It often seems
as though journalists and politicians possess highly selective memories. Worse, they also assume that the rest of us
do as well, and are quite happy for them to regurgitate old stories as if they
were new, or even to completely reverse the ‘facts’ if that suits their current
requirements. I mention that as context
for the ‘revelation’ that some members of Plaid Cymru went to Libya in 1976 and
that the party may, or may not, have received money subsequently.
I was a member
of the party’s national executive at the time.
However, it was 40 years ago, and I have no written records from that
period, so I am working from memory here – and age, as they say, does not come
alone. I recall, though, that the first
I knew about the infamous visit was after the event. I don’t know how it came to be arranged or
how the participants were selected, but I’m sure that it wasn’t through any
formal decision-making process. On the
other hand, in those days an awful lot of things happened outside any formal
decision-making processes!
The problem
with the past is often that we view it through the prism of the present, but
the context back in 1976 was significantly different. At that time, Gaddafi was seen less as a
despot and more as a revolutionary who had overthrown an absolute monarchy in a
bloodless coup. And the then
comparatively new government of Libya was making efforts to share the country’s
oil wealth more fairly, and develop the country’s education and health
services. The BBC’s report includes a quote from Carl Clowes
about the reasons for the visit which are entirely true – these were
interesting developments from which it was believed that Wales could learn.
One other
result of the visit was an attempt to broker some sort of deal between Welsh
farmers and Libya to export Welsh lamb.
I’m not sure that very much ever came of it, but the attempt was genuine
and well-intentioned. The one thing of
which I am certain is that the visit was not conducted with the aim or
intention of securing funding.
Most of what I
subsequently learned about the visit came from one of the participants, Brian
Morgan Edwards. Brian, or BME as he was
more widely known,
was something of a character, to put it mildly.
And on all issues other than the core question of independence for Wales
it would be fair to say that his views and mine were more than a little
divergent, but we always got on well – and he could be very good company. But like all good raconteurs, he could at
times ‘embroider’ his stories ever so slightly.
(At the time, incidentally,
he was not, as stated, Treasurer, but Deputy Treasurer. The Treasurer at the time was the late Elwyn
Roberts from Bodorgan on Ynys Môn. Having
subsequently taken over from Elwyn as Treasurer, I can vouch for the fact that absolutely
no-one other than Elwyn would have fully understood the party’s finances at
that time, not even the Deputy Treasurer, which was a post with no
clearly-defined responsibilities despite having a seat on the Executive.)
Thus it was
that one Saturday night in the lounge bar of the Bellevue Hotel in Aberystwyth
after an all-day meeting of the Executive (early in 1977, I think) Brian
regaled me with his tales of the visit.
He was, shall we say, partial to the odd whisky or six, and had a knack
of speaking in a stage whisper which meant that everyone in the room could hear
everything he said (including on this particular occasion the gentleman on the
other side of the room to whom Brian referred as “Big Ears over there” – in the
same stage whisper. In all fairness, I
could hardly blame anyone for listening in in the circumstances).
The Libyans, he
told me, had offered guns as well as money, and could not understand why the
group were refusing them. According to
Brian, the response to the refusal had been along the lines of “But when the Irish come here, they always
want guns. Why don’t you want guns?” I was more than a little alarmed at this turn
of events, and subsequently spoke to Phil Williams (who had led the visit) privately to express my concerns.
Phil was able to give me the assurances that I sought; the visit had indeed
been about looking at what the government was doing in fields such as health and
education, not about seeking assistance – and there had been a little ‘embroidery’
in Brian’s tale.
So, with that
by way of background, I completely believe the statement by Carl that Brian
told him that money had been received; but that is not necessarily inconsistent
with believing the counter claim by Plaid that there was no money. I certainly have no recollection of a £25,000
donation from Libya being reported to the Executive. The party was, in those days, run on rather
less than a shoestring; £25,000 would have been considerably more than 10% of
the party’s annual turnover. It was the
sort of sum which only ever arrived as a result of the wills of departed
members. The party’s financial affairs
were more than a little ‘complex’ at the time as well; the treasurer was always
borrowing from Peter to pay Paul as the party stumbled from one financial
crisis to the next. £25,000 would have
made a significant difference.
On the other
hand, in those days political parties as entities were barely acknowledged
under the law, and regulation was zero.
Add to that the secretive nature of party financing in general and it’s
entirely possible that any party at the time could have received money from all
sorts of dubious sources with no more than a handful of people ever being aware
of the fact. For what it’s worth, I genuinely
don’t believe that £25,000 was received, but I cannot in all honesty entirely rule
out any possibility that some money was received via one route or another with
the knowledge of only one or two individuals who are no longer with us. I suspect not; I simply cannot be certain.
The response by
Labour and Lib Dem politicians to the latest rehashing
of the story was utterly predictable – seize on a claim, portray it as fact,
and issue a condemnation. It’s utterly hypocritical,
as Cai has pointed out, given the links which others
subsequently developed with Gaddafi.
It might be
argued that it was known at the time that Libya was arming and financing the
IRA, and that therefore any contact with the regime was at the least
unwise. With hindsight, that is perhaps
so – but there are a lot of things that most of us would do differently with
the benefit of hindsight. And there are plenty of other governments which have funded armed groups in other countries - the US is probably primus inter pares in this respect. We have to
come back to context again. Although
Gaddafi turned out to be a despot, the despotic aspects of his regime were
considerably less obvious in 1976 than they were by the 1990s. At that time, he looked like a man who was
utterly determined that all in his country should benefit from oil wealth, and
that was a very different perspective on wealth from that prevalent in the capitalist
economies. I couldn’t then, and still
can’t, see anything wrong with trying to learn how that was being done in
practice. Everything else about the
latest ‘story’ just looks like froth and mud-slinging to me.