MORNING SERIAL
Wales: England’s Colony? The Conquest, Assimilation and Re-creation of Wales
ITS biggest fears lay in Scotland. There nationalist sentiments were also growing and had the added support of the discovery of North Sea oil which made the proposition of some form of self-government seem far more feasible. Growing demands for this, together with Labour’s fear of losing support in its Scottish and Welsh bases, very suddenly made devolution a mainstream political topic in the 1970s.
As in the nineteenth century, a political situation in England, where there was little between the two main parties in their levels of support, gave weight to the political demands of the other British nations. The outcome was the 1979 devolution referendums in the two nations. There was little enthusiasm for it in the Labour government but it was a way of placating nationalist sentiments that could otherwise easily escalate into demand for independence.
The referendum gave Wales the opportunity to shake off the English ‘shackles’ in a meaningful and political way, but the Welsh voters gave the idea a resounding ‘No.’ At the end of a decade where Welsh rugby had suggested a confident, even aggressive national identity, only 11.8 per cent of the electorate voted in favour of the creation of a Welsh assembly.
There were regional variations but even in Gwynedd, the area with the highest proportion of Welsh speakers, less than a third of votes cast were for Yes. The pro-devolution campaign had failed to communicate its vision and suffered from a wider climate of economic problems and distrust of the Labour Party’s record in national and local government.
But the vote was not just about practical politics. It was also unavoidably about nationality. The emergence of the Northern Irish troubles had not helped since it associated so-called ‘Celtic’ nationalism with extremism and conflict.
The ‘No’ campaign consistently played upon fears that devolution would mean the English-speaking majority being ruled by a Welsh-speaking clique from the north and that it would ultimately lead to the breakup of the UK.
> Wales: England’s Colony? by Martin Johnes is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW