CAROLYN HITT ON WELSH INDEPENDENCE
At 18, it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. Not only was the boy my age dressed in the kind of tweed ensemble not seen since an Edwardian country house shooting party, he was actually wearing a monocle. A monocle! For real.
This wasn’t some Bertie Wooster theme party or a revisiting of Brideshead. It was 1987 and I was getting my first experience of Old Etonians, who were already assured of their position at the heart of the British Establishment even though they were barely past the bumfluff stage.
When you’d arrived at Oxford from a comp in Pontypridd this kind of encounter wasn’t so much a culture shock as an earthquake. More than 30 years later he’s dropped the monocle, but as he draped himself across the House of Commons green leather with the same languid, arrogant and sickeningly superior sense of entitlement, Jacob Rees-Mogg was still underlining the lesson I’d first learned at 18. Wales is a world away from the people who exert power over it.
And as support for Welsh independence hits an historic high – revealed by the results of a YouGov survey yesterday – it’s evident that more and more of us are thinking about the implications of this void.
Politics is the art of the possible, as the famous Bismark quote goes, but in the current climate of carnage it feels more like the art of anything’s possible. At the scary end of this spectrum is the prospect of a No Deal Brexit. Wales might have voted
Leave but no-one in their right minds would have opted for this particular route out of the EU.
It would be nothing short of a catastrophe for Wales, which would be hit harder than the rest of the UK. This isn’t scaremongering. A few indisputable statistics tell the story, most pertinently that last year nearly two-thirds (60.9%) of exports from Wales went to the EU compared with 44% of UK exports. Their value was £16.9 billion.
At the more exhilarating end of anything’s possible is contemplating a new future for Wales extricated from the Eton Mess of Westminster rule. Boris, Brexit, the possible breakaway of Scotland and growing support for a united Ireland should shock us out of Cymric complacency and get us thinking what would be left for Wales in the shake-down of a break-up of the Union.
We’d need self-determination by design rather than default. Wales has to start thinking about its own destiny in these uncertain times because no-one at the other end of the M4 is going to give a stuff.
As historian Martin Johnes wrote in these pages recently: “The UK could disintegrate whether Wales is ready or not. It is very unlikely that Wales will be driving the changes but it will have to know how it wants to respond and whether it wants to remain in a union where England is the only other member. The practicalities have to be discussed before time runs out.”
One of the key arguments against independence has been economic – that it would be a heart rather than a head decision for Wales. All the romantic patriotism in the world is useless if an independent Cymru would be worse off. But with all the indications pointing to Wales being devastated economically by Brexit, who is best placed to look after our interests – us or them?
These are the factors that are shaping Indy-curiosity and finally bringing the issue of independence into the mainstream. My own feelings
about independence have wavered between ambivalence and scepticism – until now.
I come from a background that has embraced cultural patriotism but not political nationalism. Old Labour, post-industrial, happy to scream our identity from the rugby stands or weep with hiraeth on hearing a male-voice choir caress Myfanwy’s most poignant chord. But independence? That was the aim – I felt with typical Valleys chippiness – of those who said people like me weren’t as Welsh as people like them.
My parents were children of the Second World War, a time when Britishness was not just an identity, but an essential act of togetherness in the face of a terrifying foe. My nan, meanwhile, had a reverence for royalty that ran to a framed picture of the entire extended clan – second cousins and all – on the wall of her tiny terrace house. (Actually, even in 1977 I thought that was a bit weird.)
But these were the cultural conditions that made growing up in some parts of Wales a unionist experience. Don’t judge me for it. We’re all products of our environment. If I’d been transplanted to deepest Gwynedd at 18 months life would have been very different.
Yet as Eddie Butler articulated so eloquently last week from the balcony of Merthyr Tydfil’s magnificent Red House, it’s different now even for those of us who were raised to think Britain was reasonably Great. “The United Kingdom that made my parents proud to call themselves British no longer exists,” said Eddie. And he’s right.
Let us pause for a moment to ponder that a rousing speech in favour of Welsh independence was made by Eddie Butler. As captain of Wales Eddie threw some smart passes in his day but his presence on the Merthyr Yes Cymru platform was a glorious curveball.
This is what makes me excited about creating a national conversation about independence. Unexpected voices are speaking out – voices that will reach those who might not usually listen.
“To be in Merthyr, with independence in the air. This place, this crucible of resistance,” declared Eddie with a wonderful sense of theatre before lapsing back into the Welsh identity self-deprecation some of us indulge in.
“I’m from half an hour that way. Monmouthshire. Not a centre of revolution. Not really Welsh at all,” he said. But then he added: “How easily we – even we – pick on the things that keep us apart. Well I’ve been lucky in my working life to go to just about every corner of this land of ours – working, walking, talking and I have reached the conclusion that there is far more that binds us together than keeps us apart.”
It is a key message if these conversations are to continue. Because for all the surge in the polls, the marches that have attracted thousands and the energy of social media debate, let’s be realistic about the depth of interest. I live in a Cardiff bubble of media and politics where my timelines buzz each morning with talk of independence. It’s a different story when I return to my Rhondda roots each week and doubtless other parts of Wales will feel the same.
So a movement that is inclusive and embracing of all strands of Welsh identity is essential. Welsh independence must be a broad church. The faithful who have always worshipped will be fine. Progress depends on the converts.
Even those who can’t contemplate being part of a nation that decides its own destiny should welcome the opportunity to get engaged in the debate. Any discussion of what can make Wales a better place in a political climate where anything is possible should be welcomed.
We are living in extraordinary times. Worrying times. And while Jacob Rees-Mogg might be privileged enough to take it lying down, it’s time Wales thought about standing on its own two feet.