not living outside Scotland. As he argues, explicit federal mechanisms. Moreover, the solutions, between him and fellow “If the Scottish people vote to secede, such an approach, and an associated panelists Labour AM and former Northern Ireland and Wales would Constitutional Convention, needs to be

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Not surprisingly, Ministers and officials in Whitehall design policies for England and it is often hard for the Welsh Government to convince their opposite numbers in London that this can produce substantial, and costly, anomalies for Wales.

announced beforehand. Welsh Government to convince their which the UK Independence Party has There was widespread agreement opposite numbers in London that this tapped into, not just over Europe but between the diverse speakers that the can produce substantial, and costly, also over immigration and broader current position is not stable. Whether anomalies for Wales. claims that ordinary, English, people Scotland votes Yes, or, as the current Yet, as Adam Price pointed out are being ignored by the Westminster opinion polls suggest, No, everyone with characteristic brio, there are also political class. assumes that some version of Calman, broader questions of national identity. As one acute questioner, a senior or a more ambitious Devo Max will be The Scottish question is a question for us civil servant, asked, “Where will it all adopted during the rest of the decade all—“whatever the result, sooner or later end?” No one knows. But, far more with more fiscal powers. And the we are going to need a referendum-all- than members of the coalition Cabinet government of Wales is in flux not just round on what the future holds”. or senior civil servants in Whitehall as we await further instalments of Silk And there is the ill-defined English recognize, the question is much but as the existing arrangements pose question — ill-defined in part because more than how Scotland votes next increasing problems. The division of England so dominates the United September. Change is underway in responsibilities between Westminster Kingdom, and in part because no one Wales and Northern Ireland as well. and Cardiff Bay is being tested even has found a convincing answer. English And as important as the 2014 vote will without further statutory changes. This is regionalism has yet to recover from the be the promised 2017 referendum on partly because the relationship between debacle of the defeat of the half-baked membership of the EU. If the overall London and Cardiff is inherently more plan for an Assembly in the North-East vote is to withdraw - and particularly if ambiguous in constitutional terms in 2004, while the campaign for an England votes differently from Scotland than between London and Edinburgh, English parliament has yet to take off. and Wales - then the Union will really despite the changes of recent years. Nonetheless, the Future of England come under strain. As significant, as Leighton Andrews survey, an annual poll conducted pointed out, are the results of policy by the universities of Edinburgh and divergence. This, of course, started Cardiff, and the Institute for Public during the Blair era with the NHS, but Policy Research, shows that the English is now producing increasing problems are increasingly discontented. Indeed, over welfare provision, such as the they are beginning to see themselves ending of the educational maintenance as a national community that demands allowance in England but not in recognition. A growing number Peter Riddell is Director of the Institute Wales. Not surprisingly, Ministers and have begun to distinguish between for Government, a former political officials in Whitehall design policies Englishness and Britishness. journalist and author of seven books on for England and it is often hard for the In a sense this is the constituency British politics.

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of national distinctiveness. The Loose ends of asymmetrical development of Wales as a distinct polity in the 20th Century resembled, even constitution building followed, Scotland through the growth of distinct national political institutions. James Mitchell asks how the Scottish referendum Administrative devolution culminated will affect Wales in democratic devolution. But Welsh devolution was and remains quite It has been frequently noted that will create major tensions and problems different from Scottish devolution. constitutional debate in the UK occurs at some point in the future. Complicating matters have been in silos and that responses to one set of Northern Ireland has long been developments since the establishment pressures often fail to take account of seen as a place apart with a marked of democratic devolution. They have implications for other parts of the state reluctance by other parts of the UK to occurred in silos with little heed to or constitution. Establishing devolved consider whether devolution there might how they might impact on the UK’s government in three components of have lessons or implications for the rest of asymmetries. The UK Government the state around the same time at the the UK (rUK). The UK is neither a unitary is expected to respond officially to turn of the last century was as close to nor a union state but a state of unions. the McKay Commission Report on simultaneous constitutional deliberation Each union that constitutes the United the consequences of devolution for as has been achieved. Even then, Kingdom was different at the outset and the House of Commons at a time of however, debates on Welsh, Scottish has evolved differently. change in devolution. The West Lothian and Northern Ireland devolution Union with Wales was founded Question arises because of Holyrood’s occurred in relative isolation. on conquest and with little effort to legislative powers, but the primary Devolution has been accommodated accommodate anything distinctive legislative powers in Wales further in Westminster and Whitehall with about Wales. Union with Scotland was complicates the matter. If Scotland is as little change as possible. Its loose based on a treaty in which key Scottish to be given more powers or becomes ends – the ‘English Question’, the West institutions were given protection. Over independent that will also affect the Lothian Question, Barnett – are seen as time, these unions have evolved in nature of the West Lothian Question. either necessary evils of an asymmetrical similar directions but at different speeds, Scots pay little attention to what constitution or unfinished business that accommodating different manifestations happens in Wales, often exhibiting the

Fluctuating opinion poll support for Scottish independence between 1978 and 2013.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 35 22//EconomyChanging Union condescension they perceive and feel others. The combination of cuts and the under any illusion that it will be easy to aggrieved about from England. Growing referendum has raised questions of fiscal agree an alternative but the opportunity evidence suggests that the combination equity up the agenda. for reform may arise immediately after of the European Union and a vague Back in April 2010 Liberal Democrat the referendum. awareness of devolution is awakening Alistair Carmichael, who became It is unclear what might happen in a sense of collective self in England. Secretary of State for Scotland in the event of a No vote as far as Scottish Probably more than any part of the UK, October 2013, argued that the Barnett devolution is concerned. The Prime Wales adopts a more outward-looking Formula should be “scrapped”. He said Minister has stated that devolving any perspective, looking to learn and gain it should be replaced with “a needs further powers to Scotland will only be momentum from change elsewhere. based” formula and that voting Lib Dem discussed after the referendum. The This reflects its weak position within was the way to do this. Confusingly, Liberal Democrats are committed to some form of federalism, involving more powers for the Scottish Parliament but What has held back successive UK Governments have either been unwilling or unable to press this within the coalition in London. from reforming or removing Barnett has been a Labour’s position remains obscure. fear of a Scottish backlash. In the absence of a clear commitment to any more devolution, the most likely outcome of an emphatic rejection of independence is that no the UK rather than signalling virtue. after his appointment as Scottish new powers will be granted in the The strong tend to be most parochial in Secretary he also said the “easiest way foreseeable future. It is equally probable politics. But how will the referendum on to get rid of the Barnett Formula is to that debate on the UK’s territorial Scottish independence affect Wales? vote for independence”. At Labour’s constitution will enter a period of If Scotland’s constitutional journey recent conference his opposite number, stability. There are always competing comes to a juddering halt next September , said Barnett should demands on the UK Government’s will that stand in the way of the further be replaced, though that is not what her agenda, not least the European question development of Welsh devolution? If party says in Holyrood. which is likely to dominate UK politics in Scotland votes for independence will So if we take the statements about the next few years. Wales follow this course? Barnett at face value we are left a little If the main parties at Westminster are Any effort to consider the confused. Of course, we have heard reluctant to commit themselves to further constitution as a whole is difficult due all of this noise around the subject of devolution to Scotland in the context of not only to silo constitutionalism but the Barnett before. But the difference is the referendum, then the prospect of a dynamics of devolution. The cliché that context. What has held back successive major concession to Wales is not out of devolution is a process, not an event has UK Governments from reforming or the question because of the silo approach far-reaching implications. There are two removing Barnett has been a fear of to constitutional reform. But London’s key aspects of the debate in Scotland a Scottish backlash. In the event of a appetite for devolution mongering is likely to affect Wales: fiscal relations substantial No vote, there may be little limited and tends to follow pressure or and implications for the UK as a state reason for London to hold back on when devolved government impinges on of unions. Each of these is likely to be reform. In the event of a Yes vote, the government at the centre. The UK may affected by the referendum regardless of main impediment to reform will be be a state of unions but that does not the outcome, though different outcomes removed. The best prospect of Barnett mean that change to one union does not will have potentially different impacts. surviving will be a narrow No vote. have implications for other unions, only Nothing eased the establishment of The case for reform has been made that this can occur in a variety of ways devolution more than the sums of public repeatedly but the context now exists in that are difficult to predict. funds that were sloshing around the which change may be possible. However, system in the first decade of devolution. the opportunity to press for change may Few cared that one part of the state be time limited. While it is easy to identify benefited more than others so long as the problems with Barnett, reaching an all gained. But a very different scenario agreement on an alternative will prove Professor James Mitchell is ESRC prevails in fiscally straitened times. As troublesome. Calls for a ‘needs based Scotland Fellow at the University of cuts are imposed, devolved and local formula’ are little more meaningful than Edinburgh. With Gerry Hassan he is government become more conscious calls for reform. The concept of ‘needs’ editor of After Independence, published by of how they are treated compared with is highly contestable. No-one should be Luath Press in November.

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3 Newport’s Economy blue route Stuart Cole examines options for by-passing the Brynglas tunnels on the M4 north of Newport

Articles Newport’s blue route

Age of the There is a consensus that additional capacity • Using the existing A48 but improving it by City Region is required to cope with peak period traffic upgrading the present junctions on the route How housing congestion on the M4 around Newport. There that impede the free flow of traffic with new can boost rural are three main reasons: bridges and underpasses – that is, building economy grade separated junctions. This was known • The Brynglas Tunnels on the M4 directly to as Option C and would cost £345m. the north of Newport are an acute pinch- point, reducing a six-lane motorway to • Building a new dual-lane carriageway four lanes. In July 2011 the M4 was clsoed – known as the Red Route – at a cost of for two days after a lorry cught fire in the £830m. Brynglas tunnels. Nearby structures - the Usk Bridge to the east of the Tunnels and the • Building a new road to full motorway canal bridge to the west - accentuate the standards – known as the Black/Purple difficulty of any road-widening project. route, at a cost of £936m.

• There were faults in the original design of A fourth option put forward by the author, the Newport northern by-pass / northern and developed from a Welsh Government distributor road, later linked in to the M4, plan in 2007, uses a combination of the A48 including the lack of a hard shoulder for Newport Southern Distributor Road around some of its length. This reduces its capacity Newport and the former Steelworks Road for current traffic volumes. to create a dual carriageway to motorway standard. This is known as the Blue Route, • The M4 is used by local traffic as a local and would cost £380m. distributor road for short journeys within the The cost estimates for these four options local urban area. are based on Welsh and UK Government figures. They assume each scheme to have an The Government has put forward the following opening year of 2020, and include costs for three options for overcoming these problems, construction, acquisition of land and property, but has rejected the first two and is now only preparation and supervision, and traffic- considering building a new motorway at a related maintenance. significant cost: The issue is whether the Welsh Government’s present motorway option

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The four proposals for a new road to relieve congestion on the M4 around Newport.

provides an unnecessary increase My argument is that of Newport, to Junction 28 in the west. in capacity and in consequence The roads would be re-constructed as a unnecessary expenditure. My argument the fourth option, the two-lane, dual carriageway at motorway is that the fourth option, the Blue standard. The land that has been Route, would be a more appropriate Blue Route, would be acquired on either side of the Steelworks solution, delivering what is needed at a a more appropriate Road is sufficient for widening to a three- much lower cost and with significantly lane motorway standard at a future date less impact on the environment. It solution, delivering if this is needed. would have a lower capacity than what is needed at The present traffic flows on this the motorway option favoured by the route are lower than were expected. government but would be sufficient to a much lower cost This is a consequence of the number cope with the estimated need. and with significantly of intersections which disrupt the free The Blue Route involves an upgrade flow of east west traffic. Grade separated of the A48 and the ‘Steelworks Road’ - a less impact on the junctions, where the traffic flow is length of industrial roadway purchased unimpeded, would give these flows by the Welsh Government in 2010 for environment. greater priority. building a motorway at a cost of £7.7 A key question in deciding between million. It would follow a line to the south the various upgrades is calculations of Junctions 23a and 24 on the east side about future traffic forecasts. After the

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The Blue Route would solve the congestion issue on the M4 as it arises. Moreover, since it could be built earlier that the Black/Purple route it could ease congestion earlier. Combined with the Metro and rail electrification it would provide more than adequate relief to congestion over the period to 2035.

recession ends, will there be a lower level The consultation paper takes has already been shown to be in excess of of car usage in absolute terms or will the no account of the impact of rail actual flows for 2012 and 2013. rate of increase be similar to that in the electrification or the Metro developments The main pressure for relieving immediate pre-recession period? along the M4 corridor. The Newcastle congestion on the M4 around Newport An additional consideration will be Metro built in the 1990s, and the has come from the Federation of Small the Welsh Government’s plans to create Bordeaux Tram network completed in Businesses, the Institute of Directors, and a Metro light rail system for south-east 2004, reduced peak traffic flows into CBI Wales, with only the latter supporting Wales, as outlined in its Cardiff Capital those cities by over 30 per cent. A similar the Welsh Government’s position. The Region Metro Impact Study, published impact could be expected in Newport FSB supports the Blue route, while the in October 2013. This is an ambitious and Cardiff. Electrification of the South IoD says it would welcome a scheme scheme, which will take between 10 and Wales Mainline alone would reduce which solves the M4 congestion problem 15 years to deliver, at a cost of about £1.5 M4 peak traffic flows by up to 15 per and is future-proofed to extend road billion. There is no doubt that it will have cent, the so-called ‘sparks’ effect which capacity if required. Only the Blue a major impact on ameliorating traffic has occurred on most other similar Route, in conjunction with the Welsh congestion around Newport. electrification schemes. Government’s plan for rail electrification The Welsh Government’s The Blue Route would solve the and the Metro, will achieve that. consultation paper M4 Corridor around congestion issue on the M4 as it arises. Newport forecasts a need for 20 per Moreover, since it could be built earlier cent more traffic capacity by 2035. An that the Black/Purple route it could ease additional motorway (the Black/Purple congestion earlier. Combined with the Route) is estimated to divert up to 40 Metro and rail electrification it would per cent of existing traffic away from provide more than adequate relief to the present M4. This is far more than congestion over the period to 2035. Stuart Cole is Emeritus Professor of adequate as a solution to current and Even with the UK Government’s Transport with the Wales Transport future capacity problems. forecasts showing a 20 per cent growth Research Centre at the University of On the other hand, the Government in traffic flow between 2012 and 2030, South Wales. This article is an extract estimated that Option C was only the Blue Route will satisfy capacity from his report The Blue Route - the cost expected to divert between 6 and 10 requirements to 2025. However, the effective solution to relieving M4 congestion per cent of the traffic. This suggests that more likely change in car usage is a low around Newport, published by the IWA in the Blue Route, which would utilise percentage increase, with the current association with the Chartered Institute the Steelworks Road, would divert plateau continuing for some time. of Logistics and Transport in December around 15 per cent. This may well be a The forecast for growth in the Welsh 2013. The report can be downloaded at conservative estimate. Government’s consultation document www.iwa.org.uk.

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Age of the City Region

Kevin Morgan explains why family to build port facilities and, without labour markets were becoming Wales is finally coming to export facilities, Cardiff would never have increasingly entwined. terms with connecting the become a ‘coal metropolis’ in the early This zero sum mentality helps to Valleys with the coast years of the 20th Century. explain the antipathy in parts of the Valleys Although the city and the Valleys to the development of Cardiff Bay, which were mutually dependent from the was thought to have benefited from public Of the four depressed areas that were outset, the nature of this relationship investment that might otherwise have designated for economic relief by the changed radically after 1920, when in been deployed to regenerate the deprived Special Areas Act of 1934 – namely employment terms the coalfield peaked. communities of the upper Valleys. To allay south Wales, north east England, west Thereafter the economic flows from the these fears the Cardiff Bay Development Cumberland and Clydeside – only south Valleys to the city were decreasingly of Corporation sought to present the Bay as Wales retains this sad status. For the next products in search of an export market a boon not just for the city but for the city- round of EU regional policy, covering and increasingly of people in search of region as a whole, a strategy that might the period 2014-2020, West Wales and a labour market. But these flows were have been more credible if the region had the Valleys will be classed as a ‘less not confined to the prosaic world of an integrated public transport network developed region’ in the classification of work. Over time these travel-to-work that made connectivity routinely available the European Commission. flows from the Valleys to the city were to all. Shorn of the diplomatic language, complemented by travel-to-shop, travel- The concept of the city-region made this signals nothing less than a deep to-travel and travel-to-play flows as its Welsh political debut in 2004, when developmental failure in Wales and a Cardiff developed into a larger and more it was positively endorsed in the Wales devastating indictment of 80 years of varied consumption centre for the region Spatial Plan as a strategy for south east British regional policy. Indeed, if nothing as a whole, particularly for young people. Wales The region was referred to as “the improves in the coming generation, the south Wales Valleys will have to confront the anniversary from hell: a hundred years of relative economic decline. One of the most serious criticisms levelled at the 1934 Special Areas Act – aside, of course, from it being too little too late – was the fact that it severed the region from its towns by excluding Cardiff, Newport and Swansea from the coalfield, the area that had been targeted for relief. This rendered the task of economic regeneration virtually impossible because, by excluding the urban centres, the legislation excluded the focal points of development and ignored 1.4 million people live within 20 miles of Cardiff. the inter-dependence between places within the region. In fact, south-east Wales If the centre of economic gravity capital network” because the Welsh presents a classic case of the spatial inter- was shifting from the coalfield to Government could not bring itself to dependence of regional economies. the coast, politicians in the coalfield say the Cardiff City-Region. The section Cities are not self-sufficient entities were loath to acknowledge the fact. on the city-region combined a factual no matter how much they pretend Instead of capitalising on the growing statement about the present with an to be, and this is especially true of interdependence between the city and its aspiration for the future, when it said: Cardiff. Indeed, few cities have been as hinterland, politicians in the Valleys were dependent on their regional hinterland more likely to frame their interests in “South East Wales is Wales’ most as the Welsh capital. Without the self-referential terms. Imagining regional populous area. It is characterised dramatic growth of the coalfield in the development to be a zero sum game, by major economic and social south Wales Valleys, there would have they saw Cardiff’s gains as the Valleys’ disparities. The coastal zone is now been no commercial logic for the Bute losses, even though their respective the main economic driver, and

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vanguard of city-regionalism in the UK. It wasn’t and Wales was reduced to being a laggard instead of a leader. Although the ten local authorities in south east Wales have been collaborating in a loose fashion on a wide range of activities – such as public transport, spatial planning, economic development and waste management – this fell well short of what was happening in leading city-regions, like in England and Stuttgart in Germany. Why is Wales embracing the city- Roger Lewis, new Chair of the South East Wales City Region Board, with , Minister for Economy, Science and Transport. region concept now? The answer has three parts – intellectual climate, cross- Board of the South East Wales City Region border competition, and a new political • Roger Lewis Chief Executive, Wales Rugby Union, Chair. commitment on the part of the Welsh • Cllr Russell Goodway Cabinet Member for Finance and Economic Government. Development, , Vice Chair. As regards intellectual climate it is not • Prof Colin Reardon Vice Chancellor, Cardiff University, Vice Chair. too much of an exaggeration to say that governing élites around the world have been gripped in recent years by what we Members might call metrophillia, such is the pro- • David Stevens, Chief Operating Officer, Admiral Insurance. urban bias in developmental narratives • Matthew Hammond, Wales chair, PriceWaterhouseCoopers. today. Some of the most influential • Dan Langford, Group marketing and communications director, Acorn books on economic development – like Recruitment. Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser, and • Ann Beynon, Wales Director, BT. The Metropolitan Revolution by Bruce • Cllr Bob Wellington, Leader Torfaen County Borough Council. Katz for example – have unreservedly • Cllr Brendan Toomey, Leader Council. extolled the role of cities and city- • Cllr Peter Fox, Leader Monmouthshire County Council. regions in promoting wealth, health and even happiness! To support this • Cllr Bob Bright, Leader Newport City Council. pro-urban policy bias, economists • Professor Julie Lydon, Vice Chancellor, University of South Wales. have pointed to the strong correlation • Professor Brian Morgan, Professor of entrepreneurship and director, Creative between productivity, innovation and Leadership and Enterprise, Cardiff Metropolitan University. agglomeration, furnishing an economic • John Phillips, Regional Secretary, GMB Union. rationale for burgeoning urbanisation. Cross-border competition also played a part because the Core Cities its competitiveness needs to be its immediate neighbouring towns, in England began to embrace the sustained to help raise the economic particularly Barry, and city-region concept after Labour’s potential of Wales as a nation. The Caerphilly. This needs to be built preferred model of English devolution heavy commuting flows between the on constructively, making Cardiff – elected regional assemblies – was Valleys and the coast mean that the the focal point of a coherent and defeated in the north-east referendum area functions as an interdependent successful urban network in south in 2004. Through a series of bespoke but unplanned urban network. east Wales, enabling it to share its ‘city deals’ with Whitehall, the Core This gives rise to pressure on the prosperity... The area will function Cities have been acquiring new powers transport infrastructure. Cardiff is as a single networked city-region to regenerate their metropolitan a relatively small capital city. It is on a scale to realise its international economies, putting urban areas in Wales important for Wales as a whole potential, its national role and to at a competitive disadvantage. that Cardiff becomes significant reduce inequalities”. The combination of intellectual internationally, but to do this requires climate and cross-border competition a much greater ‘mass’ of population Had the concept of a ‘single networked revived the city-region concept in Wales, and activity. Already, Cardiff has a city-region’ been acted upon in 2004, where policy-makers were receptive to close functional relationship with Wales would have found itself in the anything that could boost the fortunes of

42 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 3/Economy the Welsh economy. The most tangible facing the new City-Region Boards is the the most important and the City Region sign of this new political commitment impending report from the Commission Board would be well advised to address came in Autumn 2011, when the Minister on Public Service Governance and these two issues without delay. for Economy, Science and Transport Delivery chaired by Sir Paul Williams. If better connectivity is the first priority, Edwina Hart asked Dr Elizabeth This is widely expected to recommend a then a close second is innovation and Haywood to chair a City Regions radical reduction in the number of local economic development. A potentially Task and Finish Group to explore the authorities in Wales – from the current 22 transformative city-region project in this applicability of the city-region concept to fewer than half that number perhaps. category is the new Innovation Campus to economic development in Wales The uncertain fate of local government being designed by Cardiff University, with (a group of which I was a member). structures was one reason why Mrs Hart its twin sites at Maindy Road and Heath Published the following July, the report decided to leave the operational details of Park. Although the Innovation Campus is issued a total of 22 recommendations, the the City-Region Boards to be fleshed out physically located in Cardiff, it is designed most important of which was the green at a later point in time. But such details – to be a resource for the city, the region light given to the creation of city-regions particularly with respect to which powers and the nation as a whole because, with in south east Wales and Swansea Bay. they will assume and what resources they its accent translational research, it will help As well as identifying potential will have at their disposal – will make or to pioneer the knowledge economy across economic benefits, the report argued break these fledgling bodies. The Welsh Wales. Among other things, it will also help that a city-region would also allow for Government has a dual role to play to secure funds from Horizon 2020, the a more strategic approach to planning, in shaping the future evolution of city- EU’s research and innovation programme, learning and skills, transport and housing regionalism because, as the Haywood offering commercial opportunities to firms allocation, all of which needed to be Report said, “it must both drive the city throughout the country. planned on a regional rather than a local region agenda and delegate powers and Green infrastructure played a major scale. The thrust of these arguments responsibilities to the city regions”. role in fashioning the Stuttgart city- was generally well received, a positive It would be a great shame if the region because it allowed municipalities reaction that was confirmed in October political agenda in south east Wales to integrate their local parks into a 2012 when a plenary debate in the got side tracked into a petty squabble seamless regional landscape park, a National Assembly demonstrated broad about the name of the city-region. process that did much to overcome cross-party support for the conclusions of Around the world city regions tend to the parochialism of local mayors. The the City Regions Final Report. This was brand themselves around the name of Valleys Regional Park presents a similar the surest sign that the age of the city- the largest and best known city, which opportunity to local authorities in south region had officially dawned in Wales. suggests that the name ought to be east Wales because, as well as being The end of the beginning of city- the Cardiff City Region rather than the an untapped resource for health and regionalism in Wales was the launch of anonymous placeless landscape conjured wellbeing, it is a major piece of green the City-Region Boards. The Swansea up by the Wales Spatial Plan, which infrastructure that needs to be viewed Bay Board was launched on 18 July referred to “the capital network”. and valued in terms of its potential 2013 comprising the Leaders of the four A more ambitious agenda would contribution to eco-system services. local authorities in the area together with be for the city-region debate to focus While each of these projects addresses four representatives from the business on substantive issues, such as social, a different theme – namely connectivity, community and two from the higher economic and ecological projects that innovation, and sustainability – their education sector. The launch of the City- could have a transformative effect on the common denominator is the fact that Region Board in South East Wales was region’s health, wealth and wellbeing. they are projects that have transformative more protracted, not least because there Three such projects spring to mind. potential on a city-regional scale as opposed were ten local government Leaders in Top of the list of potentially to projects of purely local significance. the region but only four local government transformative projects is the south seats on the board. In the event Mrs Wales Metro, which is so much more Hart agreed four local government than a mere transport project. As Mark representatives with Councillor Bob Barry and his colleagues in the Metro Wellington, the Leader of the Welsh Local Consortium have argued, the Metro Kevin Morgan is a Professor in the Government Association. affords an opportunity to develop denser School of Planning and Geography Having resolved the local government and better connected communities at Cardiff University, where he is the dilemma, the Minister unveiled the full around Metro stations, thereby reducing Dean of Engagement. He is also the City-Region Board in a statement to the car use and relieving road congestion. City Region adviser to the Minister for National Assembly in November 2013 and Among the many ingredients needed for Economy, Science and Transport, and listed in the panel on the facing page. a successful Metro, innovative finance adviser to the Board of the South East One of the many imponderables and political consensus are arguably Wales City Region.

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How housing can boost rural economy David Goodwin outlines a scheme for affordable homes in the Welsh countryside

The former slate quarrying village of Abergynolwyn in Meirionnydd. Photo: John Briggs.

Why should our hearts sink when cultural benefits to communities Taking affordability first, we see yet another large site and the wider society. Moreover, by being cordoned off for a housing producing around 7,850 houses across the key is to outlay a development? Why do we see new Wales – based on the number of reasonable, non-inflated housing as a form of unvarying planning authorities and their average price for the land and to environmental pollution rather than number of villages - these projects as something that contributes to would make a massive contribution to separate the design of our surroundings and enhances the current housing shortage. the new housing from our community? Taking affordability first, the key is its construction. And why is it that we can’t build to outlay a reasonable, non-inflated affordable houses in our towns and price for the land and to separate the villages for people who will contribute design of the new housing from its known as ‘exception sites’ but will be to community life and provide a balance construction. It is this very combination much smaller than the norm. Land against dormitory or second homes? of land acquisition, design, construction will be acquired at a realistic ‘special Well, we can do these things. All it takes and marketing all within one high cost’ of between £40,000 and £50,000 is a little imagination and some help from profit-making organisation which is the per acre – that is, about four times the the government who after all, claim that problem with the cost and the quality of value of good agricultural land. they, too, want to find solutions. much new housing. The second key requirement is to This proposal puts forward the idea The Welsh Government should separate design and construction, as of hundreds of small-scale projects of require each Local Planning Authority traditionally is the case with public five to ten houses each, threaded into to identify small parcels of brown or funding. This means these projects can villages across the country. Projects green-field land of approximately 1.5 be put out to competitive tender by would be largely self-funding, have acres, the average size of a field, within local building contractors, whose profits virtually no negative impact on the existing villages and other settlements. are much lower than those of volume environment and aim to house a Sites will not have planning house builders. broad social mix of people, generating permission nor be involved in current To achieve the kind of quiet design considerable economic, social and applications. These are generally excellence that people want, it will

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be necessary also to split the design process into two stages. Under Stage One, architects and conservation architects of proven ability will be appointed by the local planning authority to establish the basic design brief and produce the preliminary design to a sustainable and high standard, incorporating elements of the local vernacular domestic architecture. Schemes should consist of a range of house-types, sizes and layouts, with linked and separate dwellings, as appropriate. The designers will be retained to ensure that original principles are maintained in design Stage Two, to be carried out by others. Before Design Stage Two can happen, the question arises as to who should inhabit these beautiful and An example of integrated new housing in the village of Bunbury in Cheshire, incorporating elements of local affordable houses. Surely there would vernacular domestic architecture. be no shortage of takers? However, achieving home ownership where builders, construction professionals and if we want to achieve a diversity of another does not, whether by family producers and suppliers of materials, all occupancy where public money will money or by meritocratic means. The to the benefit of local economies. have initially been involved, neither important thing here is to increase the More widely, the built-in, high selection by points nor via the open rural housing stock in a desirable way. standard of these schemes would market would be appropriate. Selection Upon winning their plot, new provide an object lesson for future in general can be made by setting owners and their own designers would proposals, including those by volume conditions such as family, background be able to proceed with adjustment house-builders, Moreover, as it unfolds, or essential work ties to an area. to the plans and detailed design. the process would stimulate interest However, to avoid bias at an individual Construction proposals would be in society as a whole, countering the level this would have to be random. prepared either individually or as common feeling people have of being In other words, selection would be by a group using a standard form of distanced from such major initiatives. lottery, albeit a targeted and local one. agreement, employing local architects We have, unfortunately, drifted into a Over a period, all Phase One and builders or possibly self-build, universal way of procuring new housing projects across the country would according to the practicalities on site. when it is plainly not the answer in every be packaged up with a high level of The total cost of the dwellings would situation. So why continue with this publicity and Lottery Tickets sold for be well below the current market single approach, when for the sake of a the acquisition of plots. The sale of the price on completion, which would little effort, it would be possible to make tickets would balance the cost of the be encouraging for the providers of a significant improvement in virtually preliminary publicity, administrative mortgages. The same rules governing every rural community. and initial professional work involved. eligibility for tickets would apply to The purchaser would select which future purchasers and be written into size of property and to which projects deeds as covenants. their tickets should apply. There would Would communities feel differently be qualifying terms as stated and strict about additional homes being created conditions preventing any commercial in this way? Well, it would make a David Goodwin is a graduate of or second home acquisition. The contribution to keeping communities Nottingham University School of winners would have won the right together for one thing, and it would Architecture and worked in Bristol, to purchase title to the freehold of a tend to benefit the use of local shops London and Liverpool before setting plot for as little as £5,000. Lucky them, and pubs and the numbers attending up practice in 1980 in north Wales and you might say. But there is always an local primary schools. Also employment Cheshire, predominantly concerned element of luck involved in one person would be given to a range of local with housing.

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Carwyn’s ‘One Wales’ 4 philosophy spikes Politics Plaid’s guns

Michael Sullivan argues we are witnessing the rebirth of social democracy as a result of Labour’s co-option of Welsh nationalism

The ideological architecture for post-war UK commitment to the welfare state as an engine social democracy was put in place by the 1945- of equality, social justice and social inclusion 51 Labour governments. The chief architect based on the political values of universality and Articles was the late Tony Crosland. His arguments were social solidarity. Carwyn’s made most cogently in The Future of Socialism For the Welsh Government this definition of ‘One Wales’ (1956) and The Conservative Enemy (1952). social democracy distanced its administration philosophy spikes The creation of a post-war welfare state and a from some of the principles and many of the Plaid’s guns planned economy had civilised UK capitalism. policy actions of the New Labour project at A system that required social and economic Westminster. Its ‘clear red water’ philosophy, Welsh Water can inequality had been transformed into one enunciated by in a speech provide a model where the achievement of greater equality and at Swansea University in December 2002, for Royal Mail social justice were both desirable and possible. distinguished Welsh from English social policy. Why Labour If Crosland was the architect of post-war The method of making policy as well as the could lose half its social democracy, the foundations were laid substance of policy diverged from the ‘English income by T. H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship. He model’. Welsh policymaking was rooted in believed the welfare state could mitigate the co-operation, rather than competition and on insecurity and economic inequalities caused ‘voice’ rather than ‘choice’ as the best way of by unregulated markets. Like the civil and strengthening the influence of citizens (rather political rights that preceded them, the welfare than consumers). In developing diverse and state’s social rights were part of citizenship responsive services, it aimed for a greater entitlement. The right to welfare is connected equality of outcome, rather than simply of with full membership of the community. opportunity. The devolution dividend included However, the creation of New Labour and an increasing differentiation in the tone ’s election victory in 1997 signalled a emerging from Labour in Cardiff and London. shift away from this approach. The notion of a This policy differentiation continued into Third Way promulgated by social democratic a third Assembly term but was accompanied theorist Anthony Giddens, now became by an even more substantial change, the ‘One the guiding hand of contemporary Labour Wales’ coalition between Labour and Plaid politics. One of its central arguments was a Cymru. Meanwhile, in the face of economic redefinition of social democracy, emphasising crisis, the Labour Government in London responsibility rather than rights, and work replaced social democracy with a sort of rather than welfare in order to meet the social social liberalism. and economic challenges of new times. For both and Plaid One of the consequences of devolution was Cymru social policy has played a part in to create a space for a different interpretation nation building. Prior to devolution Labour of social democracy in Wales and Scotland could present devolutionary ambitions as where Labour continued to adhere to the an opportunity to craft Welsh solutions to older definition. Labour-led administrations in Welsh problems. It was also an answer to Cardiff and Edinburgh retained Old Labour’s the legitimacy of the Conservative writ being

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imposed in Wales. No more than a handful of Conservative MPs had been elected in four general elections. So devolution and the left of centre social policies that resulted were expressions of both general political values and of national identity. The Welsh Government has used the new powers it gained in 2006 and 2011 to introduce a raft of legislation on social care, environmental issues, school transport, the use of the and children’s rights. Meanwhile, the red-green’ Labour Plaid coalition that emerged from the 2007 election put constitutional change at the top of its Launch of the ‘One Wales’ government in July 2007. Labour First Minister Rhodri Morgan and Plaid Deputy First Minister programme for government, including: face the media on the steps of the Senedd following the announcement of their coalition Cabinet.

• A commitment, without qualification, Welsh Government debates enforcing guns. Where critics within Welsh to a referendum on further powers for new legal standards over the use of Labour saw ‘One Wales’ as a vehicle the Assembly at or before the 2011 Cymraeg by public and private bodies. to take the nationalists to the ‘gates Welsh election. The proposition embedded in ‘One of independence’, the actual legacy Wales’ – of Labour formally breaking has been Plaid’s decline to third party • A Convention looking at the case bread with the supposedly hated status. After all, if there are two social for further powers leading up to the nationalists – was the first and so far the democratic, soft-nationalist parties in referendum. only truly seismic post-devolution shift. Wales, doesn’t one become surplus to What it ultimately signified was a general requirements? • An independent Commission to review recognition of Welsh Labour’s evolution Two last words from contemporary the Barnett formula through which since 1998 into a particular type of soft- Plaid Cymru politicians. Dafydd Elis- Wales was allocated funding. nationalist party, espousing what might Thomas talks of nationalism “growing be called a ‘One Wales’ identity politics. out of the bowels of Welsh social • A commitment to consider devolving In doing so it has operated within a post- democracy”. Adam Price argues that powers to Wales over criminal justice, devolution consensus in Cardiff Bay to Plaid will save social democracy in Wales and a new Welsh Language Act. which all the major parties, even to an while the latter implodes in England as a extent the Tory Group, adhere. result of the election of a Conservative- Of course, there have been those in Inside the ‘One Wales’ cultural Liberal Democrat government in both parties who argue against the milieu, Welsh Labour’s rhetoric has 2010. Exactly how all this plays out is meshing of social democratic and trumpeted the particularity of a ‘small dependent – in large part – on Plaid nationalist concerns. It’s also probably nation’ and people with ‘Welsh values’ keeping its implicit promise to ensure true to say that if nationalism in Wales and ‘Welsh attitudes’ declared to be Welsh Labour is honest, nationalist and was of a political variety (as it is in very different to ‘the English way’. In social democratic. Scotland), rather than cultural and turn they make ‘Made in Wales’ policy linguistic (as it actually is), fewer within solutions necessary to match. Every the Labour movement would have element in ‘One Wales’ which caused Professor Michael Sullivan is Vice- feared its influence. critics to denounce it as a nationalist President (Strategic Partnerships) and Yet, to a large extent such concerns Trojan horse – the focus on Barnett, Professor of Policy Analysis at Swansea have been groundless. Even fears at more powers and promoting Cymraeg University. This is a summary of a the ‘Cymricisation’ of Wales’ civic space – are now owned by Welsh Labour. paper he gave to a seminar on Welsh linked to an increasing emphasis on the They are basic points of Carwyn Jones’ nationalism at the University of Pompeu promotion of and spending on the Welsh political philosophy. The result is a Fabra in Barcelona in November: language has raised less than the odd broadly soft-nationalist consensus. http://cataloniawalesseminar.weebly.com/ yelp. This remains the case even as the Arguably it has spiked Plaid’s welsh-nationalism-seminar.html

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Welsh Water can provide a model for Royal Mail Peter Hain says a Labour government should adopt a Welsh ‘not-for-dividend’ model for the postal service

The Government badly undersold Royal Class mail to all areas (and therefore the the less well off, for the inner city Mail shares – rewarding private investors next-day service), reducing quality of and the rurally remote. These tariffs at the expense of taxpayers – by selling service standards and cutting delivery could make the difference between the public shares in a service it already days from six to five a week. home delivery and picking post up owns. And privatisation has also placed Meanwhile on 23 December 2012 from the sorting depot – a genuinely the proud legacy of the universal postal reported that fear-inducing prospect for the elderly service under serious threat. Yet there Conservative ministers were thinking or disabled. Private companies like is an alternative model which could about future changes to the USO and TNT already charge extra – sometimes avoid that threat, and is achievable even that an all-Conservative government a third or a half more – to deliver to under the 2012 Postal Services Act which could seek to relax the USO. more remote locations. delivered Royal Mail privatisation. It hails Costlier elements of the universal Yet the universal service provided by from Wales in the form of Welsh Water. service such as Royal Mail’s air network Royal Mail makes a vital contribution to But first, the problem. The National would become vulnerable to cuts, life in remote and rural communities. The Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP) has called privatisation a “reckless gamble with the future of the post A worry highlighted by many is that like other office network” because rewarding privatised utilities – gas, electricity and telephones – shareholders will inevitably push what remains an essential public service to different services and tariffs might spring up, further cut corners and cut quality of service. entrenching the potential difference in service for the Experience elsewhere of mail privatisation – for instance in the rich and the less well off, for the inner city and the Netherlands and New Zealand – rurally remote. demonstrates that. Although the Universal Service Obligation – the right of every address to receive a delivery through their letter box whether in remote Snowdonia or central Cardiff – is enshrined in the Postal Services Act, it only covers the bare minimum. leaving areas of Northern Ireland, daily delivery helps people in these areas Much of the essential detail is set Scotland, Wales and parts of England to access online shopping and prevents by the regulator and could losing between a quarter and half of many older residents from feeling easily be changed whilst still remaining the service standards enjoyed by urban isolated. The Post Office is the heart of legally compliant. For example, Ofcom areas. A worry highlighted by many is the high street in many rural areas and recently looked in various ways at what that like other privatised utilities – gas, helps to sustain local economies. the public has come to expect from electricity and telephones – different But it could be fully protected by the universal service and what could services and tariffs might spring up, converting Royal Mail into a not-for- be modified to make it cheaper to run. further entrenching the potential dividends company rather like Welsh Ofcom considered getting rid of First difference in service for the rich and Water which originated from a similar

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stock market flotation in 1989 but the Postal Services Act 2012 but it also fund investment. Welsh Water finds it hit problems until it was eventually successfully combines social obligations cheaper to raise capital at below market transformed in 2000 into its current and commercial imperatives. There is rate because it is not caught up in the status as a private company limited nothing in the legislation that would usual speculator driven merry-go-round. by guarantee. prevent a future Labour Cabinet from Under the terms of its license Glas Royal Mail’s recent profitability establishing for Royal Mail a similar Cymru may not operate in sectors other means it could comfortably raise structure such as a Company Limited than water, just as Royal Mail would be investment capital through its own by Guarantee that was used for restricted in its operations. profits, becoming a self-financing, Network Rail. Welsh Water provides a cheaper and not-for-dividends company like Welsh This plan is also supported by the more reliable service across Wales (and Water. Royal Mail could then borrow Communication Workers Union which some border areas in England) than any from money markets at a significantly represents Royal Mail Workers, 96 other UK provider. If our collective pride cheaper rate, just like Welsh Water. The per cent of whom were against the in the universal postal service that Royal website of Glas Cymru/ Welsh Water Government’s plans. Mail provides is to survive, I believe that describes how they have operated Such a model would not necessitate Labour should include in its manifesto since 2000, summing up exactly what a adding to Government debt and there a pledge to establish Royal Mail on a privatised Royal Mail should be: would be no cost to the taxpayer. As similar basis to Welsh Water. a not-for-dividends company itself, “A single purpose company with no Welsh Water’s financial surpluses are shareholders that is run solely for reinvested in the business. the benefit of customers.” The company has the highest credit Peter Hain is MP for Neath, a former rating in the water sector which enables Secretary of State for Wales and a Not only is it perfectly compatible with it to borrow money more cheaply to Government Minister for 12 years. 4/Politics Why Labour could lose half its income

Mark Lang examines the Ed Milliband announced a review of implications of a fundamental the relationship between Labour and shift in relations between the the unions to be undertaken by former Labour Party General Secretary Lord trade unions and the party Collins. This is due to report in full at a they created special Labour Party Conference in the spring of 2014. Labour’s initial response to the GMB’s announcement, which appeared In September one of Labour’s largest to take it by surprise, was that it got donors, the GMB Union, decided to cut the majority of its funding from small its affiliation fees to the Party by around donations and individual membership 90 per cent, reducing its commitment fees, and was therefore not concerned Labour leader Michael Foot, MP for Ebbw Vale, addressing the Wales TUC’s annual conference at Porthcawl in 1981 by approximately £1m per year. The by the GMB’s decision. It determined to on the catastrophic return of mass unemployment. Photo: Union also made it clear that it would press ahead with reforms. George Wright. be spending significantly less on wider However, during the election year Labour Party campaigns and initiatives. of 2010 when the Party’s activities, The GMB was responding to Labour campaigns and staffing increased, allow them to collect a political fund from Leader Ed Milliband’s proposed reforms according to the Electoral Commission its members to fight campaigns, from that would mean the Party’s affiliated the Labour Party received £25.2m which they have funded their affiliation unions could only join up those of in donations. Without trade union to the Labour Party. Union leaders are its members who agreed to become income this would have been £11.7m concerned that, when they are balloted direct individual members of the Party. – a substantial cut of more than half. If next year to renew the fund, their The GMB’s response to significantly other unions were to follow the GMB members may not agree that it should be reduce its affiliation fees suggests that there would be a major cut in the simply handed over to the Labour Party. some union leaders believe that only Party’s resources, substantially reducing Whereas the current debates on a small proportion of their members its capacity to fight election campaigns. the trade union-Labour Party affiliation would choose to join the Labour Party The argument for wider state funding fees could lead to a significant decline individually. In the case of the GMB, of political parties has yet to garner in the Party’s income, it is important Britain’s third largest union, it will be significant support, though should to understand that there is far more cutting its affiliated membership from Labour pursue this agenda it may well complexity to the relationship than 420,000 to just 50,000. It is important to gain backing from the Liberal Democrats. media representations of shallow note the distinction between affiliation Despite recent difficulties in discussions arguments would seem to suggest. fees and other donations made by the on the issue between the two parties, it is It would be a gross simplification unions to the Party to help fund its likely to be a key issue following the next to suggest that the debate is purely campaigns and activities, particularly general election should any one party fail about Party funding. Seminal research during an election year. to gain a majority. undertaken by Lewis Minkin and This series of events was prompted It has been suggested that one others has exposed the complexity of by the recent situation in Falkirk where concern that has prompted the GMB into the relationship. Minkin’s book The Unite, another affiliated union, was action, and which may prompt other Contentious Alliance – Trade Unions and accused of exerting undue influence unions to follow suit, is the impending the Labour Party (1991) offers conclusive over the selection of a Parliamentary ten year ballot of union members about evidence that the post-war relationship candidate. Although the claims were the future of union political funds more between them has been governed by later withdrawn, as no evidence could generally. Trade unions are required to a set of unwritten yet robust ‘rules’ be found of any improper activities, conduct such a ballot every ten years to based on mutual support, respect for

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one another’s autonomy, and a sharp the unions on their own internal affairs. but should the unions also chose to division of labour between the ‘political’ Another important dynamic to reduce their wider donations to the and ‘industrial’ wings of the movement. consider is that this debate is largely Party, then funding these campaigns will Despite exaggerated claims by about affiliation fees and the number become increasingly difficult. the media and politicians, Minkin of members that unions choose to The trade unions gave birth to shows that regardless of their massive affiliate to the Labour Party, and not the the Labour Party, and developed a financial contribution to the Party, union wider range of support that the unions strong bond with it and over 100 years leaders have tended not to exert major give to the Party. This is potentially of of shared history and achievement influence over Party policy. Indeed, if more significance at the sub-UK level of improving the lives of working anything union leaders have tended Labour Party-trade union relationships. people. There is little doubt that the to actively support the position of the My own research has highlighted Labour Party-trade union relationship Labour leadership in the internal affairs the significance of the Labour Party- will endure. However, the reforms of the Party. It is therefore, both wrong trade union relationship in Wales, and envisaged should be taken in the wider and unhelpful to present these recent in particular the important role the context of a gradual formalisation of changes to trade union affiliation fees as unions played in the establishment of relationships that has been evident in some way removing the trade union devolution through the institutions of the throughout their history. stranglehold over the internal affairs of Labour movement in Wales in the 100 the Party, which simply does not exist. years leading up to 1999. How much the Should, as it is anticipated, the Collins unions will continue to support future Mark Lang, a former member of the Review recommend that unions have Labour Party election campaigns in Welsh Labour Party Executive, is an to ballot their members on affiliation Wales, or other campaigns such as for the Honorary Associate of Cardiff University. fees, it could be argued that the Party’s London Assembly or Scottish Parliament, He works as Senior Researcher at CREW leadership itself will breach the historic remains unclear. The Party spends Regeneration Wales and is Chair of unwritten rules of the Labour Party- significantly less on these elections than Glandwˆr Cymru – The Canal and River trade union relationship by instructing it does on UK Parliamentary campaigns, Trust in Wales. PISA challenge to 5 Welsh education Education Philip Dixon says seeing Welsh GCSE-drilled youngsters performing in Pisa is like watching a rugby league side playing rugby union

For months the pundits told us to prepare • In science, Wales scored 491, for bad news when the Pisa results were compared with England’s average announced on 3 December. Despite this score of 516, Scotland’s 513, and 507 the First Minister was optimistic. “I expect to in Northern Ireland. see an improvement in our PISA results in December,” he told the Senedd in October. Articles However, by November Huw Lewis, The programme began in 1997 PISA challenge his new Education Minister, was issuing to Welsh health warnings. It would be “unrealistic” and 68 countries now take part. education for Wales to better its position from the Wales joined the programme in “extraordinarily poor” Pisa results of 2010. Power play The actual results were even worse than 2006. Unfortunately, since then in growth of many expected. we have shown regression Welsh medium The Organisation for Economic rather than . education Co-operation and Development runs Pisa - the Programme for International Student Assessment - every three years. Responses to the Pisa results verge from It tries to evaluate education systems the ludicrous to the sane. Some are simply across the world by testing “what 15-year- Pisa-deniers, the flat-earthers of our day. olds know and what they can do with They argue that no comparison is possible. what they know” in the key subjects Indeed, some countries such as India have of reading, mathematics and science. pulled out of Pisa citing this very reason. The programme began in 1997 and 68 Such exits might be more believable countries now take part. Wales joined if they weren’t all from the bottom of the programme in 2006. Unfortunately, the league. More credible voices have since then we have shown regression been raised about the methodology as rather than progress. The accompanying seen in recent exchanges in the Times table shows how Wales is slipping down Educational Supplement and elsewhere. the overall ranking in the national league But like it or lump it these statistics tables. Overall we now underperform the do give some sort of temperature test for rest of the UK by some margin: the health of education systems. And, of course, in our case it confirms a lot of • In reading, 15-year-olds in Wales other depressing data. scored 480, but Scotland scored 506 Those who accept Pisa again points on average, England scored 500 divide into the ludicrous and sane in and Northern Ireland 498. their remedies for recovery. Some, including the Westminster Tories argue • In maths, Wales scored 468 points that the abandonment of SATs and on average, compared with 498 in league tables over a decade ago are to Scotland, 495 in England and 487 in blame, conveniently ignoring the fact Northern Ireland. that England’s Pisa performance has stagnated. Closer to home others have blamed the Welsh language (despite

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Wales’ international Pisa ranking out of 68 countries values and skills that permeate Pisa. This 2007 2010 2013 is not just because we want to improve our scores. More importantly, it should be Reading 27 38 41 because by valuing and promoting the Maths 31 40 43 sorts of skills that Pisa measures we will improve our children’s education, their life Science 20 30 36 chances and our economy. The Welsh Government has rightly insisted that we will keep the principle of GCSEs - no retreat here to the Govian dystopia of a two-tier exam system. However, we will also need to align our curriculum and qualifications with the skills that the OECD tells us are essential for the modern world. Another recent survey of adult skills by the OECD revealed England and Northern Ireland lagging behind the rest of the world. It showed no real gain in skills across the generations, and thus shone a light on the current nature of GCSEs. It is odd to say the least that year on year GCSE results have improved many Pisa leaders being bilingual Leighton Andrews in 2010. Not wanting but that these gains are not mirrored in nations), the abolition of grammar to ‘waste a good crisis’ he used the Pisa international surveys. schools (despite the fact that leading results of that year to issue his wake-up Tristram Hunt, the new Shadow Finland has a fully comprehensive call. In his 2011 speech, Teaching Makes a Education Minister in Westminster, fell into system), or the absence of Morris dancing Difference, he went as far as to say that he the elephant trap of trying to square that from the curriculum. OK, I made that last wanted Wales to be in the top 20 nations particular circle. The debate about grade one up but you get my drift. by 2016. That now seems impossible. inflation is superficial. Is there something Saner analyses have come in the When Huw Lewis surprisingly and, if flawed about the content, form, and shape of pointing out the chronic rumours are to be believed, reluctantly, delivery of current GCSEs which do not underfunding that Welsh education has found himself catapulted into the role of promote skills as they should? Is there too experienced. The spending gap per head Minister for Education he could have had much teaching to the test, too little space between England and Wales with is now little doubt that the new brief would be a in the curriculum for innovation, and an around £600. Successive Welsh education tough challenge. He has so far negotiated overemphasis on regurgitation that has Ministers have tried to minimise the some of the rocks pretty well. The pace not produced the independent, adaptable impact that this underfunding is having of local government consortia reform learners that we need? on education. However, the gap is too has picked up, an essential review of Comparing our current GCSE-drilled large for it to have no detrimental effect curriculum has been announced, and he youngsters performing in Pisa is almost at all. Our Pisa decline, as well as our has gone down well with the profession like watching a rugby league side playing poor GCSE performance compared with as someone without the porcupine rugby union – something is off key. England, has taken place alongside the tendencies of his predecessor. But Pisa What of the future? There is a growth of the funding gap. was always the spectre at the feast. tremendous amount to do. By 2016 the Others have pointed out the The task ahead is huge, especially ship has to be turning. Wales has to show accountability vacuum that existed once given the financial constraints that now that our community comprehensive SATs and League Tables were abolished. beset us. Gaming of Pisa may produce approach to education works. It’s as Despite repeated warning nothing was some limited short term gains but they blunt as that. put in their place. Overall the decade will be transient. We also need to plan immediately after devolution could be properly for the fact that the next set of characterised by three Ds rather than tests will be computer based. Longer term, Philip Dixon is Director of ATL three Rs: denial, drift, and dither. deeper change is necessary. We need Cymru, the Association of Teachers Things changed with the advent of to align and inform our system with the and Lecturers.

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Power play in growth of Welsh medium education

Aled Eirug finds a major assertiveness and ambition”. and disappointing, therefore that in this challenge for the language is There were what he and Huw account their voice is silent. Thomas call “intelligent operators” The book considers the stereotypes that it continues to be used including council officials such as associated with Welsh medium schools, outside the school gates Gwyn Daniel, and Gwilym in particular that they are ‘snob Humphreys, advisers such as Gwilym schools’ – “veritable Etons” in the Prys Davies, and national politicians words of one visiting academic in the such as John Morris, Nicholas Edwards 1960s – academically outstanding, and The number of Welsh language schools and Wyn Roberts that pupils from non Welsh speaking in south-east Wales has grown from The debate over Welsh medium families are at a disadvantage. Thomas three in 1949 to almost 80 today, education was mainly conducted disproves the first accusation, confirms including 15 comprehensive schools. with the local authorities, and led by the second perception, and rejects A new book Parents, Personalities and pressure from parents coordinated the third assumption. An unequivocal Power: Welsh medium Schools in South- through Rhieni dros Addysg Gymraeg conclusion of the book’s analysis of East Wales, edited by Huw S. Thomas (Parents for Welsh medium Education). the performance of the Welsh medium and Colin H. Williams, reminds us of the In Glamorganshire County Council, schools are that their standards, extent to which this growth has been and later Mid Glamorgan Council, the achievement and attainment are high. contested. close relationship between supportive The contribution of Michael Jones, Welsh medium secondary education Directors of Education and political leader of the parents’ campaigning is internationally famed for its quality, leaders such as Llew Heycock and group RHAG, and the fascinating saga and this book describes and analyses the Philip Squire was crucial. This account of the controversial re-organisation ‘historic treasury’ of the interaction of highlights the dynamic tension between of primary schooling in Canton by parents, personalities, power and politics reluctant bureaucracies and dedicated the former First Minister, Rhodri that has combined to create the present campaigners who were sustained by Morgan, are colourful and incisive patchwork of provision. It concludes that Welsh medium education has played an important part in fostering Welsh identity, It is noteworthy that more often than not the campaigning a growing belief in self-government and parents were not Welsh speaking themselves. Their motivation self-regulation, and an ever-increasing was to give an opportunity for their children to learn and use the self-respect among those forerunners Welsh language of which they had been deprived. who had been disempowered by monolingual education. The growth of Welsh medium “faith, of conviction and of hope”. reminders of the centrality of politics education is described as one of the It is noteworthy that more often to the development of Welsh medium ‘little miracles’ of post-Napoleonic than not the campaigning parents were education. Europe. The most fascinating part of not Welsh speaking themselves. Their One of the most interesting the story is the extent to which key motivation was to give an opportunity contributions is that of Jeni Price’s officers, local and national politicians for their children to learn and use the consideration of the social language interacted with the parents’ campaigns. Welsh language of which they had been usage patterns of pupils in Welsh Colin Williams asserts that, “There is deprived. And it is remarkable that 80 medium schools. She underlines a no understanding of Welsh-medium per cent of children in the new Welsh- general concern that the growth of education except through politics medium schools came from exclusively Welsh medium schools has not led to an and power, and through aspirations, English speaking homes. It is unfortunate increase in the use of Welsh in a social

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In November 2013 First Minister Carwyn Jones launched the Welsh Government’s Live in Wales: Learn in Welsh campaign at Ysgol Gymraeg Trelyn, Blackwood, where he read a Welsh language story to children in the reception class. The three-year campaign will target expectant parents and parents with children aged 0-3, offering them information and advice so that they are fully informed when making a decision on whether to send their child to a Welsh-medium or bilingual school. setting outside school. This study points Jeni Price’s research in ten schools medium school system, and what that to the role of teachers and auxiliary in south-west Wales suggests that implies for future policy in this area. staff in Welsh medium schools and from secondary school onwards, the The authors suggest that further their reluctance to use Welsh informally Welsh language is linked more with work should concentrate on other sub- outside the classroom. learning, structure, order, routine and regions of Wales and at other national This echoes the conclusions of the enforcement, whereas the English and international comparative levels. Government’s recent Cynhadledd Fawr language is linked with contemporary But perhaps the first place to start might listening exercise, which emphasised culture, media, web-chatting and be with the pupils themselves. that practical and social use of the socialising. language rather than its status should This book is ‘top down’ in its be the priority. This view is shared by approach, and does an excellent job First Minister Carwyn Jones who is now of describing why Welsh medium responsible for the Welsh Government’s education in south east Wales is Welsh language policy. He has admitted considered to be such a success. It Aled Eirug was an adviser on Welsh that although they attend Welsh raises important questions both for the language education to Leighton medium schools, his children tend to planning of Welsh medium education Andrews AM, former Education speak English to each other at home. and the extent to which it is effective Minister in the Welsh Government. An overwhelming challenge for the in transferring the language from Parents, Personalities and Power: Welsh Welsh medium education sector is an educational to a social context. medium Schools in South-East Wales, to ensure that the language of the However, with the exception of Price’s edited by Huw S. Thomas and Colin H. classroom is also a social language that is contribution, it lacks consideration of Williams is published by the University used beyond the school gates. the experience of the pupil in the Welsh of Wales Press.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 55 Sustainable development 6 slips down Welsh priorities Environment Gareth Wyn Jones finds that while the evidence for climate change gets ever more stark politicians increasingly side with the sceptics

Last September the International the evidence tells us we must leave Panel on Climate Change increased its the great majority of existing proven assessment of the likelihood of man- hydrocarbon resources in the made climate change to 95 per cent. ground unused to avoid very serious Articles The medium-term risks are becoming consequences. Also there are long time Sustainable clearer, including sea level rise and lags in Earth Systems that unwind in development acidity as well as more extreme weather future changes e.g. rising sea levels. slips down Welsh and higher global temperatures Our slow human responses also risks priorities unevenly distributed. Despite the triggering fast-forward reactions that foreboding of senior scientists, who see will aggravate warming, for instance Wales hit by this as mankind’s gravest threat, the by massive methane releases from quotas extended public and, more importantly, a section degrading tundra and the shallow to under ten of the political class have become more Siberian seas. Meanwhile, our current metre fleet sceptical. The report’s reception by the conventional energy sources are fragile media, including the BBC, was muted while prices rise and fuel poverty and the public mood unchanged. spreads. Speedy practical action should The contrast with the media be both vital and prudent. treatment of the typhoon Haiyan in How therefore are we to understand the Philippines in early November the current socio-political impasse, be it could not be starker. An event, likely in Wales or internationally? aggravated by global warming, was Unscrupulous self-interest can given blanket coverage with no expense explain the behaviour of the oil and gas or gas emissions spared to fly senior giants and coal barons. Their wealth reporters there for their short pieces. has spawned denialist think tanks The scientific background was largely and web sites, mainly in the US, that ignored. I do not recall a signal popular promote doubt with cherry-picked report that climate-induced sea level rise half-truths, coarse misunderstandings is at its greatest around the Phillippines. and sometimes lies. Current profit is all- Few note that storm intensities can be important and the hydrocarbon reserves expected to grow as the sea temperature are balance-sheet assets. Recognising continues to rise. It’s worth recalling that them as global climate-health liabilities Munich Re, the re-insurer, find a steady would have far-reaching, perhaps rise in climate-related claims whereas catastrophic, financial implications. those from other natural disasters Small wonder they fund denial. show no such trend. The increasingly There is no question but that the parochial London media seem only to climate record is complex. Changes respond to a few dramatic disasters. do not, and should not be expected The mismatch is both a problem to, proceed in a regular pseudo-linear and a wonderful excuse for government manner. Our understanding of basic inaction. It is problematic because equilibrium energy import from

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Figs.1 A and B and export from our planet to avoid a continuous change in temperature and stop overheating or cooling is not in doubt. Without the subtle natural greenhouse effect, our planet could be frozen or too hot for life. However, the regulatory and atmospheric and oceanic circulatory systems, which modulate and disperse this energy are extraordinarily complex and chaotic. An excellent illustration is the behaviour of the Arctic sea ice. Last year there was a precipitous fall (see the welsh agenda, Autumn 2012), but this summer there was a partial recovery in extent - ecstatically and misleadingly reported in the . Figures 1a and 1b show the trend in ice extent and the continuing decline in volume. Hopefully, the steep declines from 2009 to 2012 are only ‘accidently’ related to our series of poor summers. More importantly this varying behaviour provides plenty of scope for the ‘deniers’, ‘dissemblers’ and lobbyists. There is a more profound issue. Our Anglo-American economic model is based on a free-market, competitive creed and a cult of individualism. Thus bankers and others are justified in amassing huge fortunes (despite our public financial bail-outs) and the poor, sick and those on benefits are open to be demonised as wasters and free riders. The concept of ‘common good’ has been degraded, and human transactions monetarized. Consumerism reigns. Global competitiveness and the democratic model do moderate these Prophets of doom are never welcomed. private sector are seen as the keys to assumptions and, even within the US, The work of behavioural economist and progress. Unfortunately the rich have the tradition of local activism offers Noble Laureate, Daniel Kahneman, large carbon footprints and a life style fierce resistance to the Wall Street ethic. has shown that our natural short-term to which we aspire. However, our The climate ‘worriers’ write about reactions to events are rapid, superficial atmosphere, oceans, climate, weather international and inter-generational and optimistic. We try to create a and biodiversity are quintessentially justice, about recognising personal coherently acceptable story from limited ‘common goods’ which, economically, responsibility and the need for a information. Our decisions may be are externalised and often ignored. personal carbon ration and for emissions irrational but they help us cope. Thus Peter Lilley, from a private sector regulation and legal obligations. All this We depend heavily on recent perspective, sought to rubbish both Lord is interpreted as a ‘socialist threat’ to experience and on priming. Our Stern’s warnings and his assessment the entrepreneurial spirit, to individual response to climate change is weather- of the global investment required to liberty, and to the American dream. dependent! We resist deep, hard contain the problem. Reason enough to vilify the scientific thought, even more so in this age of An important caveat is that other message and the messengers. instant satisfaction and a highly visual forms of capitalism based on a social Beyond there is our human nature. digitized culture. Climate change,

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Fig. 2 Interpretation of Galbraith’s model

consequently, seems: legislating for sustainable development employed and support public services, (2012), I drew heavily on John and from which we cannot dismount • Unreal. Kenneth Galbraith’s insights. He saw without deep discomfort. Our treadmill • Far in the future. our affluence as arising from a bargain consumes natural resources including, • Out of our grasp – what difference between us - the public - government of course, energy. And sometimes us? can we make as a tiny proportion of a and politicians, and business and In a five-year electoral cycle and a global population of 7 billion? industry to maintain economic activity world in which businessmen, politicians, • A threat to living standards, which and create work almost at any cost and ourselves are scraping to acquire we prefer not to address, or to our (Figure 2). small advantages over each other - such neighbourhoods, for example wind This dynamic system he saw as as cheaper energy and fewer regulations farms, which we will fight. intrinsically unstable as it is powered - long term rational planning is at a • To depend on those same scientists by debt that all parties have a vested premium. Responding to future climate who gave us Foot and Mouth and interest in ignoring. He foresaw crashes change and achieving real sustainable a number of unrealised scares - as being inevitable unless the system development becomes a mirage. Nigel remember the millennium computer was rigorously regulated. The system is Lawson thunders that, if we do not non-crash? strongly centripetal and its dependence find, frack and burn hydrocarbons, the on debt empowers financiers. However, international financial and commercial Much more real issues are our standard Galbraith did not anticipate a globalised system will disintegrate. Instinctively and cost of living, health and our next electronic world making taxes optional he dismisses the evidence for climate holiday in the sun if we can still afford and investment and capital so mobile, change, but as The Economist insists it. “Sufficient unto the day the evil nor trading regimes so complex that ‘facts are facts’. thereof”. in the words of Niall Ferguson: “Even We are faced with two opposite Our hopes, fears and doubts are the nothing can be money”. I liken us threats: Homo envirus emphasising stuff of politics. And we are in very real to being on a treadmill whose speed our biophysical and social exposure bind. In my contribution to the IWA’s (GDP) must accelerate at 2-3 per cent and inter-generational and national Wales’ Central Organising Principle – a year (greater in China) to keep us inequity; and Homo economicus who,

58 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 6/Environment while accepting our economic fragility, • Taxing CO2 inefficient cars, but giving constructive, more localised economic believes in the redemptive power of the tax breaks to fracking. development model. Sustainable market. Paradoxically, a Westminster • Offering long term guaranteed returns development has been rebranded government committed to debt to nuclear power stations at the same as ‘sustainable futures’ which allows elimination has decided to underwrite time as subsidising wind power – both more wriggle room. Unfortunately the personal debt to encourage home in the face of vigorous opposition, scientific and economic reality is that we buying to speed up the GDP treadmill while we are warned of the dangers have to make long-term decisions and before the next UK election. Galbraith of winter power cuts. investments now even if they will only would be amused - and possibly gratified have some impact way in the future. that his insight has such longevity! In Wales climate change has slipped well For example the Welsh Government has Where does this leave climate down the political agenda in response approved a policy to increase Wales’ change and energy policy in London to pressures to re-set the conventional woodland coverage from about 300,000 and Cardiff Bay? As might be expected ‘affluence treadmill’. Green growth to 400,000 hectares. Yet this will not from the analysis above, the signals had emerged but is constrained. The materially affect net emissions nor our are very mixed and ministerial opinion current separation of responsibilities space heating resources for 15 to 20 appears divided. It is difficult to develop between Cardiff and London in relation years. Progress is frustrating and painful. a coherent policy that will command to powers over energy and water, is wide acceptance and there is no clearly a nonsense. We need to control evidence this has been achieved, even our own resources, which almost as it becomes more and more pressing. certainly are significantly greater per Thus Westminster is head than England’s, as they are key Professor Gareth Wyn Jones is former to sustainability and to greater public Director of the Centre for Arid Zone • Closing the most greenhouse gas engagement. Studies at Bangor University and polluting power stations, but seeking This political ambiguity inhibits green Deputy Director of the Countryside to increase airport capacity. job creation and the evolution of a more Council for Wales. 6/Environment

Wales hit by reduced quotas to the under ten metre fleet

Fisherman hauling nets at sea in an under ten metre vessel.

Jeremy Percy explores the In the case of the Irish Sea that species such as Cod, Plaice, Sole, and dilemmas facing Wales’ fragile laps Welsh shores, there are significant Haddock. Each Member State fleet then inshore fishing industry concerns over the state of stocks gets its own percentage allocation of the generally. Yet things are beginning to look whole, based on historic catches. up and the figures above are all reducing Until this year, the UK allocation, or year on year, with a resultant increase in quota, for each species in each fishing In 1945 Aneurin Bevan famously stated many stocks, not least due to a publicly area was then further subdivided between that Britain was an island built on coal funded reduction in the number of larger UK vessels of less than ten metres in length and surrounded by fish. He went on to UK vessels in past years. and those over ten metres. And this is say that only an organisational genius Fisheries management at any where it gets complicated. could arrange a shortage of both at the level is a massively complicated issue, Historically, the over ten metre fleet same time. Over the last thirty years, the with opportunities for confusion and were originally provided with log books organisational genius of the European obfuscation. Equally, the way that to record their daily catches. Despite Commission, ably assisted by short- permitted catches are decided on an asking repeatedly to be treated in the term economic interests and political expediency, have conspired to make Bevan’s second statement a reality in Fisheries management at any level is relation to fish stocks. The bad news is that in EU waters, a massively complicated issue, with about 50 per cent of assessed stocks opportunities for confusion and obfuscation in the Atlantic and nearby seas are still considered as overfished, rising to 80 per cent in the Mediterranean and EU basis and then shared out is less than same way, the under ten metre fleet affecting five out of seven stocks in the straightforward. Ostensibly based on were refused log books and told that as Baltic. Equally serious is the lack of data scientific advice, the EU Commission their efforts made little impact on stocks, for many stocks with the condition of and European fisheries ministers set the they should just carry on without any 64 per cent of fish stocks in EU waters overall total allowable catches on an effective reporting requirements. This unknown. annual basis for all the main commercial has led to the current situation where

60 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 6/Environment the over ten sector receives 96 per cent fleet of 479 vessels, 440 of which are less not have the capacity to pursue stocks of the UK quota, with under tens getting than ten metres in length. About 95 per elsewhere and so are entirely reliant the remaining 4 per cent. cent of these vessels rely primarily on on what comes to them. Their ability This was all very well until 2005, potting for shellfish rather than pursuing to diversify effort across a range of as the under tens were largely ignored finfish quota species. Apart from the both quota and non quota species is and allowed to fish on without undue quota issue, this focus on shellfish key to their profitability and, of course, regulation. However, at that point is largely due to the rich diversity of reduces reliance on any one species. the EU introduced a new system that Welsh inshore waters that abound This traditional flexibility is vital but is required first sale buyers of quota in lobster, crab, prawns and whelks. constrained by lack of access to the species from the under ten fleet to Notwithstanding weather and tides - quota that is required before they can record and report their purchases. Wales has the second highest tidal range legally pursue many species. The resultant information appears to in the world, and we all know about This situation has been made have come as something of a surprise Welsh weather - they are available for dramatically worse recently through to officials, as it showed this sector of capture for most of the year, as opposed an agreement by the devolved the industry actually caught relatively to more mobile finfish species, and can administrations to move away from significant amounts of quota species. As be profitably pursued in small boats. access to a common pool of quota a result there was to a swift reduction in However, this overwhelming reliance available to the whole of the UK under the quotas allocated which then pushed on shellfish is a fragile business. The ten metre operators (many of whom many smaller scale fishers who were vast majority of catches are exported never need or use it), to one where reliant on access to quota species either to the continent where the economic that common pool has been divided out of business or into non quota species crisis has slashed both demand and between them on the basis of historic such as Bass and shellfish. prices. Climate change and rising sea track records. Wales has been seriously On a UK basis, fisheries are a temperatures are having a double disadvantaged by this decision as our devolved issue. In Welsh territorial impact. On the one hand new species primary reliance on shellfish over the waters local management is the such as Spider Crab have been brought years means that we have little effective responsibility of the Welsh Government, to our shores in great numbers to the track record on finfish quota species. albeit with a significant presence of benefit of inshore fishers. On the other, Whilst this may not have an immediate large EU fishing vessels operating in our increasing ocean acidification will impact on the majority of fishers, it will waters under ‘historic rights’, the efforts eventually prevent shellfish from making significantly restrict their vital ability to of which are largely outwith the control shell -plainly a disadvantage for species diversify fishing effort as markets change or influence of Cardiff Bay. with an exoskeleton. and species composition in Welsh waters Wales has a total registered fishing Smaller scale inshore fishers do varies over time. Officials are working hard to make up the shortfall in access to quota that stands to blight the future of the Welsh industry. But it is seldom easy to get back what one has given away. The recently reformed EU Common Fisheries Policy provides some hope for both fish stocks and fishermen. However, it will be of little use to Welsh fishers if they don’t have access to the quota to be able to land finfish and are forced to stand idly by on the harbour wall, watching other fleets, from England and elsewhere, harvesting Welsh resources in Welsh waters.

Jeremy Percy is Chief Executive of NUTFA – the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association. Fisherman clearing lobster pots in Cardigan Bay.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 61 7 Small-scale beekeeping in International the developing world

Article Small-scale China is investing heavily beekeeping in Martin Jones describes how a in Uganda, for instance the developing Welsh-based charity is making with this new road through world Kamwenge, population a big impact in Uganda about 17,000, in the western part of the country. Quilting for Wales’ contribution is on a Africa smaller but smarter scale.

Almost every international NGO involved in to forage for nectar and pollen from a variety development has some form of beekeeping of flowers – rendering the forest a productive project. The common practice is to give asset for local communities without the expensive European-style hives to poor pressure to clear it for farmland. And due farmers in an effort to improve their to the nature of the beekeeping practised in efficiency and productivity. Yet this approach these fixed comb hives, the beekeeper is able completely misses one crucial and important to continue with their principal livelihood– fact. It is expensive. often subsistence farming – without the Apart from costing around £200 these hives financial, land, or time-commitment required are complicated and expensive for beekeepers with their more expensive, intensive in the developing world to maintain. As a result counterparts. This is extensive beekeeping. more often than not they are gutted of their The Bees for Development charitable machinery and used as storage tanks trust, based in Monmouth, has helped On the other hand local-style hives are thousands of the poorest farmers around the quick, easy and inexpensive to make. Using world to supplement subsistence farming local materials they cost as little as 60p to with profitable beekeeping. Our flagship get started. They allow rural small-holders programme is the Uganda Honey Trade to easily up-scale honey production at low Project where we are working with a small, cost and effort. While they may not be as cooperative in Kamwenge, Western Uganda ‘productive’ in a conventional sense as to help farmers sell the small quantities of European-style hives, for subsistence farmers honey and wax they harvest to the distant they demand very little in terms of labour. market in the capital Kampala, at a fair price. Due to its low cost, this method of Rather than selling the 20-30kg they can beekeeping is accessible to some of the most produce individually, small-scale farmers economically vulnerable around the world. can boost their incomes by forming a Beekeepers place many hives in the forested cooperative to enable them to sell to distant areas of the developing world, allowing bees markets at a scale that brings real income. In

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the first three years of the project the cooperative has increased from trading around 250kg of honey to more than 14 tonnes in 2012-13. Growing a small cooperative at the rate that has been achieved in Kamwenge is not without its challenges. Grant-dependency is often an unavoidable reality in many parts of the developing world and careful management has been required to ensure that the funding that comes from the project does not subsidise unprofitable activities. We have worked closely with management and staff of the cooperative to calculate, thoroughly, the total costs of collecting, processing Kamwenge coffee farmer Alice Tumwine’s production is boosted by keeping bees. and selling honey. This relatively simple task does not appear to have been done is studying agronomy and hopes to – local subsistence farmers, young and before: too often in other projects the return home to assist his parents once old are now attuned to the massive cooperative closes when the funded he graduates – complete with the added economic benefits from beekeeping – project comes to an end. value training he has gained. not only from the obvious benefits of The wider benefits of the project are A key part of the co-operative is to organic honey that flows from the hives plain to see. In addition to the benefits have established a Collection Centre but also from the pollination services from the sale of honey the pollination Network which coordinates honey that the bees provide. services provided by bees also significantly collections in the Kamwenge District. Wales will never match the increase farmers’ crop yields. For The plan is for it to provide a robust and intensive, credit-card diplomacy of the instance the yields of coffee farmer Alice sustainable system for local beekeepers likes of China which is constructing a Tumwine have increased dramatically to sell their honey after our project massive new road through Kamwenge. since she sited her apiary among her concludes next year. However, we can promote ideas that coffee plants. Bee Health, a paper by the With just one year left for the project, work and are appropriate to the lives National Assembly’s Research Service in we are working hard to ensure that the and lifestyles of the modern Ugandan May estimated that the cost of replacing gains made in the first three years are small-holder. pollination services from bees with reinforced during a gradual withdrawal hand pollination in the UK would cost of funding and consultancy support approximately £1.8 billion per year. from the cooperative. The aim is for it Martin Jones is Project Officer Alice uses the extra income to send to stand on its own feet independent with Bees for Development. her son Isaac to University, where he of external actors. One thing is certain www.beesfordevelopment.org

Local-style hives are quick, easy and inexpensive to make. They allow rural smallholders to Expensive honey extractors designed for use with European-style ‘frame hives’ donated by easily increase their honey production with little effort and at low cost. the Government are incompatible with rural beekeeping practices in Africa. More often than not they are gutted of machinery and used as storage tanks.

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Quilting for Africa

Maggie Cullinane explains how she became involved in a project Maggie Cullinane with children from Rumney Primary School, Cardiff, painting to support mothers at risk from dying of complications in childbirth squares for the Quilt Project.

In March 2012 the Cardiff-based medical have one anaesthetist per million heart rate dropped dramatically and a education charity Mothers of Africa people. In Cardiff alone there are 140. call was made to alert theatre that we organised a 33 mile sponsored walk. This were on the way. is a distance equal to the average journey Doing nothing more than lending All of a sudden, the brake was taken a woman in Africa would make on foot a hoody was no longer an option. off my bed and we were running down to get to medical help when pregnant. I’ve only ever had the need for an the corridor. I lost the next hour of my I didn’t take part in the walk, anaesthetist once in my life, and when life, the hour in which I became a Mum. although I did provide a baton in the I did it was one of the Cardiff team who My son wasn’t exactly born kicking and form of a couple of hoodies for the was there within minutes. screaming. His first taste of oxygen came relay team entered by Cardiff School of People often say that having children from a bag - the phrase “making no Art and Design, where I work. At the is the most natural thing in the world. All respiratory effort” on his notes still sends time I barely knew anything about the too often, however, Mother Nature needs a chill through me. But he had a beating charity, but throughout the day, regular a helping hand. We take it for granted in heart, and after a few minutes he was emails updated us on the progress of the developed world that we will have able to breathe on his own. the walkers. After about the fourth or doctors and midwives available to make Had we had to wait for a theatre fifth of these, I decided to see what this sure our babies are brought safely into and an anaesthetist and surgical team charity was all about and took a look at the world. We forget so easily how lucky to become available, it could have been their website, where I read the following we are. The night my son was born was a lot worse. The first month of his life horrific statistics: the luckiest of my life. wasn’t easy, but today you would never Complications from fairly early in know he came so close to not making • Each day in Africa three Boeing 747s my pregnancy had meant that by the it into the world at all. Even in the UK, of mothers die in childbirth. time I reached eight months I had to be not every woman needing a caesarean • A woman’s risk of dying from checked in hospital every two days. I as desperately as I did is that lucky, and treatable or preventable managed to get within a week of my due I’ve been acutely aware of that fact ever complications of pregnancy and date but by then it was decided that there since. In Africa we wouldn’t have stood childbirth over the course of was just no point in my staying pregnant. a chance. her lifetime is 1 in 6 in Africa In My baby was hardly growing and I was So when I read those figures about developed parts of the world the risk getting sicker. Labour was induced and the dangers of bringing life into the is 1 in 7,300. although nothing much happened at first, world, just because you live on the • Some African countries, like Benin, when it did it happened fast. My son’s wrong continent, straight away I wanted

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Examples of designs of squares produced for the Quilt Project to do something. I decided to resurrect all over again, but this time on a much out to Zambia and are on display in a past fundraising project which had bigger scale. I started thinking of all the the local hospital and in the education involved students and friends being other people out there who might want centre built by Mothers of Africa in sponsored to create fabric squares, to help, people who love sewing, textile Shiyala village. Our next exhibition, in which I then made up into a quilt. groups, the schools and colleges who Spring 2014, will be on the theme of Having previously raised £700, I set might like to run a classroom project that hopes and aspirations for the future, and myself a target of £1,000. could help to save the lives of the women will be held in Cardiff School of Art and Over the summer of 2012, when of Africa and their babies. The original Design’s brand new building in , every other woman in Britain seemed quilt was donated to the charity, for use in Cardiff. There will be quilts featuring to be reading Fifty Shades of Grey, I publicity, but with more quilts, we could squares produced by Zambian artists was coordinating the Mothers of Africa send them out to Africa to be distributed and children from the village, on one Sponsored Quilt Project. It was difficult in the communities there. Eventually, we of the charity’s recent visits. These will at first, but then the squares started to would like to be able to send packs of be shown alongside designs created by come in thick and fast, and eventually squares out to Africa for the women to students from both Cardiff School of Art we got there, with contributions coming make up and sell themselves. That’s a little and Design and Bridgend College. not just from the UK, but also from way off yet, but one day we’ll get there. mainland Europe, USA, Kuwait and So what initially started as a one-off Japan. The finished quilt was exhibited summer project is now a permanent Maggie Cullinane is a Technician at the in Cardiff Bay, initiative, open to all, irrespective of age, Demonstrator at Cardiff Metropolitan and the final total raised reached nearly location or ability. Our first exhibition, University’s School of Art and Design £1,300. I felt totally elated at reaching in June 2013, featured quilts created and organiser of the Mothers of Africa the target and very proud of what we by schoolchildren from Cardiff and Sponsored Quilt Project. See had achieved as a group. However, I the Vale of Glamorgan. The youngest http://www.moaquilt.wordpress.com also felt quite sad that it was all over. participants were three years old. Some for more details of next Spring’s Within a few weeks, I decided to start of those quilts have now been taken exhibition in Cardiff.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 65 Wales remembers 8 the trenches Heritage Deian Hopkin outlines the Fusiliers Museum in Caernarfon Castle, the activities being planned to Saxony Regiment Museum in Dresden and commemorate the centenary of the community of Armentieres in France to the Great War recall the Christmas Truce of 1914. Extending our knowledge and understanding of the war involves an In France and Belgium the thousands of ambitious programme of digitising materials cemeteries and the monuments at Vimy, relating to the period. The Welsh Experience of Thiepval and Tyne Cot are a constant the First World War, led by the National Library Articles reminder of the scale and intensity of the of Wales and funded by the Joint Information Wales First World War that was fought on their Systems Committee, will provide 190,000 remembers the soil, while the bugles of Menin are a daily pages of text, 50 hours of audio and 20 hours trenches reminder of its cost. Although the war was of film dealing with all aspects of Welsh life not physically fought in Britain, the human during the War. The archives of major War Ghostly imprints consequences were visited on every town, poets will be made available as well as army of an epicentre village, community and family. Even in records, diaries, letters and recordings from of the maritime those 52 communities in England and Wales the collections held by the BBC and the South age - the ‘Thankful Villages’ like Herbrandston Wales Miners Library. A searchable archive in Pembrokeshire - which were spared any of Welsh newspapers during the period will deaths, there was a painful legacy of survival. transform our ability to research communities. Determining how best to commemorate the The Heritage Lottery Fund has also awarded Great War has been a difficult task because there a grant to Cardiff University to digitise the is a balance to be struck between reflecting on cartoons of Joseph Staniforth which appeared the individual sacrifice and suffering on the one through the war in the Western Mail. hand, and the dispassionate examination of the All of this will provide the basis for new causes and, indeed, justification of the war on curriculum activity in schools and colleges the other. Some groups and organisations want across Wales, though the primary focus will be to commemorate specific military encounters on the local experience as revealed through while others want to remember the pacifists and the study of local resources. Indeed, the most conscientious objectors. There needs to be visible legacy of the war in Wales are memorials room for both. in town centres and inside public buildings, It is generally accepted that this is not many of which are in need of restoration or a moment for celebration and the Welsh even rescue. It is hoped to encourage as many programme is firmly founded on the theme as possible to explore the 7,000 and more war of reconciliation. While acknowledging graves in every part of Wales, 3,000 of which are the importance of commemorating major in Glamorgan alone, which have been listed by events, such as the battles of the Somme the Commonwealth War Graves Commission or Paschendaele, we need to reflect on the and further research on which could enrich our wider issues, the impact of the war on society, local history. politics, culture and on international relations. This might form the basis for a wider There is a strong sense of European exploration, following the trail, so to speak, to engagement in the Welsh preparations. Europe and beyond. The Heritage Lottery Fund Early events will include a celebration of the has launched small grant schemes for schools contribution of Belgian refugee artists and and communities to undertake local projects sculptors to Wales, while a joint exhibition is relating to the history of the War. The first grants being developed between the Royal Welch have already been announced, in Brecon,

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Powys and Flintshire and many more will follow. There will also be funding, from the War Memorials Trust and others for the restoration of memorials while the impressive memorial at Mametz Wood on the Somme is also being refurbished. New physical spaces are being created as well. The Heritage Lottery Fund has supported the purchase of Yr Ysgwrn, the family home of Hedd Wyn, which will be developed as a visitor centre in which the War will feature strongly. And, thanks to the efforts of a campaign group, there will be a new memorial to the general Welsh sacrifice in the war on land donated by the local council at Langemark, near Soldiers in the trenches at the Battle of the Somme between July and November 1916 when more than a million men were either killed or wounded. Pilkem Ridge, scene of the ferocious battle of 1917 and where there already exists a kind of audience, including children. A Above all, the programme has the active memorial to Hedd Wyn. There is even particularly valuable output, from the support of the First Minister and the a plan to reconstruct trenches in north perspective of the historian, will be the Welsh Government and is also engaging Wales, where practice trenches were used release of the thousands of interviews politicians and civil leaders on all sides. for training purposes. with veterans conducted for the 1960s Centenaries can be difficult moments Cultural aspects of the war will series The Great War but which were and in this case there are some additional feature very strongly in the Welsh never broadcast. complexities. What will happen in programme. There is an obvious danger of Ireland, especially in 2016 when another have commissioned a work based on centenary exhaustion especially if the centenary approaches, reminding us In Parenthesis, David Jones’ remarkable coverage focuses unduly on endless of the role the British Army and its autobiographical account of the Battle battles, frustrating trench warfare and commanders played in suppressing the of the Somme. Welsh National Theatre continuous tragedy. However, every Easter Rising? What exactly will Russia is producing a play based on Owen effort is being made to provide a richer commemorate - the Imperial War or the Sheers’ poem Mametz, while there will context. This is why in Wales we want collapse of the Empire? be major retrospective exhibitions on to make sure that all points of view And how will Germany react? First World War soldiers at the National are reflected in the organisation of After all, they are our close allies in Library and the National Museum. the centenary. A dedicated website, current conflicts. What good does it Next year the Gregynog Festival Cymru’n Cofio-Wales Remembers 1914- do to remind them of their own, less will be focusing on the generosity of 1918 (www.walesremembers.org) is triumphant, experiences in 1918? There Margaret and Gwendoline Davies, the a platform and a portal, providing a are some in the UK who do not flinch Gregynog sisters, in supporting Belgian continuous stream of information and from triumphalism, as witnessed by the artists and composers in Wales during guidance with associated social media. virulent comments in some parts of the the war period. One of them Eugeen A representative Programme Board media after a quiet appeal from Germany Vanfleteren, handcrafted the Eisteddfod has been meeting for over a year while to leave judgements to historians. In Chair posthumously awarded to Hedd sub-groups on historical interpretation, commemorating this centenary it is vitally Wyn in 1917. community activities, strategic important that we find a balance between A more general, UK wide programme communication and educational reflection and judgement. At the same is underway to encourage contemporary resources have been contributing time, it is an opportunity for each of us artists, designers and musicians to valuable advice. to ask what we would have done in the create new works, reflecting their own As for the cost, a subject which is same circumstances? reaction to the centenary. The BBC has often raised by observers, there will announced its largest ever programme of be no new money given the severe activity relating to one centenary: 2,500 limitations on Government finance. Deian Hopkin is President of the hours of television and radio drama Funding will be mainly found from National Library of Wales and, as the and documentaries extending over the existing departmental budgets to First Minister’s Expert Adviser, chairs four year period and dealing with every supplement the financial support of the Welsh Programme Board for the aspect of the war and aimed at every the Heritage Lottery Fund and others. Centenary of the First World War.

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Ghostly imprints of an epicentre of the maritime age

Coal ships tied up at in the early 20th Century.

Peter Finch looks back at a they have become sanitized entities that on the coast. They know nothing of time when Cardiff was the coal seek to reflect each other the world over. the great docks that once were, or that capital of the world Same stores, same street furniture, same Cardiff in its industrial heyday was the landmark features, opera houses, State world’s leading coal exporter. The south parliaments, corporate headquarters, of the place, everything from the main Cities are not what they once were. street art, high rise apartment blocks, GWR rail line to the alluvial shoreline The sense of unacceptable alienation undercroft car parking, same branches of was filled with smoking industry: great Baudelaire felt when the landmarks of Tesco, or whatever the local equivalent dockyards, coal stays by the hundred, Paris around him were removed and might be, showing their gleaming teeth rail yards and steam and mountains of his city changed through metropolitan through their glass and aluminium doors. multi-racial sweat. renewal is no longer how the urban Cardiff, which sold itself as Europe’s David Jenkins’s Shipowners of world is. By contrast alienation is now newest capital, is no exception. We Cardiff – A History of the Cardiff and the norm. It’s how we get through like to think that here in the nation’s Bristol Channel Incorporated Shipowners’ life, most of us, walking the city streets powerhouse we have created a unique Association may sound like a chore to acknowledging no one simply because metropolis. But in truth our revitalised, read but it isn’t. It is actually a fascinating there are too many around for this to be pedestrianised heart now looks much reminder of what we once were and how done. In the countryside strangers are the same as the centres of Leicester, the British industrial age had an epicentre always spoken to. In the cities, if they can Nottingham, Manchester, or Newcastle. in south Wales, big enough for the world help it, no one speaks to you at all. There are students out there in the to see, and one that left scars that we still Alienation is a way of life. As cities drunken two-bed houses of Cathays haven’t completely removed. have grown and regenerated themselves who are barely aware that this city is Until 1850 coal exports from Cardiff

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that remains are photographs. The best of these form the Hansen Collection now housed at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. Father and Son, Lars Peter and Leslie Hansen ran a Cardiff-based photographic business majoring in taking shots of every ship that sailed in and out of the port. Their superb collection amounts to more than 4,500 black and white images. Some of the best are reprinted in David Jenkins’ second book, Shipping at Cardiff – Photographs from the Hansen Collection. It’s the sheer variety here that amazes - steamers, sailing ships, diesel-engined traders. There are ore carriers, motor tramps, tankers, liners, tugs, trawlers, dredgers, cutters, paddle-steamers, Welsh steam coal at Cardiff Docks in 1927. minesweepers, nuclear submarines, corvettes, destroyers and frigates. Of were carried in wooden Welsh sailing Cardiff expanded its docks, the port you don’t see much. The shots ships owned by Welsh shipowners. added ship repair and show ships at sea although docksides do Trade was modest but about to explode. occasionally feature. There’s a skyline The native Welsh failed to see this. By extensive bunkering. It sent of cranes and dock offices that now the mid-1860s a new generation of out its coal to the continent, no longer exist. Cardiff has turned its immigrant entrepreneurs had arrived to South America, to the far waterfront into a freshwater leisure lake. from the west Country, from Newcastle But the Port is still out there. South and elsewhere, to establish the now reaches of the empire. of the barrage and built on reclaimed famous Cardiff shipping lines. These used land the Roath Dock and the Queen steam ships, ships of iron, which could Alexander are well beyond any kind shift the black gold in quantity. John Cory, led underwriters to impose an additional of public access. These are times of the Morel Brothers, Charles Stallybrass, premium for any vessel registered at heightened security after the ball. You Edward Hill. Cardiff. Which led, naturally, to local can spot a ship, occasionally, its white Cardiff expanded its docks, added fleets being shifted from the city to superstructure moving slowly somewhere ship repair and extensive bunkering. It London, Bideford and the Bahamas in beyond the BBC’s Porth Teigr studios and sent out its coal to the continent, to South order to avoid additional costs. The Port the hi-rise apartment blocks that dot the America, to the far reaches of the empire. of Cardiff’s reputation as a ship owning shore. Cardiff’s seafaring teeth are still in The Navy marked Welsh steam coal as giant was sullied for decades. place but unless you worked there you’d the variety best for its ships. At its height, However, the Association did predict be forgiven for not realising. in the years immediately before the First the future. In 1920 it suggested the World War, 22 million tons a year went joining together of the Taff and the Ely out through Cardiff, Barry and Penarth. In as feeders to a great new port facility. In return Cardiff imported grain, ore and pit 1929 it proposed the building of a dam Peter Finch is literary editor of the props. The Shipowners’ Association had between Penarth head and the Queen welsh agenda. His latest book Edging the 77 member companies and controlled Alexandra Dock. It took until 1999 with Estuary, an exploration of the heritage almost 750,000 gross tons of shipping. the port now a pale shadow of its former of the Welsh coast from Chepstow to Not that the Association always self for this to happen. Worms’s head, was published by Seren in controlled things for the best, as David The ships the Association operated September. Shipowners of Cardiff: A Class Jenkins points out in this far from dull have now all vanished. Contemporary By Themselves – A History of the Cardiff and history. No mention appears anywhere in trade is now container or dredger with Bristol Channel Incorporated Shipowners’ the Association’s minutes of the practice, virtually nothing owned by entrepreneurs Association and Shipping At Cardiff – highly prevalent in Cardiff at the time, based in the Welsh capital. Even Photographs from the Hansen Collection, of over insuring vessels and then sinking Reardon-Smith, the largest of them all, both by David Jenkins, are published by them to claim the marine insurance. This went to the economic wall in 1985. All the University of Wales Press.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 69 Magazines forced to 9 grasp funding nettle Comms Malcolm Ballin reports on radical changes to the future support of Welsh writing in English

Welsh magazines in English are heading with declining readerships, for a shake-up following a report unsustainable funding levels and proposing radical changes to their significant (although by no means funding. The report was commissioned universal) dissatisfaction with some and accepted by the Welsh Books aspects of content and range of Articles Council. In future its support for material available”. Magazines forced magazines will be geared to a maximum to grasp funding ratio of twice the grant funding compared Today the three leading ‘franchised’ nettle with the income they generate from sales magazines average sales of below 600 per and advertising. This compares with a issue, an amount that has fallen by almost ‘Don’t hate the ratio of about 4:1 at present. 30 per cent since 2006-7. The Books media, be the The three magazines that make up the Council subsidy now averages over £24 media’ core of the sector - Poetry Wales, Planet per copy and covers as much as 80 per and New Welsh Review - have a collective cent of total costs. There are serious history going back fifty years. They were worries about prospective competition originally funded by the Arts Council of from digital media, though this has yet Wales which set up a series of three-year to have a substantial impact. Only one franchises in the late 1980s. This funding magazine, New Welsh Review, has as yet system is now managed by the Welsh established a paid-for on-line presence, Books Council. though others are planning to do so. To qualify for Books Council support The Bianchi panel calls for “a radical magazines need to be ‘literary’ to a response”. significant extent, to be produced at a As well as dealing with financial and minimum of quarterly intervals and to commercial concerns, the panel reports present convincing three-year plans. readers’ worries, touching on what In addition about half a dozen other is described as a lack of “personality” magazines, including the welsh agenda, and “humour” and some perceived receive less generous financial support, “cliquishness” in the magazines. They sometimes restricted to their ‘literary’ or are seen as weak in their coverage of ‘cultural’ pages. current affairs, politics and history, and In 2012 the Books Council set up need more engagement with specifically a review panel led by Tony Bianchi, a Welsh subjects. writer and former Literary Director at the However, the panel rejected the Arts Council, supported by Tim Holmes, accusation of “cliquishness” among Senior Lecturer in Cardiff University’s commissioned writers. The contributors School of Journalism, and Alex Clark, were actually highly varied. On the other formerly Editor of Granta. Their report, hand, the panel found that articles did published in July 2013, declared that the tend to “a perceived sameness of tone magazines had: and perspective”. The Anglophone public sphere in “...entered a period of stagnation Wales has traditionally had a strong

70 | 9/Communications sense of educational mission. In many respects this is a source of strength, but it can easily be interpreted as over selective and even condescending. In a hotly disputed observation the late Tony Conran once described literary culture in Wales as “a pedagocracy”. The review panel’s main recommendations propose:

• Books Council support should be geared to a maximum ratio of 2:1 for grant and generated income compared with about 4:1 now. • Much broader coverage of subject areas outside the ‘literary’ field, especially current affairs, politics, history, and the environment. • Allocation of more resources to digital development. • More sensitive responses to criticisms from readers. • Better promotion and marketing.

The Books Council has substantially endorsed these findings and announced a new basis of funding on the 2:1 gearing concept from April 2015 when the current franchises run out. The next series of awards will last for a four-year period, as against the present three-year span.

After the first four years the magazines Iconic August 1970 first cover of Planet, Wales’ longest-running English language magazine. will either become self-sustaining or will be free to apply for one of two Before the review’s publication, Gwen in the wake of nineteenth-century new categories of grant: for ‘General Davies’s editorial in the 100th issue of nation building, should be today Magazines’, that is to say not exclusively New Welsh Review (Summer 2013) measured by depth not breadth, by ‘literary’ or ‘cultural’ offerings; and the expresses apprehension about its possible influence, perception, judgement, other for specifically ‘Literary Magazines’. outcomes. In a critique of my recent by those economically valueless These grants will be based on book Welsh Periodicals in English 1882- but participatory intangibles such similar criteria and limited to 50 per 2012, she takes issue with magazines as social media reach, author tours cent of total expenditure. In addition, being judged mainly on their relatively and festival presence? By its – dare ‘seed-funding’ will be available for low circulations: to say it – educational importance, innovative proposals; and there will be its filtering of ideas, taste; its filtering encouragement for digital initiatives, “Ballin writes that “...there has out the crass, the untrue, the including a fund of £5,000 set aside always been a risk that the appeal ignorant and the lazy? for training in this area. This is not a of the magazines [seems] limited large sum when related to the costs of to a restricted, intimate part of This determined defence emphasises many professional training activities. the public sphere... dominated the editor’s perception that the cultural The discussion so far has been silent on by intellectuals, educators and impact of the magazine is already potent payments for contributors and staff. academics.” But surely this and challenging. Her celebration of The Bianchi proposals aim at ‘intimate... public sphere’, which the magazine’s 100th issue proclaims shaking up the present, long-established pioneers such as Owen Morgan its active presence at the Hay Festival, pattern by introducing more diversity. Edwards and Keidrych Rhys created in association with Aberystwyth

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University, its reach beyond “the intimate on disability and the drive for widening the desired higher levels of sustainability public sphere” to include work by access in the universities. It also has space and meet competition from new the Argentinian ‘literary star’, Andrés for some of the areas that the review felt contenders. ‘Business as usual’, with a Neumann (translated by Richard Gwyn), were neglected: sport (Rachel Trezise few adjustments, will not be enough. an extract from Francesca Rhydderch’s on a roller derby in the Valleys) and The Review’s recommendation to new ‘family biography’, The Rice Paper popular music (Rhian E. Jones on recent add more entrepreneurial experience to Diaries, and a photo-essay on ‘The developments in the Welsh scene). the membership of the Grants Panel of Manufactured Coastscape of Wales’ by There has as yet been no published the Books Council is not addressed in the Roger Tiley. response from Poetry Wales; the decision Council’s public response. However, this Bianchi’s review acknowledges of Zoë Skoulding to retire as editor could lead to a reduction in the historic the exceptional work and dedication (announced in the Summer 2013 issue) emphasis on literary values. The Books of magazine editors. It recognises that may have inhibited comment. Council does seek significant changes the franchised magazines “continue to The timing of events from now on in the present configuration. This would publish the best writing in Wales” and allows magazines some space to adjust favour joint ventures or mergers or observes that “their role in providing to the new regime. Current franchises entirely new formats. The proposed drive a platform for Welsh perspectives and still have more than a year to run. to compensate for the lack of voices is valued highly, if critically, Proposals under the new four-year newspapers in Wales will encourage by the great majority who come into funding system have to be prepared exponents of campaigning journalism in contact with them.” But it still finds by the ‘early autumn’ of 2014. The magazine format. that, despite these virtues, the sector increased period for new franchises A more active presence in cultural is in crisis, needs to embrace radical is itself consciously intended to give events such as the Hay International change and to be more responsive to its extended support to allow magazines Festival, the Cheltenham Literary potential readership. As a first reaction, to become more sustainable. Nothing is Festival or the Edinburgh Festival could the supportive editorial (Summer 2013) planned to be precipitate. be anticipated. Hosting live debates in the Welsh-language satirical review However, more competition in the with readers, either through sponsored LOL revels in Bianchi’s criticisms of sector appears likely. Within a year from conferences or on-line would appeal the English-language magazines and now existing magazines are expected to a younger demographic and also to (maybe tongue-in-cheek) quotes solely to readjust their forward plans to meet private sponsors. and enthusiastically from the critical more stringent funding rules from the The announced changes do not comments in the report. first year of the new franchise and to entail any descent into popularization, The first published response to the compete with new contenders who although the proposed change to Books Council’s actual announcement may be attracted by the more relaxed the funding ratio will be profoundly of future changes comes in a short but requirements for content and timing. challenging for the existing magazines. highly positive piece on the end-page Well before the end of these franchises In my book I show that finding a in the current issue of Planet (Autumn in 2019 it will be clear to what extent the substantial audience for excellent writing 2013). It welcomes the Council’s radical changes called for by the Bianchi on a wide range of topics, extending emphasis on the need for a wider review have been achieved. beyond national boundaries, underpins range of subject matter, seeing this as It is always difficult for long- the success stories of self-sustaining giving Planet “the freedom to respond established institutions to change magazines outside Wales. The new to developments in 21st Century Wales gear quickly and it can be dangerous, scenario for Welsh magazines in English while maintaining our distinctive, radical alienating existing readers and demands a similar response. and wide-ranging presence.” Planet also supporters. The Books Council’s new welcomes the “more flexible approach funding arrangement stays faithful to to multi-platform publishing” and its ‘hands-off’ tradition. It enlarges the announces that it is already developing potential scope for magazines and Malcolm Ballin is an independent a digital version of the magazine - to be gives them more freedom but does researcher, based at Cardiff University. published alongside the print version not prescribe particular directions of He specialises in periodical literature and Planet’s existing multimedia website. change. However, the whole thrust of in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. His Indeed this issue of Planet itself deals the Bianchi review suggests that the book Irish Periodical Culture appeared trenchantly with many current political existing magazines need to grasp some in 1998 and his Welsh Periodicals in and social issues, such as shortcomings aggressive nettles if they are to retain, let English: 1882-2012 was published by the in children’s wellbeing in Wales, policies alone expand, their readerships, achieve University of Wales Press in June 2013.

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College, Oxford, argues that the influence of online news should not be predicated ‘Don’t hate the media, purely on the number of readers. In many smaller scale but deficient media environments, the increasing be the media’ influence of one or two dominant websites, portals or hubs, becomes Simon Gwyn Roberts asks commons in cyberspace”, a new kind of apparent. Indeed, they frequently whether the internet can plug the web-enabled public sphere. sidestep the mainstream press entirely. democratic deficit in mainstream Today there are examples around Sites like Ukrayanska Pravda (Ukraine) Welsh press and broadcasting the world where cooperation and and Liberali (Georgia) generate significant collaboration between social media, amounts of political attention and blogs, and professional journalists offer illustrate a tendency towards hybrid Can the growth in the scope and an exciting future. For instance, I visited forms of journalism. Professionals ambition of politically motivated websites post-revolution Tunisia one year after the mobilise a wide variety of social media provide an answer to the democratic revolution which deposed the Ben Ali and local blogs to form politicised news deficit in the mainstream media in Wales? regime to meet journalists active on the websites with enough non-aligned In the last issue of the welsh agenda the Nawaat website - strapline don’t hate the sources to allow readers to encounter Assembly’s Presiding Officer Rosemary media, be the media. a range of alternative perspectives. The Butler noted that the Welsh readership It echoes similar websites established problem of how to ‘use’ fragmented yet of London-based newspapers is around in parts of the former Soviet Union - informative and important forms of social 600,000 while the combined readership notably, the post-Colour Revolution media is therefore addressed. of Wales’s six home-based daily nations of Georgia, Ukraine and The now defunct WalesHome site newspapers is only 350,000. At 307,000 Kyrgyzstan. Both were lent impact by attempted to do something similar the Welsh viewing figures for the BBC earlier revolutions which located a here, and that baton has now passed network six o’clock news is greater than vibrant and informative news media at to the IWA’s clickonwales. The quality the 285,000 who tune into to BBC Wales the heart of debates about democracy. of debate is immediately apparent, Today. Indeed, Nawaat provided a neat as is the range and significance of the As Rosemary Butler put it, “We have encapsulation of the role of hub websites subject matter, although many would a UK media, both broadcasters and print, in relation to the more widely publicised suggest the extra key is increasing the which fail to relay the huge differences role of social media when it published a size of the audience and the amount in approach to public policy in devolved detailed story debunking what it called of interactivity generated. But, to fields such as health and education, the myth of the revolution in restate Abiye Megenta’s argument in to their substantial Welsh audiences.” Tunisia. It concluded that social networks a different context, an influential site Could the internet provide a platform for were neither the catalyst nor the like Ukrayanska Pravda is certainly addressing this information gap? organizational framework of the protest not accessed by the majority of In answering the question it is movement. Nawaat journalist Afef the Ukrainians, but by a significant instructive to examine the experience of other places where the mainstream It is unsurprising to learn that the role of online journalism is media are in various ways deficient. It considerably more politically significant in places that lack a is unsurprising to learn that the role of online journalism is considerably more long-established tradition of independent print journalism. politically significant in places that lack a long-established tradition of independent Abrougui argued that the site’s impact percentage of politically engaged people print journalism. as a collated source of semi-professional, – not just political anoraks. And this is a Of course, hopes and predictions that determinedly independent journalism far direct result of a dysfunctional (indeed, the internet will reinvigorate the public outweighed that of individual blogs and almost non-existent) mainstream press sphere are far from new, with entrenched social media. that fails to provide the voting public perspectives and polarising opinions For us in Wales, web access, even with a range of political perspectives characterising the debate for years. For now, continues to be cited as a barrier to on Ukrainian politics. But its influence is example, as early as 2001 in their book engagement. But writing in the context of also partly because of resources: the site Realising Democracy Online Jay Blumler sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopian journalist receives external funding which allows and Stephen Coleman called for a “civic Abiye Megenta, a Fellow at Nuffield it to employ professional journalists

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full-time, who work on distilling and conveying the mass of information deriving from social media. This funding model is further complicated by the fact that sites like these often find it difficult to attract advertisers, who may shy away from controversial content – hence the need for that funding to come from external sources. In the case of the former Soviet Union it often comes from foreign NGOs like the Soros Foundation, and some would argue this inevitably compromises neutrality. However, there are also signs of independent and robust funding models emerging in other parts of the world. For instance, Malaysiakini, another portal website that deliberately seeks to provide an alternative to the mainstream press in Malaysia (a country in which racial and religious issues are Post revolution street scene in Tunisia. highly politicised) is a subscription- based website that makes a profit, derived from relatively small numbers of committed readers who recognise its value in providing alternative journalistic perspectives. In essence it is a public service model, supported not by a universal license fee but by a certain percentage of the voting public. Might a version of this model work in Wales? A small amount of any future tax-raising powers for the Welsh government could be used to fund a modest investment which hosts a small number of journalists and academics tasked with gatekeeping and mobilising the vast amount of comment, information and opinion emanating from social media and the wider blogosphere across the country. By breaking the BBC’s monopoly it might also resonate with the new Welsh Government Commission on Public Service Government, tasked as it is with suggesting innovative alternatives to service delivery without altering the overarching commitment to public sector cooperation.

Simon Gwyn Roberts is a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Chester

News stand in Georgia.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 75 10 Fishlock’s File Culture When a corkscrew and honey saved a royal line

Trevor Fishlock describes how a former Prince of Wales survived an arrow through his head Articles Fishlock’s File: When a As a writer by trade I spend some four children, most importantly corkscrew and of my time gathering stories. The Edmund and Jasper Tudor, honey saved a one I’m about to relate comes with respectively the Earls of Richmond and royal line a guarantee: Amazement or your Pembroke. Edmund married Margaret Money Back. You will know some Beaufort and three months after his Live wire act parts of it but I bet you won’t know the death, when she was not yet fourteen, astonishments. I hope you are not in she gave birth to Henry Tudor at Book reviews any way qualmish. Pembroke Castle. Jasper devoted An oblique glance To begin at the end, it was a cold his energies to making the boy King at a cloud of February morning in 1461 and it Henry VII. Ahead lay the march artists was clear that Owen Tudor had not through Wales, Bosworth and Henry’s expected to get the chop. battlefield crowning in 1485. A problematic He had just fought in a War of the Here we rewind to the year 1403, Zionist role model Roses battle at Mortimer’s Cross and as another time of war in Wales, the Portrait of an a Lancastrian was on the losing side. revolt of Owain Glyn Dwˆr against elusive bohemian Still, he trusted he would get a pardon. the rule of Henry IV. The struggle It was only when he arrived at Hereford was going badly for the king: he was Wells we should market and saw the block and axe that short of money and losing his grip. know he realized they were for him. He commissioned his son Henry, He mentioned to the executioner Prince of Wales, to fight as a garrison that his head had once lain in the commander. Henry was only fifteen, lap of a queen. This was strange but but like all sons of the nobility was true. Forty years before, Owen Tudor trained for war. was a presentable Anglesey boy in The king’s crisis deepened as the his twenties who found a job in the powerful Percy family of northern household of Henry V, the forever England moved to overthrow him. Their glorious hero of Agincourt. In 1420, eldest son, Harry Hotspur, sided with five years after that battle, Henry Glyn Dwˆr. But impatient Hotspur rashly married Catherine of Valois, daughter showed his hand too soon. Without of the king of France. waiting for his father’s forces or Glyn Henry died two years later and Dwˆr he raised his banner against the in time his widowed queen warmed king in July 1403. The armies clashed at to Owen’s Anglesey charm. A priest Shrewsbury and the sky was dark with married them in 1429 and they had arrows. Hotspur was killed.

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American actor Guy Roberts playing Henry V in a new production staged in Houston and Prague this year by the Prague Shakespeare Company he founded in 2008.

An arrow penetrated the left side Bradmore kept the wound open by from side to side he dislodged the of Prince Henry’s face just below the filling it with a packing sewn into arrowhead from the bone and pulled it eye and lodged in the base of his skull. clean linen soaked in honey. Then out through the entry wound. He kept It looked like a mortal wound. He was he went to Kenilworth’s blacksmith’s the cavity filled with wine and honey carried sixty miles to Kenilworth Castle workshop. He was not only a surgeon, for three weeks to prevent infection and treated with potions. These were he was a goldsmith and knew how to and complete the healing. useless. The only way to save his life fashion metal. John Bradmore left an account was to extract the iron arrowhead Time was short and he was thinking of the operation and the making which lay dangerously close to vital on his feet. At the blacksmith’s forge of the extractor. , a blood vessels. John Bradmore, a he fashioned an ingenious instrument, Cotswold’s blacksmith who specializes surgeon, was called from London to part corkscrew, part tongs. He inserted in fashioning historical ironwork, perform the operation. He found that this into the hole in the prince’s face followed Bradmore’s notes to the arrowhead was embedded in bone and probed. When he made contact make a replica of the device and at the back of Henry’s head, six inches with the arrowhead he opened demonstrated to me how it worked. I from the entry wound beside his nose. the tongs with the screw and then showed the extractor to Michael Fardy, One can only imagine the pain. tightened them so that they gripped a maxillofacial surgeon in Cardiff who There was no room for error. it. Moving the instrument gently greatly admired Bradmore’s skill. Henry recovered and returned to the war in Wales, experience which He had just fought in a War of the Roses battle at served him well in France. His head wound in 1403 was a very close-run Mortimer’s Cross and as a Lancastrian was on the thing. Had he died of it there would losing side. Still, he trusted he would get a pardon. have been no Henry V, no Agincourt, no widowed queen for Owen Tudor, It was only when he arrived at Hereford market no Tudor dynasty, no Henry VIII, and saw the block and axe that he realized they no Elizabeth. A lot of history was balanced on a corkscrew and honey. were for him.

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It’s a great tale. Young law graduate from LSE, heading for a bright future in tax consultancy, arrives for the kind of exam on which that future depends. Decides at the door that she can face neither. Spends the rest of the day in an Islington café with her cigarettes, writing a short story. It makes me smile every time. As does the sequel. Some months later the same gabby, clear-eyed thing encounters a tableful of poets – for heaven’s sake - in a Soho bar one evening, fresh from Covent Garden and the Poetry Café’s weekly open mic spot. At their urging, she is intrigued enough to drop in the following Tuesday. “I expected to feel completely out of place and rather over-awed,” she said. “Instead I came away thinking ‘I could do this’.” So she tried; a single poem delivered at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden led to a 20-minute spot at a ‘New Blood’ night the following month. “A couple of months after that I won the very first Poetry Idol at what was Shortfuse at the Camden Head”. She was hooked. A decade later, with an award- winning full-length collection and some 300 hundred gigs under her belt, Rhian Edwards deserves to be enjoying the fruits of an eventful eighteen months. Her return from London to her hometown of Bridgend coincided with a wave of literary distinctions: a shortlisting for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection followed the 2011 (biennial) John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry. A three-month residency at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in the summer preceded her success at the Wales Book of the Year Award in July, with Clueless Dogs (Seren). Born in 1977, Edwards recalls her childhood years roaming in and beyond Rhian Edwards pictured at Kenfig Farm, Bridgend. Photo: Peter Morgan a still-genteel Bridgend bordered by river, wobbly bridges and sand dunes. However, these came to an end when, at eight years old, she moved with her divorced mother to Derbyshire. A Live wire act precociously early reader, she developed Alice Entwistle profiles a poet who says the Welsh want into something of a solitary, her taste to suck the marrow out of life for an audience developing alongside a lively line in what can only be called

78 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org 10/Culture dollshouse noir. But she returned to her readings have little in common with music’s importance to her writing. father’s home in Wales regularly, firstly for the extremes encompassed by ‘live “For a long time I didn’t realise or the school holidays, later from her studies literature’ - the poetry slam, hip-hop, appreciate that the two were very much at LSE and the Bohemian years which and their now rather elderly-seeming intertwined in my work.” Likewise she followed. “Wales was always home, no forerunner, performance-poetry. Which did not immediately embrace the riches matter where I was,” she says. might be why I can think of very few of the speech-patterns she deliberately shrugged off in London. “I used to keep my Welsh accent very disguised. I’d Although readings play a vibrant part in literary culture impersonate Dorothy Parker and all these across the UK, especially in the spreading phenomenon other people” until “I found I was much Welsher when I read my poems aloud. I of the literary/arts festival, most conventional poetry want the clarity of the language to come readings have little in common with the extremes across and somehow it just eggs the encompassed by ‘live literature’ - the poetry slam, accent a bit.” Although it has been written – and hip-hop, and their now rather elderly-seeming rewritten – for the page (Edwards forerunner, performance-poetry. acknowledges the sternly elegant hand of Hugo Williams in teaching her to ‘make every line count’), a spirited Edwards’ success at the Book of the writers (of prose or poetry) whose idiom is largely “dictated by what sounds Year was hailed as a surprise - new young practice comfortably crosses the page/ right, even if it means inventing phrases left-fielder suddenly propelled centre- stage rubicon in either direction, let and language.” Poems like ‘Going Back stage. Never mind that an exceptionally alone both. for Light’ home in on the comforting strong shortlist also happened to be an Having balanced the demands pulse of dialect: all-women one, and that neither of the of ‘page’ and ‘stage’ from the outset, other contenders – Samantha Wynne Edwards seems to find in their Pair of chocolates, those eyes. Rhydderch (Banjo) and Deryn Rees- conjunction something very like an Daft over him, women were. His dark Jones (Burying the Wren) – though aesthetic, an oxygen-rich creative looks that was, both distinctive and powerful poets, raison d’etre. Presumably she dislikes Mind... could yet be called a ‘major’ presence. the ‘performance poet’ tag for its (often Never mind, either, the ten long years unjust) association with winging-it, and Frequently, a jaunty disregard for of endeavour which went into the shock-tactics. As she says, “Poetry doesn’t conventional expression pumps through making of Clueless Dogs, debut or not, as have to be a performance laden with more enigmatic locutions, as when Edwards reminds one interviewer. Which gimmicks in order to win the audience’s “She wears her head on the bone of his is not to say that there isn’t a story worth attention”. Instead, she describes herself, shoulder” (‘Crossed’), or “I sigh the train telling about a feisty collection, still less its “as a page poet who reads well”. This South” (‘Marital Visit’). Elsewhere, nouns ingenious writer-performer. is partly for ethical reasons. “It’s the and adjectives turn adroitly verbal. In the In our multi-platformed techno- responsibility of the poet to give a good vengefully surreal ‘Girl Meats Boy’, which culture, artists can reach all kinds of and clear reading,” she said. “The won the John Tripp award, knife and fork audiences in all kinds of places, and in audience wants to be challenged but transform into all kinds of ways. Of course, different they also want to ‘get’ the poem and artforms depend on different kinds and appreciate it. A throwaway reading that is soldiering guards degrees of witness. Whereas most literary unclear, rushed and wilfully obscure, just west and easting a world of plate texts simply need a reader and a source isn’t fair to the audience or the poem.” of petticoat white… of light, the performing arts trade on The result is a wonderfully live collective experience, when every performable idiom ripe with sonic There are perilous moments of over- iteration prompts fresh energy between drama. “The sounds of the words are orchestration in ‘Back To Bed’, largely performer(s) and audience(s). very important to me. I often edit by endebted to Dylan Thomas: Although readings play a vibrant walking and talking to myself.” And she part in literary culture across the adds, “Remembering my poems enables What a waste of good fawning UK, especially in the spreading me to communicate them better.” when the flattered is sleep-swooned! phenomenon of the literary/arts An accomplished singer-songwriter, festival, most conventional poetry Edwards was strangely slow to sense However, Edwards’ idiom is mostly more

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“Wales was always a sanctuary for me… In England, people tended to be rather sparse with language and I knew that I didn’t belong there because I was always a juggernaut of words. It must have done their heads in, but by Welsh standards I wasn’t too bad. There is a joie de vivre I think, that is very particular to Wales – a kind of … wanting to suck the marrow out of life.”

fleet-of-foot. Thus, the near-monstrously By way of explanation, the poet herself Bridgend, a “market town without physical ‘Unmentionable’ which side- points to the cultural background she a market”, her sidelong glances at a steps slapstick: has gaily recovered, insisting that “the punishing social history (‘Going Back for humour is very Welsh... not taking Light’ and ‘The Welshman Who Couldn’t He rusts my blood one’s self very seriously… That’s what I Sing’) and the unnerving tomfoolery of cadavers my skin embrace really about being Welsh. More ‘Girl Meats Boy’? sweating a smile than anything, it’s the complete candour. “The Welsh love a good story,” a jaundice-licked grin Nothing is off bounds.” she says. “I think that’s what I missed Perhaps this is why a collection so much when I was in England.” Likewise the gluttonous ‘Coldsores’ mostly written in London can feel Edwards’ homecoming concludes one (pulsing avid / as a stripped heart on decidedly partisan, as if the very process chapter of an unusual literary tale. May display), while a mosquito-swatting of surviving away from Wales somehow the next find her crackling creative ‘Skeeter Syndrome’ segues delicately sharpened its value as cultural bedrock. energy turned to more highly-charged, into philosophy: “Wales was always a sanctuary for me… or subversive, ends. Live wires should In England, people tended to be rather be dangerous things.” I opened my hand to a mangle of limbs, sparse with language and I knew that I a patch of my own blood – the stigma didn’t belong there because I was always of killing something full of me. a juggernaut of words. It must have done their heads in, but by Welsh standards I Together image and wordplay weave wasn’t too bad. There is a joie de vivre I from love and loss, faith and betrayal, think, that is very particular to Wales – a Alice Entwistle is a lecturer in English cruelty and compassion a familiar kind of … wanting to suck the marrow literature at the University of South narrative of human experience, darkly out of life.” Wales, where she co-directs the Centre reminiscent of the lurid stories Edwards Edwards’ funny, earthy, moreish for the Study of Media and Culture in wove around her toys as a child (‘Broken poetry hints at a literary-poetic wheel Small Nations. Her Poetry, Geography, Lifeboat’). come full circle. The cultural punch of Gender: Contemporary Women Rewriting The accessibility commended by Clueless Dogs has much to do with what Wales has just been published by the the Book of the Year judges is rarely we might call its poetic stagecraft, its University of Wales Press and a critical decorous, as in ‘The Unkindness’: unself-conscious dusting-off of the ancient study of the poet Gwyneth Lewis is links between bard and audience. forthcoming. Thanks are due to Jenna What of this cauliflowering arse? What else binds together Edwards’ Gaughan, whose 2013 unpublished Where are the buttocks that snake- unsentimental reflections on the unlovely interview with the poet supplied some of charmed? socio-economic realities of her own the materials used in this profile.

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his main theories and proposals. These learned the language and embraced the Reviews have been an implacable desire to put struggle for language rights, speaking unrecognised in its rightful place publicly. In a number of critical books he in our institutions, and to give naïve or combined revelations and reflections on An oblique glance at a folk art or, as the author prefers to call it, our unrecognised native painters with the cloud of artists artisan art, the same status that similar art larger struggle for cultural and political Osi Rhys Osmond enjoys in other countries, most notably in autonomy. From his writing it appears he the United States. felt a sense of trespass in this challenged At the same time there is much more terrain. He admits to feeling an outsider to the book than the story of one writer’s wherever he is and confesses that part of interest in the art of Wales. Although the appeal of the art of his passions is that trained as an artist at Reading University the artists themselves were in their time Lord’s interest in the art of Wales seems “outside the established order of things”. to have coincided with his Welsh cultural His zealous approach to his subject epiphany. Moving in the early 1970s to and his single mindedness has of necessity live in the Ceredigion uplands – housing made him a somewhat intransigent was cheap due to agricultural change character, not afraid to upset the experts, and economic decline - he was struck many of whom elicit little sympathy. He by the beauty of the language and the acknowledges his shortcomings, as far nature of the rural community in which as he can see them and freely admits he found himself. He quickly realised past errors. “Great artists do not interest that a rapid erosion was taking place. He me much,” he concedes. “I mostly write was witnessing a historic turning point about artisans and about trained painters Relationships with Pictures – that meant Welsh would be extinct in its marginalised by the mainstream of art an Oblique Autobiography heartland if nothing was done. Moreover, historians.” This says a great deal about his Peter Lord since they had settled in one of the most predilections and prejudices. Parthian Press, 2013, £15 linguistically precarious parts of Wales, he Lord investigates the lives and work and other non-Welsh speaking neighbours of artists long since dead, largely 20th

Over the last quarter of a century Peter Lord’s contribution to our understanding His zealous approach to his subject and and appreciation of our native art has been immense. His has been a vital his single mindedness has of necessity made study of the unrecognised, forgotten him a somewhat intransigent character, not and hidden art of Wales. Now his autobiography, obliquely different from afraid to upset the experts, many of whom the usual format as he says in his title, illuminates his enthusiasms, highlights his elicit little sympathy. methodology and reveals something of his early life and ancestry. This book is well produced, full of fresh insights and thankfully not simply a reprise of the author’s extensive previous writing. Peter Lord is a singular individual and has trodden a somewhat lonely path were a major part of the problem. His Century artists who generally left Wales, through the corridors of our national sensitivity and consequent response permanently, periodically or briefly to institutions and museums. With the to cultural calamity is to his credit. develop their training and careers. He exception of the National Library, he has Unfortunately it is something that few are ranges across the diaspora of those who generally received little support and, on aware of, incomers or disappointingly left their working class roots to find or lose occasions what seems like obstruction to many of the Welsh themselves. Lord soon their way in London, Paris or in the case

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of Evan Walters, even further afield. He undertaken as responsible custodianship A problematic Zionist pursues the patrons of artists who interest and Lord will pass them on to the nation role model him, their families and their descendants. on his demise. Meanwhile, he obviously Naomi Jones In John Cyrlas Williams he has discovered very much enjoys living with the paintings. and brought to our attention the least The final chapter of the book reveals known and perhaps the most gifted of much about Lord himself, his personal them. Evan Walters and Archie Rhys beliefs or lack of them, his philosophy of Griffiths studied at Swansea School of life and his thoughts on what if anything, Art before they graduated from the Royal comes afterwards. Here he quotes and College of Art and began to make their discusses the philosopher J.R. Jones, mark in the art world. Both enjoyed the who invokes St Paul and examines Waldo patronage of Winifred Tennant Coombe William’s use of the line from Paul “Within early in their careers. a cloud of witnesses” which had been Cyrlas Williams was from a family quoted by the philosopher in his essay Y made newly wealthy by the coal industry. Syniad o Genedl (‘The idea of a nation’). He studied in Newlyn and Paris and That Peter Lord’s idea of a nation painted extensively in France, experiences includes a national collection fully which seem to have imbued his work representative of its culture and history, with a continental light, dexterity and is a given. Needless to say, like many of a subtlety of touch missing from the us, he is still waiting. Relationships with likes of Archie Rhys Griffiths, one of the Pictures is a lively book, not exclusively Whose People? Wales, Israel, Palestine author’s personal favourites. The lives of about paintings, illustrated in black and Jasmine Donahaye both Cyrlas Williams and Archie Griffiths white and colour, and full of well-told University of Wales Press, 2012, £24.99 are tragic tales, bedevilled by drink and interesting stories, many of them and depression, Neither fulfilled their ‘detective’ stories. potential. Their talents were dissipated by There is little romance, apart from the Jasmine Donahaye’s upbringing bears exile and isolation. author’s love affair with the art in question. similarities to my own. She learned Among Lord’s revelations is the It is not strong on humour either and Hebrew as a teenager on a kibbutz ulpan work of the London artist Maurice this may be the result of his spending his in Israel, and later started learning Welsh Sochachewsky, who in the thirties painted domestic days surrounded by the rather at UC Berkeley, before making her home mining life at Talywain, near Pontypool. admonitory portraits of 19th Century and career in Wales. As she studied she Although examples of his work had been preachers and dignitaries. However, it noted that: in the National Museum - several drawings will be equally enjoyed by those with an were purchased at a London exhibition in interest in Wales, Welsh art and the non- “Many connections and comparisons 1938 - Lord had missed them on an earlier art expert as the fascinating revelations of had been made between Wales and search. Coming from such a community a complex and tenacious individual who Israel, between Welsh and Hebrew, I don’t share the author’s enthusiasm for has done more than anyone to ask the and between Welsh political and this work. Nonetheless, Sochachewsky’s pertinent questions about the previously cultural nationalism and Zionism, letters, describing the life of the miners, perceived history of the visual art of Wales. all of which were understood by particularly his journey underground to the commentators in the 1990s and early coalface, are extraordinarily moving. 2000s to constitute elements of a Essentially an art historian, Lord widespread, remarkable tradition of relishes the research, enjoys the chase and ‘Welsh identification with the Jews’, a the acquisition and has now come to own tradition of identification that had its many of the paintings he writes about, a roots in the deep past.” seemingly large if not vast collection. His espousal of the merits of his artists could But then she goes on to say, “Only, of be - as in the famous case of Bernard course, it didn’t – or not quite in the ways Berenson - compromised by his partly that were claimed.” commercial interest. Yet we are reassured Osi Rhys Osmond is a painter who My own experience of the Welsh-Israel that he is at pains to point out that his lectures in Drawing, Painting and relationship is as the daughter of the Israeli collection was not amassed as investment Art History at University of Wales Trinity writer, the late Judith Maro, and of the in the pecuniary sense, Rather, it has been St David. artist, the late Jonah Jones. They came to

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live in Wales over sixty years ago, having “While there are innumerable instances As a new wave of Welsh identification with met and married in the Palestine of the in the late nineteenth and twentieth Israel comes about during the rise of the British Mandate following the Second centuries of an invocation of Jewish Welsh nationalist movement, and on into World War. I was brought up with a child’s biblical suffering as a metaphor for the 1960s and 1970s, Donahaye perceives working vocabulary of Hebrew alongside Welsh suffering, this is informed by a a more sophisticated process of Welsh the English of our household and the Welsh spiritual and theological tradition in identification with the Jews. By the end of the we spoke in the village school. which the Welsh become the children 20th Century in Wales - “a time of national As children we visited grandparents in of Israel…”. narrative reinvented on a grand scale for a Israel regularly, and from an early age were new national status and identity” - Donahaye aware of the shadow of the Holocaust. My She goes on to examine what she describes believes that the proliferation of writing on this mother had grown up on Mount Carmel as the “significant degree of confusion subject has “a strongly politically-motivated alongside Jews who had lost their whole between… notional representative or argument about Welsh particularity, and families in the concentration camps. My metaphorical Jews and …historical post- about a notional ‘true’ Welshness”. father was among the first Allied troops biblical contemporary… of a particular to enter Bergen-Belsen in 1945, an present moment Jews”, explaining that: In the final chapter Donahaye concludes: experience which left what he described as “an ineradicable mental scar”. And so the “In accounts of Welsh interest in “‘The Jews’ in some way, notional and title alone of Donahaye’s book about my Jews, evidence of interest in notional historical, are embedded in Welsh ancestors through Welsh eyes, and Jews is frequently and seemingly consciousness in the nineteenth her previous work of poetry, Self-Portrait unconsciously conflated with evidence and twentieth centuries, and in less as Ruth, were enough to claim my of interest in historical Jews, and this historical and more notional ways for immediate attention. has led to a quite skewed impression a great deal longer than that… The Some manifestations of the Welsh- of the imprint that these various forms example that Israel and the revival Jewish identification that Donahaye of interest (and putative support) have of Hebrew offered to Wales was examines seem today part of a simplistic, left on the culture.” based on a fantasy rooted deep in the almost fantastical commentary, positing Welsh imagination – it was rooted in “mythical biblical and Brythonic (ancient This “conflation of putative Welsh attitudes the Welsh-Israelite biblical tradition, Celtic) ethnic origins for the Welsh to notional and historical Jews” has its and its precursor in traditional people, and Hebrew roots for the Welsh source in the early 20th Century, the Welsh historiography, and was given language”. The examples given include the time of the Celtic Revival, when cultural sustenance also by what had been a sixth-century writing of the monk Gildas nationalism was growing alongside Welsh strong Welsh conversionist desire.” in De Excidio Britanniae, and in the 18th patriotism within the framework of the Century work, Drych y Prif Oesoedd, by British Empire, in the work of writers such But perhaps the most important conclusion Theophilus Evans. A map printed in 1900 as the Reverend D. Wynne Evans. What drawn by Jasmin Donahaye - using Derec and distributed to chapel Sunday schools makes this all the more complex is that Llwyd Morgan’s classification, from his all over Wales shows the names of the Evans, just like the Rev John Mills before lecture Canys Bechan Yw, of ‘small’ nations tribes of Israel and of areas in biblical Israel him, is a recognised conversionist and yet to achieve success versus ‘successful’ superimposed onto a map of the Welsh millenarianist, for whom the bottom line is nations - is this: counties. Villages across Wales bear biblical to observe: “…the Jews, as a people, are names such as Golan, Horeb, Carmel, and not converted to Christ”. “But the Israel that existed in the hopes Sion. Similarities were perceived between of Zionists, and in the imaginative the grammatical structure of Hebrew and This is all evidence in Donahaye’s comparisons of the Welsh, ceased to Welsh. According to generations of Welsh monograph of a confused and ambivalent be one of the ‘small’ nations whose historiographers, all this amounted to set of attitudes in the historiography that success is yet to come, and became one evidence that the Welsh may be some lost she examines. of the ‘successful’ nations… and not eastern tribe! just ‘successful’, and believing its own On a deeper level, as Dorian Llywelyn The frequently confused imaging of Jews in success to be signal of divine favour, but wrote in 1999, examining Y Ffydd Ddi-ffuant the work of Welsh writers including David expansionist, militant and colonising.” by Charles Edwards (1677), “Edwards’s Lloyd George, Geraint Goodwin, Saunders linguistic fantasy is part of his attempt Lewis, Caradoc Evans and Harri Webb is to strengthen the grafting of Welsh also examined by Donahaye, as she seeks Naomi Jones is managing director of national identity on to the trunk of Israel”. to set aside the limitations posed by “an the animation production company Donahaye writes: antisemitism/philosemitism opposition”. Cartwn Cymru.

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Portrait of an elusive friendship with D. H. Lawrence at the of Davies’ 1947 novel The Dark Daughters bohemian end of Lawrence’s life and outline the paused in her description to assert, “What Huw Osborne important publications and personalities a film all this would make!” On another in Davies’s life and career (the two occasion, “a lone lady ‘fan’ ” wrote to indexes, one for ‘persons’ and another Davies to praise his 1940 novel Under for ‘publications’ echo these interests). the Rose, exclaiming, “What a film your Throughout the book, Davies is well- beautiful book would make!” situated within the wider literary context in Stephens highlights this professional which he was read and against which he and creative interest on several occasions, was judged. Stephens does an admirable which invites further inquiry along these job of discussing Davies in terms of Welsh lines. For instance, more could be said of writing in English more generally. Davies’s interest in Ivor Novello. This could One recurring topic that I appreciated have just as much to do with questions of was the useful discussions of Davies’s professional identity, performance, and frustrated efforts in drama, radio, and celebrity as it does with depicting what film, areas in which he strove to make an Stephens terms a “fantasy projection” of impact though never succeeded. These Davies’s “narcissistic Welsh homosexuality”. discussions go beyond the more common It’s also fair to say that Stephens critical interest in Davies’s fiction and draw provides the most complete picture to attention to his search for wider appeal date of Davies’s frustrated romantic Rhys Davies: A Writer’s Life and fame through alternative genres life, supported by hitherto unpublished Meic Stephens and media. This attention is certainly material from extensive interviews with Parthian, 2013, £20 warranted, for, as early as 1935, Davies those who knew Davies most intimately. had film-making on his mind when he Perhaps the critical engagement of wrote to Raymond Marriott asking if Davies’s sexuality would benefit from more Meic Stephens’s biography of Rhys Davies he could see one of his stories being theoretical attention - or perhaps less than (1901-78) offers the most complete picture turned into a film and wondered “what the reduction to a narcissistic obsession. yet of the writer’s life. There is much black …one exercise[d] to get film However, again, such questions are outside that is new and revealing in this study of companies to read print?” the author’s stated goals, and the portraits this elusive writer. It explicitly avoids any thematic or theoretical frame and is based on Davies’s writings, the archival record, and interviews that suggest many new One recurring topic that I insights into Davies’s professional and personal development. appreciated was the useful The organisation of the book is strictly chronological, returning to themes and discussions of Davies’s frustrated figures as they recur in Davies’s life. It begins with Davies’s youth in Blaenclydach efforts in drama, radio, and film, in the Rhondda and usefully situates Davies’s family history within the larger areas in which he strove to make an context of industrial Welsh history. It explains Davies’s troubled relationships impact though never succeeded. with class, religion, language, gender, and sexuality. It then moves to Davies’s career in the professional bohemianism of London, providing a complete and nuanced picture of the milieu of literary life in which Davies As Stephens notes, Davies never of Davies’s sexual and romantic friendships established himself and began to define achieved the fame of A. J. Cronin and are very enlightening. himself as a writer of Wales. The ‘London Richard Llewellyn, but his interest in film As indicated, the book does not provide Legs’ chapter dealing with this milieu is the makes one wonder how much he may any thematic frameworks, but some most unified and pleasing of the book. have begun to write for a potential popular greater focus would have been welcome, Subsequent chapters describe Davies’s film audience. For instance, one reviewer and several of the chapters lack unity.

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The author has chosen to favour strict Wells we should know legends associated with them and so gives chronology and biographical detail over a Barry Morgan us an insight into how people have viewed single theme or limited set of themes, which them over the centuries. He shows how he felt would unfairly reduce the diversity some of the sites which existed before and complexity of Davies as a writer. the Romans, became places which they Consequently, the fiction discussed in the used for bathing. These were then used as book tends toward description in support places for Christian worship by the church of the biographical narrative rather than and then as spas by the Victorians. He analysis in support of literary argument. also shows the fascination water holds in Stephens’s more general interest in different ways for every generation. Davies’s fiction is primarily concerned with The volume is lavishly illustrated by his its “timeless and universal” quality. He exquisite photography and alongside his avoids “academic theoretical discourse” narrative are quotations from all kinds of and what he refers to as “the methodology sources, as well as poems by such diverse of fashionable exegesis” of much recent authors as T. S. Eliot, Mary Webb, R. S. criticism on Davies. For instance, he Thomas and Wilfred Owen, to name but dismisses more recent and insightful critical Borderlands a few. There is no doubt that sacred wells analysis of The Black Venus in favour of Phil Cope have played a crucial part in the culture Gwyn Jones’s saccharine 1944 review Seren, 2013, £19.99. and landscape of this long border. of the novel. Finally, readers looking Without this book, many of these for a complete scholarly apparatus will wells would remain unexplored, except to be disappointed, and many quotations In this book, the author describes and those who happen to live in their vicinity. from Davies’s letters and writing are photographs the 94 wells and springs on the Who, except the locals, would know about unreferenced, though archival and other borderlands between Wales and England, Fynnon Degla near Llandegla ? sources are more generally identified in the stretching from Cheshire to Monmouthshire. Famous for curing leprosy, this well is on acknowledgements. Phil Cope has written extensively before the north bank of the river Alyn, its waters On the whole, the book is on such diverse subjects as the Tynewydd emerging into a small chamber from comprehensive, but one should not Mining Disaster of 1877, John Charles the beneath two shading trees. Who has heard expect much critical attention to Davies’s footballer and the Welsh communities in of Fynnon Beuno at Gwyddelwern near work. That said, the benefit of Stephens’s Liverpool. This is his third book on wells Corwen, crudely fenced beside the main approach is that it provides a broad and detailed picture of the complexity of By his own admission, his aim was not just to provide an historical Davies’s life and career. There are many overview of all aspects of the sites on the borders, but to capture their valuable insights into Davies’s professional spirit, mystery and beauty. anxieties, his literary goals, his sexuality, and his personal relationships. The book makes a strong case for Davies’s continued since he has produced volumes on both A494 Corwen to Ruthin Road? relevance and contributes to the foundation the wells of Cornwall and of Wales itself. As someone who travels along the of scholarship which will support further Such is his prowess as a photographer, that border between England and Wales fairly work on this complicated writer. the National Library bought his collection regularly, I shall in future take this book of photographs of the Holy Wells of Wales. with me to make detours en route to As he points out in his introduction, we see the wonders it has to offer. At times are familiar with the story of conflict on one will have to make a fairly extensive the borders of England and Wales from detour since the definition of borderlands Celtic to Norman times and beyond which is stretched a bit to include places such as he outlines. However, we are not so Trefriw in north Wales, Llanwrtyd in south knowledgeable about the ideas which unite Wales and St Chad’s Well in Lichfield. England and Wales and those which define Nonetheless, this is a beautifully produced Huw Osborne is Associate Professor in the and distinguish our two separate nations. volume and a bargain at £19 99. Department of English at the Royal Military By his own admission, his aim was not College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario. His just to provide an historical overview of monograph on Rhys Davies appeared in all aspects of the sites on the borders, but the Writers of Wales series, University of to capture their spirit, mystery and beauty. Barry Jones is Archbishop of Wales and Wales Press, 2009. He does this by recounting the myths and Bishop of Llandaff.

the welsh agenda winter 2013/14—issue 51 | 87 Last word

Random supernumeraries in a Commons of lost souls Peter Stead to for reassurance. Yes, their clothes are dull that the bareness of Cameron’s cupboard but poignantly one can spot the carefully was fully exposed. The door of opportunity is chosen tie, scarf or short skirt that is meant to certainly opening for Labour but outsmarting attract the attention of voters. And there they a rather dim PM is only the first small step in are: certainly former students, one or two of coming to terms with a grim outlook. Jeffrey Bernard, that great chronicler of whom might well owe me essays, a former On my first visit to Parliament in 1960 drinking-days in Soho, memorably began colleague with whom I used to play poker, I travelled down in the small Commons one of his pieces by noting that, “Last week a front-bencher who when young would lift with Winston Churchill. Perhaps that Songs of Praise came from Reading Gaol invite me to tell him and his brothers bedtime moment clinched my life-long passion and in the congregation I recognised a stories, a few stalwarts who once generously for both politics and history. Now, half-a- man who owed me fifty quid”. That story worked for my own doomed campaign, century later, I am still amazed to realise the invariably comes to mind at 11.30 on those several men whom I long thought dead and extent to which one lives through history. Wednesday evenings when I watch the late not a few faces that I had identified on the My first memories are of 1940s austerity, transmission of PMQ. tube or in bars as belonging to well-known of outside toilets and no bathrooms in my I must confess that, George Osborne television actors. grandparents’ homes, of rationing and the apart, I have yet to spot anyone on the show Each week I find myself asking why poor light provided by gas and candles. I that actually owes me money, although all these people are there. The prevailing first chanted political slogans in the Election there are several people there on the sense I have is that of randomness. When of 1950. Gaitskell and Macmillan clashed on benches who should buy me a drink when I first went to the gallery of the Commons my first Commons visit but I was not able to they next run into me. Initially one took to in 1960 one looked down on a chamber vote until 1966 when I was 23. watching this 30 minute outburst of political peopled by a rational and identifiable Looking back I am still surprised by how passion just to see who would win the main cross-section of the population at that time. the issues were different in every decade as Cameron/Miliband bout, but soon one’s But who are these so-called legislators of were the fashions, the music, the economy, fascination shifts to that strange audience today? Who do they represent and what the global issues and the state of technology. that gathers each week in what appears to expertise do they bring to bear on the issues The job of historians and politicians was to be the conditions of extreme discomfort on of the day? One appreciates that the more read those times, to understand the wider those ringside benches. conscientious members will do sterling issues and to plan accordingly. The facts, the They certainly are a rum crowd. work in their constituencies and on the figures and even the crystal-ball needed our Those elected members sitting on the two increasingly important standing committees. full attention. opposing front benches look for all the But on that one day of the week when After that appalling PMQ of October world like passengers on an overcrowded the house is full why is it that they sit there 23 I was left wondering about which of Northern line tube (of course, looking and behaving like embarrassed the assembled is now doing the best job would certainly be led away by men in supernumeraries? in looking at the crystal ball. The historian white coats if he actually performed his Surely they are not there to experience in me believes that our times are as routines on a tube). I used to think that the any political enlightenment. The Prime challenging as any in the modern era. We backbenchers, dressed conservatively and in Minister’s replies to backbenchers are are yet to determine the role of public a slightly crumpled way, generally resembled increasingly an offence to our intelligence. His spending in a post-industrial society, private patients waiting in a posh doctor’s clinic supporters have invariably “raised important business and finance has never been so nervously getting to their feet hoping that issues” whilst members opposite are insulted remote from political influence, and in their name has been called. More recently I and swept aside. And all too often the terms of investment, research, education, have come to see them as the congregation top-of-the bill-bout with Miliband comes and employment, not to mention energy waiting in a suburban crematorium for the down to the killer one-liner which makes production we have lost our way. These are coffin of a business associate whom they had one side or the other feel good for a day but serious times and my advice to all of those only known slightly. Certainly, the Speaker which contributes little to our understanding. crowded on the Labour benches is give looks as if he is there to play the organ. Increasingly, Miliband, sharply dressed, up on one-liners, cheap-shots and slogans. Their nervousness is the most obvious exuding political testosterone and firing on all At PMQ the PM has to be questioned characteristic of those assembled. I soon cylinders, is outsmarting an increasingly red- remorselessly. And for all those on the spotted that each week they opt for the same faced, bad tempered and confused Cameron. benches the time has come for sustained seat and, indeed, for the same neighbours The PMQ of 23 October, the day of ‘the analysis, honesty and imagination. to whom they will turn to or even hang on con-man’ jibe may well go down as the day

88 | www.iwa.org.uk www.clickonwales.org Pints, Poems and Pies

On the eve of Wales’ crucial match against France, the Institute of Welsh Affairs invites you inside the players dressing room of the Millennium Stadium for an evening with WRU writer-in-residence Owen Sheers.

Reading exclusive extracts from new chapters of his acclaimed book Calon, the poet and novelist will give an intimate glimpse into the workings of the Welsh squad. In conversation with BBC presenter Felicity Evans, this unique event, kindly sponsored by the WRU, will allow guests to share in the magic and crackle of the atmosphere in the Wales Millennium Stadium the night before a Big Game.

Please note that due to available space in the changing room, the number of tickets is limited.

Ticket Prices: IWA members: £60 + VAT Non-members: £75 + VAT

For more information and to book, please call 02920 660820 or visit the IWA website: www.iwa.org.uk WINNERS OF THE IWA AND WESTERN MAIL BUSINESS AWARDS 2013

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