An Article from The North American Journal of Welsh Studies, vol.
8 (2013)
As a child it is hard to understand the
world beyond the immediacy of home, school and street. Those limited horizons
present enough challenges for most 8 year olds. The wider adult world impinges
only indirectly. A major political event is a matter for adults. Sensitive
explanations of marital problems, serious illness or death are often kept from children
whom, adults believe, are unprepared to cope with the emotions arising. So it
was with me.
In the 1950s I was a young boy from an
English-speaking part of south Wales who found himself living in a monoglot Welsh
village on the Llŷn peninsula. My primary concern was coping with the resultant
playground tensions. I was proudly Welsh, but these children were quite
different to the children of Cardiff, quite different to me. I became expert in
the suspicions and misunderstandings that can arise between the Welsh-speaking Welsh
and their English-speaking compatriots. I understood that these tensions were shared
by many others, including my parents. There were other sources of friction:
North against South, Socialist against Conservative, Church against Chapel,
soccer against rugby. There were sometimes heated discussions about
“Nationalism” and the language. To my parents thinking, the Welsh language,
whilst honoured, was associated irrevocably with poverty and the sufferings of
a past generation. The brighter future was written in English. I was “protected” from learning Welsh
which “would be of no use in a proper career.” From the conversations of other
adults I still heard mentions of Saunders Lewis, of Penyberth, of Tryweryn; all
of which meant nothing. I did not understand, but I did sense, the bewilderment
and injustice felt by those who had lived on this land for centuries speaking their
own language and worshipping in their own way, but now felt under immediate threat.
As a child I was partly aware of “adult”
crises affecting neighbours and friends although my knowledge was limited to that
which parents thought it right that a child should know. At the furthest
periphery of my vision, my parents’ newspaper headlines noted the mighty
political and social events of the day: Suez, the Hungarian Uprising, Sputnik,
Rosa Parks, post-colonialism, the birth of the European Economic Community. Only
Sputnik caught my imagination.
The time when you are brought up imbues
personal significance to any era, but the late 50s deserve special respect as a time
of fundamental changes: political, economic, social, cultural and
technological. I have spent much of the following half century trying to make
sense of all I heard, saw and felt. I needed to trace some of the lines that
connected local events I had witnessed with national or global changes. For
example, I was joyfully aware of the pleasures of harvesting: of following the
baler with a crowd of frolicking children in a manner which would never be
permitted today. I did not understand that this new agricultural mechanisation
was causing unemployment on the farms of Snowdonia, causing young men to leave the village to
find work in the midlands. I greeted the arrival of television with glee but
missed the reaction of the chapel minister who feared for the future of the
language which he saw as in danger of being eclipsed by the twin rising planets
of American cinema and the cut glass English of BBC TV Crystal Palace. I was
oblivious to the significance of Suez and how it changed attitudes. Some longed
to restore “Britain’s place in the World”. Those who had never loved the Empire
rejoiced that the British bulldog was now toothless and the time had arrived
for small nations to assert themselves. I was quite unaware that local people,
some of whom where family friends, took heart from Suez as they sought to
resist and reverse the one-way flow of governmental edict and cultural
influence from England (and America) to Wales. They desired nothing less than
the establishment of a Welsh national layer of Government which could focus on
pressing Welsh problems.
In the 1950s the urges for national
expression were striving for definition. Modern Welsh commentators tend to trace the
origins of devolution from the creation of the first Secretary of State for
Wales in 1964. The birth of the language movement is dated often from Saunders
Lewis’ famous broadcast “Tynged yr Iaith” (The Fate of the Language) in February
1962 and the subsequent formation of Cymdeithas yr Iaith (The Welsh Language Society).
These were major events and milestones of significance, but they were not spontaneous
occurrences. They arose out of the complex ferment of the 1950s. That they took
form at all was due to the work of some astonishingly strong-willed individuals
who lay foundations on which other would build.
One of the “adult” crises of which I was
partly aware affected Dafydd Williams. Dafydd was a successful young lawyer in
Caernarfon, a leading member of the Labour Party and the youngest mayor the
town had ever elected. He was also a friend and business associate of my father
and the families frequently socialised. He had two pretty daughters for whom I
developed a childhood affection. Through them, I became aware that Dafydd spent
a lot of time in Cardiff at “important” meetings. The girls talked of a
favourite “Wncl Huw” who often arrived with their father back from Cardiff
with stories and presents. “Wncl Huw” , I eventually discovered, was Huw T.
Edwards, the Chair of the Council for Wales and Dafydd Williams was his chosen
successor. I read of the life and career of Huw T. Edwards who, in the opinion of many, is
an unjustly neglected figure in the history of modern Wales. He could
reasonable be credited as the grand father of devolution. Certainly in his own
time be became known as “The Unofficial Prime Minister of Wales”. His importance
lay in being the right man in the right place at the right time with the right talents.
His years as a trade union leader had taught him the skills of a “fixer”. He
had been a quarryman in North Wales and a miner in South Wales. He had stood on
the picket lines in Tonypandy in 1910 facing the police batons. He had survived
the trenches of Flanders and was decorated for bravery. He was a first-language
Welsh speaker, an amateur poet and keen Eisteddfodwr. Most importantly he
commanded the respect and trust of most sections of divided Wales: North and
South, Welsh- and English- speaking, Socialist and Welsh Nationalist - even
some Conservatives.
Dafydd Williams and his wife Kitty had set
up house at Plas y Bryn in Clynnog. This fine old house was a joy. In the company
of the two girls I explored the house and garden, concocting ridiculous stories
of secret passages and lost treasure. The house had an atmosphere of a place
where things had, and would, happen. Years later I am able to explain from
whence came its charisma. Originally built by Arthur Ackland, Liberal MP for Rotherham
in the 1890s, the house was used as a place to retreat, plot and plan by
turn-of-the century Liberal notables including Tom Ellis and Lloyd George.
Unknown to us children, Daydd and Huw T.
Edwards were continuing the house tradition into the 1950s. The two girls
recall much coming and going at Plas y Bryn. The cars impressed them: Rovers,
Wolseleys and even a Bentley. The names they recalled were the diminutives they
were taught: “Fred Elwyn,” “Yncl Bill”, “Merv the Gas”. Dafydd and Huw T.
Edwards were hosting gatherings of some very influential people. “Fred Elwyn”
was Elwyn Jones (Nuremburg prosecutor and later Attorney General in Harold
Wilson’s 1964 government), “Yncl Bill” was Sir William Mars Jones QC
(prosecutor of the Moors Murderers and later High Court Judge), Mervyn the Gas
was Mervyn Jones, Head of the Gas Board (and owner of the Bentley). There
were also visits from Lyn Howell, Secretary of the Welsh Tourist Board, John Clement, Secretary
to the Council for Wales, Clayton Russon, owner of Cuthberts Seeds, Goronwy
Roberts MP, Cledwyn Hughes MP and many more.What political machinations were
going on? Was this a faction within the Welsh Labour Party? Certainly it
contained most of the Labour Party prime movers in the early campaigns for a
Parliament for Wales, a cause that was not supported by the party grandees of
the south, notably Aneurin Bevan.
I had discovered a wealth of information.
Most of it came from the published work of professional historians who had
researched the period in depth. I leaned heavily on the work of Gwyn Jenkins,
Paul Ward, Gwilym Prys Davies and Rhys Evans. Gwyn Jenkins, author of Prif
Weinidog Ansyddogol Cymru, a life of Huw T Edwards, gave me access to unpublished
interviews he had conducted in the 1980s. He also directed me to particularly fertile
files in the National Library of Wales. Bit by bit the story became clearer,
and what a story it was. I am not a professional historian and in any case much
of what I wanted to charter was social rather than political history. The
historians I mention have devoted a life-time of study to the period and anyone
in quest of the historical narrative should first go to their work. If I had anything to offer it was to
explore the emotional intelligence that drove the passions and sparked the
conflicts of the time: to chart a way through the swirling miasma of events. My
own background in theatre made me wish to dramatise events. I wanted to portray
the complex attitudes and tensions within Welsh society in that period. I
wanted to take a non-Welsh speaker into the minds of Welsh speakers of Arfon
the 1950s. I wanted to portray the tension between those fighting to bring
industry and jobs to rural areas and those whose first priority was to protect
culture and landscape. I wanted to dramatise the political dilemma faced by
those working towards a Parliament for Wales: whether it was best to work within the existing UK
political parties or to move towards the nationalist route.
The result is a novel entitled A Welsh
Dawn, which has taken five years to write. The political narrative that acts as
the spine of the work is as correct as I could make it in spirit and factual
detail. Much of the dialogue is first hand although the contexts are changed. The
intention throughout was to dramatise and reconstruct the political context
faithfully. I was astounded when Gwyn Jenkins provided me with access to
recordings of interviews he had conducted with John Clement in the 1980s recalling,
in detail, the private meetings of The Council for Wales including the dramatic
resignations of Huw T Edwards and Dafydd Williams. These were invaluable in my
efforts to recreate the political events of the time with accuracy.
Although A Welsh Dawn contains much
history it is not a history book but a story designed to entertain a reader. Beneath
the macro level of political manoeuvring in Cardiff or London, I felt free to
recreate a life of Dyffryn Nantlle and Llŷn drawing on memory, reading,
conversations with those with longer memories than I and my own invention. I sought
to people the narrative with characters who would spark the tensions I wished
to explore. I sought to shape a narrative that would hold a reader. The central
characters are totally fictitious: a young couple who we follow through five
years of their lives after leaving school. They, and a cast of friends,
parents, teachers and those in authority react to the events of the time and
play their part in shaping new attitudes and a new future. Ifan and Gwen do not
solve the problems of Wales, but they do face the dilemmas and choices of their
generation. They come through the experience with a basic certainty: that
keeping their identity and nationality is worth
sacrifice. The question is “How?”
The title comes from a famous Welsh poem by Ceiriog, who is sometimes titled the “Welsh Wordsworth”
for his success in restoring directness and simplicity to Welsh nineteenth
century verse. The poem tells of how “with the dawn”, the old songs of Wales
can still be heard but must be sung by the voice of a new generation.
Aros mae’r mynyddau mawr,
Rhuo trostynt mae y gwynt;
Clywir eto gyda’r wawr
Gan bugeiliaid megis cynt.
Eto tyf y llygad dydd
O gylch traed y graig a’r bryn,
Ond bugeiliaid newydd sydd
Ar yr hen fynyddoedd hyn.
Ceiriog
Abiding are the granite peaks
As ancient as the wind that stings
And with the dawning an old cry:
the song you hear the shepherd sing.
As ever with the break of day
His footsteps ring on crag and scarf,
But a shepherd new to this old way
Now sings the song and treads the path.
Gareth Thomas
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