Problems, diagnoses and budgies

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It seems that hardly a week goes past without one or another member of the Welsh government issuing dire warnings about the future of the United Kingdom if Boris Johnson continues to ignore or over-ride the devolution settlement. Drakeford, Gething et al increasingly remind me of Harri Webb’s budgie – the one that squawks and squawks as it flies into a fearful rage – as they vent their anger. There’s not much wrong with their diagnosis of the problem; power devolved is power retained, and the problem with devolution from the outset has been that powers enjoyed by Wales were only ever on loan and could always be recalled.

There is a great deal wrong, however, with their prescription. In essence, it boils down to waiting for England to elect a Labour Government and then hoping (against all the evidence provided by decades of experience) that that government will set up a commission to examine constitutional options, come to an agreed position and then implement it. It’s an approach which depends on an English Labour Government being in power for at least two – and probably three – full five year terms, and being prepared to invest a substantial amount of time, effort, and political capital on matters constitutional over the whole of that period in order to deal with what will always look from a London perspective to be the concerns of a fringe minority (aka Wales and Scotland). There is simply no appetite in England for the sort of significant reform required and ‘England’, in this context, includes the English Labour Party. Given the unlikelihood of a Labour government being elected at the next election – and maybe not even the one after that, in the light of active attempts at voter suppression by the Tories – it’s a recipe for waiting 25 years for action, even if all the ducks, however many legs they possess, were to line up as required.

That’s a quarter of a century to wait for the off-chance that something might eventually change. It’s no wonder that the alternative scenario, which is that Wales follow Scotland out of the dysfunctional union, is gaining support. Those who expect that all this fulminating and complaining by Labour politicians in Cardiff will eventually lead them to support the obvious alternative should remember that budgie again. As Harri put it:  

But he won’t get out, he’ll never try it,

And a cloth on the cage will keep him quiet.

When push comes to shove, the Labour budgie is a remarkably well-behaved bird. And Westminster knows where to find plenty of suitable cloths.

Stamping his little feet

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Today’s statement by the First Minister to the effect that Welsh ministers will not be puppets over Brexit somehow inexplicably reminded me of some lines from a poem by the late Harri Webb:

“…but if you ignore him he’ll squawk and squawk

and fly into a fearful rage

and rattle the bars of his pretty cage

but he won’t get out, he’ll never try it,

and a cloth on the cage will keep him quiet…”

Other than squawking, just what does the First Minister propose to do? From 1959, when Harri wrote the poem, until 2016, little seems to have changed for Welsh Labour.

Short-termism is the enemy

Tweet A little over 40 years ago, in 1972, I found myself standing outside the Rhydycar leisure centre in Merthyr, waiting for the results of the Merthyr by-election for which Plaid and its candidate, Emrys Roberts, had high hopes.  I got involved in a discussion with the late Harri Webb and another, sadly now also departed, comrade about the sort of Wales they wanted to see.

Harri was arguing for a free and open democracy, but Terry was a little more hesitant.  He was concerned that a Plaid government, having led Wales to independence, could subsequently lose power and that some of the Labour Party’s Unionist dinosaurs would come to power and undo all Plaid’s work.  Kinnock, Abse and Thomas were the names specifically mentioned as I recall. 

Harri’s response was typically robust.

“Oh”, he said, “we will have shot them in the first week.  Then we can have a free and open democracy.”

I’m not a great believer in the idea that shooting people changes anything very much, and I never really believed that he was serious – although one could never be entirely sure with Harri.  The conversation was brought to mind again recently by a number of apparently unconnected stories.

The first was the result of the Australian election, which the opposition won convincingly.  One of the factors believed to be behind the scale of the election victory was that the opposition promised to scrap the hugely unpopular carbon tax.  (There’s a parallel in the UK of course, with some politicians calling for scrapping those environmental measures which are perceived as being constraints on economic growth.  It is a call which might even prove popular.) 

The second is the debate about the proposed high speed rail line in the UK, and the growing suspicion that the cross-party consensus (at UK level anyway) in favour of the project is rapidly disintegrating for short term electoral considerations.

The third, returning to that discussion outside the Leisure Centre, is the question of the continued decline in the usage of the Welsh language, and the issue of what, if anything, can be done about it.

And the fourth is the increasing belief in government circles that our behaviour can be ‘nudged’ in a particular direction rather then forced that way by legislation.  Number 10 even has a ‘nudge unit’, apparently.

The thing that links all these strands is this; bringing about real long-term change depends on winning hearts and minds and creating a new consensus.  Winning an individual election is never enough; it’s the arguments which need to be won.  Almost anything which can be easily done by one government can be equally easily undone by the next.  Failure to convince people of the merits of a particular policy or direction enables others to take an unpopular stance against that policy or direction, and undermine the longer term commitment which is necessary to bring about real and fundamental change.

Whatever the issue, for any long-term policy the work of convincing people that it’s the right thing to do is the key to success, not the result of an individual election, nor the passing of laws, nor even the gentle ‘nudging’ of our behaviour - let alone shooting people.  And in the same way, ‘success’ isn’t measured by election results – it’s measured by the extent of change. 

Much of what passes for political debate seems to ignore that, and seek short term electoral success on the basis of populism.  In the real world, political short term electoralism is the enemy of real change; it is not the route to achieving it.

Cox's Farm

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I was passing Swansea Jail last week, and I noticed that the pub alongside it – the one that stands ‘just off the Mumbles Road, at the end of Argyle Street’, as Harri Webb described it, was due to re-open last Friday evening.  It’s no longer to be called the Glamorgan Arms; it’s been re-named as ‘The Lock-Up’, presumably due to its proximity to Cox’s Farm.

I don’t actually know whether Harri’s Uncle Will really did keep the pub; I never got round to asking him.  It may just be a bit of poetic licence to fit the rhythm of the poem.  But Harri’s roots in Swansea were strong, and he often drew on his roots in his work, so it’s perfectly possible that it was indeed his Uncle Will.

The poem was set to music and sung by the Hennesseys on the Green Desert LP – essential listening for all young nationalists in the late 1960s / early 1970s.

I also noted that the building has been repainted – it’s now a bright shocking pink colour.  Somehow, I don’t think Harri would have entirely approved.  

Fanfares and vol-au-vents

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I attended my first ever Plaid Cymru annual conference in 1971, at Porthcawl.  The event was exciting, if more than a little disorganised.  I met many people who have influenced my politics for the first time at the event, including Dr Phil - who needed to borrow my comb as he rushed past on the way from the street to the podium where he was due to speak.  That was in the days when he had hair – not that any comb ever made any difference to the appearance of his hair!

One of the others whom I met for the first time was Harri Webb.  Nationalist, socialist, republican – and, of course, poet.  I was not the only nationalist in the class of ’71 who found him an inspiring figure, even if much of what he said was not exactly to the taste of the party establishment of the day.

He was one of those characters who were larger than life.  Indeed, he was large in more ways than one – ferrying him home to Aberpennar after a ‘Poems and Pints’ evening in Dinas Powys a few years later was when I discovered that the seat belts on an Austin 1100 had never been designed with the not insubstantial girth of someone like Harri in mind.

He wasn’t what anyone would ever have called a ‘moderate’ by any means; his talk, like that of others in that era, was of revolution rather than evolution.  He was one of those who provided a hard edge to nationalist thinking, but he was never destined to play much of a practical part in building a movement.

Some of the excitement died in 1979 – indeed, many of the class of ’71 departed in the lean years which followed. Those of us who did not sought instead to build an effective, organised party which could engage more positively with electoral politics.  Much time and energy within Plaid over the years was expended on that task in one way or another, and the result of the efforts of many people over many years has been to create a much more effective political arm for the national movement than ever existed previously.

The aim, though, was never to lose that passion which Harri displayed, albeit sometimes to excess.  It was, rather, to combine idealism with pragmatism in order to be able to better present the message, not change it.  We wanted to be effective, yet remain a democratic party, owned and controlled by the members; to complement rather than replace what had gone before.  In seeking to professionalise that party’s activities, it was never any part of my objectives to use ‘professional’ in its tighter meaning, and to put the control of party largely into the hands of the ‘professional’ politicians.

Yet somehow that is largely what has happened.  Yesterday’s opening of the Assembly stirred more than a few memories, and there are some interesting comparisons which struck me.

The class of ’71 regularly railed at the way in which the Government could afford military bands but could not afford to meet more down-to-earth needs.  The class of ’11 watches the military bands performing outside the Senedd.

The class of ’71 campaigned against low-flying jets disrupting the peace of Wales.  The class of ’11 admires them flying past the Senedd.

The class of ’71 ridiculed and scorned the ruritanian anachronisms of heraldry, fanfares and pomp.  The class of ’11 watches in awe as the Herald of Wales leads the monarch out of the Senedd, and listens to a new fanfare especially commissioned for the event.

I could go on.  Harri wrote a poem called “Merlin’s Prophecy 1969”, which reads:

One day, when Wales is free and prosperous

And dull, they’ll all be wishing they were us.

We’re a long way off prosperity (other than in the relative sense so clumsily referred to by Peter Hain a few years ago); and we’re not exactly free yet; but nationalist politics has become a great deal duller since then.  It’s not quite as it was foreseen.  But then, somehow, I don’t think that many in the class of ’71 ever expected that the road to independence would be paved with fanfares and vol-au-vents either.  Unless, of course, we’ve somehow taken a wrong turning somewhere along the way.