Tribute to Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas 1946 – 2025

Tribute given in Welsh at the funeral of Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas in Llandaff Cathedral on 14 March 2025  by Aled Eurig   

We are here to celebrate the life of The Right Honourable Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas of Nant Conwy – born 18 October 1946, died 7 February 2025, known to most of us here, as ‘Dafydd El’.

He has been recognised as one of the most influential Welsh political figures of the past fifty years, a ‘founding father’ of the Senedd, a ‘political giant’.

He was born in Carmarthen, and brought up in Llanrwst in the Conwy valley. His father, WE Thomas, was a prominent Presbyterian minister and his mother Eirlys, a cultural leader in her community. In chapel and school concerts, Dafydd was a precocious child, and trained in public performance and debating skills from an early age. His first political memories were of the Parliament for Wales campaign in the 1950s, and Llanrwst boys being conscripted into the Army at the time of the Suez crisis.

In 1958, he became a member of CND, and in 1962 joined Plaid Cymru. In 1964 he went to Bangor University, where as a brilliant scholar, he gained a first-class degree in Welsh, and established himself as a formidable debater, student politician, and literary critic.

As chair of Plaid Cymru’s youth section, he opposed the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969, ironically given the warm personal friendship he developed with Prince Charles in later life. In February 1974, he won the Meirionnydd seat and became the youngest Member of the House of Commons at the age of 27. An energetic and campaigning MP, he supported Labour’s devolution proposals, which ended in failure in 1979. Following that, he moved Plaid Cymru towards the left.

In the House of Commons, he showed bravery in opposing the Falklands/ Malvinas War, and a readiness to court unpopularity by moving the writ for the Fermanagh and South Tyrone byelection after the death of its Member of Parliament, the IRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands.

In 1984, he became Plaid Cymru’s President, led it to support the miners’ strike, and aligned the party with the decade’s main causes – anti-Thatcherism, the Welsh language movement, Greenham Common, and the anti-apartheid campaign.

Throughout his life he had a strong connection to the countryside. He was a passionate walker and runner in the landscape, and an early champion of the environmental movement.

After 18 years in the Commons, in 1992, he controversially took a seat in the House of Lords and was appointed Chair of the Welsh Language Board, where he ensured that the language was seen as available to all, and above party politics.

In May 1999, he was elected to the National Assembly for Wales, and undoubtedly the political highlight of his life was as the Assembly’s first Presiding Officer. He worked with the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, to embed the new institution into Welsh life, and secured an iconic home for the Assembly – the award-winning Senedd building, which reflected the principles of a transparent democracy.

The 2011 referendum gave reality to Dafydd’s teenage dream of a legislative Senedd. After standing down as Llywydd that year, he found it difficult to settle into life as a backbencher, and in 2016, left the party on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, to become an independent Member. In 2017, he was appointed deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism in Government – a role that he delighted in and was eminently suited to.

He was mischievous, challenging , entertaining and provoking, but Dafydd was also a profoundly serious man – he retained his interest in the semiotics of language, philosophy and the arts; and in religion, he moved gradually from the ascetic Calvinism of the Presbyterian church, through the liberalism of Congregationalism, to the Church of Wales, where he was made a lay canon in this very Cathedral.

Even his friends thought that Dafydd could sometimes be inconsistent in his political judgement – but he would argue that he was simply adapting to the political realities of the time. He was perceptive, lively, hugely charming, courteous and inspirational.
His critics have characterised him as a political chameleon, and of failing to rein in, his intellectual agility. He could certainly be a contrarian and was remarkably adept at presenting unorthodox political views. But he was true to his fundamental belief in that whatever he did, he did wholly for the benefit of Wales.

He understood the need for Plaid Cymru to extend its political hinterland, and as Presiding Officer, he knew the importance of ensuring that the legitimacy of the new Assembly, was recognised by the support of the members of the Royal family for instance, who attended every official opening.

His public roles were many but they came at a price. His time with the family was sacrificed to the needs of his party, parliaments and the public. His first victory in 1974 came as a seismic shock to him and Elen, and Dafydd found it difficult to balance the many calls on his time. One of his boys memorably said that Dafydd’s method of coping was ‘never to look in the rear view mirror’ – always to look forward.

His loss is not solely to the political and public world of course. It is a huge loss to his family – to Mair his wife, his sons Rolant, Meilyr and Cai, their mother and Dafydd’s friend, Elen, and his grand-children, Mali, Osian, Llew and Bleddyn, who have lost a loving taid.

Following Dafydd’s death, Mair has received literally hundreds of letters of sympathy. I’d like to read a section from one of them;

‘I was so terribly sorry to hear the very sad news about your husband and particularly wanted to write and send you my deepest possible sympathy….
To all things, your husband brought an independence of mind and a generosity of spirit, not to mention a wit, that I always found immensely impressive. Our public life will be so very much the poorer without his thoughtful and stimulating presence.

There can be few people who have contributed so much to the lives of their nation, in so many fields, for so long. I hope it will be of at least some small comfort to you, in your loss, to know the enormous respect in which your husband was held by so many people from all walks of life.’

A deeply affecting tribute, from King Charles, whose friendship with Dafydd extended over fifty-five years.

Dafydd was my closest friend, sometimes a wise adviser, an inteliigent and playful companion, and a fine man to share a glass of wine with. A brave and bold politician, a lover of Welsh culture and language, and a patriot. Wales, his family, and all of us, are poorer for his loss.

However, reflecting on a full and well lived life, we give thanks and celebrate Dafydd El – our nation builder.

Tributes to Emrys Roberts 1931 – 2025

EMRYS ROBERTS  1931-2025

The uncompromising nationalist and radical who became the first Plaid Cymru council leader.

Dafydd Williams

 

I met Emrys Roberts for the first time in a meeting of Exeter University’s Debating Society.  It was the early sixties, and I was a student of economics while Emrys had recently become Plaid Cymru’s General Secretary.  We were treated to a lively and effective address by a speaker with loads of charisma – he was surely one the party’s best ever orators.  It included Plaid’s views on international affairs and nuclear weapons.  

But what sticks out in my memory is the skilful humour with which he dealt with loaded questions.  One person insisted that the only reason he wanted self-government was to wage war.  Not a bit of it, responded Emrys with his wry smile, Plaid’s master plan was to dig a trench along Offa’s Dyke and tow Wales out into the Atlantic Ocean!

Emrys Roberts was born in 1931 and raised in  Leamington Spa.  His father came from Blaenau Ffestiniog and there was Welsh in the family but the language of the home was English. He learnt Welsh thoroughly after the family moved to Cardiff in 1941.  At the age of ten, he began attending Cathays High School, joining a Welsh-medium class with the legendary Elvet Thomas as Welsh teacher.

Emrys became a dedicated nationalist in his teens, and was always someone who thought for himself.  He showed early signs of that unique combination of humour and radicalism: although deciding he did not really believe in God, he continued to attend chapel and accepted the post of Sunday School secretary – on condition they understood he was not a believer!

He did time in Cardiff gaol for refusing to enlist in the armed forces on the grounds of nationalism.  Following dismissal from the civil service because of his prison sentence, he went to University College, Cardiff and was elected as President of the Students Union for 1954/55.

In 1957 he took up a post with the staff of Plaid Cymru, first of all with the specific role of defending Cwm Tryweryn.  He played a leading role in organising the illegal radio programmes broadcast on the BBC’s television channels after the evening closedown, and he stood as a Westminster parliamentary candidate in a number of constituencies in South Wales.

In 1960, he became Plaid Cymru’s General Secretary: I had no idea as I listened to his address in Exeter University that I would follow in his footsteps a decade or so later.  But his period of office during a turbulent period prior to the Carmarthen by-election proved to be problematic, with tensions between different groups within the national movement.  Emrys was obliged to give up his post in 1964 following a dispute that made a front page lead.

Despite this, he had made a lasting impression on Plaid Cymru’s membership, especially in the valleys of South Wales.  After a period as organiser of an international eisteddfod in the Teeside area, he and Margaret returned to Wales, where he later worked as public relations officer for the Welsh Hospitals Board.  No-one would have blamed him for keeping his head down after years of uncertainty.  But Emrys was a man of deep convictions, and when the call came in 1972 to stand as Plaid candidate in the Merthyr by-election he accepted the challenge.

It was a crucial time for the party.  After the historic victory in Carmarthen and two near misses, in Rhondda West and Caerffili, by 1970 Plaid Cymru had no representative in the House of Commons.  Labour hastened to call the by-election as fast as possible, and I recall Neil Kinnock predicting that they would bury Plaid Cymru.  But it didn’t happen:  nationalists rolled up from all parts of Wales to work through wind and rain for Emrys.  Posters appeared throughout the constituency and Labour’s majority was trimmed to 3,710.

From that point on, Plaid Cymru improved it’s standing throughout the south.  Emrys went on to win a Merthyr Council seat in the Troedyrhiw area, and in 1976 came and astonishing victory in the Borough – Plaid Cymru took 21 of the 33 council seats, with Emrys as leader of the first ever Council to be officially run by Plaid Cymru.  You can read about this and much more in his autobiography on the Plaid Cymru History Society website  www.hanesplaidcymru.org (search for A Bee or Two in my Bonnet, under Publications).

*Emrys Pugh Roberts was born on 30 November 1931.  He died on 9 January 2025.

———————————

Statement in the Senedd by Rhys ab Owen MS 29/01/2025

The best orator he had ever heard. That was Vaughan Roderick’s opinion about Emrys Roberts. He was born in Leamington Spa, but at the age of 10 the family moved to Cardiff. Through Minny Street Chapel, Cathays school and his aunt Bet, Emrys learned Welsh. In Cathays, he was one of a group of boys who became fluent in Welsh, including Bobi Jones and Tedi Millward.

A conscientious objector, he refused to do military service after the second world war, and he was sentenced to a term in Cardiff prison. While he was there, Mahmood Mattan was hanged. Emrys Roberts saw the racism against Mahmood, and saw his fellow prisoners, those of Somali descent having to dig the grave, and covering it with quicklime.

Emrys had an international mindset. He was a leader in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and had enormous an respect for Castro and Cuba. His great aspiration was to see Wales sitting next to Cuba at the United Nations.

He stood for Plaid Cymru in several prominent by-elections, and he led Merthyr council at the end of the 1970s. He was also responsible for the unlawful broadcasts that happened when the BBC banned political broadcasts by Plaid.

Although he held leading roles within Plaid Cymru, it’s fair to say that he did not see eye to eye with the leadership of the party on all occasions. He was a socialist by instinct, and he worked hard to push the party in that direction. Everything that Emrys did was rooted in what was best for Wales and the peoples of the world. He was a kind man, and I experienced that kindness over the years.

It’s a privilege to pay tribute to Emrys here in the Senedd. He was part of a small group that insisted that Wales was a nation, and this Senedd is the fruit of their labours. Thank you very much.

Activities of the Society

Book Launch – The Politics of Co-Opposition

A new book by John Osmond was launched at a fringe meeting of Plaid Cymru Annual Conference in Cardiff on 12 October 2024.

Sound archive of the launch meeting –

Martin Shipton discussing the book with John Osmond
 
The Politics of Co-Opposition reveals how a completely new form of political engagement in the British Isles – the 2021-24 Co-operation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour – created history and provided the major part of the Welsh Government’s policy programme for over three years.

John Osmond, who was involved in negotiating the Agreement as Special Adviser to Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, provides an insider’s account of the political background to the Agreement – including a fascinating week-by-week diary of Price’s first 100 days – how it was finalised and the compromises that were made to achieve it.

Essential reading for politicians, political journalists, students and political scientists globally, the Co-operation Agreement, termed by academics as ‘Contract Parliamentarianism’, drew on non-coalition precedents in Sweden, New Zealand and Malaysia. It resulted in significant measures being introduced across 46 policy areas such as: free school meals for all primary school pupils, expanding free childcare to all two-year-olds, action on the second homes crisis blighting rural Wales, and reforming the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament) including a 60% increase in Senedd Members – from 60 to 96 – and a fully proportional electoral system from 2026.

Brought to a premature end in May 2024 by Plaid Cymru as the result of the controversial internal election of the new Labour leader which resulted in the implosion of his short-lived government, The Politics of Co-Opposition is a fascinating and candid account of how innovative politicians co-operated on key mutually-agreed policies while maintaining their positions as government and opposition.

 

Price: £19.99 
Publisher: Welsh Academic Press
Publish Date: 10 October 2024
EAN/UPC: 9781860571688

Richard Wyn Jones Lecture at the 2024 Eisteddfod

 
From Future Wales to Plaid Cymru
O Gymru Fydd i Blaid Cymru
 
 
At the Societies Tent,  Eisteddfod Rhondda Cynon Taf, Pontypridd on Thursday, 8 August Professor Richard Wyn Jones gave a lecture in Welsh. 
 
On the eve of Plaid Cymru’s 100th anniversary, he considered the differences and similarities between the Blaid and the nationalist movement that preceded it, namely  Cymru Fydd (Future Wales).
 

The Plaid Cymru History Society lecture, Pontypridd National Eisteddfod 2024

From Cymru Fydd to Plaid Cymru

Richard Wyn Jones[1]

Director of the Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University.

Firstly, may I thank the Plaid Cymru History Society for its invitation to deliver this lecture; Eluned Bush for organising everything so efficiently; and of course you the audience as well, for having decided to come by the Societies Tent today!

***

I was advised some time ago now that no-one should ever start a lecture or a speech with an apology or an excuse. Better to go confidently straight into the content, however thin the material which is about to be covered…! I’m certain that that is sound advice. In spite of that however, given my current position, I feel it would be right of me to ignore it just this once.

You see, my original intention was to spend most of the months of June and July researching and then writing this lecture, that would represent the first step in the process of my writing a new book. Unfortunately, Mr Sunak decided that it was not going to be like that. And to be honest, Mr Gething did not really help matters either, did he!?

So the truth is that I have spent far less time reading and thinking about and writing what follows than I had intended. Consequently, this will be a taste of the argument I wish to develop, rather than the argument in its entirety. Despite all that, I hope there will be something here of interest and enough, indeed, to whet your appetite for more…

***

Let me start by setting out some of the context… As I explained, this lecture will be a stepping stone to the writing of a chapter in my new book. That book will complete a trilogy of works which discuss different aspects of Plaid Cymru’s ideology. (By the way, the trilogy will have been published by the University of Wales Press, and as someone who has had works published by highly respected academic publishers in England and the United States, I would like to underline how fortunate we are to have a publisher here in Wales which is better than all those others…).

The first of the three volumes, Rhoi Cymru’n Gyntaf: Syniadaeth Plaid Cymru, Cyfrol 1, was published back in 2007, and an English translation of it will appear from the presses in October this year – at last!!! The second tome, Y Blaid Ffasgaidd yng Nghymru: Plaid Cymru a’r Cyhuddiad o Ffasgaeth appeared in 2013 with an English translation, The Fascist party in Wales? Plaid Cymru, Welsh nationalism and the accusation of Fascism, published the following year. And now at last I am working diligently on the third and final book, namely Rhoi Cymru’n Gyntaf: Syniadaeth Plaid Cymru, Cyfrol 2.

My intention is to start that third book in the trilogy – Volume 2! – with a comparison between Plaid Cymru and the nearest thing it had as a predecessor, which is the Cymru Fydd movement; that political movement which was a true force in the life of Wales for a period towards the end of the nineteenth century. A movement which is associated with names which remain famous – sometimes infamous – like Tom Ellis, David Lloyd George and O.M. Edwards, along with others who are rather forgotten these days such as Beriah Gwynfe Evans, Ellis Jones Griffith and that fascinating couple, Herbert and Ruth Lewis.

There are a number of reasons why I believe that setting out a comparison of this kind is worthwhile. I want to note three of those reasons, even though there will not be an opportunity to discuss them in full this afternoon.

  • The least important of these reasons in terms of the book itself, which is ultimately a study of Plaid Cymru not Cymru Fydd, is that I feel that the phenomenon of Cymru Fydd (and boy, what a phenomenon!) has not received its just deserts in the history books. As we shall see in a minute, that partly reflects the fact that interpretations and understanding of the second wave of Welsh nationalism – the wave which formed and then was in turn nurtured by Plaid Cymru – have to an extent damaged our understanding of the first wave of nationalism embodied in the Cymru Fydd movement. Cymru Fydd merits rather more rounded consideration than it has tended to receive in the past. Luckily, recent works by academics such as Dewi Rowland Hughes and Hazel Walford Davies have started to provide such consideration. And I vouch that there is yet more to say on that subject.
  • On top of all that, as part of the wider study of Plaid Cymru’s ideology, Cymru Fydd and the first wave of Welsh nationalism demands attention because understanding the reasons why Cymru Fydd and the whole movement’s inheritance was rejected by the founders and earliest supporters of Plaid Cymru enables us to understand better their political beliefs – and crucially, I imagine, the origins of those beliefs.
  • Lastly – and here my thoughts are at their most nascent and uncertain – I have a feeling that understanding the differences and the similarities between Cymru Fydd and Plaid Cymru is also a means of shedding light on aspects of contemporary Welsh politics. Specifically, it is a means of us understanding better the relationship between the Plaid Cymru of our day and the Welsh nationalist wing of the Labour Party in Wales.

I hardly need to remind you how central this relationship has been to the development of Welsh politics over the past 25 years and more. Since the new voting system for our national Senedd to be introduced by 2026 will make coalitions pretty much an inevitability, that relationship is likely to continue. And is there a better comparator for the pro-Welsh wing of the Labour Party than Cymru Fydd?

As is the case with Cymru Fydd historically, the supporters of that wing of the Labour Party believe that the institutional and economic foundations of the Welsh nation are better set through the British state, and that Welsh and British national identities can not only live side-by-side comfortably but also mutually strengthen and elevate each other.

As with Cymru Fydd, they also believe that it is by yoking the Welsh national cause to the success of a big British party that such benefits can be achieved. In their estimation, the danger of distancing yourself from the British party set-up is irrelevance and losing the chance to influence matters.

It can hardly be denied that they have been supremely successful in their efforts in all of this, too.

Yet still, as with the example of Cymru Fydd’s torch-bearers, the small ‘n’ nationalists in the Labour Party have also discovered time after time that the big British parties are ‘broad churches’, and that some of their most  uncompromising and effective enemies are to be found co-existing in the same party as them. And then, even should they win the internal battles in their own party, the state itself proves that it is not always as flexible as they have imagined it to be.

What then are the implications for Plaid Cymru of imagining their ‘enemies’ but, also, their unavoidable allies on the Welsh wing of the Labour Party, as being the latest revelation of Cymru Fydd in the very different political situation which now exists, a hundred and thirty years since that movement was at its peak?

So there you have some of the reasons for believing that it is worth comparing Cymru Fydd with Plaid Cymru – and specifically the ideas that were associated with them – more systematically than has been done in the past.

***

Clearly, we have time to do no more than lift the corner of the curtain on all of that in this lecture. As a starting point let us look at Cymru Fydd’s existence and its ideas before considering how the founders and some of the later supporters of Plaid Cymru went about interpreting their predecessors’ story.

  1. Understanding Cymru Fydd

An Eisteddfod audience tends to be a particularly knowledgeable one and I’m pretty sure that there will be people in this tent who know a great deal (a great deal more than me!) about Cymru Fydd’s history. But beyond those well-informed individuals, to the extent that many who are interested in Welsh politics are at all aware of that history, I suppose that the meeting which is considereed to have led to the ending of Cymru Fydd is the only part of the story that will be generally known. That was the infamous meeting of the South Wales Liberal Federation held in Newport in January 1896, when Robert Bird – President of the Cardiff Liberal Association – stood up and declared ‘There are from Swansea to Newport, thousands upon thousands of Englishmen, as true Liberals as yourselves…who will never submit to the domination of Welsh ideas’.

Some may also be aware of the response of the Member of Parliament for Carnarvon Boroughs, David Lloyd George, to what happened in Newport. ‘Are the multitudes of the Welsh nation’, he thundered, ‘going to accept being lorded over by a coalition of English capitalists who come to Wales, not to raise up the common people, but to make their fortune?’. I’ll let John Davies (Bwlchllan) complete the anecdote in his own incomparable way:

‘Yes they are’ was the answer to his rhetorical question, because although examples of attacks on capitalism could be found in Wales, it was not in the nation’s name that it was being challenged. The Newport meeting proved the death knell for Cymru Fydd. More meetings were convened in 1897 and 1898, but there was little conviction to be found at them; by the turn of the century the movement had disappeared.

Like the storied comet, Cymru Fydd happened and then was gone.

But if that is the most familiar part of the movement’s story by far, let me add a few vignettes which might show Cymru Fydd and the first wave of Welsh nationalism in a slightly less well-known light:

  1. A public meeting was held in Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1886, organised by Michael D Jones and Pan Jones, with Michael Davitt speaking on the issue of land rights. Davitt was an Irish revolutionary – a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood – who had already been imprisoned on various occasions by the British state and, at the time, was one of the leading lights of the Irish Land League. Amongst the other speakers was the young lawyer David Lloyd George. The story goes that Davitt strongly encouraged Lloyd George after the meeting to pursue a career in politics. And so it came to pass …

This was not the only time that Welsh nationalists of the period came into contact with the most militant wing within Irish nationalism – a minority wing at the time, of course. There is another tale of T.E. Ellis travelling to a public meeting in Ireland where some of those present were killed by members of the crown’s armed forces.

  1. Exactly one hundred and thirty years ago – in 1894 – four of Wales’s most nationalistic Liberal Members of Parliament went ‘on strike’ as part of what was called at the time the ‘Welsh Insurrection’. The four were:
    • David Lloyd George;
    • Herbert Lewis, Member of Parliament for Flint Boroughs;
    • A. Thomas, Member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil and later Viscount Rhondda, and one of those who contributed to emasculating Cymru Fydd as a political force partly because of personal animosity towards David Lloyd George (though the two of them made it up later); and,
    • Frank Edwards, Member of Parliament for Radnorshire and later a Member of the House of Lords.

Their main gripe was that the Liberal Government of the day, under the leadership of arch-imperialist Earl Rosebery, had decided to postpone acting on disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales. For a period the four ‘rebels’ spoke at public meetings throughout Wales and it would appear received strong support. That was before the rebellion came to an end, and that at least partly (as might be expected) because of T.E. Ellis’s efforts, who was by then a Liberal whip.

It cannot be denied that ‘disestablishment’ was the main Welsh-specific matter on the political agenda in Wales in the mid-1890s. As we live in an age which is not only wholly secular but one in which dealing with Wales as an administrative entity has become a routine matter, it is easy to underestimate how far-reaching were the implications of this call. And that not merely from a spiritual standpoint but also in terms of its constitutional significance; through ensuring disestablishing the state church, this was a sign that Wales, seemingly so fully assimilated, was yet a separate unit to England after all. But it is worth noting the fact that this was not the only reform that the first wave of Welsh nationalists were requesting….

A sense of the broader agenda can be gleaned from one of the cartoons included in the novel Dafydd Dafis – a novel written by Cymru Fydd’s General Secretary, Beriah Gwynfe Evans, and published in 1898; a novel which reveals a lot in terms of the politics of the period, even if it is frankly unreadable. 

Along with Disestablishment and Disendowment, it notes the following as aspirations:

  • Reform of burial laws
  • A Welsh Education Office
  • Reforming land laws
  • Local choice (right to veto), and
  • Self-government for Wales

One could add to this list.

In a famous speech in Bala in 1890 the Member of Parliament for Merionethshire, T.E. (Tom) Ellis, had argued that the last of these, self-government – establishing a ‘Law-making Assembly’ for Wales – was (or should be) the intellectual link connecting the different elements of the Welsh national policy programme. And indeed, when the first list of goals for Cymru Fydd was drawn up in a meeting in London three years earlier (NB: as with so many other national movements in Europe in the nineteenth century, exiles were central to the development of the first wave of Welsh nationalism), it was noted very clearly:

That the main objective of the association will be ensuring creation of a Legislative Assembly, to discuss Welsh matters.

Whilst reading Thomas Jones’s autobiographical writings in his volume Leeks and Daffodils, we see how normal it was to debate and support self-government for Wales in the decade that came after Ellis’s speech. It is enlightening too to see how important was the influence of Irish nationalism among nationalistic circles in the Wales of the 1890s. According to Jones, ‘Home Rule for Ireland was constantly under discussion…I bought and read the essays and poems of Thomas Davis.’. The discussion on Welsh home rule – self-government – was literally happening side-by-side with discussions on Irish home rule.

The significance of these comments is underlined when we remember Jones’s role – as Lloyd George’s right-hand man – in the process of dividing Ireland through the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and then the Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921. It is worth remembering too that, at precisely the same time that Leeks and Daffodils was published – 1942 – Jones was central to the efforts to blacken Plaid Cymru’s name as a party which had fascist sympathies.

  1. Lastly, let us tarry a little to look more closely at Herbert Lewis. The first wave of Welsh nationalism had no more constant or effective a champion than him. He was the first chairman of Flint County Council in 1889 before becoming Member of Parliament for Flint Boroughs in 1892, then Flintshire itself in 1906, and ultimately holder of the University of Wales’s seat in the House of Commons from 1918. He was one of the architects of the intermediate school structure in Wales, and through his role as parliamentary secretary for the Education Board he played a central part in shaping the famous Education Act of 1918 – ‘the Fisher Act’. Alongside his characteristic emphasis on educational matters, it is worth noting that Lewis played a central part – perhaps the central part – in the process of making sure that the British state shouldered the financial burden for maintaining the Welsh national institutions that were successfully created in this period, in particular the National Library and National Museum. As part of that, he was the one who ensured that the Library in Aberystwyth would become a copyright library.

His second wife, Ruth Herbert Lewis, was one of the main benefactors of Cymdeithas Alawon Gwerin Cymru (the Welsh Folk Song Society) and a collector of folk songs. I must admit that I was not aware that it was she who collected ‘Hwp, ha wen! / Cadi ha, Morus stowt / Dros yr uchle’n neidio / Hwp, dyna fo! / A chynffon buwch a chynffon llo / A chynffon Richard Parri go / Hwp, dyna fo!’, a lovely nonsense song I often sang with my children a few years ago, as well as the splendid plygain carol ‘O! Deued pob Cristion / i Fethlehem yr awron’. Somebody will have won the Lady Ruth Herbert Lewis Memorial Prize this week at the Rhondda Cynon Taf National Eisteddfod.

T.E. Ellis’s widow, Annie Jane, was another of the benefactors of Cymdeithas Alawon Gwerin Cymru. As Annie Jane Hughes Griffiths, she became President of the Welsh League of Nations Union and led the deputation that would take the Welsh Women’s Peace Appeal to the USA in 1924. As another indicator of the commitment of this first wave of Welsh nationalists to high brow Welsh culture – as well as to more populist culture – it is worth reminding ourselves that T.E. Ellis himself was editing the works of the mystic Morgan Llwyd for publication at the time of his premature death.

There is a whole lot more that could be said about the activities, the personalities, and the various ideas connected to Cymru Fydd. But there are three particular points I wish to draw attention to in relation to the current discussion.

Firstly, it is essential to emphasise time and again that the evidence points to the fact that the vast majority of Cymru Fydd members and supporters considered the British state and Britishness not as enemies to Wales and Welshness, but rather – given appropriate revision – as the means to ensure and promote Welsh national aspirations. Note that that was true even before the great imperialist fever of the 1890s took hold of Wales, as it did the rest of these islands.

The reforms that they desired were (i) establishing a legislative parliament for Wales, and for that to be (ii) part of a broader process of ensuring  acknowledgement that Wales had a place as one of the nations which composed Great Britain. One aspect of this acknowledgement – the negative aspect, in a way – was to make sure that the state acknowledged the realities of Welsh spiritual life by disestablishing and disendowing the state church of England in Wales. The more affirmative action taken was to create Welsh civic institutions to mirror the pattern of such institutions which already existed in the three other constituent parts of the state and transferring the costs of running them to the British Treasury.

Secondly, when contemplating the reality of the British party system, this in its turn meant that Welsh nationalist desires were closely bound to the Liberal Party’s prospects. That would have still been true even if Alderman Bird – under D.A. Thomas’s influence – had failed in his efforts to stop the unification of the liberal federations of north and south Wales desired by Cymru Fydd in that infamous Newport meeting. Even if the proposed political unity had succeeded in becoming a Welsh and more prominent version of the Irish Parliamentary Party – which, no doubt, was Lloyd George’s wish – the fact that English politics (from 1886 onwards, at least) was thoroughly unionist, and its elected representatives withstood every effort to make Welsh national desires real, meant that it was only in those periods when the Liberals were in power that meaningful reforms could hope to be won.

Even though the fact is acknowledged very rarely, this is one of the main reasons why the decade between 1895 and 1905 was such an unprofitable one for Welsh nationalists. With the unionists – the  Tories – in an alliance with the unionist wing of the Liberals – in power in London throughout that period, the opportunities for the first wave of Welsh nationalists to influence things were few and far between. For the same reason, it was a thin time for Irish nationalists and that despite their complete domination of electoral politics in Ireland. Indeed, things remained difficult even after the huge Liberal victory in the 1906 election. In that parliament the Liberals’ majority was so large that the Celtic fringe nationalists lost any bargaining power – quite simply, they were not needed. It is a non-Conservative government in London with a small majority which is perfect for those outside England who wish to win concessions for the fringe nations (a lesson for us all in 2024, perhaps?!)

And so to my third point, and maybe my most controversial one, which is to note how similar the first wave of Welsh nationalism was to mainstream Irish nationalism in the same period. They were alike not only in their dependence on the success (and as seen above, the extent of that success) of the Liberal Party. By the time Cymru Fydd was formed, they were also far more similar ideologically than we tend to acknowledge these days. Welsh people of the period understood that clearly enough – remember Thomas Jones’s memoirs which I referred to earlier. But since we now look at Irish nationalism through the prism of the Easter Rising 1916 and all that came in its wake, we have tended to forget, or mis-remember, what came before.

Take John Redmond as an example. He was one of the main leaders of Irish nationalism after Parnell’s death in 1891 and, as leader of the united Irish Parliamentary Party, he was without doubt the main man between 1900 and 1918. Redmond believed one could and should satisfy the wishes of Irish nationalists through the British state; moreover, he wanted full status for Ireland within the British Empire. With the Liberals dependent on his party’s votes after the 1910 election, Redmond succeeded to get the Government of Ireland Act passed, which received royal approval in 1914. As is now known, it   proved to be a pyrrhic victory since the Act was not implemented in the end because of – amongst other things – the Great War, the solidarity between parts of the British army and the Conservative Party, and the Easter Rising. In the same year of 1914, and under exactly the same conditions, the law which would disestablish the Anglican Church in Wales also received its royal assent.

Deliverance through the British state; ensuring that the existing national identity took its place honourably as part of the national inheritance of a broader Britishness: these were the foundations of the nationalist credo and constitutional ideas of both John Redmond and of T.E. Ellis – and David Lloyd George too, for that matter. Whatever their other differences, here was the common ground between mainstream Irish nationalism at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and the beliefs of the first wave of Welsh nationalists.

  1. Plaid Cymru’s interpretation of Cymru Fydd

As I suggested, historians have not been kind to Cymru Fydd. There are perhaps a range of reasons for this. For one thing, there has been a tendency to deal with the movement’s history as if it was a sort of first dish to taste quite quickly before moving on to the main course. On the part of historians of contemporary Wales, that main course – quite naturally – is the growth and then the dominance of the Labour movement and party. In the case of those many historians who have concentrated on David Lloyd George’s story, the main course is the central role that the ‘Welsh Wizard’ had in the massacres of the Great War or in cementing the basis of the welfare state in Britain or in the story of dividing the island of Ireland and creating the Irish Free State oror… You get my point!

If you turn to those types of work with an eye on what they have to say specifically about Cymru Fydd, you can often sense the authors’ keenness to leap ahead to the other matters which they are really interested in. It is also unfortunate that the only (?) book published in the twentieth century which focussed especially on Cymru Fydd’s history – William George’s book of the same title, published in 1945 – is confused in parts while also coming across as an attempt to save the reputation of the author’s big brother, namely David Lloyd George of course.

But this in turn raises a significant question: why in the world would the younger brother who had been a great support to his elder brother feel there was a need to do such a thing as to save face, when the boy from Llanystumdwy had gone on to lead the largest and most powerful empire in the history of humanity? This brings us neatly to another factor which has had a great impact on the historical memory of Cymru Fydd and that, very simply, is the contempt that the second wave of Welsh nationalists showed towards it – and especially their utter disdain towards David Lloyd George.

In his biography of Lewis Valentine, Arwel Vittle depicts the rift between the older generation of Welsh nationalists and the younger generation who would go on to set up Plaid Cymru, including its first President:  

Cymru Fydd’s failure was seared into the minds of many young patriots, seen as being based on the betrayal of its leaders who pursued the advancement of their own careers in Westminster at the expense of their nationalism. This was personified most strongly in the person of Lloyd George himself, who had been such an idol for Samuel Valentine’s generation, but who was now seen as an arch-imperialist by his son.

One could make a long list of examples where second wave Welsh nationalists were scathing in their criticism of the first wave, and that – by now – for over a century. It is clear that such an attitude has also influenced many of those who have written about the main figures connected to Plaid Cymru. As one instance, Arwel Vittle himself states that what Cymru Fydd represented was ‘Loyal Britishness wrapped up in the dress of tearful Welshness’.

Saunders Lewis was withering in his judgement. He ascribes the movement’s failure to the purported fact that ‘Cymru was what was missing from the Cymru Fydd movement’.[2] And again, ‘To speak in rough terms… Cymru Fydd’s liberals neither knew nor understood Cymru’s past.’[3] When considering some of the names associated with the movement, including J.E. Lloyd, this was very rough speaking! Yet according to one of Saunders Lewis’s biographers, D. Tecwyn Lloyd, if one set aside self-governance, there was nothing Welsh-specific among the reforms supported by Cymru Fydd’s members. Rather, they were nothing more alternative than ‘means by which to improve and increase and make more effective the contribution of Wales to Britain and its world-wide Empire’.[4] More than this, by the first decade of the twentieth century, ‘the talk and discussion about Wales’s exceptionality’ by politicians like Lloyd George ‘was no more than a playful excuse for seeking personal promotion’.

But perhaps it is the following anecdote which best reflects the attitudes of the second wave of nationalists towards their predecessors. In the September 1929 edition of The Scots Independent newspaper there is an article by Lewis Spence, Vice-Chairman of the National Party of Scotland – the SNP’s forerunner – recording the story of his visit to Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru’s Summer School, held that year in Pwllheli. He relates the tale of the bus journey organised for attendees to see a bit of the environs, noting that the passengers booed and hooted as the charabanc went past Lloyd George’s birthplace! Scarcely believed that one of Plaid Cymru’s own publications would have included such a childish – if amusing – tale, as it would have caused more of a fuss and trouble than it was worth. But it does offer an interesting and quite significant insight into the world view of members of the still young Plaid Cymru.

Of course the older generation knew full well about the attitude of the younger generation, and – as you might expect – did not take kindly to such a lack of respect towards their elders. A rather plaintive take on this came from Beriah Gwynfe Evans in the South Wales Daily News when he complained of the manner in which one heard ‘De Valera compared and contrasted with Lloyd George, to the latter’s disadvantage’. Now it is important to recognise that Evans’s decision to personalise Irish nationalism of that era into the form of Éamon de Valera was intentionally controversial. At the time – September 1923 – ‘Dev’ had just lost an ugly civil war against the majority faction in Sinn Fein and that part of the Free State’s population which was in favour of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In fact, he had just been incarcerated in Kilmainham – a location that will be familiar to many of you. It would be a further 18 months before he set about forming Fianna Faíl and finally turned his back on the most uncompromising and militant views among those that he had espoused during the civil war.

But by depersonalising the comment made by Cymru Fydd’s former Secretary, the point remains a fair one. Members of the second wave of Welsh nationalism did judge the first wave through comparing them with those Irish nationalists who incited the Easter Rising and who succeeded in bringing freedom to the greater part of Ireland. And verily they thought that a comparison of that sort favoured the Irish version over the Welsh version. Which brings us to the third part of my lecture, on the influence of Ireland – and specifically, the influence of Sinn Feín – on the early Plaid Genedlaethol.

  1. Sinn Féin’s influence on the second wave of Welsh nationalism

There is nothing new or original in highlighting the influence that events in Ireland post-1916 had on the early Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru. I will not try to go after those various aspects, either. There is far too much to cover to do justice to the whole issue – from the brave stance taken by Lewis Valentine and his fellow students in Bangor, to personal meetings in Ireland between, for example, D.J. Williams and Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins (in 1919) and, later, between Saunders Lewis and De Valera (1925). By the way, Saunders was memorably contemptuous of Dev – ‘He’s one of those types  with a drunken mind, bombastic, unsystematic…’ – but that should not surprise us because Plaid’s leader was strongly supportive of the Treatyites in the Irish Civil War. On that basis, we should not expect him to have any fellow feeling with Dev in  the summer of 1925. By 1938, however, with De Valera by then well respected and an uncompromising enemy of the republican ‘extremists’, Lewis had changed his tune and acknowledged Dev to be one of the world’s greatest leaders…

Rather than overusing quotations and examples, let me note the words of J.E. Jones, General Secretary and Organiser of Plaid Cymru between 1930 and 1962(!). ‘There is no doubt,’ he said

that Ireland was the greatest stimulus and inspiration for nationalism in Wales in our time… After the 1914-18 war,…there were a number of Welsh soldiers in the English army in Ireland who saw and understood the oppression there; sympathy grew towards Ireland, and that despite Lloyd George’s propaganda. Then Ireland won its freedom in 1921: the very first country in the whole empire to win it… It was through books that the Irish heroes became known and an encouragement for many of us in Wales… Thomas Davis’s ballads from the middle of the last century were familiar to a number of us…and the romantic hero Michael Collins… It was in Ireland too that H.R. Jones [Plaid Cymru’s first Secretary] got his greatest encouragement: he went there many times…. Ireland continued to be the shining light for very many in Plaid Cymru until the 1939-45 War even. A proof of that was the constant demand for books on the Irish struggles and their heroes in that time, and we used to sell such books by the hundred from Plaid Cymru’s Caernarfon office.

To avoid any uncertainty, it should be pointed out that part of Lloyd George’s cardinal sin in the eyes of the second wave of nationalists was the part he played firstly in standing against – and then diluting – Ireland’s ‘freedom’.

The point I wish to add to this familiar picture is that it was not only the actions and the ‘spirit’ of the Sinn Feiners which were inspirations in Wales. We have rather lost sight of the fact that the main ideas of the preppy Plaid Genedlaethol were also orthodoxly Sinn Fein-ist. The influence of Sinn Fein’s ideology could be seen not only among the grass roots membership, but also on its most important leader, namely Saunders Lewis.

A lot of ink has been spilt on efforts to prove the impact of various thinkers on Saunders Lewis’s beliefs. You have the deservedly well-known essay by Dafydd Glyn Jones on Lewis’s politics which discusses the influences of different French thinkers on his thoughts, or the efforts of D. Tecwyn Lloyd to prove the input of  Hilaire Belloc, the Anglo-French Catholic philosopher. More recently, Robin Chapman has concentrated attention on the claimed influence of ‘two English social critics whose names have since been forgotten’ – Arthur Joseph Penty and Montague Edward Fordham.

But in terms of his political ideas at least, I surmise that the reality was a little more prosaic. Put simply, Saunders Lewis was a pupil of Arthur Griffith. Or to express it in slightly less provocative terms – Arthur Griffith’s main political views which he had popularised through the Sinn Fein movement tallied so closely with the views which were cherished later by Saunders Lewis that one can but conclude that the former had hugely influenced the latter, whether directly or indirectly. This can be seen by close reading of the political programme of Arthur Griffith and Sinn Fein and comparing it with the political programme adopted by the early Plaid Genedlaethol under Saunders Lewis’s influence.

Griffith believed that there would be no lifeline for Ireland’s predicament through the British state – neither from its political parties nor its other political institutions. It was instead essential to divest oneself of them and concentrate on acting at the level of the island of Ireland only. That meant that no-one elected in Sinn Fein’s name to the House of Commons should take their seat there (absentionism). Instead, the local governmental infrastructure in Ireland itself should be used as a platform for building up Irish politics and, indeed, the alternative Irish state inside the shell of the British state.

This was precisely the vision and policy followed by the cub Plaid Genedlaethol too. Only after the failure of Plaid Cymru’s campaign in the Arfon constituency at the 1929 general election was its policy of engaging with Westminster changed. (We should note that, at the time, 609 votes was considered a dreadful failure, even if Dafydd Iwan has charmed contemporary nationalists into thinking differently about it!) And the unstinting efforts of Saunders Lewis’s closest allies were required to force it to accept the change in policy. There is in fact plenty of evidence to suggest that his instincts remained absentionist throughout his lifetime.

Economic arguments were central to the political creed of Arthur Griffith, and economic self-sufficiency one of his big ideas. Let us be clear that this was not the economic credo of the the first wave of Welsh nationalists, but that had changed by the time the second wave had crested. There was without doubt more than one influence at work in ensuring this change. But the beliefs of Irish nationalists – the advanced nationalists influenced by Griffith – were key to it. One can in fact read the notorious ‘10 policy points’ set out by Saunders Lewis as an orthodox re-stating of the economic and social ideas embraced across the rift caused by the Irish civil war.

The constitutional ideas held by Saunders Lewis and the early Plaid Genedlaethol were also remarkably similar to those of Arthur Griffith – someone who was, of course, one of the supporters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. So when Plaid Cymru published its plan for for the constitutional future of Wales at the turn of the 1930s, it was made perfectly clear that the Irish Free State was the model that Wales should try to emulate. And it was therefore ‘dominion status’ rather than full independence that was to be pursued. By remembering  the stand (controversial, to some) Saunders Lewis made about royalty, it is worth remembering that Arthur Griffith himself backed continuation of the link between the Free State and royalty, on the basis of the type of ‘double monarchy’ found in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

But at the same time as desiring continuing links with the the British state and Crown, it is important to underline that Arthur Griffith and Sinn Fein on one hand, and Saunders Lewis and Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru on the other, were all uncompromising anti-imperialists. This was in fact one of the fundamental differences between – in Ireland – the main stream of nationalism embodied in the Irish Parliamentary Party and the ‘advanced nationalists’ of Sinn Féin. In Wales as well this was perhaps the most striking difference between the first wave of Welsh nationalists – all charmed in the end by British imperialism – and the second wave of Welsh nationalists, which has consistently been highly critical of the pomp and presumption of British imperialism and all other forms of imperialism for that matter. Once more, Ireland’s example, as J.E. Jones had pointed out, in being the first nation to free itself of Westminster’s clutches, was key in setting the tone.

And as we come to a close it is perhaps worth contemplating the following.

Over time the majority of Sinn Fein’s influence which formed so much of the world view and policy programme of the early Plaid Genedlaethol was by-passed. Welsh nationalists turned their backs on absentionism; on economic self-sufficiency; the party became content enough with working alongside British parties – the ‘English parties’, as the founders’ generation would have called them – in order to win concessions for Wales; and in 2003 the party decided to adopt ‘independence’ as its constitutional goal. One thing which however remains and it would be true to say has grown stronger than ever (almost) a century later is its objection to imperialism and, linked to that, its very different approach to international politics. One could in fact argue that this is the greatest and most fundamental difference nowadays in attitudes between the contemporary Plaid Cymru and the inheritors of the first wave of Welsh nationalism in the pro-Welsh wing of the Labour party. But you will have to wait for the book to hear more about that…

Thank you very much for your attention.

[1] Director of the Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University.

[2] Saunders Lewis, ‘O.M. Edwards,’ in Gwynedd Pierce (ed) Triwyr Penllyn (Cardiff: Plaid Cymru, undated), p. 31

[3] Saunders Lewis, ‘O.M. Edwards,’ in Gwynedd Pierce (ed) Triwyr Penllyn (Cardiff: Plaid Cymru, undated), p. 31

[4] D. Tecwyn Lloyd, John Saunders Lewis: Y Gyfrol Gyntaf (Denbigh: Gwasg Gee, 1988), p. 185

Women in Plaid Cymru

Women in Plaid Cymru

For the Plaid Cymru Conference in October 2013, an exhibition was prepared of Women in Plaid Cymru during the early years by Yvonne Balakrishnan, on benhalf of the Plaid Cymru History Society.

Here is the information about those women and some additional women.

 

Efelyn Williams

From Cwm Rhondda originally, Efelyn Williams went to the Barry Training College wher she gained a reputation as a rigorous student with a thirst for knowledge. She was faithful to a variety of Welsh organisations such as the Sunday School in the chapel, the Urdd and Plaid Cymru and went regularly to the Summer School. Her quiet influence was significant.

 

Jennie Gruffydd (1899 – 1970)

In the 1929 general election the Party gained the most of its votes in Talysarn and thanks for this was due to Miss Jennie Griffiths. She was renowned in the area for her work for the Party and was always ready to accept any reponsibility asked of her. She went to the Bangor University College and became a teacher in the Lleyn peninsula and then to Talysarn.


Tegwen Clee (1901 – 1965)

One of the first women to join the Party, she was member of the Executive Committee and attended the Summer School every year. Originally from Ystalyfera she graduated from Cardiff University with honours in Welsh. She became a teacher in Llanelli and worked with organisations such ar the Urdd and Plaid Cymru. She wrote about Brittani in Y Ddraig Goch.

Nesta Roberts


Originally from Arfon she became a headmistress in talybont, Dyffryn Conwy. Sister of O.M.Edwards, she served as secretary of the party’r county committee in Caernarfonshire.
She was injured during the election of 1929 but continued to work for the fortnight campaigning despite the pain. She had a talent for public speaking and on one occasion whenm a speaker failed to turn up she took the platform and performed with ease.

 


Cathrin Huws, Caerdydd

Cathrin Huws was the secretary of the Cardiff College Branch. The secretary of East Glamorgan Committee and a member of thr editorial committee of The Welsh Nationalist. She was a candidate for the Glyndwr branch for a seat on Cardiff City Council. She was elected by the Conference to a seat on the Executive Committee – and all this before reaching the age of twenty three.

 

Dr Ceinwen H. Thomas (1911- 2008)

Originally from Nantgarw and well known for transcribing the Nantgarw Dances and for directing the Language Research Unit at Cardiff University which resulted in a corpus of information on the study of the Welsh language including the dialect known as the “Wenhwyseg”.
She became a member of Plaid Cymru whilst at University in the 1930’s. In the 40’s and 50’s, a difficult period in the history of the Party and also for the Welsh language, she fought for the party’s principles, Welsh history in the Education system,and the recognition of Monmouthshire as an historic part of Wales.

 

 

Mai Roberts

Mai Roberts was one of the initiators of the National Park and had worked to start a truly national movement before 1925. She was the first to contribute a payment when Plaid Cymru was formed and is therefore the first registered member of the Party. She became a member of the Executive Committee and contributed valuable administrative service during the parliamentary elections in Caernarfon in 1929 a 1931. She was also involved with other important organisations such as the Celtic League. Her service to Wales was immeasureable.

 


Kate Roberts – (1891 – 1985)

The most notable author in the Welsh language of the twentieth century.
Kate joined the Party at the Summer School in Machynlleth in 1926.
Once the Women’s Section was established Kate was elected ar Chair. She became responsible for the Women’s page of the official Party publication – “Y Ddraig Goch”.

 

 

Priscie Roberts

Sister to Mai Roberts, she joined the Party under the influence of Lewis Valentine at the Summer Sschool in Llangollen. She assisted the Party in caernarfonshire in many ways, keeping the financial accounts for three years in the period between H.R.Jones’ illness and J.E.Jones arriving at the Office. As Secretary of the Women’s Section in caernarfon she was key to the success of every occasion.

 


Llinos Roberts, Lerpwl

Llinos Roberts was the Secretary of the Liverpool Branch and also of the Area Committee and a member of the Executive Committee. Originally from the village of Penygroes near Talysarn she became influential within the “new movement” as it was known at the time in Dyffryn Nantlle. She was a proficient speaker, debater and planner for the Party.

 

 

Nora Celyn Jones

She was from Caernarfon originally but spent her life in Caerffili, Glamorganshire. She was nurtured in a home where Welsh Culture was of great importance. She went to the Training College in Barry and while there was the secretary of the Welsh Society. Later, when teaching at an elementary school in Senghennydd, she worked consistently with Welsh organisations in the area. She was the secretary of the Urdd in Caerffili.

 


Nans Jones

Nans Jones (Anni Mary Jones) was born in Tafarn Newydd, Penrhosgarnedd near Bangor. Later her family moved to Treborth. She joined Plaid Cymru at 15 years of age in 1930 five years after the party’s foundation. She became its full time accountant in 1942 at the office located in Caernarfon. Nans left North Wales in 1947 when the headquarters moved to Cardiff and for decades her work played an indespensible role in the Party’s administration.

 

Cassie Davies (1898 – 1988)

 

Cassie Davies MA comes from Ceredigion and became a teacher at Barry Training College after graduating with honours in both Welsh and English at University College Aberystwyth. She became a member of Plaid very early in its history and became a noted pblic orator as well as writing regularly for the Draig Goch. She was a close friend of two other Plaid women menbers, Dr Kate Roberts and Mai Roberts.


Eileen Beasley (1921 – 2012)

Eileen (James) Beasley was originally from rural Carmarthenshire but moved to Llangennech after meeting her husband, Trefor, at Plaid Cymru meetings and subsequently marrying. Both were elected as local councillors o Llanelli District Council in 1955. But she is best known ar a Welsh language campaigner. She and her husband demanded to receive council rate bills in Welsh and bravely fought an eight year ultimately successful action. Eileem is remembered as the ‘mother of direct action’ in Wales.

 

Elizabeth Williams (1891 – 1979)

Born in Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1891, the daughter of a quarryman, she studied Welsh in Aberystwyth where she met Griffith John Williams whom she later married. It was in their house in Penarth in January 1924 that they met with Ambrose Bebb and Saunders Lewis and formed a new Welsh Movement, with Bebb as President, G J Williams as Treasurer and Saunders a Secretary. Elizabeth took the minutes and kept a record of the movement’s growth until it joined a group from Gwynedd to form the National Party at Pwllheli in 1925.
When she died in 1979 she left her house in Gwaelod y Garth to the Party.

 

Also there is an interesting dissertation here  – ‘The height of its womanhood’: Women and gender in Welsh nationalism, 1847-1945 
by Jodie Alysa Kreider, Prifysgol Arizona.

https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/280621

 

Fighting for Wales Before the Foundation of Plaid Cymru

The history of the great poet, T.Gwynn Jones (1871-1949)

Review of the Welsh language biography ‘Byd Gwynn’ by Alan Llwyd

We have good reason to be grateful to the poet and author Alan Llwyd, who was brought up in the Llŷn peninsula and now lives in Morriston.  His awdl, a poem in strict metres on the subject Llif (stream, or flow) ensured that  the chair could be awarded this year, providing a real climax for the successful Llŷn and Eifionydd National Eisteddfod.

By now Alan Llwyd has established himself as one of Wales’ outstanding poets and writers.  His output is astonishing, both in quality and quantity , and includes a number of detailed biographies of Welsh poets, among them T. Gwynn Jones.

Today people remember T. Gwynn Jones as one of the leading poets of the twentieth century but he was much more – for decades a hardworking journalist, novelist, critic and adjudicator as well as a translator and linguist.  And a committed pacifist and a fiery nationalist. 

Alan Llwyd paints a detailed picture of his life from his upbringing in Denbighshire as son of a struggling tenant farmer. Although his family’s straitened circumstances ruled out university, Gwynn’s sheer talent ensured a career as a journalist in Welsh and English newspapers such as the Cymro and the North Wales Times.  But he also contributed substantially to the cultural life of Wales. At the age of 17 he published a poem in Y Faner in support of Welsh people’s fight against being forced to pay tithes to the established Church of England, and from then on he would occupy a key role in the literary life of his country. 

In 1902 he carried off the Eisteddfod Chair with his poem Ymadawiad Arthur, making purposeful use of the complex Welsh mode of cynghanedd to create a special effect; as Alan Llwyd explains, “not throwing consonants idly around without regard to the meaning of the words “.   In this respect, he was very different to many other poets , such as Hwfa Môn and Dyfed; and before long Gwynn would find himself in the middle of a fierce debate about poetic standards.  Critics would accuse him of resurrecting antiquated words that no-one understood, but Gwynn was more than ready to stand his ground and use his jounalistic skills to fight for rasising the standards of the Welsh language and experiment with new measures.

Cynghanedd, according to Gwynn, was the learned term for what ordinary people called a ‘cwlwm’, a knot or link.  As a schoolboy he came to know these links by ear before learning the rules, and coming to love them.

He succeeded in surmounting every obstacle,  moving from his ill-paid journalistic career to become a cataloguer and biographer in the National Library in Aberystwyth, and in 1919 a lecturer, and finally Professor of Welsh Literature in Univerity College, Aberystwyth.  Alan Llwyd also records Gwynn’s marriage and happy family life.

Gwynn became an accomplished linguist and translator in a number of European languages, and especially the Celtic languages.  He had learnt the Breton language before the visit in 1904 of the Celtic Congress to Caernarfon, and Gwynn played an active role as a member of the local organising committee.  Later on he set out to master Irish, seriously considering academic posts in Ireland.

Throughout his life T.Gwynn Jones was a convinced nationalist, but it is interesting to explore exactly what that meant during the course of his life. Gwynn’s father was a keen Liberal: he was forced to leave the farm at which he was tenant because of his opposition to the Tories during th ‘tithe war’ in rural Wales.  The young Gwynn also supported the Liberal cause, enthusiastically so during the period in the 1890s when the Cymru Fydd movement was campaigning for self-government. In 1903, he composed a poem in Welsh praising David Lloyd George, ‘our Dafydd of silver tongue, and a heart of fire’.

Disillusion with the Liberal Party followed the failure of Cymru Fydd and the support of many Liberal leaders for the First World War.  Gwynn was a lifelong convinced pacifist, and was profoundly disappointed by the ‘dogs of war’, politicians and ministers of religion who urged young people to go to their deaths in the slaughter.  As a socialist as well as a fervent nationalist, by 1918 he was attracted to the Labour Party, telling a close friend that he had (like DJ Williams) joined the ILP.

A verse from the awdl ‘Ymadawiad Arthur’ in T.Gwynn Jones’ writing

However, there was no question whose side he was on when the Easter Rising took place in Ireland in 1916: if England had the right to fight, then so did Ireland, he said.

In 1923, Gwynn chaired a meeting of the ‘Tair G’ (the three Gs, Y Gymdeithas Genedlaethol Gymreig or The Welsh National Society), one of the meetings that would lead to the formation of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru.  It is not known what was his reaction to the suggestion voiced at that meeting by Saunders Lewis to set up an ‘army’ of volunteers who would conduct military drill – it is unlikely he would have been in favour, and the idea found little support at the time.   Could that be one reason why, curiously,  there is no evidence that this convinced nationalist ever joined the nationalist party launched in 1925.  Indeed, some years later, he would admit that his friendship with one poet had cooled because of the latter’s support for Plaid Cymru.

By 1943 however, Gwynn was prominent among those who nominated Saunders Lewis as Plaid Cymru’s candidate in the University of Wales by-election, even though he was running against W.J. Gruffydd for the Liberal Party.  Gruffydd had been a close friend of Gwynn’s since his youth.

A great poet, and an emotional and complex character, T.Gwynn Jones stands out as a leading figure in the history of Wales, and his story is well worth remembering.

Dafydd Williams

From the Plaid Cymru History Society Newsletter Autum 2023

 

 

Celebrating the first Plaid Cymru Meeting

Friday 12 January 2024 Plaid Cymru met in Penarth to celebrate 100 years since the first meeting to establish the party.

Leanne Wood, Rosanne Reeves, Richard Wyn Jones, Gareth Clubb

Here are the contributions of Leanne Wood and Richard Wyn Jones at the start of the meeting.

 

Lively Kick-off for Centenary Celebrations

A series of events marking the foundation of Plaid Cymru nearly a hundred years ago got off to a lively start in Penarth on Friday 12 January 2024 at the Belle Vue Community Centre, Albert Crescent, Penarth. 

Plaid members and guests took part in an evening to celebrate the formation of a secret group, the Mudiad Cymreig or Welsh movement, one of the organisations whose fusion a year later led to the formal launch of the national party.

Those present at the meeting  on 7 January 1924 in Bedwas Place, Penarth, were Ambrose Bebb, Griffith John Williams, Elisabeth Williams and Saunders Lewis, the great poet, playwright and future leader of the party, who subsequently lived in Penarth from 1952 until his death in 1985.

Former Plaid leader and Rhondda Senedd Member Leanne Wood and Welsh Governance Centre Director Richard Wyn Jones led discussion of the last century of Plaid Cymru’s campaigning and its future prospects.

Leanne Wood paid tribute to all those activists who, although not prominent themselves,  had worked for Wales throughout the last century, especially the many women who had played a key role in building a nation.  This was echoed by Professor Richard Wyn Jones, who went on to analyse the circumstances that led to the launch of Plaid Cymru and the challenges and opportunities it now faces.

Their presentations in Penarth’s refurbished Belle Vue pavilion were followed by a lively discussion session – about Plaid’s future role as well as the party’s performance over the last one hundred years. 

There was a spirited debate about exactly when and where Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru came into existence: Richard Wyn Jones argued for Caernarfon in December 2024, but from the audience Gwenno Dafydd – one of three descendants of Ambrose Bebb present – put forward a powerful case for Penarth.  Officially, however, the centenary will be celebrated in August next year, the 100th anniversary of a meeting held in Pwllheli during the National Eisteddfod of 1925.

The event was organised by Plaid’s Penarth and Dinas Powys branch with the support of the Plaid Cymru History Society.  It was chaired by Gaeth Clubb

“We are delighted with the strong turnout for this highly successful evening, the first of a series of events which will trace the formation of Wales’ national movement a century ago” said History Society Chairman Dafydd Williams.

 

 

Booklets

Booklets Archive

 

1936 Blaenion Y Blaid (292.6 KiB)

1936 Cymru Dan Draed (641.0 KiB)

1937 Cymru Rydd (2.2 MiB)

1937Unjust Government (535.3 KiB)

1945 Ffeithiau (1.7 MiB)

1946 Brwydr Cymru (1.6 MiB)

1950 They Cry Wolf (1.1 MiB)

1950 TVA for Wales (2.2 MiB)

1952 Camre Cymru (1.5 MiB)

1958 TV In Wales (2.0 MiB)

1974 Gwynfor Evans (1.4 MiB)

1997 Gorau i Gymru (3.3 MiB)

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Hanes Plaid Cymru