A SPEECH TO BE DELIVERED AT SILIAN CHURCHYARD, LAMPETER, ON MARCH 28th, 2015 AT THE GATHERING TO MARK THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF JULIAN CAYO-EVANS OF THE FREE WALES ARMY
It’s good to see so many young people here today who didn’t even know Cayo. I think that’s because Cayo, and the Free Wales Army, represent a refusal to submit with which many Welsh can identify today.
The reason I was drawn to Cayo, Dennis Coslett, Dai Bonar, Viv Davies and the rest, was that they saw the problem we faced very clearly, and they saw no need to complicate it. The problem in the 1960s was the same problem our ancestors faced a thousand years earlier – we Welsh were confronted with an aggressive and acquisitive neighbour.
This clarity of vision was often derided and dismissed as simplistic or even ‘racist’ by those who regarded themselves as intellectually superior to us, those who preferred to hide the truth behind ‘socio-economic paradigms’ and other bullshit.
This helps explain why the Free Wales Army, and even MAC, have almost been written out of history. To believe some books I’ve read, the only opposition to the Investiture in 1969 came from Plaid Cymru and Cymdeithas yr Iaith! But this is the price that has to be paid for frightening people with the truth.
Things have obviously changed since the 1960s when we still had industries paying good wages, and plenty of jobs. Today, most parts of Wales are in managed decline. In rural areas like this the only future our young people are offered is fawning over tourists, wiping wrinkly backsides, and building houses they’ll never be able to afford. And if you don’t like it, then move out . . . and make way for a new population.
Something else that’s changed is that back in the 1960s the Scots used to look to Wales for inspiration – can you believe that? Today Scotland is on the verge of independence, and because many in London are now resigned to the ‘loss’ of Scotland they will do everything in their power to hang onto Wales.
So we’ll see an upsurge in BritNat propaganda – even worse than we’ve seen in recent years! Expect to see poppy sellers appear some time in May; all television programmes will be renamed ‘Great British’ this and ‘Great British’ that; and attempts – overt and covert – will be made to further undermine Welsh identity.
And all this will either be welcomed or greeted with silence by the quisling regime down Cardiff docks, and the so-called ‘Welsh’ media.
So forget fracking, forget the M4, forget the Barnett Formula, because these are trivial matters compared to this threat to our very survival as a nation. Cayo and the boys would have cut through the bullshit and understood it, and known how to react. How will you react?
