Plaid Cymru

8 Key excerpts on "Plaid Cymru"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Minority Nationalist Parties and European Integration

  A comparative study

  • Anwen Elias(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The chapter argues that these various attempts at making sense of European integration reflect an ongoing struggle within Plaid Cymru to reconcile a fundamental ideological commitment to Wales as a European nation with the ever-changing dynamics of Welsh, British and European politics. At times, the political context in these three political arenas has made it easy to translate this principled support for European co-operation into a concrete project that sets out the opportunities for the Welsh nation within the framework of the EEC and, after 1992, the EU. At other times, however, the dynamics of party competition at home and developments on the supranational level have made it very difficult for Plaid Cymru to defend a political project that posits a strengthening of Welsh self-government within a framework of European co-operation. The case of Plaid Cymru demonstrates clearly that, whilst basic party ideology dictates the broad parameters of minority nationalist party attitudes towards European integration, the substance of European policy is contingent on the shorter-term changes in domestic and European politics. The latter in particular has played a determining role in shaping Plaid Cymru’s attitude towards European integration.

  The Origins and Development of Plaid Cymru

  Plaid Cymru was established as a result of the joining of forces of two smaller nationalist groups, the Welsh Nationalist Party and Mudiad Cymreig. Most commentators divide Plaid Cymru’s subsequent evolution into three periods: from 1925 to 1939 under the leadership of Saunders Lewis; from 1945 to 1981 under the leadership of Gwynfor Evans; and from 1981 onwards with Dafydd Wigley and Dafydd Elis Thomas alternating as party presidents (Christiansen, 1998; McAllister, 2001; Gwilym, 2000; Wyn Jones, 2007).

  In its earliest years, Plaid Cymru was first and foremost a pressure group for the protection and promotion of the Welsh language, its political agenda informed by the Catholic conservatism of the poet and prominent cultural figure, Saunders Lewis (Wyn Jones, 1999). However, for the first forty years of its existence, the party made very little impact upon the Welsh political scene, due to a combination of lack of members, lack of finance and lack of political motivation (Davies, 1983: 262). Gwynfor Evans’s presidency from 1945 until 1981 was characterised by an attempt to bring Plaid Cymru out of the political and electoral wilderness. Party energies and resources were focused on fighting elections and contesting an incremental number of parliamentary constituencies. Plaid Cymru also abandoned the ideological purity of its forefathers and adopted a more detailed socio-economic programme inspired by the principles of ‘community socialism’. As a result, ‘Plaid Cymru’s politics became more practical, more concrete, and more “normal”’ (Wyn Jones, 1999: 189). By the end of the 1960s, this was a strategy that seemed finally to be paying off, bringing to an end the period of ‘drift and fragmentation’ (Butt Philip, 1975: 85) that had characterised Plaid Cymru’s political fortunes in the post-war era. Plaid Cymru won its first Westminster parliamentary seat in the 1966 Carmarthen by-election. This was followed by further electoral successes in the late 1960s and 1970s in local and general elections (Butt Philip, 1975: 105–23; McAllister, 2001: 112–13).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Government and Politics of Wales

  • Russell Deacon, Alison Denton, Robert Southall(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Edinburgh University Press

    (Publisher)

  Unlike in Scotland, the percentage of the Welsh population, under a variety of different scenarios, in favour of independence remains in most polls well under a fifth. This means the pro-union parties retain their dominance in Wales politically. Why is Plaid Cymru technically an ethnoregionalist party and not a nationalist one? Although Plaid Cymru had its origins as a traditional nationalist party sup- porting Welsh nationalism, and at times it senior members were close to European fascism, it has deviated into a different category of party. 36 The Government and Politics of Wales Today, however, political scientists do not always refer to them directly as ‘nationalist’ parties. This label they reserve for those anti-immigrant parties or groups, normally on the far political right, such as the BNP and the English Defence League. Instead, Plaid Cymru is technically referred to as an ‘ethnoregionalist’ party. The same label is also given to the SNP, Plaid Cymru’s sister party. This means that both parties repre- sent a specific regional/national group within a larger nation-state, in this context the Welsh and the Scottish peoples in the United Kingdom. In the political world and in the media, however, they remain defined as nationalist parties, but we need to be aware that there is a clear distinc- tion between nationalist and ethnoregionalist parties in their ideologi- cal backgrounds. Neither Plaid Cymru nor the SNP are anti-immigrant parties and tend to be left of centre on most policies. Having stated this, however, you will find that in most texts they are still commonly known by the label, ‘nationalist party’. 19 The Welsh political parties Without the political parties in Wales, any distinctiveness in Welsh poli- tics would be greatly reduced because the drive towards national distinc- tiveness would be far more limited. In this respect, the Welsh Liberals started to formulate a different Welsh structure and policies in the late nineteenth century.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  New Challenges for Stateless Nationalist and Regionalist Parties

  • Eve Hepburn(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The territorial dimension to Plaid Cymru ’s nationalist project returned to the fore in the party’s annual conference that year. A motion was approved that replaced the constitutional terminology of “full national status in Europe” with a commitment to “independence in Europe”. The election of Dafydd Iwan as the party’s new President—a life-long Plaid activist, language campaigner and major figure on the Welsh cultural scene—also represented a desire by party activists to re-assert the centrality of traditional ‘ Plaid ’ issues to the Welsh nationalist project. Table 1. National Assembly for Wales election results, 1999–2007 However, this retreat to traditional ideological politics was temporary. Despite an equally disappointing performance in the 2005 general election, Plaid Cymru ’s leadership renewed its efforts to establish the party as a governing alternative within Welsh politics. In February 2006, Plaid Cymru launched a six-month policy consultation with the Welsh people, the objective of which was to identify a more voter-friendly set of policies ahead of the 2007 Assembly election. In the resultant election manifesto, the new goal of “independence in Europe” hardly featured, although the party did commit itself to the pursuit of greater powers for the Welsh Assembly. Instead, the bulk of the document was taken up by the presentation of the party’s new “practical policies” (Ieuan Wyn Jones, quoted in Western Mail, 2007) that were “radical” as well as “credible and deliverable” (Plaid Cymru, 2007). There was no mistaking the message that Plaid Cymru wanted to deliver to the electorate: realistic and workable solutions, not abstract ideology, were what Plaid Cymru had to offer. Whereas the 1999 Assembly election was characterized by Plaid Cymru ’s attempt to position itself vis-à-vis its main state-wide competitors on the territorial and left–right ideological dimensions, by 2007 the party was more preoccupied with pragmatic politics and valence concerns

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Modern British Party System

  • Paul Webb(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Having lost its independence as long ago as 1536, Wales has not retained the degree of institutional and legal distinctiveness from England that Scotland has enjoyed; almost paradoxically, however, a relatively high proportion of its people (approximately 20%) remain Welsh speakers and these are central to Welsh cultural identity and nationalism. Living largely in northern and western Wales, they provide the basis of a political cleavage which has left its mark on the principality’s party system in the shape of the Welsh Nationalist party, Plaid Cymru (PC). Founded in 1925, PC has articulated the grievances of those Welsh voters who have sought to protect the Welsh language and identity, and who have aspired to a degree of home rule for their country.

  During the 1950s and 1960s the party began to develop a broad programme of economic and social policy, something which it had hitherto lacked, partly in an effort to spread its appeal to the largely English-speaking communities of south Wales. As with Scottish nationalism, the electoral growth of Welsh nationalism became evident in the decade following the middle of the 1960s: by-election success at Carmarthen in 1966 helped spawn the Welsh Language Act 1967 (giving greater prominence to the use of Welsh in the public services); and an electoral breakthrough occurred in February 1974, with PC securing over 10% of the vote in the principality and returning two MPs to Westminster. This level of electoral support has been broadly maintained for elections to Westminster, though the number of representatives elected to the Commons increased to four in 1992 and 1997. That said, ‘unlike the SNP, Plaid Cymru’s support is strongly concentrated, with 37% of the vote in Gwynedd and 22% in Dyfed, but little outside their linguistic base’ (Norris 1997: 17). Thus, all four PC parliamentarians represent constituencies in North Wales (Ynys Mon, Caernarvon, Merionnydd Nant Conwy and Ceredigion), while the party lost deposits in 25 of the 38 Welsh seats it contested in 1997 (Garner and Kelly 1998: 192).

  Ideologically, PC has taken some time to develop a broad programme and it has not been achieved without considerable tension between the party’s various internal tendencies. Quite obviously, PC’s primary dimension of appeal relates to the question of Welsh independence. Here it pursues a general strategy of decentralization, supporting the Labour government’s devolution legislation in 1997–98. These provisions were quite different to those put forward in respect of Scotland, and have been characterized as ‘devolution without autonomy’ (Lynch 1998: 7). Labour has long been aware of the challenge posed to its traditional electoral hegemony in Wales by the rise of Welsh nationalism, and sought to provide a satisfactory response in the 1970s through the establishment of the Welsh Development Agency (1974) and proposals for devolution – though the plans were emphatically rejected by the Welsh people in the referendum of 1979. Its criticisms of the way in which the Conservatives governed Wales via the quangocracy during the 1980s and 1990s, plus the belief that regional economic development might be enhanced through some measure of devolution, led to the Blair government’s new plan for an elected Welsh Assembly in 1997 (Eurig 1999: 89). This Assembly (the Senedd

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Labour's Crisis

  Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives, and the Decline of the Labour Party in North-West Wales, 1960-74

  • Andrew Edwards(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • University of Wales Press

    (Publisher)

  There was, however, consist-ency to the party’s approach. As in the 1960s, Plaid focused on governmental and constitutional weaknesses as well as on the institutional weaknesses of its rivals. In the early 1970s, the party continued to attack the failures of the Welsh Office and its incumbent secretary through the columns of its news-papers. The critique of the Conservative government focused on the party’s electoral failure in Wales and unsatisfactory rule by a Conservative Party ‘rejected by the people of Wales in election after election’. 94 The Conservative government was regularly lambasted as ‘alien, ignorant and arrogant’, lacking in compassion and ‘without conscience’. 95 Rising food prices, escalating unemployment, industrial unrest, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the huge expense of Concorde and the Common Market all received regular treatment in the party’s propaganda. 96 The party also faced a number of local challenges. For example, attempts to break the independent stranglehold of local councils were only partially successful. Branches reported that finding candidates willing to represent Plaid (in the party’s name) was less of a problem than had once been the case, but the transition to full representation in local elections was not always smooth. Even Plaid officials were reluctant to break with local independent traditions. As Elfed Gruffydd, the secretary of Plaid’s Pwllheli branch, pointed out in a letter to the party’s secretary, Dafydd Williams, in 1971, ‘I am quite willing to stand . . . but of course I will be standing as an independent, in keeping with the traditions of this part of the world.’ 97 The situation had not improved by the end of 1972. The secretary of the party’s Arfon branch wrote to Williams, ‘there are only one or two prepared to stand as official Plaid Cymru candidates in the 94 Welsh Nation, 22–8 October 1971. 95 Ibid . , 29 October–4 November 1971. 96 See Welsh Nation and Y Ddraig Goch , June 1970 to February 1974.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  A History of Modern Wales 1536-1990

  • Philip Jenkins(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  for Plaid) as a protest against economic policies. There was also increasing outrage at the successive local government scandals associated with Labour, though the media underplayed this element. Newspapers and television thus reinforced the picture of an upsurge in national consciousness, with Plaid as its vehicle, and the bombers as a genuinely dangerous fringe. This nationalist movement appealed to younger voters, and it attracted many of the energies that elsewhere went into radical movements like ecology and feminism. Plaid was an early practitioner of the community politics that would so often be advocated in the 1980s.

  Plaid Cymru never fulfilled its early promise, but its achievements were striking. The party’s support in general elections fell gradually, from a peak of 175,000 votes in 1970 to a mere 124,000 in 1987: 11.5 per cent of the Welsh vote compared to 7.3 per cent; but this was sufficient to establish them as a parliamentary presence. Since 1974, they have always held either two or three Welsh constituencies. Carmarthen fell to Gwynfor Evans once more in 1974, though it returned to Labour in later years. Much more reliable was the nationalist fortress in the north-west. Since 1974, the party has always held Caernarfon and Merionethshire (Meirionydd Nant Conwy), respectively the seats of Dafydd Wigley and Dafydd Elis Thomas. The taking of Anglesey (Ynys Mon) in 1987 essentially gave Plaid the whole of traditional Gwynedd, with the exception of the east Caernarvonshire strip that makes up the Conwy constituency. The achievement owed much to the vagaries of the British electoral system, which favours a party with a strong local base over one that has more widely disseminated support. In both 1983 and 1987, the Liberal/SDP Alliance won about a fifth of the Welsh vote in each election, and gained respectively two and three seats: the same as Plaid, which received under eight per cent.

  The rise of Plaid raises important questions about the potential of Welsh nationalism, but also about its limitations. The party attracts a protest vote in addition to its nationalist core, but the ‘disaffected’ are not likely to provide a firm base. When Liberal (Alliance/Democrat) support crumbled in the late 1980s, defectors transferred their loyalty not to Plaid, but to the ecological Green Party, which suddenly emerged in the 1989 European elections with almost as many Welsh votes as Plaid. In fact, the upstart Greens outpolled Plaid in three of the four Welsh Euro-constituencies, with only North Wales preventing total humiliation.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Nation, Class and Resentment

  The Politics of National Identity in England, Scotland and Wales

  • Robin Mann, Steve Fenton(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The debate took another turn a month later, when the BBC political programme Question Time came to Caernarfon, during which Labour Member of the European Parliament Glenys Kinnock challenged then Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones to dismiss the councillor from his party, along with his ‘racist’ remarks. In the aftermath of this debate, a new Welsh language pressure group, Cymuned, was formed with an explicit focus on the integration of non- Welsh speaking migrants to Welsh-speaking areas. This primary concern of Cymuned is to protect the language, and charges of racism can be seen as an attempt by the other political parties to mobilise popular opinion against Plaid Cymru. Either way, it is likely that this episode reinforced popular perceptions of Welsh nationalism as being preoccupied with cul- tural and linguistic concerns. Labour has also attempted to respond to its declining support, and to the challenge from Plaid, by reasserting its identification as a ‘Welsh’ party, to the point where it now represents something of a ‘soft’ Welsh nationalist party. Hence the Labour Party in Wales was rebranded as ‘Welsh Labour’ and ‘the true party of Wales’ (Jones and Scully 2003). This involved adopting a stance that was more to the left than its Westminster counterpart, rejecting for example New Labour plans for foundation hospitals and free schools (McAllister 2004). Labour’s domi- nance in Welsh government elections nevertheless continued to decline (from 40 % in 2003 to 32 % in 2007), raising concerns that the party remained overly reliant on its traditional support and was losing what votes it did have in rural areas, either to Plaid in the Welsh-speaking areas or to the Conservatives in areas along the English border. The 2010 gen- 188 Nation, Class and Resentment eral election saw Labour’s vote share in Wales fall to 36.2 %—almost 20 % below the mark achieved in 1997 and worse even than the vote won in the desperate defeat of 1983.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Rethinking Stateless Nations and National Identity in Wales and the Basque Country

  • Sophie Williams(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  …“they’re only a party for Welsh speakers”, that would be…one of their default lines that they will use…shamelessly .

  However, this position has contradictions; although the interviewee accused ‘Westminster’ parties of negatively branding Plaid Cymru , they in term emphasised the superficiality of the ‘Welshness ’ of these parties, intimating that Plaid Cymru is the only truly Welsh party:

  MP (22/8/2014): The Labour Party…think

  Wales

  is a region…of the British state…I don’t believe there is such a thing as the

  Welsh Labour

  Party…the

  Welsh Conservatives

  , the Welsh LibDems…are branding names which they use to try and deal with the growth of Welsh

  identity

  to make the impression that they’re Welsh parties…you’ve got to be honest, it’s been pretty successful…our opponents are very clever in the way they’re able to portray as us something that’s based on blood and soil politics

  .

  In arguing that a British party cannot be truly Welsh, and vice versa, as the two are politically incompatible, the message seems to be that, while one side associates the other with a certain kind of Welsh, the other deem that opponents are not Welsh at all, suggesting that the ascription or non-ascription of Welshness , however understood, is used as a political insult.

  The media were also seen as a significant barrier to the effective dissemination of Plaid Cymru ’s frame of Welshness :

  MP (22/8/2014): The major problem we have in

  Wales

  …is the lack of Welsh media…that’s the one major thing that’s holding back the ability of

  Plaid Cymru

  to actually develop beyond where we are…

  On the permanence of identities, one interviewee stated that the moving around and changing or adapting identity was entirely possible, particularly if that person learnt a new language. Another interviewee disagreed entirely, considering Welshness more durable:

  MP (22/8/2014): I think…people feel very passionately about

  Welshness

  , I don’t think if you leave

  Wales

  you necessarily lose that

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book