‘Early childhood distorted academic’s attitude toWales’
AN S4C programme this weekend offers a new answer to the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial figures in Wales’ recent history.
As well as reaffirming that Goronwy Rees had spied for the Soviet Union, the latest programme in the Dylan ar Daith series also offers an explanation why the brilliant academic also turned against the Welsh language and his social background.
Presenter Dylan Iorwerth and one of the contributors to the programme, Lord Elystan Morgan, come to the same conclusion – that being forced to leave Aberystwyth as a child had coloured and distorted Goronwy Rees’ attitude towards Wales.
“Goronwy Rees himself said that his early childhood in Aberystwyth was a kind of paradise, but the family moved to Cardiff and changed his life for ever,” says Dylan Iorwerth.
“When he came back to Aberystwyth later as principal of the University College, he had turned against everything that was central to his early life – the Welsh language, the chapel and the local culture.
“As it’s also obvious that he did some spying for the Soviet Union and was part of the scandal surrounding Burgess and Maclean in the 1950s, I sug- gest that he was also a kind of double agent against himself.”
Lord Elystan Morgan was a student at Aberystwyth when Goronwy Rees was principal there and was related to him. He puts forward a similar analysis and he also offers a personal insight into the man who was at the same time one of the most brilliant academics of his generation and a lovable rogue and womaniser who failed to fulfil his potential.
Lord Elystan Morgan said: “He left Aberystwyth under that cloud. It was a great loss in many respects – he was so different, so lively, so audacious. He was a man before his time and the Welsh institution at that time was not ready to accept someone like Goronwy Rees. Whether Goronwy Rees was the third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh spy – I do not know.”
The programme – the last in the present series of Dylan ar Daith (Dylan on Tour) – follows Goronwy Rees through three less well-known periods in his life – to Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, as part of a famous World War II expedition and through parts of Germany immediately after the war.
“Whatever you say about Goronwy Rees, the man, his writing was scintillating and his descriptions of Germany before and after the war throw new light on how Hitler came to power and why Germany has done so well since,” says Dylan Iorwerth.
The programme is produced by a company from Goronwy Rees’s own area – Unigryw is based in Talybont near Aberystwyth and cameraman, Aled Jenkins, is a local son of the Manse, like Goronwy Rees himself.
Dylan Iorwerth said: “His father, Rev RJ Rees was a minister at one of Aberystwyth’s biggest chapels, Tabernacle, and Goronwy has very vivid descriptions of being there. One picture was a happy one of him as a young boy feeling secure and homely looking at his father and the sun shining through the windows and the other is of his father at the pulpit going into the hwyl, the gentle person bawling and shouting… Years later, Goronwy Rees would see a similarity between this and Hitler punching people with words... punching them until they gave up thinking.”
Goronwy Rees said of his father: “One saw in front of one’s eyes a man quite suddenly transformed into something of a witch doctor, demoniac and possessed, the hwyl instilled fear and terror in me... a kind of shuddering, shrinking from such a bare breasted display of real or stimulated emotion and also a kind of alarm ...”
Dylan Iorwerth said: “By the First World War, R J Rees was using his power of speech to persuade people to join the army and that angered some members of his congregation.”
Lord Elystan Morgan said: “My father was RJ Rees’ first cousin and they were great friends. But that came to an end at the time of the First World War when he was preaching war and my father walked out of the deacons’ seat; things turned quite unpleasant.”
Dylan Iorwerth said: “In 1922, RJ Rees fell out with church members on political issues and he left to move to Cardiff and became a minister in the Valleys. As a result, as a 13-year-old boy, Goronwy’s Welsh language childhood came to an end. Years later, he would describe this as “leaving para- dise”, and for the rest of his life he hated the Welsh establishment.”
Lord Elystan Morgan said: “It is possible that Goronwy, who had been so much at home in Aberystwyth, felt that he had been exiled in moving to Cardiff and that may have later played a part in his attitude towards Aberystwyth.”
Goronwy Rees was named as a spy by a KGB defector in 1999. It finally ended years of suspicion that the Aberystwyth-born minister’s son had been a Soviet agent.
It was during his time at Oxford that he became an idealistic believer in socialism and it was his dalliance with communism that brought him in touch with Guy Burgess, who later defected to the Soviet Union.
Rees (1909–1979) does not have a portrait hanging on the walls of the college buildings derspite his tenure as Principal. He probably didn’t pass anything of great note to the KGB under the two code names Fleet and Gross. The only evidence of his tenure at the university is a small plaque, erected after some pressure from his family.
Tabernacle Chapel, where his father was a minister, has long disappeared.
Dylan ar Daith goes out on S4C at 8pm tomorrow.