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A Prince, a King, and a Referendum: Rugby, Politics, and Nationhood in Wales, 1969–1979

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Martin Johnes
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Type
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 129 - 148
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2008

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References

1 Daily Mirror, 2 July 1969.

2 Ward, Paul, Unionism in the United Kingdom, 1918–1974 (Basingstoke, 2005), 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pimlott, Ben, The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II (London, 1996), 391Google Scholar.

3 See Clews, Roy, To Dream of Freedom (Talybont, 1980), 211–13Google Scholar.

4 For a detailed account of the investiture, see Ellis, John S., Investiture: Royal Ceremony and National Identity in Wales, 1911–1969 (Cardiff, 2007)Google Scholar.

5 The Times, 2 July 1969. The 1969 investiture was also influenced by a similar event in 1911, also designed to bring together Welsh and British national identities. See John S. Ellis, “Reconciling the Celt: British National Identity, Empire, and the 1911 Investiture of the Prince of Wales,” Journal of British Studies 37, no. 4 (October 1998): 391–418.

6 As is the convention in Wales, throughout this article “rugby” is used as shorthand to describe the sport of “rugby union.”

7 The Times, 10 March 1969.

8 John, Barry, The Barry John Story (London, 1975), 32Google Scholar.

9 The Times, 15 March 1977.

10 Davies, Mervyn and Roach, David, In Strength and Shadow: The Mervyn Davies Story (Edinburgh, 2004), 179Google Scholar.

11 There is a large literature on devolution in the United Kingdom, but for a good introduction, see Bogdanor, Vernon, Devolution in the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1999).Google Scholar

12 Andrew Evans and Duncan Tanner, “Defining or Dividing the Nation? Opinion Polls, Welsh Identity and Devolution, 1966–1979,” Contemporary Wales 18 (2006): 55.

13 Williams, Gwyn A., When Was Wales? A History of the Welsh (London, 1985), 305Google Scholar.

14 For introductions to such themes, see Holt, Richard, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford, 1989), chap. 4Google Scholar; Bairner, Alan, Sport, Nationalism and Globalization: European and North American Perspectives (Albany, NY, 2001)Google Scholar; and Adrian Smith and Dilwyn Porter, eds., Sport and National Identity in the Post-war World (London, 2004).

15 Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), 143Google Scholar.

16 For a nuanced sociological overview of the different possible relationships between sport and nationalism, see Grant Jarvie, “Sport, Nationalism and Cultural Identity,” in The Changing Politics of Sport, ed. Lincoln Allison Manchester, 58–83.

17 On this “reawakening” of Wales, see Kenneth O. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation: Wales, 1880–1980 Oxford, chaps. 1–5.

18 For the history of rugby in Wales, see Williams, Gareth, 1905 and All That: Essays on Rugby Football Sport and Welsh Society (Llandysul; 1991)Google Scholar; and Smith, David and Williams, Gareth, Fields of Praise: The Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union, 1881–1981 (Cardiff, 1980)Google Scholar. For the wider history of sport in Wales, see Johnes, Martin, A History of Sport in Wales (Cardiff. 2005)Google Scholar.

19 Max Boyce, “The Outside-Half Factory,” Live at Treorchy EMI Records. On the role of schoolteachers, see Samuel, Bill, Rugby: Body and Soul (Edinburgh. 1998)Google Scholar.

20 A triple crown is where all the other British nations are beaten in a single season, and a grand slam is where all four other nations in the competition are defeated.

21 Edwards, Gareth, The Autobiography (London, 1999), 114Google Scholar.

22 Western Mail (hereafter WM), 19 March 1979.

23 Bennett, Phil, The Autobiography (London, 2003), 275Google Scholar.

24 Jones, Emrys, ed., The Welsh in London (Cardiff. 2001)Google Scholar.

25 Fishlock, Trevor, Wales and the Welsh (London, 1972 3Google Scholar.

26 Fishlock, Trevor, Talking of Wales: A Companion to Wales and the Welsh (London, 1976), 45Google Scholar.

27 WM, 17 March 1979.

28 Smith and Williams, Fields of Praise, 375. J. P. R. Williams, JPR: The Autobiography of J. P. R. Williams London, 15.

29 Davies, Gerald, An Autobiography (London, 1979), 15Google Scholar.

30 Davies, John, A History of Wales (Harmondsworth, 1993), 644Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 Williams, Gareth, “Fields of Praise,” Planet 14 (1972): 20Google Scholar.

33 South Wales Echo (hereafter SWE), 19 March 1979.

34 The Times, 15 March 1977.

35 New Society, 10 February 1983.

36 Grand Slam BBC Worldwide. This was first broadcast in 1978. The mix of drink, song, and even prostitutes was the continuation of an interwar tradition that had seen Welsh miners head to Cardiff for matches followed by “ale and chops and tarts” (Idris Davies, Gwalia Deserta, pt. 33 [1938], in The Collected Poems of Idris Davies, ed. Islwyn Jenkins [Llandysul, 1980], 46).

37 The Times, 29 November 1979. More sinister than bawdy drinking weekends, a young Welsh miner was stabbed to death in Paris before a Wales match there in 1979 (SWE, 19 February 1979).

38 David Parry-Jones, Taff 's Acre London, 169.

39 Davies, John, Broadcasting and the BBC in Wales (Cardiff, 1994), 319Google Scholar.

40 While sport was the most popular of BBC Wales's outputs, it is important to note that not everyone watched it. In 1979, for example, 45.8 percent of Welsh households tuned in to watch Wales play Ireland on a Saturday afternoon (Davies, Broadcasting and the BBC, 358).

41 Williams, JPR, 19; Bennett, The Autobiography, 213; John, Barry John Story.

42 Bennett, The Autobiography, 4.

43 Thomas, Clem and Nicholson, Geoffrey, Welsh Rugby: The Crowning Years, 1968–80 (London, 1980), 19–20Google Scholar.

44 Williams, JPR, 19.

45 Davies, An Autobiography, 16.

46 Rugby had, of course, always had rowdy behavior and crowd disturbances, but there was a perception that rowdiness was a symbol of change.

47 John, Barry John Story, 53.

48 Price, Graham, Price of Wales (London, 1984), 143, 70Google Scholar.

49 Bennett, The Autobiography, 75–76.

50 Taylor, John, Decade of the Dragon: A Celebration of Welsh Rugby, 1969–1979 (London, 1980), 18–19Google Scholar.

51 Rugby had split into two sports (or “codes”) in 1895 over the issue of professionalism. Clubs from the north of England formed what eventually became known as rugby league, a sport that allowed professionalism and, over time, developed its own rules and style of playing. The sport they left behind became known as rugby union and was concentrated in the south of England and Wales. In England, the divide drew on class and regional tensions, and relations between the two different codes of rugby were never good. Rugby union refused to allow professionalism at any level until 1995. See Tony Collins, Rugby's Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football London, and Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain London.

52 See, e.g., Edwards, The Autobiography, 138–39.

53 The migration from amateur rugby union to professional league was especially strong during the interwar economic depression when players struggled to find work in Wales. See Williams, Gareth, “The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited: The Migration of Welsh Rugby Talent since 1918,” in The Global Sports Arena: Athletic Migration in an Interdependent World, ed. Bale, John and Maquire, Joseph (London, 1994) 25–38Google Scholar.

54 Bennett, The Autobiography, 70.

55 Price, Price of Wales, 144.

56 Bennett, The Autobiography, 7, 72, 75.

57 Price, Price of Wales, 71, 142.

58 Davies, An Autobiography, 14.

59 Bennett, The Autobiography, 33.

60 Price, Price of Wales, 154.

61 Davies, An Autobiography, 18.

62 Price, Price of Wales, 8.

63 Quoted in The Guardian, 2 February 1993.

64 Chris Williams, “J. P. R. Williams,” in More Heart and Soul: The Character of Welsh Rugby, ed. Huw Richards, Peter Stead, and Gareth Williams (Cardiff, 1999), 112.

65 Williams, “Fields of Praise,” 15.

66 Fishlock, Wales and the Welsh, 7.

67 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995).

68 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

69 Dylan Phillips, Trwy Ddulliau Chwyldro? Hanes Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, 1962–1992 [Through revolutionary methods? History of the Welsh Language Society, 1962–1992] Llandysul; Dylan Phillips, “The History of the Welsh Language Society, 1962–1998,” in “Let's do our best for the ancient tongue”: The Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century, ed. Geraint H. Jenkins and Mari A. Williams Cardiff, 463–90.

70 Denis Balsom, Peter Madgwick, and Denis Van Mechelen, “The Political Consequences of Welsh Identity,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 7, no. 1 (January 1984): 160–81, cited at 161.

71 Smith and Williams, Fields of Praise, 375.

72 The Times, 22 January 1968.

73 The Times, 19 March 1974. A letter in reply said there would be more support for the playing of the Welsh anthem at Twickenham if the English anthem was not so regularly interrupted by whistles and catcalls at Cardiff (The Times, 21 March 1974).

74 Thomas and Nicholson, Welsh Rugby, 91.

75 Quoted ibid., 94.

76 Quoted ibid., 96.

77 Davies, History of Wales, 644.

78 Fishlock, Talking of Wales, 47.

79 Williams, “Fields of Praise,” 15.

80 Gwilym R. Jones, “Dewin y Bêl” [King of the ball], in Gwilym R. Jones, Y Syrcas a Cherddi Eraill [“The Circus” and other poems] Bala, 50–54. Translation from Gareth Williams, “Postponing Death: Sport and Literature in Wales,” New Welsh Review 36 (Spring 1997): 44.

81 WM, 3 March 1979.

82 SWE, 28 February 1979.

83 SWE, 27 February 1979.

84 For an analysis of the 1979 referendum, see David Foulkes, J. Barry Jones, and R. Wilford, eds., The Welsh Veto: The Wales Act 1978 and the Referendum Cardiff.

85 Geoffrey Evans and Dafydd Trystan, “Why Was 1997 Different?” in Scotland and Wales: Nations Again? ed. Bridget Taylor and Katarina Thomson Cardiff, 100–101.

86 SWE, 3 March 1979.

87 “Tafod y Ddraig” [The dragon's tongue] quoted in translation in Osmond, John, ed., The National Question Again: Welsh Political Identity in the 1980s (Llandysul, 1985), xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

88 In 1968, a survey suggested that 68 percent of the Welsh electorate identified themselves as Welsh rather than British, while a 1970 survey showed that 65 percent of people did not object to being labeled Welsh (Balsom et al., “Political Consequences,” 162). All these surveys are problematic, because unlike work done in the 1990s, they force people to choose between Welsh and British.

89 Of respondents to the 1979 Welsh Election Survey, 36.1 percent of fluent Welsh speakers voted “Yes” compared to 11.2 percent of non–Welsh speakers (Evans and Trystan, “Why Was 1997 Different?” 101).

90 Jenkins, Nigel, Song and Dance (Bridgend, 1981), 43Google Scholar.

91 Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, 134. Similarly, after the 1992 general election, Jim Sillars of the Scottish National Party famously complained that “Scotland has too many ninety minute patriots whose nationalist outpourings are expressed only at major sporting events” (quoted in Grant Jarvie and Graham Walker, eds., Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation: Ninety Minute Patriots [Leicester, 1994], 1).

92 Williams, “Fields of Praise,” 16.

93 Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, 317.

94 On otherness in national identity, see Colley, Linda, “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1992): 309–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 On Wales's Britishness in a sporting context, see Martin Johnes, Soccer and Society: South Wales, 1900–39 Cardiff, chap. 6 and conclusion.

96 Balsom et al., “Political Consequences,” 174. Among what its analysts termed those with a medium cultural attachment to Wales (which it defined as based largely on linguistic factors and use of the Welsh media) the rugby, music, and singing category scored even higher than the environment. This group was largely people who did not speak Welsh but did use the Welsh media and lived outside South Glamorgan or Clwyd.

97 Rugby relations with South Africa were deeply controversial and gave the sport much bad publicity. The WRU maintained that while it did not approve of apartheid, its rejection of South African racial policies would be more effective if sporting relations were maintained. Not all the players agreed, and John Taylor asked not to be considered for games against South Africa in 1970. For an overview of British sporting relations with South Africa in this period, see Holt, Richard and Mason, Tony, Sport in Britain, 1945–2000 (Oxford, 2000), 161–64Google Scholar.

98 See The Times, 18 March 1974.

99 See, e.g., the comments of Bill Samuel in Western Mail, 16 March 1979.

100 Evans and Trystan, “Why Was 1997 Different?” 95–117.

101 Brian Roberts, for example, has argued that there has been a growth in the Welsh identification of the valleys in response to and in replacement of the decline of mining and the local radical tradition in local identities (Brian Roberts, “Welsh Identity in a Former Mining Valley: Social Images and Imagined Communities,” Contemporary Wales 5 [1994]: 77–96).

102 In a 2004 vote to find the 100 greatest Welsh men and women ever, Gareth Edwards finished sixth. See www.100welshheroes.com/ (accessed 10 April 2006).

103 Davies and Roach, In Strength and Shadow, 222–23.