Although it’s a little bit late – by around three or four months – 2021 marks the fifth anniversary of the official launch of the current incarnation of YesCymru.
This piece was going to be written anyway, but it’s come at a time of public disagreements over the direction of the pro-independence group. That may be inflamed by a mix of people pursuing their own agendas, disappointment that the promised push for independence at the 2021 Senedd election didn’t materialise, a lack of transparency on YesCymru’s part and some pretty aggressive to-and-fro on social media by everyone.
The pandemic has made things more difficult than they otherwise would have been and put everyone on edge, so I’m reluctant to say the organisation is at a turning point even if some of the more recent developments have been concerning.
There are things they’ve done right and things they’ve done wrong – like any body its size. It’s just a case of maintaining and building upon progress where it’s been made and learning from mistakes.
(Update: 10/07/2021) Since posting this, Siôn Jobbins has announced his resignation as Chair of YesCymru.
While he quite clearly states this wasn’t for any political reasons, purely personal, it raises yet more concerns about how the organisation is being run. The sensible move would be to call an EGM and hold the necessary elections as soon as possible. This is beginning to spin out of control given that yet another senior founding member of YesCymru has left.
As for Siôn, I don’t think we could’ve asked for a better person to get the movement this far. It takes the sort of character a lot of people lack to admit the job has gotten too big to handle, but YesCymru would never have gotten to where it is now without him.
I hope this is temporary and he can remain active in the independence movement, but myself and every single independence supporter are in his debt. Diolch o galon, Siôn.
(Update: 13/08/2021) Only a month after the last update, today it’s reported the entire Central Committee has stood down after a series of resignations and suspensions over the last few weeks. An interim team has been put in place ahead of an EGM in the autumn.
While I don’t believe they’ve managed the situation to this point particularly well (and made that clear in the piece itself), I have a lot of sympathy with the (now former) Central Committee members for the abuse they’ve received which got very nasty very quickly. It was clear that (the former Chair) Sarah Rees and others were trying to get a hold on things and get the right processes in place but that wasn’t enough for some people. I said we had to be patient and give them a chance, but that didn’t happen.
Hopefully, this finally draws a line under the months-long infighting, but mass resignations like this are hardly a good look.
Lack of professionalism
First and foremost, by this I don’t mean “this is amateur stuff” in a bad way – we would all do well to remember that YesCymru is mainly staffed by volunteers and very few people put their hands up or put their names forward when asked to do so.
It’s more “they need to get the right policies and people in place to stay at their current level”. It’s a bit like an amateur or semi-pro football team that’s won successive promotions and are now playing against full-time clubs. If they don’t adapt, they’ll go straight back down.
In the space of 18 months, YesCymru has gone from being a fringe, modestly growing pressure group into one of the largest organisations of its kind in the country. The sort of numbers involved exceed that of most town and community councils and certainly some of the mainstream political parties. Sadly, that membership growth has outpaced the professionalism YesCymru needs behind the scenes to retain members and sustain the momentum needed to win a campaign for independence.
There are some elements – branding and their safeguarding and diversity policies, for example – which probably are at the level you would now expect. Elsewhere, it’s perhaps not as good as it should be and they’ve lost a lot of experienced heads.
YesCymru shouldn’t exist so people can make a living. However, you get a sense in Wales that amateurism is seen as more pure and genuine – though you can’t win serious campaigns making things up as you go along. A lot of individuals and organisations will be looking at their membership figures and income and rubbing their hands or preparing a sales pitch for magic beans – so some kind of procurement policy and checks and balances on decision-making are needed too.
At the very least, things like meeting agendas, minutes, accounts (properly audited), personal interests and alike should be publicly available. They should be publishing annual reports and explaining where they spend money, how much and why.
Even organisations with full-time staff slip up now and again. Shit happens. It’s not a problem as long as mistakes are acknowledged and never repeated. When they happen again and again – that’s when you need to worry and start asking questions.
It’s unclear what their long-term strategy is
It’s fairly obvious the long term aim of YesCymru is Welsh independence, but have they sat down and thought seriously about how they’re going to get there? Are they all on the same page? If they’re not, how can they accommodate opposing worldviews while “staying on the same side”?
While the pandemic will have had a major impact here, I wouldn’t say it’s a lack of direction, more as if there are a series of loosely connected one-off projects rather than a sustained campaign. When backing projects or campaigns are they asking the right questions?
“Who is this for?” “How does this fit with YesCymru’s long-term goals?” “Is this going to help convince the IndyCurious?” “Will we learn anything new from this?” “Will this challenge ourselves or just come across as self-promotion?” “Is this too pretentious, or too low-brow?”
At the moment they don’t have any competition beyond the “No Cymru” thing – which seems to have something to do with UKIP and is typically dense (“duuuurh, they’re called Yes Cymru so we’ll call it No Cymru hur hur hur duuuuuurh”). When there’s a serious campaign for the Union (I don’t think you can call anything the UK Government have done or Labour’s “radical federalism” serious) we’ll see what YesCymru are made of as they’ve had a comfortable head start so far. Too comfortable.
The Echo (& Torture) Chamber
Social media has been the undoubted driving force behind YesCymru’s recent growth. While it contributes to success, it can contribute to failure as well. As a format, Twitter encourages arguments. It thrives on shitty hot takes and clickbait.
If all the information you got on YesCymru came via Twitter – which is probably the case for a lot of people since the membership boom and when stuck inside during the pandemic – you would think the organisation was falling apart based on what’s happened over the last couple of weeks. Yet it’s the same few dozen people arguing with each other, not helped by the algorithms that put this stuff in front of you (leading to pile-ons from random people for whom it’s got fuck all to do with) as well as YesCymru’s seeming lack of transparency (leading to too much guesswork and conspiracies).
There’s also the obsession with polls. Too many things in Welsh politics are micro-analysed to the point of pedantry because there’s often very little else to talk about. Polls are fine as indications of underlying trends, but they cause false dawns. Even I don’t believe committed support for independence is at 30-35%; it’s not something people discuss regularly or at the forefront of their minds apart from the hardcore.
There’s a lot – and I mean a lot – of work to do, but it’s become far too easy to be distracted or to assume things are going better than they actually are.
Committee politics
However necessary they may be in some circumstances, committees in voluntary and community organisations are a perennial Welsh weakness. We see the same story play out all the time:
- Committees enjoy some early success but as soon as there’s a wobble, misstep or disagreement they get asked awkward questions by the rank-and-file. If that isn’t properly resolved the committee feels threatened, gets defensive and becomes increasingly closed-off.
- The organisation becomes more about the committee, who start seeing themselves as an embodiment of the organisation/community rather than as administrators. Decisions are increasingly made behind closed doors and there’s little to no challenge – either by design (i.e. no checks and balances) or because nobody wants to get on the wrong side of them.
- The organisation’s aims and projects begin to match the aspirations and demands of the most outspoken individual committee members which starts arguments. People who leave the organisation at this point are dismissed as “never truly believing in it.” It becomes a quest for purity, conflict aversion and unanimity, entrenching groupthink.
- After a dramatic resignation or two by stalwarts or more “awkward” committee members – driven by personality and ego clashes – the organisation either collapses, or the process starts all over again with a new, increasingly ineffective, committee. Trust will have broken down between those at the top and the membership, with the organisation’s split difficult to reconcile.
I don’t think YesCymru have got anywhere near that endgame but the Central Committee have certainly reached the “get asked awkward questions” stage and the jump from that to the end can often be very quick.
It’s worth remembering though that squabbles involving the Central Committee aren’t new and their influence over YesCymru as a whole is perhaps overstated. There were serious problems during 2017-18 caused by arguments over the constitution – at least partially linked to arguments within Plaid Cymru at the time – which culminated in an AGM in Burry Port and EGM in Builth Wells. More recently, there’ve been accusations of a so-called “Momentum takeover” just because a few Labour members were elected to the Central Committee this year.
YesCymru should – ideally – run itself in the same way they see an independent Wales being run. Surely that means more democracy, plurality, accessibility, accountability and transparency, not less? Perhaps it’s time to move away from committees and chairs – with very broad, open-ended remits – to Senedds and presidents.
