I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL PROBABLY NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.
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On Monday I attended the funeral of the great patriot John Barnard Jenkins at Pentrebychan Crematorium, Rhostyllen, Wrecsam.
For obvious reasons, there weren’t many people there, just the family and a few loyal admirers. Including me. In fact, I think I was the only one there from the 1960s generation. God! I’m getting old.
I managed to take a couple of short videos on my mobile phone. I put these out on Twitter and it seems only right that they should also appear on the blog. So here they are.
The first shows the Cambria Band leading the hearse. John of course was a great influence on the band, helping Adam Phillips get it started.
Here’s the second video, which shows the coffin being taken from the hearse into the crematorium.
Although the family had asked for no wreaths I couldn’t help noticing as I left the crematorium a small wreath propped against a wall.
Click to enlarge
The card, carrying the standard of Owain ap Gruffydd Fychan, ‘Glyndŵr’, reads:
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
The clue to my motivation lies in my use of the word ‘Wexit’, for I believed then, and I believe even more strongly today, that Brexit, especially a disastrous and damaging Brexit, can lead to Welsh independence. And Welsh independence is my priority; more important by far than membership of the EU.
In addition to voting for Brexit I confirmed my trip to Tartarus by supporting Trump, and more recently, by voting for the Brexit Party in the recent EU elections. Then there’s my backing for Neil McEvoy, and the regular criticism of Plaid Cymru.
Oh, yes, and of course I attack the Labour Party on a regular, almost daily, basis.
So, all in all, I suppose I’ve made a few enemies.
My rap sheet is enough to reduce certain people to bouts of carpet-chewing rage. These, it should be said, tend to be Plaid Cymru members and supporters; more especially what some call the ‘Leannistas’, the woke left, currently nursing their wounds after so many recent defeats and now lashing out blindly at people like me.
Which is ironic in a way, for I am only following Lenin’s dictum, “The worse, the better”. By which he meant that the population at large will be more receptive to revolutionary change when the system they’re familiar with starts disintegrating.
It may be cruel, it may be cynical, but old Vlad was spot on. For the Bolsheviks would never have come to power if Russia had stayed out of World War One and the Czar had introduced adequate reforms.
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BY THE LEFT
There are no half measures with these people who attack me.
If you don’t support Extinction Rebellion bringing cities to a standstill then you’re a climate change denier. Vote for Brexit and you’re a fascist/racist/white supremacist. Refuse to accept that ‘chicks with dicks’ are 100% women and you’re a transphobe. The list of crimes people like me can commit – without even knowing it! – is endless. And these ‘crimes’ increase by the month.
Though many of my critics are happy to engage in rational debate, and there’s even banter. But then there’s the darker side, those who just want to screech at me.
Here’s a recent example from Twitter of what I’m talking about.
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I don’t know who Aled Gwyn Williams is (is he the one in the cap?), and I’ve no idea what motivated him to put such ugly slanders on social media for my grandchildren to be teased about.
I shall deal with the first paragraph in a minute.
As for the second paragraph, I am none of the things he lists. Though perhaps he’s trying to say the same thing with “fascist”, “racist”, and “authoritarian & white-supremacist”. (I can almost hear the spluttering as he repeats himself.)
As for being “homophobic”, well, just ask my gay friends.
The final smear is that I am a “defender of violence against women”, but I have no idea what the hell he’s trying to say. Does he think I stand outside windows listening to domestic arguments and shouting, “Go on, pal, punch her!”
Displayed here we see the absolute self-belief of the true fanatic (political or religious); convinced that he/she is right and anyone he/she disagrees with is not only wrong, but evil.
Which makes them no different to those they claim to oppose. For the right, we’re told, is intolerant, that it ‘others’ people, who can then be vilified and humiliated. Precisely what Aled Gwyn Williams tried to do to me in that tweet.
Support for the old axiom that says there’s no real difference between the extremes of left and right. They operate in almost exactly the same way.
But yes, I did vote for Brexit; and yes, I did support Trump; and yes, I did vote for the Brexit Party in last month’s EU elections; and yes, I certainly want Boris Johnson to become prime minister: and yes, I did help form Ein Gwlad – because I want Welsh independence!
An increasing number of people across the political spectrum now agree that Brexit delivered by Boris Johnson with his head up Trump’s arse will threaten the Union.
The exclusive English nationalism preached by Boris Johnson makes many more Scots, Irish, and Welsh question the English connection.
This is a good thing. As this Irish tweet I picked up over the weekend understands. (Though I’m not sure about Wales as a fifth province!)
Click to enlarge
When Johnson is announced as new Tory Party leader and prime minister tomorrow he will face a choice. Either to soldier on with a rebellious minority in his party capable of derailing his plans, or to call a general election in the hope of removing his critics and increasing his majority.
Despite the obvious discord in the Labour Party there’s no guarantee that Johnson could increase his majority, that’s because any election will be fought on the issue of Brexit, which will see certain parties standing aside to give a single anti-Brexit candidate a clear run at the Tory opponent.
His best option then might be an electoral pact with the Brexit Party. The Tories could concentrate on the suburbs and the shires, while Farage’s crew could focus on those ‘left behind’ areas that voted for Brexit in 2016.
Such a pact will confirm the split in the Conservative Party.
For as I’ve said somewhere before, in recent decades ‘Europe’ has been to the Tories what Irish Home Rule was to the 19th century Liberal Party. The Liberals split in 1886 with the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party eventually merging with the Conservative and Unionist Party.
A victory for the pact would give Boris Johnson – and his thirsty deputy, Nigel Farage – the majority needed to turn the UK into an offshore tax haven where everybody whistles The Dam Busters tune before settling down to yet another meal of chlorinated chicken.
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A LITTLE BIRD
While it’s difficult to understand the unprovoked attack from Aled Gwyn Williams, he is not alone. Not so long ago a very similar assault was mounted by someone called Huw Marshall who, again, is a complete stranger to me.
Ifan Morgan Jones also came out swinging with a ludicrous charge of Antisemitism over something I’d written that included George Soros. But in my piece I never mentioned that Soros was Jewish. To which I might add that, as a good conservative, I support the state of Israel because it’s an ally of the West.
But why would complete strangers want to attack me, and do so by telling lies? I mean, if you don’t like me, or you don’t agree with me, then don’t read this blog, don’t follow me on Twitter, etc. Am I that influential?
Which makes me wonder whether we are really dealing with a few individuals who’ve taken an intense dislike to me/my views or if there’s more to it.
Let’s think about it for a minute. I criticise Plaid Cymru. I helped form Ein Gwlad. I continually attack the Labour Party. I am an outspoken supporter Neil McEvoy. I regularly refer to Cardiff Bay as ‘Corruption Bay’ (or “a cess-pit”). For years I have exposed the corruption, cronyism and waste of public funding in the third sector . . .
Thinks . . . who might share my interest in those things, but from a perspective opposite to mine, and might be able to influence, directly or indirectly, people who don’t know me?
One obvious suspect is Deryn Consulting, the lobbying firm that acts as a link between Labour, Plaid Cymru, the third sector, and others that together make our country a corrupt and impoverished laughing-stock and a magnet for crooks and chancers.
At this point I should add that I’ve also attacked Deryn more than once.
To understand how Deryn operates – they are lobbyists and ‘influencers’ after all – just think of Welsh public life focused on Cardiff Bay as a web, with Deryn as a fat, hairy-legged spider at the centre.
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Deryn was instrumental in the sacking of Carl Sargeant and must bear considerable responsibility for his suicide. Deryn also co-ordinates the unremitting campaign against Neil McEvoy.
If you doubt how influential Deryn is in Welsh political life then read this piece by the lawyer representing the Sargeant family at the resumed inquest the week before last into Carl Sargeant’s death. There are passages there that almost jump off the screen.
Particularly the section below.
Extract from Dr Neil Hudgell’s account of the Sargeant inquest. Some might argue that Deryn set itself up as accuser, judge and jury. Click to enlarge.
Why would Carwyn Jones make TWO phone calls to Deryn almost immediately after hearing of Carl Sargeant’s death? Was it, ‘Oh, dear, ladies . . . tell me what to do now.’
Maybe I should explain that the Cathy Owens mentioned by Dr Hudgell is the leading director of Deryn, while the other woman also figured in Guido Fawkes’ coverage of December 2018, where we read: “Jo Kiernan: Deryn employee and named at last week’s Inquest as co-ordinating a bullying campaign against Sargeant when she worked as Carwyn Jones’ chief SpAd.”
I’m not saying that Aled Gwyn Williams, Huw Marshall, Ifan Morgan Jones, and the rest of my critics are taking orders from the nest (or maybe it’s the bunker nowadays) but they seem to share the Deryn mindset that will not tolerate critics or divergent views.
And never forget that Deryn is a creation of devolution, prospering thanks to weak and malleable politicians in a devolved system still controlled from London. Deryn would not survive independence.
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‘HIS NAME IS ROYSTON JONES AND HE’S NOT ON OUR SIDE’
Is what Aled Gwyn Williams wrote in the first paragraph of his tweet.
His tweet is addressed to “Welsh Self-determinationists”, which I assume to mean those who want Wales to be independent. But I have been a nationalist all my life, check with anyone who’s been around since the 1960s.
It follows, then, that when he says I’m not on ‘their’ side, he must mean some grouping other than those wanting independence. As Williams is a hard-line socialist he can only be alluding to the comrades.
I am a lifelong opponent of socialism.
So my real ‘crime’, in Williams’ eyes, is being hostile to socialism.
Williams seems to be active in YesCymru and supports All Under One Banner Cymru. Two groups some fear have become too close to Plaid Cymru.
The small increase in membership in the wake of Adam ‘Soundbite’ Price’s victory may already have been offset by resignations over the party’s treatment of Neil McEvoy, which will of course only strengthen the influence of the ‘Leannistas’.
I’m not the only one who sees this drift to the left. Here’s a tweet put out a week or so ago by writer Siôn Jobbins, asking if he’ll be welcome at Plaid’s Summer School, seeing as he’s not a socialist.
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Though it could be that not all the leftists trying to capitalise on the increase in support for independence belong to Plaid Cymru, there may be even more exotic elements trying to muscle in.
Below we see a picture from a recent AUOB Cymru tweet showing some kind of street furniture or utility box in Cardiff presenting an interesting display. In the centre we see nationalist hero, John Jenkins, leader of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru, who was sent down for 10 years in 1970 for his role in a 1960s bombing campaign.
John, now 85, has lived in Wrecsam for many years.
We also see a couple of YesCymru stickers, a football fans for independence sticker and Wrexham fans against the Sun (newspaper). But it’s the other three that intrigue me.
Click to enlarge
On the top left we see the Starry Plough of the Irish Citizen Army, led by James Connolly in the Easter Rising of 1916. This was a socialist organisation that fought alongside the larger, and nationalist, Irish Volunteers led by Padraig Pearse.
The one at the bottom right carries letters printed backwards to look Russian, a communist red star, and the slogan ‘Free Wales’.
Finally, the black one on the left reads ‘Wxm (Wrexham) Antifa No Pasaran!’ Antifa are left wing thugs who first took to the streets of the USA following Donald Trump’s victory, ostensibly ‘fighting fascism and racism’.
Now they resort to bombing and attacking anyone who doesn’t agree with them. A recent victim was journalist Andy Ngo, who wrote: “Antifa operates by a very broad definition of ‘fascists.’ By antifa’s telling, fascists include mainstream conservatives and even centrist journalists who dare criticize them.”
I know exactly how he feels.
You have to wonder what’s going on when the self-appointed promoters of inclusivity beat up the gay son of Vietnamese boat people. I hope to God we don’t have any nutters in Wales preparing to emulate Antifa.
And I’m disappointed to see AUOB Cymru apparently endorse Antifa.
So on a Cardiff street we see a collection of stickers linking independence with socialism, with some pretty hairy and intolerant expressions of socialism at that.
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THE CRUCIAL EIGHTEEN MONTHS
Partly due to events beyond our control Wales will soon be closer to independence than at any time in the past five hundred years. But the mood is also being influenced by what is happening here in Wales.
Our homeland is deprived and exploited because devolution has been a miserable failure. For what has devolution given us – Deryn! This realisation has resulted in the Labour Party losing credibility by the day; but I fear Plaid Cymru will be reluctant to take advantage of the opportunity presented by Johnson in No 10 and Drakeford in the Bay.
Instead, Plaid Cymru will chase rainbows and form Englandandwales anti-Tory or anti-Brexit alliances. This loss of focus is due to the party’s leftward drift coupled with the ephemeral appeal of being ‘taken seriously’ by appearing on TV with Caroline Lucas.
And when Johnson makes his move, Plaid Cymru will rush to support the Labour Party in defending ‘the devolution settlement’.
I say, fuck the devolution settlement. It wasn’t worth having in 1999 and it’s been seriously devalued over the past two decades. All our efforts now must concentrate on independence. And to achieve that goal we must reach out to as many as possible of our people.
This cannot be done by demanding a socialist feminist republic (as was heard at AUOB’s first rally on May 11). And if balaclava’d Antifa thugs start beating up people they disagree with, then any hope of independence will be lost. Wales may have a radical past but most of us today are socially conservative.
It should go without saying, therefore, that Wales needs a broad-based movement for independence that must either be ideology-free or else it must accept all ideological standpoints.
And so I’m asking All Under One Banner Cymru if there’ll be a welcome in Caernarfon on Saturday for people who don’t support Plaid Cymru, and people who are not socialist; for those who would have fought alongside Pearse rather than Connolly, who don’t obsess over a second referendum and who regard Antifa thugs no differently to the thugs who follow Tommy Robinson.
I ask because there are clearly some who feel that the drive for independence should be controlled by the left; and maybe they’ll only accept independence on their terms. Either way, it’s insulting and offensive to those holding different views who have worked for independence for over 50 years.
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?
As you might guess, this (originally short) post is a follow-up to my previous one, I Must Be Doing Something Right. It seems that Phil Parry at Wales Eye and Martin Shipton at Llais y Sais just won’t let go . . . though their persistence is not to be compared to slavering pit bulls, more like drowning men clutching at straws.
Yesterday afternoon I received a tweet from Fat Boy, you can see it for yourself on the right, together with my response. (Click to enlarge.) Yes, I was flippant, partly because I have difficulty taking the man seriously and also because I’d caught some bug that had me in bed by seven o’clock. I should have guessed that this was the prelude to another attack on me but, as I’ve said, I was feeling rough and on my way to bed.
Refreshed by fifteen hours of sleep I powered up my computer this morning to learn that after I’d gone to bed Shipton had tweeted again, this time about paramilitary activity and John Jenkins. His tweet and my response can be found on the left. (Click to enlarge.) What was it all about? I soon found out thanks to an e-mail from a supporter directing me to a tweet from Phil Parry at Wales Eye. (Below.) Again, I replied, and again, the response was somewhat flippant because, quite frankly, and with the best will in the world, I regard the man as an arsehole.
Anyway, it seems I am a “controversial commentator” (thank God for that!) and I support a paramilitary organisation. Which organisation would that be? I certainly support the various Kurdish militias fighting their people’s many enemies, but somehow I don’t think Parry is thinking of the Kurds. Given Lard Boy’s tweets yesterday we can safely assume that tomorrow, Wales Eye will run a World Exclusive! that I, Jac o’ the North, Swansea Jack, Royston Jones, supported the Free Wales Army . . . an organisation that ceased to exist around 1970.
This Earth-shattering news will be taken up by media outlets around the globe, Muscovites will stop complete strangers in a Red Square blizzard to ask, ‘Have you heard about that bastard Royston Jones supporting the Free Wales Army?’ And the response will be, ‘That’s nothing, I’ve heard he used to go drinking with that Cayo Evans in Lampeter’. Before they both shuffle off safe in the knowledge that President Putin would know how to deal with the likes of me. Then again, the coverage might be limited to Fat Boy at the Western Mail. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that the uptake will be limited to Llais y Sais.
So what’s going on here? It started off with Wales Eye, from out of a clear blue sky, attacking me in this concoction on September 2nd. A week or so later Wales Eye ran another piece about the persecution fantasies of Jacques Protic due (allegedly) to something I’d written about him, and this resulted in a North Wales Police enquiry. Then Wales Eye told us that I had been reported to South Wales Police for launching a ‘racial hatred’ petition . . . a petition that I did not launch. (But, understandably, Wales Eye neglected to tell us exactly who reported me.) This lie was then repeated almost verbatim by Martin Shipton in the Western Mail, and in WalesOnline, even though I’d put him straight. (See below.) Now it seems I am to be ‘outed’ as a supporter of paramilitary activity, a member of the Free Wales Army, and an admirer of John Jenkins. (Thank God they don’t know about that statue in Aber’!)
What sort of an arrangement is this that sees one of Wales’ most respected journalists (though not respected by me, obviously) acting as researcher for a vindictive blogger? Does Trinity Mirror plc pay Shipton’s salary for him to behave in this demeaning manner? But then, Shipton and Parry are both Labour, and Trinity Mirror has a record of supporting the Labour Party in Wales; who can forget the short-lived Welsh Mirror that crept from under a stone in the wake of Labour’s failure to gain a majority in the first Assembly elections of 1999? This rag was nothing but a platform for Paul Starling to spew his hatred for all things Welsh, dressed up of course as ‘combatting the evils of nationalism’.
With an election approaching, is Trinity Mirror doing ‘Welsh’ Labour another favour by targetting me? For those tempted to answer with, ‘You’re not important enough, Jac’, I would answer that I’m obviously important enough for the chief reporter of Llais y Sais to sift through my blog postings, check my photographs, and to monitor my tweets, looking for anything that could be presented as remotely incriminating. It’s clearly a concerted attempt to discredit me and, by extension, what I write. So why is it happening?
Anyway, the whole point of writing this was to prepare my easily shocked readers for the news that tomorrow, on the Wales Eye blog, ace investigator and top notch political analyst, Phil Parry will break the news that I supported direct action. This will then be relayed by his fat friend over at Llais y Sais. And that, my friends, just about sums up the dire state of what today passes for ‘the Welsh media’. Stop Press:Here’s Parry’s World Exclusive!, in pdf format (saving you having to pay to read it). Oh, yes, make sure you’re not eating anything, otherwise you might choke laughing.
P.S. To save certain ‘journalists’ unnecessary delving into my past I shall set the record straight on a few things.
I did not sink the Titanic, honest!
I may have met Gavrilo Princip at a social event.
I was not responsible for the Wall Street Crash.
I played no part in the invasion of Abbysinia.
I never served in the SS . . . well, not before 1944, anyway.
I was never a hippy in the 1960s (though I did wear flares).
I did not kill JFK, it was the New Orleans Mob (I was with the Chicago Outfit).
I had no hand in the break-up of the Beatles.
I was nowhere near Watergate.
I have no idea where Jimmy Hoffa is buried (God bless him).
I did not invade Las Malvinas The Falklands.
I had no involvement in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I am not related to Slobodan Milosovic (try Protic on that one).
I was never formally introduced to Saddam Hussein.
I did not vote Yes in last September’s Scottish independence referendum.
I have recommended you both for the very highest awards your profession can bestow.
In recent months I have given much thought to my lifestyle. I’m spending far too much time at my computer, writing my blog and other things; reading, watching television, or just filling my head with information I’d be none the poorer for not knowing. Then there’s Twitter, Facebook, texts, e-mails. And so often I’m not even sure who I’m dealing with . . . I suspect many are socialists, or oafs in baseball caps. Even socialist oafs in baseball caps! People I wouldn’t bother with in the real world. It has become clear to me that this technology, promised to be the great servant of mankind, can, if we allow it, become our master, exerting an unhealthy influence over our lives.
Another issue encouraging my return to the real world is the new wave of US entrepreneurs and capitalists behind this revolution. They may look and sound like unworldly geeks, but when it comes to business, with their monopolistic ambitions and their tax-dodging, they are more ruthless than Ford, Rockefeller and J P Morgan ever were. Do I really want to use anything over which these amoral weirdoes have control? Do I want to use software or social networking that is all the while gathering information about me? Do I want to download a harmless ‘update’, only to find that I have, totally unwillingly and without warning, also installed a toolbar, a search engine, anti-virus software, tracking cookies and God knows what else? No, I do not.
Don’t run away with the idea that I am rejecting new technology entirely and going live in a cave, but I will in future be drastically reducing the time I spend on my computer. My Twitter account will be closed soon, and so will my Facebook page (which I never could see the value of). As for my blog, I shall keep it open but resort to it less. Maybe a weekly or bi-weekly post, supplemented by ‘specials’ if I think I have something worth saying. For while I believe some of my postings have had an effect, particularly those dealing with the Third Sector and other obvious forms of mismanagement or corruption, at the end of the day, blogging could be viewed as a cheap form of vanity publishing.
‘Why now?’ you might ask. Well, there comes a point when you realise you’re repeating yourself. Largely because the stupidly of politicians, and the perfidy of those who manipulate them, is unchanging. As is the gullibility oftoo many Welsh voters. Only the characters and the circumstances change. One Third Sector scandal is much like another. And when a blogger finds himself referring back to his own earlier posts then he should realise that he’s said it all before. Such is the situation with me.
In addition, my mother has just died, a milestone in any man’s life. So now seems the right time to make my return to the real world. Before finishing, I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog, both at its original home with Google Blogger, and more recently here, courtesy of Gwilym ab Ioan of S C Cambria. Thank you also for your support and comments over the years. What follows may be my last post for a while, in it I try to give my honest assessment of the situation in Wales today, and how we got here.
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IN THE BEGINNING
When I joined the nationalist movement in the mid-ʼ60s I joined something vibrant and exciting, there was a ‘We’re not taking this shit any more!’ attitude, and a belief that change would be brought about by pressure from below, by activists like us. And for a while we had the system worried. But by 1975, the high-water mark had been reached, and Welsh nationalism was in retreat. For by now the British Establishment understood what it was dealing with. It knew how far Welsh nationalism was prepared to go, what barriers it wouldn’t cross; it had worked out who could be bought, or intimidated; and it understood that by guiding a nationalist movement without mass support into politics that that movement was never going to threaten the status quo.
And so it proved. After Plaid Cymru won Carmarthen in 1966, Meirionnydd and Caernarfon in 1974, after seventeen years of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, after the Free Wales Army (FWA), Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (MAC) and countless other manifestations of Welsh nationalism, on St. David’s Day 1979 just 20.26% of us voted for a Welsh Assembly. That the devolution referendum of 1997 was won was due to Margaret Thatcher and eighteen years of Conservative rule. It had nothing to do with Plaid Cymru. Even then, many Labour voters argued that we didn’t need devolution – Labour was back in power! (A good example of the mentality of the ‘Donkey Labour’ voter; rejecting devolution because it’s only needed when the Tories are in power but unable to work out that the Tories will never give Wales devolution!)
DOWNHILL
By the early 1970s the English Establishment had worked out the following facts. Plaid Cymru was essentially a linguistic and cultural movement which, once the initial excitement had worn off, would have little appeal to the anglophone majority. Many of the language activists were simply after their own niche in the English system, some proving themselves to be ruthlessly ambitious. While the most sincere and selfless element of Welsh nationalism, those who resorted to direct action, were not prepared to take a human life. Just to be sure, the English Establishment put it place a colonisation strategy to encourage English settlers into Wales, using agencies as diverse as higher education and tourism, plus quangos such as the Development Board for Rural Wales.
It was downhill from there. Apart from the Meibion Glyndŵr campaign and groups such as the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, Cofiwn, Cyfamodwyr, Wales was quiescent. Plaid Cymru went through various colour changes – red, green, pink – and Cymdeithas yr Iaith’s best days were behind it, its victories nearly all won in the first twenty years of its existence. Whatever came to us now would be gifted by our masters without them having to worry about pressure from below. Even the Meibion Glyndŵr campaign, which had widespread popular support, did nothing to remove the problem of holiday homes.
TODAY
Which brings me to a consideration of Wales today. Plaid Cymru can be discounted entirely. Exposed and discredited. Infiltrated and manipulated. A former leader openly talking about joining the Labour Party. More concerned with socialism and environmentalism than with nationalism. Its ambition limited to being junior partner in a Labour-led coalition. Quite happy to see the Welsh countryside covered with wind turbines and populated with English settlers. Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, or the wider language-cultural movement, stands exposed as a bunch of weak-kneed charlatans. Deluding themselves that another school in Cardiff is fair exchange for the loss of Ceredigion. Smug and complacent on the moral high ground, as the enemy takes over the land below. Direct action? There is none.
Ah! but we’ve got devolution, you reply. No. What we have is a system in which a bunch of second-rate politicians faff about in a leaky building down Cardiff docks while real power is increasingly exerted by English civil servants and organisations of which most of us have never heard – Planning Inspectorate, Housing Directorate, Wales Rural Observatory, countless Third Sector shyster-wagons, etc. – for which we never voted. So don’t kid yourself that this system fronted by Carwyn and his gang is devolved and democratic government, or that it’s doing anything for us. It is nothing but English colonialism with its repulsive features partly disguised with a Welsh veil.
TOMORROW?
The biggest issue facing the Welsh nation is its very survival. Partly due to ‘Wales’ becoming divorced from ‘the Welsh’. Allowing politicians and academics, journalists and others, to crow about something being ‘wonderful for Wales’ when it offers Welsh people nothing, or is even detrimental to their interests. Tourism, for example. To the point where people can even bang on about Wales being ‘a rainbow nation’, with we Welsh nothing more than another exotic component. Hand in hand with this divorce goes the trivialisation of Welsh identity, and a careful promotion of what are considered to be acceptable expressions of Welshness. So that some tart on a reality TV show would be an acceptable face of ‘Welshness’, but a dignified patriot rejecting an ‘honour’ from the English Queen would be a narrow bigot, an extremist.
These Orwellian interpretations dominate Welsh life. Exemplified by the approach to colonisation. Wales today has ‘incomers’ or ‘in-migrants’, and ‘people from other parts of Britain’, or even ‘from over the border’. These can be ‘retirees’, or people ‘looking for a better quality of life’ (even ‘good-lifers’ is acceptable). They can even be, in the memorable phrase of Wyn Roberts, “this beneficent influx”. You can use any bloody euphemism you choose, but they must never be called ‘English’. To do so would be ‘racist’. Exposing a pathetic self-censorship, perhaps even self-intimidation. This is the level of debate we have sunk to in Wales; one corrupted by political correctness and poisoned by a variant of socialism that would be ridiculed and rejected from Bilbao to Barcelona to Belfast.
From now on the only issue must be the fight against colonisation and the threat it poses to the survival of Welsh nationhood. Everything else is secondary or irrelevant. Whether it’s ‘saving the planet’ (as if Wales could make any bloody difference!) or the chimera of extra power for those clowns I mentioned earlier in the leaky building. Because no matter how many lies are told, how imaginative the euphemisms employed, or how many distractions promoted, WE know the truth: England is carrying out a colonisation programme in Wales that is excluding and marginalising the Welsh (apart from those needed to disguise the process) with the intention of destroying Welsh national identity. Fight this evil wherever you find it. It is the biggest threat the Welsh nation has ever faced.
On Monday I attended the funeral of the great patriot John Barnard Jenkins at Pentrebychan Crematorium, Rhostyllen, Wrecsam.
