MORNING SERIAL
IN THE wake of Cymru Fydd’s collapse, the most important Welsh Liberals, Lloyd George and Tom Ellis, turned their backs, by and large, on Welsh issues and instead sought to advance their ideals and their careers in a British context.
This is a cause of some lament today and there have been academic criticisms that the 19th-century Welsh Liberals failed to develop the kind of separatist nationalist movement that was emerging in other parts of Europe.
But for most of the Liberals there was no need. They did not regard Britishness as something imposed on Wales, but as a part of Wales and key to its national resurgence.
This was perhaps evident in how the royalist Prince of Wales’ feathers or the harmless leek were the most popular national symbols rather than the fiery Red Dragon of Wales.
As the previous section showed, Welsh Britishness was hardly surprising given that this was a time when the Welsh economy was booming – and imperialism was at the heart of that.
Even Cymru Fydd was only looking for devolution rather than independence.
Many today may not be comfortable with the idea of Wales as part of the Empire, but at the time empires were not seen by most as tools of oppression but of enlightenment and progress.
Progress was a very powerful Victorian notion and to go against it would have made little sense.
Moreover, since the Liberals regarded Wales as a nation defined first and foremost by religion there was simply no need for any political separatism, since the British state was able to guarantee Nonconformism’s freedoms.
This stance may well have been a missed opportunity to deliver devolution and a nation state that was Welsh speaking, but that simply was not a concern of any more than a small minority.
Instead, they were content with how they had promoted Wales as a Nonconformist Liberal nation, with a distinct identity within a wider British context and the symbols of nationhood to prove it.
> Wales: England’s Colony? by Martin Johnes is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com