‘Plaid and the UK must work in harmony to regroup post Brexit’
In his latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, our chief reporter speaks to Plaid Cymru grandee Cynog Dafis about the party’s relationship with Brexit and the rest of the UK
PLAID Cymru should start speaking about Britain in positive terms and contribute to its “reconstruction” after Brexit, according to one of the party’s most respected elder statesmen.
Speaking on a Martin Shipton Meets podcast, former MP and AM Cynog Dafis, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this month, said: “The Plaid Cymru vision has to be inspiring.
“It’s got to inspire its own members in the first place to activism, to working hard, to organisation and all that kind of thing.
“Secondly, it’s got to be realistic. It’s got to convince people that the kind of ideas we’re suggesting can actually be implemented over a fiveor 10-year period – that these are practical and realistic things.
“The third thing is that it’s got to be unthreatening. I think people perceive an element of threat in Plaid Cymru, as a party that’s really about shaking things up so radically, so fundamentally as to destabilise life.”
He said he thought this was a false, but real perception that a lot of people have.
Turning specifically to the future of Britain, Dafis said: “Plaid Cymru needs now to speak about Britain in positive terms.
“In the Welsh Nationalist tradition, Britain has been seen as a threat, as the obstacle. You’re either British or you’re Welsh – and the interests of Wales are contrary to the interests of Britain as an entity.
“I think that comes from the perception of Britain as the home of the British Empire, Great Britain as a dominant force in Welsh politics, that kind of thing.
“Following Brexit, I think that’s all going to change. Britain is going to have to come down a couple of pegs as a result of the Brexit process, completely contrary to what the Brexiteers themselves think.
“I think Plaid Cymru should speak constructively about the reconstruction of Britain as a different kind of place.
“Britain is an abiding reality, an abiding entity – and Plaid Cymru needs to contribute to the debate about what kind of Britain it is that we need for the future.
“Fundamentally, it’s going to be about the partnership of nations, equal in status if not in size, if not in strength – but of equal status and equal respect.
“So it’s about reconstructing Britain – not talking about abolishing Britain.
“Whether or not the nations within that new reconstruction will be technically independent or not isn’t the real issue.
“The important issue is how they work together, how they develop their own particular identities and interests, at the same time as living in a kind of partnership and amity with the other components.”
When it was put to him that such a possibility may be unrealistic with England as the dominant partner, Dafis said: “England will always be the dominant presence in Britain because of its size, of course, and we’re going to have to live with that. Even if Wales were independent and Scotland were independent, England would still be dominant – that’s the fact of the matter.
“We’ve got to live with that and we’ve got to assert nevertheless Wales’ own particular perspective in its own interests... and build into any constitutional arrangements compensatory factors.
“So, in any constitutional arrangements, there would have to be weighting, as it were, in favour of the smaller nations so that their voices would have to be respected and recognised.”
Asked whether he could see England agreeing to do that, Dafis said: “I haven’t the slightest idea, but that is what we should aspire to. This is the vision that we should present to the people. Whether people will respond to it, of course, is another matter.
“But I’ve got enough confidence in the English at their best – oh yes – to believe that they would respond positively to that. After all, I was for a long time a student of English literature. I read Wordsworth and Shakespeare and all these people. In that sense I can say I absolutely loved the English tradition – and in that sense too I would hope that English tradition would find sense too in working in these kind of new arrangements.”
During the podcast discussion, Dafis also spoke of his time as one of the early activists of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society), breaking the law in a nonviolent way to secure equal status for Welsh.
Now, however, he believes language activists should change their tack.
He said: “I think the language movement has found itself entrenched into a preoccupation with [the issue of language rights for individuals] when we need a shift to active promotion of the language, encouragement, creative activity that is aimed at making the Welsh language an exciting, radical and creative thing to be involved with.
“It’s my conviction that Cymdeithas yr Iaith has failed – adequately, anyway – to shift its preoccupation from status to a more active encouragement and advocacy role.”
Dafis also spoke of the historic agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Green Party that saw him able to jump from fourth place in 1987 to first place in 1992 when he stood as a parliamentary candidate in Ceredigion.
He said: “It wasn’t easily done. It involved an enormous amount of work, but it succeeded.
“People like Dafydd Wigley and Ieuan Wyn Jones I know were highly suspicious initially of this idea.
“But, as is always the case with Dafydd Wigley, he takes some persuading, but once he is persuaded, then his commitment is total.”