Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T16:37:59.746Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond Identity? The Reconstruction of the Welsh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

R. Merfyn Jones
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The prospect of l'Europe des régions, which appears to promise a simultaneous migration of power outward to a wider federal Europe and downward to the devolved regions — both goals to be achieved at the expense of the presently constituted national governments — has raised expectations in the periphery as well as concern in the established centers. The question of national identity is suddenly on the agenda and has evoked a response throughout the countries of Europe: an attempt to define a specifically European identity to accompany the little maroon passports carried by its citizens has also caused confusion in capital cities and thrown out a challenge to the peripheral nations and regions. In some respects such areas might already have arrived at the destination, for, unlike the English or the French, the Scots and the Welsh have for centuries sustained an identity without the protective buttressing of a state of their own. The Welsh, in particular, have survived despite the lack of a separate legal and educational system and a recent history that has witnessed massive immigration and integrationist pressures. A series of traditional identities of and for the Welsh has suddenly been rendered as redundant as a coal miner. The Welsh, nevertheless, are, in their contrasts and diversity, yma o hyd— “still here,” in the words of a popular song. It might be that there are pointers in the Welsh experience of national identity of how to move beyond the confines of that debate itself, a debate only just beginning among the English.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 4: Britishness and Europeanness: Who Are the British Anyway? , October 1992 , pp. 330 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jones, J. B., “Wales and Europe,” in The National Question Again: Welsh Political Identity in the 1980s, ed. Osmond, J (Llandysul, 1985), pp. 58–71Google Scholar; Mainwaring, L., “Wales in the 1990s: External Influences on Economic Development,” in Regions, Nations and European Integration: Remaking the Celtic Periphery, ed. Day, G. and Rees, G. (Cardiff, 1991), pp. 73–86Google Scholar. Marquand, D., “Nations, Regions and Europe,” in National Identities: The Constitution of the United Kingdom, ed. Crick, B. (Oxford and Cambridge. Mass., 1991). pp. 25–37Google Scholar. On the English perspective, see Crick, B., “An Englishman Considers His Passport,” in National Identity in the British Isles, ed. Evans, N.. Coleg Harlech Occasional Papers in Welsh Studies (Harlech, 1989), pp. 23–34Google Scholar; Nairn, T.. The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neonalionalism (London, 1977), pp. 191–305. 306–28Google Scholar.

2 Zaring, J., “The Romantic Face of Wales,” Annuls of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 67 (1977)Google Scholar.

3 Borrow, G.. Wild Wales (London. 1862)Google Scholar. Only nine of his 109 chapters deal with industrialized Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.

4 Bennett, G. J., The Tourist's Guide through North Wales (London, 1853). p. viGoogle Scholar.

5 Graves, R., Goodbye to All That (London, 1929; reprint, London, 1985), p. 75Google Scholar. He was referring in particular to north Wales.

6 “The purpose of the historical Tonypandy was that it could be waved as a flag of proletarian resistance or dismissed as a minor scuffle”: see Smith, D., “Tonypandy 1910, Definitions of Community.” Past and Present, no. 87 (May 1980), pp. 158–84Google ScholarPubMed, quote on p. 158.

7 Welsh Affairs Committee, Inward Investment into Wales and Its Interaction with Regional and EEC Policies (London, 1988), vol. I, par. 39Google Scholar.

8 Smith, D., Wales! Wales? (London. 1984)Google ScholarPubMed; Williams, G. A., When Was Wales? A History of the Welsh (Harmondsworth, 1985)Google Scholar.

9 “From at least the thirteenth century the formal separation of native and settler was administratively and legally recognized in the establishment of Welshries and Englishries”: see Davies, R. R.. Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales, 1063–1415 (Cardiff. 1987). p. 160Google Scholar. See also Evans, N., “Immigrants and Minorities in Wales, 1840–1990: A Comparative Perspective,” pp. 5–26Google Scholar; O'Leary, P., “Anti-Irish Riots in Wales.” pp. 27–36Google Scholar: Sherwood, M., “Racism and Resistance: Cardiff in the 1930s and 1940s,” pp. 51–70Google Scholar, all in Llaftir: The Journal of Welsh Labour History, vol. 5. no. 4 (1991)Google Scholar. See as well Evans, N.. “The South Wales Race Riots of 1919,” Llafnr 3, no. 1 (1980): 5–29Google Scholar: Alderman, G., “The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales,” Welsh History Review, 6. no. 2 (1972): pp. 190–200Google Scholar.

10 Balsom, D.. “The Three-Wales Model,” in Osmond, J., ed. (n. 1 above), pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

11 Denney, D., “The Social Construction of Nationalism: Racism and Conflict in Wales.” Contemporary Wales: An Annual Review Of Economic and Social Research 4 (1991): 149–66Google Scholar.

12 Day, G. and Suggett, R.. “Conceptions of Wales and Welshness: Aspects of Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Wales,” in Political Action and Social Identity: Class, Locality and Ideology, ed. Rees, G., Bujra, J., Littlewood, P., Newby, H., Rees, T. L. (London. 1985). pp. 91–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Thomas, Dafydd Elis, “The Constitution of Wales” in Crick, , ed. (n. I above), pp. 57–67. 62Google Scholar.

14 Thomas, R. S., “Welsh Landscape,” in his Selected Poems, 1946–68 (London, 1973), p. 9Google Scholar.

15 See Thomas, Ned, The Welsh Extremist: A Culture in Crisis (London, 1971)Google Scholar.

16 Cymru, Plaid, Wales in Europe: A Community of Communities (Cardiff, 1989), p. 1Google Scholar.

17 Jones, I. G., “The Anti-Corn Law Letters of Walter Griffith,” Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 28, no. 1 (1978): 118Google Scholar.

18 Cox, K. R., “Geography, Social Contexts and Voting Behaviour in Wales, 1861–1951,” in Mass Politics: Studies in Political Sociology, ed. Allardt, E. and Rokkan, S. (New York and London, 1970), pp. 117–59Google Scholar; Hechter, M., Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (London, 1975), p. 224Google Scholar.

19 A detailed account of these organizations will be found in Wallace, Ryland, Organize! Organize! Organize! A Study of Reform Agitations in Wales, 1840–1886 (Cardiff, 1991)Google Scholar.

20 The Times (December 26, 1885).

21 James, A. J., Wales at Westminster (Llandysul, 1981)Google Scholar.

22 See Morgan, K. O., Wales in British Politics, 1868–1922 (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 286–90Google Scholar.

23 Cymru Fydd 1, no. 1 (January 1888): 1Google Scholar.

24 An interesting discussion of the limitations of the Welsh national movement will be found in Davies, J., Hanes Cymru: A History of the Welsh in Welsh (London, 1990), p. 450Google Scholar. This history of Wales has yet to be translated into English.

25 Wallace, p. 238.

26 Richard, Henry, Letters on the Social and Political Conditions of the Principality of Wales (London, 1866), p. 23Google Scholar.

27 “The problem with Ireland was that she encompassed a plural society that did not and could not see itself as plural”; see Boyce, D. G., Nationalism in Ireland (London and Dublin, 1991), p. 387Google Scholar. On the Basques, see Sullivan, J., ETA and Basque Nationalism: The Fight.for Euskadi, 1890–1986 (London and New York, 1988)Google Scholar.

28 The paranoia of the excluded can be discerned in the pages of Vincent, J. E., The Land Question in North Wales (London, 1896)Google Scholar: “It was raised in the vernacular press in the form of threats, repeated and violent, in which the landowners were warned of the fate which they would incur if they persisted in supporting the cause of the Church … even landowners are citizens of the United Kingdom” (pp. 9–10).

29 See James; Hopkin, D., “The Rise of Labour: Llanelli, 1890–1922” in Politics and Society in Wales, 1840–1922, ed. Jenkins, G. H. and Smith, J. B. (Cardiff, 1988), pp. 161–82Google Scholar.

30 Labour won a qualified victory in rural Anglesey in 1918 and in Arfon in 1922. A number of largely rural constituencies were won convincingly by Labour in the postwar period, including Merioneth, Cardigan. Pembroke, Brecon and Radnor; all have subsequently been lost, although Pembroke was regained in 1992.

31 The classic history of the south Wales miners is Smith, D. and Francis, H., The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London, 1980)Google Scholar.

32 Lieven, Michael, “Representations of the Working-Class Community: The Senghenydd Mining Disaster, 1913” in Llafur 5, no. 2: (1989): 17–30Google Scholar.

33 Neil Kinnock, Labour Party Political Broadcast, BBC, October 1991.

34 Smith and Francis, p. 30.

35 Francis, H., Miners against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

36 Horner, A., Incorrigible Rebel (London, 1960), p. 9Google Scholar; Paynter, W., My Generation (London, 1972), p. 58 and chap. 6Google Scholar.

37 Grenfell, D., Hansard Parliamentary Debates (July 15, 1936), col. 2085Google Scholar.

38 Edwards, H. T., It Was My Privilege (Denbigh, 1957)Google Scholar; Griffiths, J., Pages from Memory (London, 1969)Google Scholar.

39 Gwerin: “a term meaning either the people in general without reference to social class … or else the common people in contradistinction to the gentry"; see Stephens, M., ed., The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (Oxford. 1986), p. 238Google Scholar.

40 On Welsh nationalism, see Davies, D. H., The Welsh Nationalist Party, 1925–45: A Call to Nationhood (Cardiff. 1983)Google Scholar; Davies, J., ed., Cymru'n Deffro: Hanes y Blaid Genedlaethol, 1925–75 (Talybont, 1981)Google Scholar; Davies, C. A., Welsh Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: The Ethnic Option and the Modern State (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; Adamson, D. L., Class, Ideology and the Nation: A Theory of Welsh Nationalism (Cardiff, 1991)Google Scholar.

41 “The majority of Welsh poets and writers, novelists, dramatists, critics have since 1930 onwards been avowed members of the Welsh Nationalist Party”; see Lewis, Saunders. “Welsh Literature and Nationalism,” Western Mail (March 13, 1965), reprinted in Jones, A. R. and Thomas, G.Google Scholar, Presenting Suunders Lewis (Cardiff. 1973), p. 143Google Scholar. He seemed to be ignoring non-Welsh-speaking Welsh writers.

42 Lewis, Saunders. Y Ddraig Goch (March 1934), p. 1Google Scholar.

43 Foulkes, D., Jones, J. B. and Wilford, R. A., The Welsh Veto: The Wales Act 1978 and the Referendum (Cardiff. 1983)Google Scholar.

44 Balsom, D., The 1987 General Election in Wales, Welsh Political Archive, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1988, p. 23Google Scholar.

45 Dodd, A. H., The Industrial Revolution in North Wales (Cardiff. 1951)Google Scholar; John, A. H., The Industrial Development of South Wales, 1750–1850 (Cardiff. 1950)Google Scholar.

46 These figures are from the relevant census reports collected in Williams, J. ed., Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics, 2 vols. (Cardiff: Welsh Office, 1985), pp. 7, 17, 20Google Scholar.

47 Morgan, H., The Social Task in Wales (London, 1919), p. 24Google Scholar.

48 Smith, D., “The Valleys: Landscape and Mindscape,” in Glamorgan County History: Glamorgan Society, 1780–1980, ed. Morgan, P. (Cardiff. 1988), pp. 130–50Google Scholar.

49 On slate quarrying communities, see Jones, R. Merfyn, The North Wales Onarrymen, 1874–1922 (Cardiff. 1981)Google Scholar.

50 “In mining villages they were soon very accustomed to visiting intellectuals who had made the railway journey in search of those social and artistic truths that could inspire a whole generation”; see Stead, P., “Kameradschaft and After: The Miners and Film,” Llafur 5, no. 1 (1988): 39Google Scholar.

51 Zweig, F., Men in the Pits (London, 1948). pp. 4–5Google Scholar; Williams, G., “Compulsory Sterilisation of Welsh Miners, 1936,” Llafur 3, no. 3 (1982): 67–73Google Scholar.

52 Different perspectives on rural Wales will be found in Howell, D. W., Land and People in Nineteenth Century Wales (London and Boston, 1977)Google Scholar; and in Pretty, D., The Rural Revolt That Failed (Cardiff. 1989)Google Scholar.

53 A perceptive portrait of Ellis, and of Lloyd George, will be found in Morgan, K. O., “Tom Ellis versus Lloyd George: The Fractured Consciousness of Fin-desiecle Wales.” in Jenkins, and Smith, , eds. (n. 29 above), pp. 93–112Google Scholar.

54 See Jones, I. G.. “Merioneth Politics in Mid-nineteenth Century,” in his Explorations and Explanations: Essays in the Social History of Victorian Wales (Llandysul, 1981), pp. 83–164Google Scholar.

55 “The culture of Wales is a peasant culture grounded in the countryside”; see H. Morgan, p. 47.

56 J. Williams, ed. (n. 46 above), 1:256–82, 289–307.

57 Welsh Reconstruction Advisory Council, First Interim Report: Office of the Minister of Reconstruction (London, 1944), app. 1, p. 123Google Scholar, quoted by Thomas, D., “Economic Decline” in Wales between the Wars, ed. Herbert, T. and Jones, G. E. (Cardiff. 1988), p. 16Google Scholar.

58 Humphrys, G., Industrial Britain: South Wales (Newton Abbot, 1972), p. 36Google Scholar; Holloway, F., “The Inter-war Depression in the Wrexham Coalfield,” Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society 27 (1978): 86Google Scholar.

59 Humphrys, pp. 50, 115.

60 On the recent history of women workers, see Williams, G. A., “Women Workers in Wales, 1968–82,” Welsh History Review 11, no. 4 (1983): 530–48Google Scholar.

61 John, A. V., “A Miner Struggle? Women's Protests in Welsh Mining History,” Llafur 4, no. 1 (1984): 72–90Google Scholar. A recent collection of essays is John, A. V., ed., Our Mothers' Land: Chapters in Welsh Women's History, 1830–1939 (Cardiff. 1991)Google Scholar.

62 For sober assessments of the strike in Wales, see Francis, H. and Rees, G., “No Surrender in the Valleys: The 1984–85 Miners' Strike in South Wales,” Llafur 5, no. 2 (1989): 41–71Google Scholar; Howells, D., “The 1984–85 Miners' Strike in North Wales,” Contemporary Wales 4 (1991): 67–98Google Scholar.

63 Cerdd dant: “singing of a counter-melody to a tune played on the harp”; see Stephens, ed. (n. 39 above), p. 84; eisteddfod: a literary, musical and cultural festival and competition.

64 An account of earlier campaigns of violence in the 1950s and 1960s will be found in Clews, R., To Dream of Freedom (Talybont, 1980)Google Scholar.

65 J. Williams, ed., p. 87.

66 Cymru, Plaid. Migration into Wales: A Positive Response ([Cardiff?], 1988)Google Scholar.

67 Day, G., “‘A Million on the Move’? Population Change and Rural Wales,” Contemporary Wales 3 (1989): 137–60Google Scholar.

68 S. Lewis, “Tynged yr laith” (Fate of the language), BBC Wales annual lecture, 1962; Williams, C. H., “Non-violence and the Development of the Welsh Language Society, 1962–c. 1974,” Welsh History Review 8, no. 4 (1977): 426–55Google Scholar.

69 Carter, H., Culture, Language and Territory (London: BBC, 1988), p. 21Google Scholar.

70 Cymru, Plaid, Wales in Europe (n. 16 above), p. 15Google Scholar.

71 See the extensive interview with Thomas, Dafydd Elis, “Tuag at y milflwyddiant” (Toward the millenium), Barn 346 (November 1991): 3–8Google Scholar.

72 See their newspaper Y Cyfamodwr (The covenanter), special eisteddfod ed. (August 1991).

73 Davies, W. C. and Jones, W. L., College Histories: University of Wales (London, 1905), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

74 Osmond, J., “The Dynamic of Institutions,” in Osmond, , ed. (n. I above), pp. 225–55Google Scholar; Williams, E., “The Dynamic of Welsh Identity,” in Evans, , ed. (n. I above), pp. 46–59Google Scholar.

75 Walker, P., Slaying Power: An Autobiography (London, 1991)Google Scholar. Walker, secretary of state from 1987 to 1990. makes it quite clear that he was pursuing a non-Thatcherite policy in Wales: “What we achieved in Wales as a result of close government co-operation with industry, councils and trade unions does underscore the weakness of our post-war performance in the rest of the country. … Britain, with its free-trade attitude belonging to another century, adopted under Margaret an arms-length relationship between government and industry” (p. 212).

76 Kellas, J. G.. “The Scottish and Welsh Offices as Territorial Managers,” Regional Politics and Policy 1, no. 1 (1991): 87–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 An Index of Welsh Associations, Movements, Bodies, Committees and Institutions (Welsh Library Association, 1984)Google Scholar.

78 Morgan, K. O., Rebirth of a Nation: Wales, 1880–1980 (1981). p. 251Google Scholar. See as well Morgan, D., ed., Babi Sam (Caernarfon, 1985)Google Scholar.

79 Evans, G., Fighting for Wales (Talybont, 1991), pp. 172–82Google Scholar.

80 Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation.

81 Welsh Affairs Committee (n. 7 above), p. xvi.

82 Griffiths, Bruce, Saunders Lewis (Cardiff. 1989)Google Scholar.

83 Lewis, S., “Address to the First Annual meeting of the Welsh Nationalist Party in 1926,” in Sounders Lewis: A Presentation of His Work, ed. Jones, H. Pritchard (Springfield, Ill., 1990), pp. 29–33Google Scholar, quote on p. 30.

84 Ibid., p. 31.

85 For a parallel interpretation of recent massive change in France, see Mendras, Henri, La seconde révolution française, 1965—84 (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar.