MORNING SERIAL
NEARBY was Glamorgan County Hall which had at its front a huge sculpture of muscular miners who looked more like Greek gods. There was little sign here of any colonised mindset. On the back of a buoyant economy, this was a confident nation.
However, the big cause of the Welsh Liberals was the disestablishment of the church, which meant stripping Anglicanism of its position as the official state religion of Wales. This was about recognising and respecting the national difference of Wales but it was not an easy thing to achieve and, despite the weight of Welsh Liberal votes, it was never a priority for any Liberal government. A series of bills got nowhere until 1914, when war disrupted one at its final hurdles. By the time disestablishment finally happened in 1920, it seemed a rather outdated issue that no longer stirred the emotions, but for more than a generation before it had been a veritable battle for Welsh nationhood.
Symbolism only went so far. Influenced by similar demands in Ireland, the 1890s saw a home rule movement for Wales emerge within the Liberal Party. Known as Cymru Fydd, it sought to create a Welsh parliament but failed to articulate any clear need for this or to fuse nationalism with the growing working-class consciousness that might have promoted it. It ran into suspicions between the coalfield and rural areas and collapsed after a meeting in Newport in 1896 where David Lloyd George was shouted down, something he blamed on “Newport Englishmen”. This was more than just the outcome of cultural tensions but also a realisation that it was being within the British Liberal movement that had helped advance Welsh causes.
Political separation might have significant symbolic significance but there was nothing of the popular antagonism to British rule that existed in Ireland to make many feel this was particularly important. Instead, most of the Welsh who thought about these things at all were content with their less radical symbols of nationhood.