Book Launch

“Dros Gymru’n Gwlad – Hanes Sefydlu Plaid Cymru”.

Pierhead Building, Cardiff Bay. 17 July 2025 6.30pm – 9pm

Link For tickets > Linc

Come to hear Arwel Vittle and Gwen Gruffudd discussing their new book with Karl Davies in an event sponsored by Mabon ap Gwynfor MS and organised by Plaid Cymru History Society, with an opportunity to buy the book signed by them. There is no entrance fee but you must reserve a place beforehand through Eventbrite . Proceedings will be in Welsh and simultaneous translation will be available.

 

 

 

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.

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

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.

 

 

About the Society

CYMDEITHAS HANES PLAID CYMRU HISTORY SOCIETY

Aims of the Society

To promote discussion, knowledge and research about Plaid Cymru’s history and aspects of history relating to Plaid Cymru.

To spread knowledge of the individuals and events that contributed to the development of the Party.

Membership

Membership is open to individuals and organisations interested in the history of Plaid Cymru and aspects of history dealing with Plaid Cymru

Officers of the Society

Chair; Dafydd Williams, Secretary; Eluned Bush, Treasurer; Stephen Thomas 

http://www.hanesplaidcymru.org.

The Plaid Cymru History website now provides the key to a range of visual, recorded and written material about our national movement.

——————————————

  • We are all part of the history of the Party. Would you like to share your experiences with other members and record them for future researchers?

If so, contact the Secretary on history@hanesplaidcymru.org

  • Do you have publications that you are unable to keep but consider them to be of value?

There is a section on the Society’s web site with advice on what to do with them.

  • Would you like to read/listen to some of the events the Society has organised in the past which you did not attend?

All of the society’s events are recorded, transcribed and translated and entered on the Society’s web site.

  • Would you like to be involved in planning the Society’s future activities? The centenary of the Party in 2025 is a good time to help with the work of recording important events in your local area.

If so, why not join the Society for £10 annually for individuals or £20 annually for Branches and Constituencies. Contact the Treasurer (stephenv.thomas@btinternet.com ) for information on how to pay.

Saunders Lewis, Wales and Europe by Dafydd Wigley

The next three years will be crucially important for refining a model of independence relevant for Wales in today’s world.  In the wake of Brexit, Wales needs to protect its essential connection with the continent of Europe – the source of our values and civilisation, and the context of practical independence for our country. 

Nearly a century ago, the Plaid Cymru leader Saunders Lewis set out a vision of Wales in Europe.  The Plaid Cymru History Society is proud to publish in full the important lecture delivered by Dafydd Wigley during the 2023 Eisteddfod Llŷn ac Eifionydd National Eisteddfod – which shows that this vision is today more relevant than ever.  

Saunders Lewis, Wales and Europe

[In Memory of Emrys Bennett Owen,
who opened my eyes to his vision]

 

I am grateful to the Eisteddfod for being for this forum to re-examine ideas that are highly relevant to this period of time; and to thank Swansea University for inviting to deliver a lecture on the subject of “Saunders Lewis, Wales and Europe”. And today, it is appropriate to remember that it was in Pwllheli during the 1925 Eisteddfod that Saunders Lewis and five others came together to set up Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru, the Welsh National Party.

May I acknowledge my gratitude to the Uwch-Gwyrfai History Society for the opportunity of delivering the first version of this lecture, and pay tribute to the outstanding work of Geraint Jones, Marian Elias, Gina Gwyrfai and Dawi Griffith. And congratulations to Geraint on his gaining the T.H. Parry Williams award; an award he fully merits. Another lecture was presented to the Society last year by Ieuan Wyn, with the title of “Darlith Saunders a’i dylanwad” (Saunders’ lecture and its influence), which is available as a pamphlet – dealing principally with the impact of the radio lecture by Saunders Lewis, Tynged yr Iaith (the destiny of the language).

This morning, I wish to deal with another of Saunders Lewis’s lectures, the electrifying one he gave in Machynlleth in 1926, under the title Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb, or The Principles of Nationalism. To some of you, what I have to say will be neither new nor original; after all, I am a politician, not an author or a historian. But I feel passionately that Saunders Lewis’s vision, interpreting Wales in the context of Europe, is fundamental to the current project of securing an independent Wales; and I want to help the younger generation to appreciate Saunders Lewis’s leadership a century ago.

The next three years, which span the centenary of the lecture, will be crucially important for refining a model of independence that is relevant for this age. Especially so, as we consider – as we have to following Brexit – how Wales can protect its essential connection with the continent of Europe, the source of our values and civilisation, and the indispensable context for practical independence.

We also remember that Saunders was a University lecturer in Swansea between 1921 and 1936, before he paid the price for acting according to his conscience in September 1936 when the Bombing School was burnt, just three miles away from this place. It is good that the University has acknowledged its connection with this hero, in the words of Williams Parry, “the most learned in our midst”. And I thank Professor Daniel Williams for the Seminar he organised in 2011, which marks the 75th anniversary of the dismissal.

It is good also to recall that, earlier this year, an enormous rally calling for independence took place in Swansea, with six thousand in the procession – this at a time when the concept of independence has aroused the interest of over a third of the people of Wales. So it is right for us to consider once again the vision of Saunders Lewis. We don’t have to agree with every word he pronounced; and we have to remember that the Wales of 1926 was a very different place to the country we have today. At that time we did not exist politically: according to the index of Encyclopaedia Britannica, with its arrogant statement – “For Wales: see England”.

There was no Welsh Parliament, no Secretary of State, and no status for the Welsh language. That was the backdrop for Sounder’s revolutionary ideas, in the wake of the most bloody war ever seen by the world; a war where he as a soldier was wounded in the trenches in France; a war which, in name, was fought to protect small nations – but Wales, sadly, was not among them. But now, after four centuries of servility, here was this diminutive, frail man was daring to challenge it all, making Wales an essential part of the European continent, not the back yard of an arrogant and self-satisfied empire.

The Wales we have today would not exist but for the vision of Saunders Lewis: he cannot be ignored. This is evident in recent books, such as the work of Professor Richard Wyn Jones, who demolishes the completely groundless accusations of fascist tendencies by Saunders and Plaid Cymru. It is confirmed by Professor M Wynn Thomas, Swansea, in his volume Eutopia, which assesses the vision of Saunders Lewis. He is critical, in an objective way, but acknowledges that his vision remains “an interesting, brave and intellectually penetrating endeavour to frame a uniquely Welsh analysis of European affairs”. It is therefore appropriate to have a forum to examine the abiding significance of his European vision in this Eisteddfod.

                                                                                *****

Throughout the centuries, and during the times of Owain Lawgoch, Owain Glyndŵr, Gruffydd Robert, Richard Price, Emrys ap Iwan and Henry Richard, our link with Europe has been a key element of our identity as a nation. And today, when considering the significance of the European dimension for Wales it is impossible to do that without taking into account the standpoint presented to Plaid Cymru in its early days by its President.

During the period that followed the second world war, there was a tendency to scorn and belittle its political vision and beliefs; partly by Plaid Cymru’s political adversaries; and partly on account of the claim that its values and vision were relevant to another era – an era whose values were very different to those of our time. I shall try and answer that sort of accusation.

Saunders Lewis was just a name to me until I turned on the radio in February 1962. The programme had already begun, and so I was no wiser as to who was speaking. I was entranced by the unfamiliar, thin voice that was saying such great things, things you would never hear on the BBC! Who was talking, and what was the context? Yes, it was the lecture “Tynged yr Iaith” (The Destiny of the Language) – and quite by chance I was listening amazed in my bedroom in Manchester University.

I met Saunders Lewis only three times – the first occasion being at the time of the 1975 referendum 1975 on Britain’s membership of the European Common Market. I went to his home in Penarth in search of consolation at a time when Plaid Cymru – quite incredibly, to me – was campaigning against membership. Like me, he could not believe that the party was so short-sighted. A decade later, I had the unexpected privilege of bearing his coffin, along with Meredydd Evans, Geraint Gruffydd and Dafydd Iwan. I believe I was accorded this privilege because the European dimension is central to my politics, as it was for him; and that I was entranced by his vision of the rightful role of Wales – and the Welsh heritage – within the Europe’s cultural mainstream.

****

Saunders Lewis was born in 1893 in Wallasey, near Liverpool, the son of a Methodist Minister. I do not know at what age he became interested in our continent’s culture, but by 1912 he was studying French in Liverpool University; and this proved advantageous for him after he enlisted, as did so many of his fellow-students, in the army in 1914.

Saunders Lewis, at the time of the First World War,
as a subaltern in the South Wales Borderers 

By 1916 he was describing his life fighting in the trenches, but billeted in a French village fifteen miles behind the battlefield. In letters to his girl friend, Margaret Gilcriest, he described the experience of socialising with the local French people; and describing it as much more acceptable than the macho-masculine company of his fellow-soldiers. He wrote of the open and spontaneous nature of French people, and that this was in sharp contrast to the company of those in the trenches.

He says that returning to the front line was like going to another country – having to go back to the middle of Englishness; to English foul language and all the attitudes of “John Bull’s own ways of eating, drinking, and geing generally half a gentleman by effort, and half a Bull by nature and instinct.”  The company of French people, cheerful, open and without malice was quite different to life in the trenches where he had to live what he describes as “the boorish life of an English Squire”. There can be no doubt that these experiences confirmed his feeling that the Welsh had more in common with their cousins on the continent than with the values and attitudes of most of the people of England.

******

Saunders Lewis,
President of Plaid Cymru between 1926 and 1939

 

Saunders Lewis, from his early days as the leader of the National Party placed his political beliefs in the context of Europe. He made this quite explicit in his great lecture to the first Plaid Cymru Summer School in Machynlleth in 1926.

In the lecture, “Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb” (The Principles of Nationalism) – and I wish to quote a substantial passage to present it to a new generation – Saunders Lewis says as follows – :

5] “In medieval Europe, no one country …… claimed that its government within its own boundaries was the supreme and only authority. Every nation and every king recognised that there was an authority higher than state authority, that there was a law higher than the king’s law, and that there was a court to which appeal could be made from the State courts.

“That authority was the moral authority, the authority of Christianity. The Christian Church was sovereign in Europe, and Church law was the only final law.

“For a while Europe was one, with every part of it recognising its dependence, every country recognising that it was not free, nor had any right to govern itself as it pleased regardless of other countries. And Europe’s oneness in that age, its oneness in moral principle and under one law, protected the culture of every land and region.

“For one of the profoundest ideas of the Middle Ages, an idea Christianity inherited from the Greeks, was the idea that unity contains variety. There was one law and one civilisation throughout Europe, but that law, that civilisation took on many forms and many colours…..

 “Because there was one law and one authority throughout Europe, Welsh civilisation was safe, and the Welsh language and the special Welsh way of life and society. The idea of independence did not exist in Europe nor the idea of nationalism, and so no-one thought that the civilisation of one part was a threat to that of another, nor that a multiplicity of languages was inimical to unity.”

He goes on to ask:

“What, then, is our nationalism? This, …… a denial of the benefits of political uniformity, and a demonstration of its ill effects, thereby arguing in favour of the principle of unity and variety. Not a fight for Wales’ independence but for Wales’ civilisation.”  [I shall come back to that shortly!] “A claim that she should have a seat in the Society of Nations and European society by virtue of the value of her civilisation. ……. Europe will return when the countries recognise they are all subjects and dependent. …… So let us insist on having, not independence but freedom. And freedom in this affair means responsibility. We who are Welsh claim that we are responsible for civilisation and social ways of life in our part of Europe. That is the political ambition of the National Party.”

I do not want to split hairs about the word “independence”. It can have a variety of meanings for different people. The meaning of independence for UKIP was leaving the European Union; its meaning for the SNP is being able to join the European Union. Saunders himself said in his address to the Llanwrtyd Summer School in 1930: “We will go to Parliament …to reveal to Wales how we have to act in order to win independence.” [Y Ddraig Goch, September 1930]. If the greatest among us mix their diction, who are we to split hairs! It is the big concept that is important; and about that, there is no doubt and no confusion about where Saunders Lewis stands – securing for Wales “her place in the community of Europe by virtue of her civilisation.”

I have no time this morning to pursue the attractive red herring of asking “What is the value of the civilisation we possess in Wales today?” There are many people better qualified than myself to analyse that. Have a go! But I do believe that it is essential that we should advocate independence for a purpose; and that purpose should be to safeguard, develop, enrich, share and pass on what we regard as Welsh civilisation. And we should never forget that the natural home for our civilisation lies within the framework of Europe.

  1. Myrddin Lloyd, in his essay on the political ideas of Saunders Lewis, also refers to the theme of Europe, when he writes as follows:

“A nation’s foundations are therefore moral and spiritual; and its destiny does not rest on any form of complete independence; nor does its dignity require that. It can present itself to many sorts of relationships. And it can cope readily with many frustrations. One of its virtues is its freedom, and in the same way that people link themselves naturally together in families, and in various other societies, as they find themselves in association with their fellow-people, so nations by virtue of moral law acknowledge many relationships with each other.”

Myrddin Lloyd continues:

“In his attack on Fascism in 1934 (an important article that some choose to ignore) Saunders Lewis said that Fascism maintains that every individual belongs to the state , and that the claims of the State are unconditional. ‘The Welsh National Party maintains that the nation is a society of societies, and that the rights of smaller societies, such as the family, the locality, the trade union, the workplace, the chapel or church, are all worthy of respect.

“The State has no right to ride roughshod over the rights of these societies and there are also rights beyond the boundaries of the nation that every man and every country should respect.”

It is certain that the vision of Saunders Lewis is founded in part on the legacy that springs from Wales’s European roots. We should not think that commercial advantages of European unity are key to this vision; to the contrary. Material advantages are a secondary consideration; because Saunders set his vision on a spiritual rather than material foundations; and it is the European origin of this spiritual dimension that is important for him. This is seen in the Wednesday essays, when Saunders says as follows:

“The history of European civilisation – this is the history of a spiritual ideal …Tracing that ideal gives meaning to studying the history of Europe; it is that which gives Europe a unity.

There can be any number of influences on a country and its way of life. But what enters its life as a destiny, and decides its role in Europe’s heritage, is the particular moral ideal, the ideal first shaped by Greece. Greece is the starting point for our civilisation and the imprint of Greece remains upon it to this day.”

It is interesting to note the words of Patricia Elton Mayo, in her book “Roots of Identity: Adnabod y gwreiddiau”, where she wrote that as a author and dramatist recognised on the continent but unknown in England, Saunders Lewis emphasised the European context of Welsh civilisation, an obvious feature “before the English occupation isolated Wales from the mainstream of European cultural development”. This sort of perspective – springing from outside Wales, and recognising national developments in Wales as part of a European movement, reflects the viewpoint of Saunders Lewis, and sets it within a much broader context.

Saunders edited Y Ddraig Goch for years during the early phase of Plaid Cymru’s history. I shall be taking advantage of every opportunity to bring the European dimension to his analysis. For example, in the August 1929 editorial article that he wrote, under the title “Yma a thraw yn Ewrop: y lleiafrifoedd yn deffro” (“Here and there in Europe: the minorities awake”), he noted the national revival in Flanders, Catalunya, Malta, and Brittany and asks:

“What does all this prove? It proves that the minorities of Europe, the small countries that were swallowed up by larger ones during periods of oppression and centralisation of government, are now awakening in every part of our continent and are bringing a new spirit and ideal to European politics.”

Then he declares:

“The speciality and strength of Europe, in comparison with America, is the rich variety of her civilisation. ….If this is correct, our argument that the movement for self-government in Wales and in all the other countries benefits Europe and the world is also correct …..

“This European philosophy also drives leaders on the continent, …. who are seeking to lead Europe back from imperial materialism, from the short-sighted competition of the large centralised powers, to a new politics, a politics founded on a deeper understanding of the true nature and value of western civilisation.”

Saunders Lewis also sees self-government for Wales as part of establishing a better international order; an order that would aim at solving disputes by peaceful methods, not by fighting the bloody war that he witnessed in the trenches in France. His emphasis on developing international systems – and his repeated warnings that England would not wish to be part of such an order, provides the background for the politics of Gwynfor Evans, and for the stand taken by Adam Price against the Iraq War.

It is worth looking at this in detail, as the message is so relevant for our time, when England, once more, is turning its back on our continent and on the European Court of Justice. In his article “Lloegr ac Ewrop a Chymru” (Wales and Europe and England) in 1927 Saunders Lewis says:

“What is the foreign policy of England? Its guiding principle was set out finally and beyond doubt by Sir Austen Chamberlain (Britain’s Foreign Minister) in a meeting of the League of Nations in September. He said: ‘England belongs to a union of nations that is older than the League of Nations, which is the British Empire, and that if a collision occurs between the League of Nations and the Empire, then we have to back the Empire against the League of Nations.’”

It is relevant to remind ourselves that the Welsh Women’s “peace petition” collected in 1923, involved this very point – appealing to America to support the League of Nations as an essential foundation for building peace.

Saunders continues: “When Chamberlain said that, he spoke for England, not for his party …. Now, by virtue of this principle, England – unfortunately, we have to say Great Britain – although naturally and geographically and in part historically part of Europe and essential to Europe – nevertheless denies its association and its responsibility and leaves Europe today, as in 1914 and before, uncertain about its policy.”

Isn’t it incredible that we can say this, once more today? By failing to learn the lessons of history, we repeat the same mistakes. Last time this lead to fascism and to the 1939 war. God forbid we should experience that blood-stained lesson yet again.

Saunders goes on with this key statement, which did much to shape my own political convictions:-

“Bringing about political and economic unity within Europe is one of the foremost needs of our century. This is clearly seen by Europe’s small nations, and in order to ensure it they drew up the Protocol that binds countries to settle disputes by discussion and by law, and calls on all the other countries to unite and punish any country that breaks their commitment.”

To that end also, the small nations demanded that every country be bound to endorse a Permanent Court of International Justice, the aim of which was to get countries to accept the judgement of the Court on disputes between them and so avoid was.

“England refuses … because, as part of the Empire almost entirely outside Europe, she does not wish to attach herself to Europe …. She refuses … because the Government cannot ensure, if the court’s judgement were unfavourable to Britain, that it could be passed into law by a British Parliament; and secondly because the Government is sufficiently broad and strong to be able to defend its rights without depending on a court of law ……….”

Hasn’t this been clearly seen during the last seven years, by the attitude of supporters of Brexit towards the European Court of Justice?

Saunders’ essay continues:

“It can also be seen that England’s economic tendencies quite as much as her political tendencies, lead to war. The hope of political peace in Europe is to get Britain as an essential part of the European union of nations ….. But in Britain is there a European tradition? Is there here a nation that was an original part of the civilisation of the West, that thinks in the ways of the West, and can understand Europe, and be able to sympathise with her?  The answer is: Wales.

“The Welsh are the only nation in Britain that formed part of the Roman Empire … The Welsh can understand Europe because they are part of the family.”

Friends, It is from these roots that the national movement in Wales has grown; and woe betide us if we forget it. Wales’ national civilisation includes our cultural heritage – our language, our literature, our music, our fine arts. It also includes our values, such as the emphasis we place on our social legacy, on equality; on the value of society in its own right, and not just the value of the individual and the family alone; and on the element of cooperation, as families, as communities and as countries, to protect our interests.

This is the essence of the fundamental difference between the politics of Wales and the politics of England; and because the Welsh Labour Party insists on tying itself to the English Labour Party, it fails to develop a philosophy and a political programme based on our

Such was the meaning of independence when Plaid Cymru was set up; and that is why Gwynfor Evans wrote in the sixties, “It was stated (by Blaid Cymru) from its outset that its aim is freedom, not independence”. This was the case because of Plaid’s commitment to empower Wales to play its part in international institutions, such as the League of Nations; national values as the foundation for its policies within Senedd Cymru.

At this point, I come back to the matter of ‘independence’. In the 1920s the policies of the London parties rejected sharing power with international bodies in order to protect Britain’s ‘independence’, and after the war the United Nations; and later on, the European Union.

It was only at the turn of the century, when the terms of membership of the European Union were redefined so that membership of the Union was open to ‘independent states, that Plaid Cymru changed its policy to one of independence. I myself voted for that, accepting that the first thing that happens to a country becoming part of the European Union is that it sacrifices part of its independence. Saunders Lewis, I am sure, would rejoice that Wales was embracing this as an aim.

Saunders Lewis, of course, was no Marxist. He acknowledged the importance of small businesses and cooperative businesses. He was most critical of Soviet Communism – and as a result he attracted the antagonism of those, both Welsh and English, who based their politics on Marxist analysis. But that does not make him a capitalist; placing him on the political spectrum is not a binary choice. Saunders made quite clear his opposition to international capitalism in the first chapter of Canlyn Arthur: “It should be said at once and clearly, that capitalism is one of the principal enemies of nationalism.” In an essay in 1932 he says: “For the Welsh nationalist, the Trade Unions are institutions that are priceless, valuable and advantageous for establishing in Wales the sort of society we aim at.”

So I completely reject the allegation that he was on the political right wing.

The aim of the European Community, from its early days, was to promote free trade on condition it was within a social framework, and so create equal terms for workers in the various countries rather than leaving them at the mercy of the market. Not many in Britain had recognised this in 1975, at the time of the referendum on Britain’s membership of the ‘Common Market’. So the English commercial right wing were longing to join the new system where they could, in their opinion, rake in more private profit. By contrast, the English left responded by opposing Common Market membership.

But both right and left misunderstood the European vision – the ambition of creating a social European just as much as an economic Europe: The idea of ‘Social Europe’ became an essential part of the fight for a social chapter within the European Union. When Maggie Thatcher and her crew realised the civilised implications of this part of the vision, they quickly went into reverse! This is why by the time of Brexit, much of the right wing in England was fiercely opposed to the European Union; while progressive elements on the left were in favour.

I do not agree with every word that fell from the lips of Saunders Lewis. Some points, credible at that period of time, appear outmoded today. But the mainstream of his vision is wholly relevant.

Another article with a European theme in the volume Canlyn Arthur is that on Tomáš Masaryk and the national revival of Bohemia; and this is a reply to those critics who complained that Plaid Cymru at that time was only interested in the small Celtic countries. Masaryk succeeded in laying the foundation for the Czech Republic which today is an independent country. Masaryk, like Saunders Lewis, stressed the role of culture as one of the essential elements of the national community; and like Saunders Lewis he saw his country in a European framework and within European ideals.

   Saunders Lewis, with his fellow-defendants
Lewis Valentine and D.J. Williams
at the time of the Penyberth trials

           

In his important contribution to the book “Presenting Saunders Lewis”, Dafydd Glyn Jones, writing about “Aspects of his work: his politics”, notes:

“Canlyn Arthur assumes throughout that the nation is the normal form of society in Europe and the basis of modern civilisation….. To be, to exist, and to be recognised by other national communities as exosting, this, Sanders Lewis maintains, is the only way …… in which Wales can fully and creatively participate in wider community.

“That participation, moreover, is indispensable if self-government is to have any meaning …. A Welsh parliament is necessary not in order that Wales may retire into self-sufficiency, but so that she may recover her contact with Europe.”

According to Dafydd Glyn, one of the strongest influences on Saunders Lewis was the French Catholic scholar, Jacques Maritain. He was one of the French leaders who maintained that there was an alternative for French Catholics other than supporting the quasi-fascist movement Action Française.

Maritain’s ideals included individual freedom, the need for order within society and a new pluralism that avoided dictatorship and conservative laissez-faire. He was influential in the task of drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and he campaigned to draw attention to the horrors of the Holocaust. In 1936, he published the book “Integral Humanism” which is regarded as a work that inspired the Christian Democrat movement in Europe. He was a close friend of i Robert Schuman, the Foreign Minister of France, after the war – the person who could claim, before anyone else, to be founder of the European Union!

A valuable work on the importance of the ideas of Saunders Lewis about the essential relationship between Wales and Europe has been contributed by Dr Emyr Williams, who took a doctorate in Cardiff with his thesis on “The Social and Political thought of Saunders Lewis”.

Emyr Williams traces the influence of Maritain on Saunders; and cites Maritain’s conclusion that the concept of sovereignty is intrinsically wrong because “political authority arises from the people, the body politic, and does not descend from above. This is crucial in seeking to understand Saunders Lewis’ thought regarding the concept of sovereignty …”

I am indebted to Emyr Williams for his help and for being able to study his research work. Among his conclusions are the following:

  • The concept of a centralised European superstate is unacceptable to Saunders Lewis;
  • That his vision is based on the principles of federalism and subsidiary;
  • That his model for Europe is one of multilevel, plural governance;
  • That the element of national cultural continuity is an essential part of the European concept, and a central part of European identity.

According to Emyr Williams, “Saunders Lewis’ Catholicism and Francophilism (sic) was undoubtedly to inform his view of Welsh culture being part of a broader European Christian heritage; seeking to move Wales away from the parochial relationship with England and Britain, and seeking to engage it both culturally and politically with the wider world.”

Saunders Lewis acknowledges that he had been influenced by the work of Emrys ap Iwan – in particular by the book by T. Gwynn Jones on Emrys ap Iwan, described by Saunders as “One of those books that changes history and influences an entire generation, giving inspiration and direction to its thinking.”. Emrys ap Iwan, like Saunders Lewis drew much of his inspiration from France, and also from Germany where he had been a teacher. Emrys ap Iwan coined the term “ymreolaeth”, self-government; defining it in federal terms and using Switzerland as a model.

According to Saunders Lewis, the French philosopher and historian, Etienne Gilson, was one of the main influences on him; and Gilson himself was an authority on the work of Descartes, and cooperated closely with Jacques Maritain! Some say that it was his own awakening to the central importance of the European dimension brought Saunders Lewis to develop his political and national consciousness.

There was a time – in the sixties and seventies – when many within the national movement saw the European Union as an impediment to Welsh independence. In my opinion today – just as it was a century ago when Saunders Lewis was refining his vision of Wales – it is not Europe that threatens the future of Wales, or the values of Wales, but the imperialistic mentality of Westminster, which is as true today as it was in the days of Austen Chamberlain.

From our perspective today, what is important to remember is first of all, why did Saunders Lewis look to our European roots for inspiration? Cultural and religious reasons account for this, as our identity and culture spring from our European roots. Our values have developed from these roots, and for me this aspect is absolutely fundamental.

But there is also another most important reason why we should not give up on the task of uniting our continent; and we are reminded of this by the recent history of Ukraine. Some of us here today have relatives who suffered – or even lost their lives – in the two terrible wars fought between the nations of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Let us never forget that people came together after the second war with the aim of creating a new, peaceful unity for our continent.

In conclusion, I return to the thesis of Emyr Williams – who underlines the fact that Saunders Lewis did not set national sovereignty in an independent state as the foundation of his Welsh nationalism. And this, say some political scientists, makes him unique for his period, and far ahead of his time. He is certainly not isolated in the mediaeval past, as his political enemies would have us believe.

Emyr Williams worked on his thesis partly because there had been no effort since the 1970s to reassess Saunders Lewis and his political ideas in the light of the massive changes of the last forty years, which by now include:

  • Britain’s entry into the European Union, followed by its regrettable departure;
  • the development of the European social chapter, the fall of communism and European reunification;
  • smaller countries achieving full membership of the European Union;
  • establishment of a legislative parliament for Wales;
  • laws that give official status to the Welsh language; and
  • growth in support for independence in Scotland and in Wales.

These all confirm the need to reassess the values and political message of Saunders Lewis.

Emyr Williams says of Saunders Lewis:

“Instead of viewing a place for the Welsh nation within a hierarchical British Empire, he sees a European political and economic union as necessary to the political vitality of the “small nations of Europe” in an egalitarian mould. The idea of a European union is therefore integral to his political thought.”

 The message comes in a sentence:

“The development of the European Union as well as of its inherent principle of subsidiarity and multi level governance therefore requires that Saunders Lewis’ thought be re-examined.”

And that is also my message today, from the platform of the Literary Pavilion, to look once more at the teaching of one of the greatest writers of Wales, one who shaped a vision for the Wales of today – whether in terms of language rights, relationship with our continent, social justice or what is vital for civilised nationhood and international order.

And if we are to use the next three years learning the lessons of the century that has passed since 1926, where better to start on the task than here in Llŷn and on the platform provided by the University of Swansea? And how better to conclude than with two poems by Williams Parry, the first to Y Gwrthodedig – the Rejected One:

 

Hoff wlad, os medri hepgor dysg,
Y dysgedicaf yn ein mysg
Mae’n rhaid dy fod o bob rhyw wlad
Y mwyaf dedwydd ei hystâd.

 

(Beloved land, if you can do without the learning
Of the most learned in our midst,
You must among every country
The most blessed of all.)

 

And again, from Y Cyn-ddarlithydd, the Former Lecturer:

“Y Cyntaf oedd y mwyaf yn ein mysg
Heb gyfle i dorri gair o gadair dysg
Oherwydd fod ei gariad at ei wlad
Yn fwy nag at ei safle a’i lesâd.”

 

(The first was the greatest among us
With no opportunity to speak a word from the chair of learning
Because his love of his country
Was greater than of his position or his well-being.)

 

Diolch yn fawr.

Editor’s Note

This is a translation from Welsh of the lecture delivered by Dafydd Wigley at the 2023 National Eisteddfod at Boduan near Pwllheli. Where possible, previous received English-language versions have been used in rendering direct quotations, notably the translation by Dr Bruce Griffiths of Saunders Lewis’ Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb – Principles of Nationalism published by Plaid Cymru in 1975 on the occasion of the party’s Silver Jubilee. I have translated other passages. I have also made use of the work of D.Hywel Davies and Emyr Williams. I am grateful to them, and also to D.Hywel Davies for his practical help.

Dafydd Williams

Sources

The Welsh Nationalist Partty 1925-1945: A Call To Nationhood. D.Hywel Davies (1983) Cardiff. University of Wales Press.

Saunders Lewis: Letters to Margaret Gilcriest. Edited by Mair Saunders Jones, Ned Thomas and Harri Pritchard Jones (1993) Cardiff. University of Wales Press.

Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb – Principles of Nationalism. Saunders Lewis (1975) Plaid Cymru. Printed originally in 1926 by Ryan Jones, Argraffydd, Machynlleth.

The Social and Political Thought of Saunders Lewis, Emyr Williams. A dissertation submitted at the School of European Studies, Cardiff University, in candidature for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Cardiff University.  June 2005.

https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/54521/

Social and political thought of Saunders Lewis. -ORCA (cardiff.ac.uk)

Hanes Plaid Cymru