‘...it became apparent that we might be asked to form a government – and quite frankly Plaid wasn’t ready for that’
In his latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, our chief reporter speaks to former Plaid Cymru President Lord Dafydd Wigley, under whose leadership the party had its greatest electoral success
DAFYDD Wigley has spoken of how the “fear of God” went through him when he thought Plaid Cymru might have won the first National Assembly election in 1999 and he would have been asked to form a government.
An MP for 25 years at the time, he had been one of a small band of elected Plaid representatives in Westminster.
When Plaid did better than expected in the inaugural election of the Assembly, the party was in no shape to run Wales.
Lord Wigley, who in total represented Caernarfon at Westminster and Cardiff Bay for 29 years, said: “The result came as quite a shock to me, as it came through. It appeared at one point, on the morning of the Friday after the Thursday voting, that it could have been a landslide to Plaid – that we were winning seats like Rhondda and Llanelli and Islwyn, but we were doing very well indeed in seats like Cynon Valley, within a few hundred votes of winning it, as it transpired.
“But when that was happening I had the fear of God run up me, because it became apparent that we might be asked to form a government – and quite frankly Plaid wasn’t ready for that.
“We’d been a small opposition party in a Westminster context. We hadn’t run anything more than Gwynedd council, I think, outside that, and we weren’t ready for that level of responsibility.”
Explaining why Plaid – which in the end won 17 Assembly seats, a record it has not improved upon since – had done so well, Lord Wigley said: “Initially our objective was to ensure that we were at the very least the second party and hopefully that we stopped Labour being in overall control.
“That appeared to be quite a challenge when the campaign started. But in many ways the people of Wales were looking at the Assembly campaign as a context in which Plaid made sense. We had the experience of talking about the needs of Wales, developing policies that were founded in Wales, rooted in Wales, and people were willing to give us a chance.
“It was also a situation where Labour had won a landslide election in 1997 on a UK level [under] Tony Blair and it was a little bit mid-term in 1999, and any government, however popular they may have been originally, loses a little bit of a shine, and they haven’t developed policies strong enough to make a difference – and therefore we benefited from that.
“Labour had also from their point of view very unfortunately lost Ron Davies as their leader. Alun Michael [the replacement leader] didn’t have the charisma, although he was a perfectly competent minister in Labour governments in London. He didn’t have the shine that was needed to project a new face, a new start, a fresh beginning, a new dynamic – and on top of that he had not been elected by the Labour Party themselves in Wales. He was Tony Blair’s person, there was an election that was regarded as inadequate by many people in the Labour Party, and that’s why when Rhodri Morgan eventually took over it was as if Labour were being given what they wanted in Wales.”
In the expectation of becoming the main opposition party, Lord Wigley had already negotiated with Ron Davies that it could nominate the Presiding Officer – Dafydd ElisThomas.
He said: “We formed a very strong group. There were first-class people there like Professor Phil Williams, from Aberystwyth University, an outstanding scientist, people like Cynog Dafis, whose campaigning in Westminster on green issues had really made a mark.”
In fact, in that first election, Plaid got a higher share of the vote than the SNP achieved in the first Scottish Parliament election.
Asked why Plaid had not subsequently seen a rise in support to match the SNP’s, Lord Wigley said: “I think in the initial years of devolution in the two countries, both Plaid and the SNP had a bit of a struggle.
“In the 2003 election we didn’t do as well in Wales, and the SNP didn’t do all that well in Scotland.
“The SNP came through in the period 2006-2007. Alex Salmond had taken over and he brought in a professionalism. He had first-class advisers and the party was perhaps a more disciplined party than Plaid Cymru.
“They were prepared to stick to agreed guidelines right through Scotland, and to have a single-mindedness of purpose to become the largest party, which they did – just, with one more seat than Labour.
“It was enough to form a minority government, and having done that, they could then show what they could achieve.
“Now had Plaid in the period 2001-2002 been in a position to form a government and show what we could do, I have no doubt we could have done equally well.
“The situation in Scotland is very different to the situation in Wales, and one of the things they had in Scotland was a much stronger established Civil Service.
“The Welsh Office was fairly new – it was 1964 when it came into being, and it was still struggling to get the level of competence that was needed.
“And the devolution act we had in Wales didn’t give the same powers as Scotland. By now we’ve got those powers – but it’s taken a long time to get there.
“In many ways Wales now is in the position Scotland was immediately after that first referendum. So the 2021 election when it comes could be the election that really tests Plaid: are we going to be a party ready for government at a time when the National Assembly has the powers fit to be a legislature for Wales?”
Asked what Plaid needed to do in policy terms to persuade people to vote for it, Lord Wigley said: “I think we have to show that we’re talking sense, that we know what we’re talking about in terms of economic regeneration, and that we can actually deliver.”