It’s safe to say it’s been a difficult few months for the Welsh independence movement.
As said in a previous piece, at heart it boils down to a conflict between those who want independence first “and sort it out afterwards” and those who want to impose their own visions for independence beforehand (and usually without much serious thought behind it).
On the one hand, those who have a clear vision have a point: some things are non-negotiable including upholding and respecting human rights (so nobody is thrown under a bus to achieve independence), social tolerance, rejecting totalitarian and authoritarian ideologies, working to eliminate inequality and learning how to do things better from the rest of the world. But even then different people will have different ideas that will clash: freedom of speech vs social tolerance for example.
Likewise, the “independence first, sort it out afterwards” folks have a point. If we believe in parliamentary democracy and plurality, then a lot of the decisions will be made by the Senedd before and after independence. YesCymru isn’t the vehicle to deliver serious policy changes; they’re there to campaign to get the tools to make those changes. We have to say why we want them and what we can do with them, but the final decisions will be based on election results and party manifestos. Democracy is rule of the majority and it’s a basic fact of life that you won’t always get what you want and change can often be very slow (I come back to this point later).
It would be very difficult for anyone to accuse me of not being a proper nationalist and I’d argue I’ve done quite a bit for the independence movement, but the purpose of this piece is to prove that your personal views don’t invalidate the views of other people in the independence movement and you can still be on the same side.
So, what “controversial” views do I hold – some of which may genuinely annoy or anger people – that may put me in the dog house with the majority of Welsh nationalists?
Scotland is a nation of engineers. Wales is a nation of historians – historians with chips on our shoulders.
As we’re so used to having everything taken away from us, it’s a natural reaction to become too sentimental about and over-romanticise the past. While we have to remember where we’ve come from, there comes a point where you need to let old ideas, grudges and quarrels go because it’ll stop us from doing the things we have to do now.
It’s an understandable instinct to want to “keep things as they are”. In many circumstances, things in Wales don’t need to radically change. There is, however, a big difference between Wales leaving things that aren’t broken alone and being left behind as the world changes around us – becoming a carefully conserved living museum that tries to do the wrong things better.
There’s an element of hypocrisy about it too.
Local shops and pubs close because in many cases their business/ownership model is broken and they’re often there to serve landlords; people then criticise the state of town centres, demand free parking yet still shop online or out-of-town.
Chapels are abandoned because Wales hasn’t been a God-fearing nation where everyone sticks their noses in everyone else’s business for decades. Yet whenever an application comes up to convert or demolish one people are up in arms. I can understand why, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good use of time or the best use of the building.
Wales has huge natural potential for hydroelectricity but any mention of building dams immediately provokes “Cofiwch Dryweryn”, while other renewable energy developments (something many nationalists often hold up as being our trump cards) are written off as “serving English needs”. The NHS in Wales is in urgent need of root and branch modernisation and reform, but even mentioning it is treated as though you’ve just climbed up to the Aneurin Bevan memorial to shoot up heroin.
People hate the title “Prince of Wales” but may romanticise the native princes as though they would have given any more of a shit about the ordinary Welsh person. If they had somehow survived, they would be living in palaces at public expense alongside an embarrassing extended family too.
- Does any of that mean that our histories are somehow invalid and not worthy of being taught in schools? No.
- Does it mean that people who campaign to preserve the past – even if it’s long past its usefulness – are sentimental fools whose views should be discarded? No.
- Does it mean we should embrace our future as brains floating in Amazon Prime NeuroVats™ permanently hooked up to Netflix? No.
