Plaid Cymru History

TRANSLATED TRIBUTE TO JUDGE PHILIP RICHARDS (1946-2025)

At his Funeral at Thornhill Crematorium, Cardiff, October 8, 2025

This is a task that I – and others taking part in today’s proceedings – did not seek and do not relish. It has been thrust upon us by recent events. The same can be said of everyone present this afternoon: we would prefer not to be attending the funeral of our friend, Philip Richards, and that he was still brilliant, bright and breezy among us – albeit of mature years. Yet we are where we are, and gather today to remember him; to share our knowledge of him – and, above all, to celebrate his life among us.

Others – in particular members of his immediate family – will speak of the Phil they knew and loved. I speak ...

Looking at his background, Alan Jobbins wasn’t the obvious person to found the Plaid Cymru Historical Society. He was born in 1940 to a non-Welsh speaking working class family in Brecon. Generations on his mother’s side had lived in Brycheiniog and his father’s family had followed the Monmouthshire canal before settling in the town. His father was active with the railway workers’ union and voted for the Labour Party and, as a young man, Alan was a supporter of the Labour Party too, before he became active with Plaid, the national movement and started learning Welsh in the 1970s.

He was undoubtedly heavily influenced by his wife, Catherine, who was from Eifionydd and a first language Welsh-speaker. They met at a dance at the London Welsh Centre on London’s Gray’s Inn Rd in 1965 where ...

PLAID CYMRU HISTORY SOCIETY

WREXHAM NATIONAL EISTEDDFOD – SOCIETIES TENT

12.30pm, THURSDAY 7 AUGUST 2025

Translation of Lecture by Ieuan Wyn Jones

‘From Cymru Fydd to Plaid Cymru – The Journey’

‘Tom Ellis was the greatest, truest patriot amongst the Members of Parliament during the “Cymru Fydd” period, at the end of the century. Unfortunately, he accepted a position in his English party, and died shortly afterwards, a year before the turn of that century. He remained a hero in the county though, in our area at least, and his old house was not far from Felin-y-Wig. A large picture of him stood above our fireside mantelpiece at home in the Foty Fawr, and beneath it his words: “Self-government is the inspiration and aim of a nation”. His stance on behalf of Wales remained in our area’s memory and was passed on to us children.’

Excerpt from ‘Tros Gymru’ (1970), p. 21, by J.E. ...