Let’s not lurch back to the past in Wales

To be young in the 1960s – 1980s in Wales was very exciting.

It was a time of campaigning to have our own TV channel in our own language.

First granted by the Conservatives as an election pledge, and then renegued upon once elected.

The lack of understanding of Wales by the London Conservative government nearly gave rise to civil unrest, before they made a U-turn to create S4C.

The 1960s were the time of Aberfan, of government proposals to flood more Welsh valleys, to provide water for English (and Welsh) cities – of water pipelines, and government offices being blown up by MAC (Movement for the Defence of Wales).

Consecutive London governments began to panic at the prospect of the troubles in Northern Ireland being repeated in Wales (as several established politicians said at the time).

The result, was the CrowtherKilbrandon Commission’s investigation of the constitutional relationships of the countries of Britain, which recommended devolution of power, rather than risk violence.

This was the background which gave rise to the establishment of the Welsh Senedd.

However, the present generation of political candidates are too young to remember any of this, and a number are now campaigning for scrapping the Senedd, brought about by so many young, and older, people being prepared to be sent to jail for their cause.

These groups of prospective politicians, want to turn the clocks back to a time when many of the things we take for granted today were not available and had to be fought for, not just by being sent to jail, but being blacklisted for jobs, because of their “nationalist” views.

I, for one, would not wish to return to those “good old days” and would not advocate such a lurch in our history.

John H Davies Llandysul, Ceredigion