The independence mindset

Some people in Plaid Cymru have been calling for a more aggressive stance from our politicians on independence for a long time, most notably an alumnus of this youth wing, Adam Price. It seems that since our sister party's landslide victory last year, that view has been adopted by most in the party, and certainly since the overwhelming endorsement it received in Llandudno last year by the membership, we as a party have been significantly more vocal on the issue.

Although I am certain of my support for an independent Wales, I do not share the view of the majority in our party that we should be moving the independence campaign into top gear just yet. It has been inspirational to witness the SNP's success in Scotland and I believe we have a lot to learn from them, but simply copying and pasting their rhetoric on independence would be a mistake. There are many reasons why Scotland is constitutionally so far ahead of Wales, not least the manner in which it was united with England and its success in preserving a distinct education system, legal jurisdiction and civil society. Wales was not united with England, it was assimilated into England, along with all aspects of civil society. Wales' distinctiveness was almost exclusively cultural for the best part of half a millennium. It is understandable therefore, that civil society in Wales has taken its time to build itself into the intrinsic role within Welsh governance that it now plays.

These differences are such that the SNP have been able to include in their manifestos and indeed, in their programmes of government, a promise to hold a referendum on independence. Only once do I remember any senior figures within Plaid Cymru mentioning such referenda in Wales, and even then it was a promise to hold one after we manage to become the biggest party in the Assembly in two consecutive elections. It begs the question therefore, why are we pushing the independence campaign to the forefront of our message at a time when a Plaid Cymru government would do nothing to deliver on that message?

In my opinion, we need to design that “roadmap” that Elin Jones promised in her leadership campaign. We need to know exactly what we are campaigning for. Simply saying, “We support independence… but not yet” is not good enough. We need to be campaigning for the first step on that road map, something that we could include in our manifesto. In doing that, we would be able to argue effectively, that what we are doing is advancing down a path towards a level of prosperity that would make independence a viable option. If we are going to reach our shared goal of setting our country free from the British puppet strings, we need to make this a priority after the election on May 3rd.

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Mae rhai ym Mhlaid Cymru wedi bod yn gofyn am agwedd mwy ymosodol gan ein gwleidyddion ar annibyniaeth ers amser maeth, yn fwy nodweddiadol na phawb yw alumnus o’r mudiad ieuenctid hwn, Adam Price. Mae hi’n ymddangos, ers canlyniad gwefreiddiol ein chwaer-blaid y llynedd, fod y barn hynny wedi’i fabwysiadu gan y rhan fwyaf yn y Blaid, ac yn enwedig ers y cefnogaeth llethol cafwyd yn Llandudno llynedd gan yr aelodaeth, rydym ni fel plaid wedi bod yn llawer mwy lleisiol am y peth.

Er fy mod i’n gadarn fy marn o blaid annibyniaeth, dydw i ddim yn rhannu barn y rhan fwyaf yn y Blaid y dylem rhoi annibyniaeth ar flaen y gad yn ein hymgyrch presennol. Rydym ni gyd wedi ein hysbrydoli gan lwyddiant yr SNP yn yr Alban ac yr wyf yn credu bod gennym lawer i’w ddysgu ganddynt, ond bysai eu copïo gair wrth air yn gamgymeriad. Mae yna lawer o resymau pam fod yr Alban yn gyfansoddiadol mor bell o’n blaenau. Un o'r prif resymau yw natur yr undeb rhwng yr Alban a Lloegr a llwyddiant yr Albanwyr i ddal ymlaen at eu system addysg, awdurdodaeth gyfreithiol a’u cymdeithas sifil. Ni fu undeb rhwng Cymru a Lloegr. Gorchfygu Cymru y gwnaeth Lloegr, gan gynnwys pob agwedd o'n cymdeithas sifil. Mi 'roedd Cymru'n wahanol i Loegr o ran diwylliant yn unig am bron i hanner mileniwm. Mae hi'n ddaelladwy felly, bod gwasanaeth sifil yng Nghymru wedi cymryd ei amser i ddatblygu mewn i'r rol ganolog y mae yn eu chwarae heddiw o fewn proses llywodraethu Cymru.

Mae'r gwhaniaethau yma mor ddwys, y bod yr SNP wedi gallu cynnwys addewid yn eu manifesto, ac wrth gwrs, yn eu rahglenni llywodraethu, i gynnal refferendwm ar annibyniaeth. Dim ond unwaith yr wyf yn cofio aelod uwch yn y Blaid yn son am fath refferendwm, ac mi oedd hyd yn oed yr aelod hynny yn son o fewn cyd-destyn o Blaid Cymru'n llwyddo ennill mwy o seddi nac unrhyw blaid arall, ddwywaith yn olynol. Ac felly, mae'r cwestiwn yn codi, pam gwthio'n hymgrych am annibyniaeth mewn adeg lle bysai llywodraeth Plaid Cymru yn gwneud dim byd i wireddu'r ymgyrch hynny?

Yn fy marn i, mae angen dylunio'r "map" hwnnw yr oedd Elin Jones yn son amdano yn ystod ei hymgyrch arweinyddol. Mae angen i ni wybod yn union am beth yr ydym yn ymgyrchu. Dydy dweud yn syml, "rydym yn cefnogi annibyniaeth... ond ddim eto" ddim yn ddigon da. Mae angen i ni allu dadlau yn effeithiol mai yr hyn yr ydym yn ei wneud yw symyd Cymru fyny llwybr tuag at lefel ffyniant mor uchel, bod annibyniaeth yn opsiwn go iawn i'r niferoedd. Os ydym am gyrraedd ein nod o rhyddhau ein cenedl o ddwylo'r Saeson, wedyn mae rhaid i ni wneud dylunio'r map yma yn flaenoriaeth ar ol Mai y 3ydd.


Osian Lewis

An important lesson for Plaid to learn...

Today, Cerith Rhys Jones, non-portfolio officer on the National Exec writes about an important factor that Plaid should consider, as it moves with Wales towards independence:

"A discussion with my grandfather (who, for the record, is English) got me thinking yesterday, about one of Plaid’s major challenges in the years to come. One of the biggest misconceptions people have, is that a nation is the same thing as a nation-state. People will gladly say that they are Welsh before they are British, but they will sometimes think of their citizenship as being the same thing as their nationality.

"There has been plenty of discussion about Plaid being in a crisis. As a party activist and an executive member of the party’s youth wing, I would take the view that the party is not in a crisis but rather, that it really needs some thinking time about its way forward. No matter how much Plaid members and activists say that the election wasn’t all that bad, the truth is that we didn’t do as well as we had hoped and expected and we, as a party, need to think long and hard about our message for the Assembly elections next year, and the local elections on 2012.

"In the long term however, as Wales works towards, first, a full parliament with fiscal autonomy, and eventually, an independent Wales, Plaid needs to focus on changing people’s view of a ‘nation’. (I would say that this would go for other parties too, but how keen they’d be to do this is another matter.)

"Too many people think of a ‘nation’ as a physical entity with a clear geography. To me, and I would think, to the party, a nation needn’t have defined borders and the people of that respective nation needn’t share a specific patch of land. Take Patagonia, for instance. The Welsh people who moved there to establish Y Wladfa (the Welsh Settlement), they went there with the intention of creating a ‘second Wales.’ To this day, their descendants think of themselves as being Welsh Argentine. If we look at that phrase – Welsh Argentine, that is – it can be split in two; into ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’. The citizenship is clearly Argentine; of that, let there be no doubt. This works in the same way with us here in Wales. I will always say that I am Welsh first, European second, and British third. As much as I may be against the British institution, I can’t escape the fact that I am a Briton, by law. Wales doesn’t have its own sovereignty (yet), so it is legally impossible to be a ‘citizen’ of the country, in the conventional way. The nationality of a Welsh Argentine person, however, is Welsh. This will confuse some people as it did my grandfather. A ‘nation’ to me, doesn’t mean a group of people who inhabit a specific piece of territory; it is a group of people (or peoples, as would probably be appropriate) who share a heritage, a history, and a feeling. So yes, while a resident of Y Wladfa may hold an Argentine passport, his or her nationality is Welsh, in so much as he or she shares our heritage and history here in Wales.

"This very principle will apply to the Quebecois of Canada. They are by law, of course, Canadian. However, in nationality, they are Quebecois. They are a group of people who share a history and a heritage. I guess this principle could go for any group of people within a nation-state, anywhere on Earth.

"Plaid’s challenge is teaching the people of Wales that although they may be subjects of the United Kingdom, they do have their own heritage and history - an Unique Selling Point, if you will - that makes them Welsh in nationality. Let them think of themselves as British, and what makes them so, and they will list things that are primarily English. As Gwynfor said, “Britishness…is a political synonym that extends English culture of the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.” This hits the nail right on the head!

"The difficulty that Plaid faces of course, is that too many people in Wales still have trouble thinking about Wales as a country in its own right; they challenge that idea, even. The question they should ask themselves though, is ‘what is a country? What makes a country, a country?’ Again, people will often think that Wales can’t possibly be a country, because it’s a ‘constituent region’ of ‘the mother-country’ of Britain. Britain, though, is not a country. It’s a nation-state. Britain is simply the entity, which contains the countries of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England, which are countries and nations in their own right.

"When Plaid looks forward in terms of how it can raise support for full autonomy within the European Union and the United Nations for Wales, it really has to get people to understand that whatever their passport says, their nationality – their heritage, their history, their national persona – is different to that of Britain. If Plaid is to succeed, it needs to ensure that the people recognise Wales as a country in its own right, which is being dictated to by another country.

"Those who disagree with me (or who are unionists), will argue that we are not being dictated to by another country at all; we are part of the UK and so we are governed as part of Britain. Here again, the problem that people think of Wales as a region and the UK as a country, is raising its ugly head. Of course we’re being dictated to by another country – England! Was it not the English who annexed Wales to England, extended English laws unto Wales, and oppressed the Welsh language all those hundreds of years ago – and still do to this day? Does the British government not create laws, which apply only to England and Wales? Is it not true that Wales is treated differently to Scotland? Yes. Yes. Yes.

"The biggest challenge to Plaid, to the SNP, Mebyon Kernow, in fact, any nationalist party, is to show their people, the citizens of their respective nations, that they are their own people, and that there is a huge divide between Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Cornwall – wherever – and the nation-state which ultimately governs them.

"It’s all very well and good Plaid in the short term focussing on its successes in the National Assembly as part of the One Wales government (and I wouldn’t for one minute say anything different to that) but if Plaid wants to keep itself as the Party of Wales – to keep its USP, to remain a nationalist party, which will do its best to govern in the short term, but all the while working towards an independent Wales – it has to realise that people still think that they’re country is Britain, and break down that idea.

"People may also rebut my ideas by saying that one’s nationality can also be interpreted as British, in that we as Britons share our own history and heritage. I can accept this to an extent, but here rises Gwynfor’s quote again; that what we perceive to be British is actually English.

"Plaid needs to campaign to teach people that their nation-state is Britain. They are British subjects. They pay their taxes to the British government. But as a people, they are Welsh. Their history is Welsh. Their heritage and their national persona are Welsh. When people grasp and believe this, Plaid won’t have much bother on election day.

"While our passports may tell us that we are subjects of the British crown, we are and always have been citizens of the Welsh nation. It will remain that way until we can look at a Welsh passport and see that we are citizens of the Welsh nation-state.

"The challenge for Plaid is to lead the way on that (long) road to independence, but all the while, making sure that we’re re-elected to the Assembly Government and we continue to do a good job of it."

Tory's defect to support independence (apparently)

By Luke James
Cymru X Chair

A new entry into the Cymru X, not so, Concise Dictionary of Welsh Nationalism today…

Internal Enlargement: a nice and fluffy phrase for independence for all the nations of Europe who want it.

I was in Venice on Friday for the conference of the European Free Alliance Youth, the European wide political party that we are in with other nationalist and regionalist parties.

A chat in one of coffee breaks came onto the phrase ‘internal enlargement’ and how it might be a useful way to put across the idea of nations, like Wales, becoming an independent state within the European Union.

A European Free Alliance conference on independence later in the year might add some more meat to this strategies bone.

It’s not a strategy I have a problem with; after all selling your ideas is half the battle. Maybe if the Liberal Democrats tried it they wouldn’t have to moan so much about other people stealing and repacking their ideas.

I know the people that are developing these ideas are firm believers in Welsh independence and that is why we are staging a conference on independence.

However I am wary that pursuing a strategy where we introduce terms like ‘internal enlargement’ sounds similar to a time when we pursued the ‘Europe of regions’ strategy.

Under the Europe of the Regions plan Wales would be part of an EU that was governed by a patchwork quilt of autonomous regions.

Dafydd Elis-Thomas appears a fan of this approach; John Osmond quotes the Llywydd in his chapter of Breaking Up Britain, Four Nations After a Union.

Elis Thomas writes: “The one thing I regret as leader of Plaid Cymru, is that my own party doesn’t seem to have understood the issues raised by devolution in the same way that other parties have done.

“Plaid Cymru has not adjusted to devolution because you have this improbable allegiance of some people to something called Welsh independence.

“Not since the seventh century was this ever a real political project.”

Thankfully since 2004 Plaid Cymru’s leadership has maintained the position that our parties long term vision is for an independent Wales within the European Union, and I don’t think that statement is contradictory.

I think I speak for most of Cymru X when I say we are not interested in arguing for our countries status as a region or motivated to hit the pavements dropping leaflets and canvassing by the vision of Wales as part of a ‘federal UK’.

We want equality, because that’s when, to quote Breaking Up Britain further, good neighbours become good friends.

But ‘internal enlargement’ could well be an asset to our arsenal.

And by coincidence I was scrolling through the Conservatives European manifesto from 2009 when I came across the section entitled “Support Further Englargement of the EU.”

Which stated: “We have long championed the enlargement of the European Union because we believe that EU membership or its prospect has been crucial in firmly establishing democracy across the continent.

“ The economic benefits are also profound: trade between the UK and the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004 increased by almost 400 per cent between 1992 and 2005, ten times the rate of growth in trade between the UK and the rest of the world. Our MEPs will support the further enlargement of the EU, including to the Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, Georgia and the countries of the Balkans, if they wish to achieve EU membership, however distant that prospect may be in some cases.”

So it seems whilst there have been notable defections to the Tory’s recently, the Tory’s have made a defection of their own, to supporting internal enlargement and Welsh independence.

Right on comrades!

Risk it for a biscuit

Trying to do an essay so obviously I will do anything to get away from it.

Which led me to scout out some political betting - from which I have two observations.

News of our esteemed leader Caryl Wyn Jones selection as Westminster candidate for the Vale of Clwyd obviously has not reached Ladbrokes HQ because they still have Plaid Cymru at 100/1.

Actually they have Plaid Cymru 100/1 to win the Vale of Clowd, no idea where that is.

How about then 25/1 for Scotland to be independent by 2015?

Your relying on a Tory General Election win and the SNP spinning the hell out of it and creating a popular upsurge for independence. Might be worth a few quid.

Mind you I wouldn't take betting advice from me, I lost finances by backing Edwina Hart, a fiver to be specific, not as bad as some mind - spare a thought for poor Andrew Davies.

Luke James