‘I think Wales has to get over England – it really has to’
England treated Wales terribly, but that was in the 13th century, says former Times editor Sir Simon Jenkins ,who has made a programme for BBC Radio 4 provocatively entitled Wales: A Twentieth Century Tragedy
WALES needs to “get over” England and “become Wales again” according to former Times editor Sir Simon Jenkins.
Interviewed by the BBC History Magazine to promote a programme he has made for Radio 4 that will be broadcast during March, Sir Simon said: “I think Wales has to get over England – it really has to. England treated it terribly, but that was in the 13th century.
“I was once talking to the Welsh minister of culture about how undersold I thought the great castles of Wales were – they’re the greatest collection of castles in Europe. He looked at me incredulously and said: ‘Why should we give publicity to English castles?’ I could not believe I was hearing this from someone in charge of tourism.
“That’s the problem. If you hate your neighbour that much, you aren’t going to get any help from them in the long term. And I think if Wales could get over England and become Wales again, it would do it nothing but good.”
Reflecting on the provocative title of the programme – Wales: A Twentieth Century Tragedy – Sir Simon claims that Wales is a shadow of its former self, and dominated by resentment and decline.
He says: “I think what I mean by this rather controversial title is that Wales – which is the land of my father – was, through much of its history, right back to the Middle Ages, a very prosperous part of the British Isles.
“It had extraordinary natural resources throughout the 20th century and benefited from them. It was far less poor than Ireland and Scotland, or much of the north and west of England. It had sheep, fertile valleys and uplands; it supplied England with milk. It also had slate, iron, lead, zinc, all these minerals, which it exploited successfully. And then coal.
“It had a very lively fabric industry and a lot of tourism, it was a beautiful place. Nothing in Wales, with the possible exception of the coal, needed to collapse. Why is it not that way today? That’s what fascinates me.”
Asked why coal was so important to Wales at the beginning of the 20th century, Sir Simon said: “The entire world needed coal. It was simply black gold, produced by huge areas of Glamorgan.
“In fact, Glamorgan was, for probably as many as 80 years, by far the richest county in Britain.
“The civic centre of Cardiff – the valleys, the ports and docks – were all centres of wealth. The
English didn’t steal this wealth; it was Welsh wealth, and most of it stayed in Wales.
“My father’s streets, in the village of Dowlais in Merthyr, were infinitely more substantial, wellbuilt and nice to live in than the ones he went to in Bradford or Lancashire, for instance, where he was appalled at the living conditions of the working class.
Wales really was a classy place, and I think, in many ways, the Welsh forget that because they spend so much time moaning.”
Asked how such resentments played out politically, Sir Simon said: “Welsh nationalism was largely cultural and bred of Saunders Lewis [the writer and academic who was one of the founders of Plaid Cymru] and people like that.
“It sprang from a discovery – a rediscovery in many ways – of Welsh linguistic culture and literary culture. And that was splendid and wonderful, and no problem. The trouble began, I think, with the Depression. This hit Wales hard because the price of coal collapsed. Coal and related industries in the late 19th century employed as much as half the working population of Wales. It was gigantic. But it was no different from wool in Yorkshire or cotton in Lancashire, or fish in Grimsby. The concept of a oneindustry region is not unique to Wales.
“What was unique to Wales was its difficulty in overcoming its decline – and there can be no denying that the decline of coal was dramatic and traumatic. One consequence in Wales, a highly controversial one, was that bright people fled – my father being one of them.
“It was a source of pride to my grandfather that almost all of his children ‘got out’. Left behind was a sense of resentment and failure, covering not just individual families or villages and towns but a political community that never let it go.
“The result of that was a complaint that you hear all the time: ‘It’s unfair, we’re maltreated, we’re oppressed.’ You don’t hear this phraseology in Liverpool or Newcastle or Southampton. And it’s overlaid with a sense of national insecurity.”
Sir Simon also rails against what he sees as the imposition of Welsh culture “on people who are just not a part of it”.
He clearly opposes making learning the Welsh language compulsory in schools, stating: “The only thing that will make it die out is if it’s compulsory. I once said that I honestly think the best thing for the Welsh language is to ban it. Then it will flourish.”
Unsurprisingly, Sir Simon’s comments have not been universally well received.
Mark Hooper, the founder of IndyCube, which provides cooperative working spaces in locations across Wales, said: “I agree with @simonjenkins4 that we spend far too much energy in #Wales feeling sorry for ourselves but I think he’s wrong-minded on much of the rest of his analysis. I said the same when I contributed to the programme – let’s see how much stays in.”