I’m not sure that you are correct that the Welsh working class don’t give a toss about the environement, the starving in Africa or female genital mutilation, though these issues may not be on the front of their minds when paying the bills, and thinking about where next weeks food is coming from in the week before the next JSA payment goes into the bank account, or worrying if their JCP advisor is going to be in a bad mood and sanction them. In all the years that I have had dealings with people from the Valleys I have found them to be compassionate and caring almost to a fault. I remember one group from the Penrhys Estate (not known for it’s affulence) who had, after having worked together to get chwarae teg from the local authority for their community, had banded together and formed a choir. The occasion I met them they were involved in raising money, not for themselves, though goodness knows that they could have done with it, but to support a good cause in, wait for it, Lesotho, because that community in Lesotho was far worse off than they were.

I agree that Plaid Cymru is too often up it’s own arse, and too often bends over backwards to appease any notion that they be anti-English through apparently supporting any petty bouregois cause. They do fail miserably in starting where people are at, which is a fundamental, and if Plaid are wondering why they don’t seem to be able to dent Labour’s hold on Valleys people then to state the bleeding obvious. people are voting for the devil they know. If Plaid did what the LibDems did over many years in Cardiff, and gradually build up their support, then they can gain a lot of support. That’s the way it worked at a ward level where Labour had for years got in unopposed, even when 3 the councillors lived outside the ward, to a point where the LibDems took all the council seats, and eventually the Cardiff Central Westminster constituency. Hardly surprisingly, the LibDems have lost every council seat and we now have slumbering Labour councillors, and will no doubt also have a Labour parliamentary representative… I wonder why? It’s not as if the LibDems had to do that much other than being an alternative that appeared to care, and to be honest, they did take up local causes, and made sure that someone came along to support local campaigns etc. It’s a hard slog, but hardly rocket science, but it builds trust. If Plaid rolled it’s sleeves up and started to deliver something of value at a local level in the Valleys, then not only could they gain support over the local issues, but also further their agenda of supporting the wider human community worldwide.

It’s certain that Saunders Lewis didn’t understand the Welsh working class, I doubt very much if he truly understood the rural Welsh either. Despite his, (and his classes peculiar Welsh speaking bourgeois) rurutarianism, it was a ruritarianism that was almost strictly restricted to urban Wales. He was born into a bourgois Liverpool Welsh family, and he didn’t learn Welsh until he was an adult. His career was in Swansea and Cardiff, and he ended his days in that most rural of places, Penarth.

However, it seems to often be forgotten that one of the earliest economic thinkers that Plaid Cymru posessed, Dr DJ Davies certainly did understand the Welsh Working Class, as he understood the working class anywhere. Much of his thinking was published in the book ‘Towards Welsh Freedom’ in which he outlines ideas that still hold as sound today as in the 1930s and 40s when they were originally written.

To be true, Wales does posess a rag bag of sad rightists, of the variety who parade at Cilmeri every 13th December to celebrate the death of a historical nonentity. But then, I suppose it is aposite, as Llywelyn ein Llwy Olaf was no more than a self seeking robber baron attempting to carve out his own feudal fiefdom, as much as most present at that sad spectacle are trying to persuade the Welsh people that Wales can be a little fiefdom for them, the petty capitalists to exploit. That these people have become disillusioned with Plaid Cymru is probably the better for Plaid Cymru, though I still am of the opinion that there should be a name change to Plaid Llymru!

To begin with, the ‘freedom of movement’ argument is nonsense, a red herring. The same argument could have been applied – and I’m sure was – by the Russians in regard to the Baltic States. Freedom of movement between large and small countries will always be at the expense of the small countries. Either her brightest and best leave and the small country stagnates, sees falling population and other indicators of decline, or else the small country is, as in the case of Wales, colonised, partly to disguise the outflow of the brightest and best.

The Wales I wish to see is a Wales run in the interests of those who live in Wales. The Welsh language and chapel-going obviously can’t play the part they did in the 19th century in defining ‘Welshness’, nowadays it’s far more complex, but as a general rule, today’s Welsh are overwhelmingly descended from those Welsh-speaking chapel-goers of the 19th century. Though defining Welshness is not an exact science; it’s a matter of choice, and self-definition, but those with roots in Wales are far more likely to identify as Welsh than persons born elsewhere.

So language and chapel-going played a role in generations past, but I’m at a loss to undertand how voting Labour made anyone Welsh. Labour was and remains the anti-Welsh party. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the Liberal Party was the party of the Welsh-speaking chapel-goer. The Labour Party rose in the south among recent immigrants to the coalfield to replace the ‘Welsh’ Liberal Party, by the 1930s it was gaining the votes of the now anglophone and non chapel-going Welsh, many of whom had intermarried with those recent arrivals. In more recent decades, it’s been Plaid Cymru and the Liberals upholding ‘Welshness’. A case could even be made that the Tories have deeper roots in Wales and are more supportive of Welsh identity than the Labour Party.

The truth is that the Labour Party in Wales has always regarded Welsh identity as belonging to ‘the enemy’, be it Liberal or Plaid Cymru. Consequently, support for Welsh identity – bilingual schools, for example – is viewed with hostility by too many in the Labour Party because they are seen as a concession to ‘the enemy’. When you understand Welsh political history it makes ‘Welsh’ Labour’s current attitudes a lot clearer.

This is to say the least a perplexing problem. For a start Welsh people are free to move to other parts of the UK, and rather a lot of them do. How would you feel if the English put up ‘Keep Out’ signs along the border? Sauce for the goose … ? But the real problem surely is that your culture, your Welshness, has decayed to such an extent that incomers are no longer ‘converted’ after a few years’ residence as would once have been the case. Indeed, since you don’t appear to be a language enthusiast, a Labourite or a chapel-goer, what in your mind does make someone Welsh rather than English/British in this day and age? That’s not rhetorical btw, I’m genuinely curious.

As regards Plaid and Wales only a small percentage of the population of Wales could be regarded as Y Fro, the political party that wins Wales is the party that wins the industrial South and its valleys, so Plaid pandering to the language and to uber Welsh culturists is not going to cut it as regards one day becoming the largest party in Wales, Wales is left leaning and having a red Rhondda rebel as leader is a positive, if not now but in the future, for the party to have a female leader, a non Welsh speaker [but a learner] and somebody from the South will stand the party in good stead in the future.

Plaids movement to the left that has been on going for many many years now is to be applauded, Wales is a left leaning country, Plaid need to major on the economy and social justice policies, many think the language has had a fair deal over the years, Plaid need to learn from the SNP and get savvy, the population is sympathetic to socialist policies so that line needs to be the basis of their policies, the population is mixed with lots of incomers over the generations but everybody in Wales is Welsh and should be regarded as such and all rhetoric needs to be all inclusive, Plaid obviously wants to keep their voters happy in the Plaid heartlands but to breakout of those heartlands and become the biggest party in Wales Plaid need to start courting the people of the towns and valleys in the South, therefore their strategy needs to reflect this if they have aspirations to be the biggest political party in Wales..

Agree with every word, well said!

Can’t argue with anything you’ve written. When it comes to the Welsh lanaguage big families are almost certainly the last hope. If prissy, self-regarding little women really want to make a sacrifice for the language then they should have 8 or 9 kids. A few hundred doing that, setting an example, could encourage others and could be what is needed. Other minorities, in other cirrcunstances, have used the ‘Revenge of the Cradle’, from the French-Canadians to the Afrikaners and the Irish. The best weapon the nationalists and republicans have in the Six Counties is not the IRA, it’s the Catholic birthrate.

Llew doesn’t believe we should call the 20% of foreigners colonists. Does he accept that what is happening in the countryside is a real ethnic cleansing? Not at the barrel of a gun of course but the results are the same – one ethnicity replaced by a quite different one. What’s his solutuion? Is there one that wouldn’t break EU rules or offend that metropolitan elite which we always aspire to pease?

Adarynefoedd thinks that Wales can’t supply the necessary workforce to maintain a welfare state. Why ever not? Is it because the rulebook is written elsewhere, for the benefit of outsiders, and not to meet Welsh conditions? It strikes me that he/she is infected by the mentality of poor little Wales however will we cope without the English. He/She is also concerned about the long standing ethnic minorities in Cardiff and Newport. Aren’t they Welsh then? Haven’t their lives been shaped by the same historical processes that have affected all in the industrial south. Why single them out as if their different to the Irish, Rural Welsh and West Country English etc who came into Wales and now regard themselves as Welsh?

The development of a Welsh-speaking petty bourgeoisie has turned out to be something of a negative for Wales – I mean the teachers, council officials, S4C types etc. They don’t create any jobs and far too often their interests coincide with their English counterparts. They mouth pseudo-radical platitudes while the Welsh speaking working class and the English speaking working class see their lives and hopes go down the drain.