On Dragons and Tongues

There is a typically Guardianista debate taking place on the Comment is Free site about intellectual clichés:

"We've all been there. You're in the middle of a heated discussion – debating the news over a pint in the pub, or firing off comments below an article on Comment is free. Suddenly, you remember that someone famous once put your argument in a much pithier way than you ever could. It might be an old canard like "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" from the Old Testament, or trendy economist-speak such as Malcolm Gladwell's well-worn phrase "the tipping point". The point is: you didn't really read the original text, and you're not all that sure what the author was really going on about in the first place. But you quote it anyway. Everyone – commenters, commentators, yes, even editors – sometimes resorts to intellectual clichés."

As if by magic our own Wales Home came up with a perfect example "The Dragon Has Two Tongues", a debate about whether or not Wales Home should publish posts in Welsh without translating them into English, a theme picked up by John Tyler.

In the Context of the CiF debate the cliché's origins are not in a debate just about the language, but in a book by Glyn Jones and a HTV series where Prof Gwyn Alf Williams debated with Wynford Vaughan Thomas, not so much about language, but about conservatism and radicalism. Both Wynford and Glyn were fluent Welsh speakers the tongues that divided their dragon wasn't linguistic but cultural; it wasn't can speak Welsh v can't speak Welsh but right v left.

In the intervening 30 odd years since the programme was made, only one party has successfully taken on the lessons learned from the programme - the Conservative Party - The only party that doesn't really mind the language that you use as long as the message is right in both senses of the word. Unfortunately the Tories oppose national self determination for Wales, so I can't support them!

Plaid Cymru, a party that one would expect to unite all Welsh speakers and all who have an abiding interest in Welsh culture and history cuts us Wynford types out, because we are not Gwyn Alf's disciples who believe that the Gresford disaster and Streic y Penrhyn are the be all and end all of North Wales' history, because we are not all left wing. Plaid treats our Dragon's Tongue with opposition, opprobrium and derision.

Unless and until a national movement unites all who want Welsh independence, left and right, cultural and practical, Welsh speaking or not, one of the dragon's tongues will remain very, very wilted!

An Answer to Ian

Thanks for your response Ian.

You response is an example of why the left has caused totally unnecessary splits in the national movement by insisting that anybody who wishes to join Plaid has to sign up to socialism. Something which I am unable, in conscious, to do.

I gave my full support to the workers at Friction Dynamic, not because I saw the issue as a right / left issue, but because I saw it from my right wing chapel mentality as a right / wrong issue.

During the miner's strike, a fight between English ideologists, where both sides were wrong and neither could give a bugger about what was best for Wales, I (obviously) supported the Welsh miners, and I did so along side the Mersyside branch of the Socialist Workers Party, because they were the only people who remembered that there were coal mines in north Wales not just in the south.

The silly point is that Liverpool's Trots welcomed my support, despite the fact that they knew that I was both a right winger and a Welsh Nat. Plaid, on the other hand, rejects my support because I am not a leftist.

As to your comment that I have little or no understanding of the internal politics of Plaid. I was a member of Plaid before you were born, Ian bach, I probably have a better understanding of Plaid's internal politics than you will ever have.

When the late great Bob Skillicorn started Plaid's Trade Union section I was chair of NUPE in Gwynedd, one of the founders of Plaid's Trade Union Section.

NUPE, was one of the most bolshie left wing unions at the time, but they were happy to have a right wing nat as chair in Gwynedd!

Despite my right wing credentials I have worked with left wingers of all sorts to advance the common cause, the ONLY left wingers who refuse to accept that I can have common cause with them are Plaid Cymru's socialist tendency.

The saddest thing about Palid's silly lefties is that their socialism is all so BRIT, it never has anything to do with Wales!

You make the snide comment that I can be a Tory in a self-governing Wales. As a Welsh Nationalist, [you] look forward to that day. Whilst you and yours prohibit non socialists from playing a full part in the national cause you are not looking forward to that day, you are preventing that day from dawning!

I told you so! Labour & Devolution

I have still not sorted out my ISP problems, so I apologise for not giving hat-tips or links to others who have made pertinent comments about the subject of this post.

I have mentioned before that I am not a supporter of devolution. My personal view about a referendum is bring it on, win or lose the Scottish type stage in the evolution of devolution argument will dead,either way, and nationalists can go on to argue the case for independence.

Despite the fact that I couldn't give a bugger about the result of a referendum, I do appreciate that Peter Hain makes a fair point when he says that those who believe in devolution as a means in itself or as a means to an end won't want to call a referendum that fails. Mr Hain says that a referendum called within the next four years will be lost.

Peter might be a piss poor politician, but Dr Hain is a distinguished academic. As an academic Dr Hain knows that one can't make a premise without proving it. But this is exactly what Dr Hain has done on at least 4 occasions since last May. He has stated, categorically, that a referendum held before 2011 can't be won, but he has offered no reason or proof for his premise, other than his own belief.

The academic response to Dr Hain's unproved premise is that there is no proof available. The political response is that there is proof but that the proof is too embarrassing for the Labour Party - that if a referendum is called within the present Assembly term Peter Hain knows that too many Labour MP's will renege on the All Wales and campaign for a No vote.

So where does that leave Plaid?

HAD

And had by its own left wing who put their own isms before the national cause!

Adam and the Right

After using his latest blog post to make a bitter personal attack on Sanddef Rhyferys , Adam Price MP then goes on to comment on right wing nationalists in general:

Plaid is, of course, a “broad inter-faith community.” It is itself a political and social coalition whose philosophical glue is the love of Wales, its land and its people. However, if the party is to be relevant, it has to have something to say on the social and economic policy issues of the day and, for the time being at least, the centre of gravity is essentially social-democratic. I have always been completely welcoming of non-socialists in the party who are nevertheless democrats prepared to accept the democratic outcome of debate in the party. What I have never understood is a tendency among some right-wing nationalists that would almost prefer if people like myself had actually joined the Labour Party instead of joining Plaid. This is a bizarre position for people who are ostensibly seeking to win over Labour voters in the south Wales valleys and elsewhere. All that awaits them from the likes of Ordovicus, it seems, is a bucket of well-stirred vitriol

I disagree with a number of comments that Mr Price makes here. Firstly I don't think that Plaid is the broad inter faith community (or broad church, as most would say) that it once was. The party's membership card states unequivocally that the party is a socialist party, so quite clearly there is no room in it for nationalists who believe that socialism has harmed Wales and will continue to harm Wales. Indeed the party has expelled people, such as Guto Bebb, for holding free market economic views. Even Mr Price's comment, which might appear broad and conciliatory on first reading:

I have always been completely welcoming of non-socialists in the party who are nevertheless democrats prepared to accept the democratic outcome of debate in the party

can actually be paraphrased as you don't have to be a socialist as long as you pretend to support the socialist views of the majority.

This is of course one of the silly things that happens in Plaid these days, you have people who are clearly not socialists, like Ieuan Wyn Jones, pretending that they are socialist. I find this funny; many potential voters find it duplicitous, dishonest, opportunistic and worst of all off putting. If Plaid is to succeed the party needs to go back to being a broad church that allows people of left, centre and right to support the national cause, that is Plaid's true core value, in an open and honest way.

I have never heard anybody on the right wing of the national cause say that they wish that Adam had joined the Labour party. Most of us, despite disagreeing with his socialist ideology, recognise that he is a great asset to Plaid and is probably the most charismatic and able of the party's elected members. Personally I feel sad that his socialist colleague and contemporary in the Plaid youth movement, Alun Davies, did join the Labour party. The loss of somebody of Alun's calibre was a great blow to Plaid, despite the fact that he has always been a committed leftie.

The criticism that many of us on the right do make about the socialist in Plaid is that they too often take a British Socialist view, rather than a left wing Welsh Nationalist view and that many of them promote the socialist cause instead of rather than as well as Welsh Nationalism (I don't include Adam in this group, incidentally). If all Plaid is about is promoting collectivism, republicanism, pacifism, trade unionism etc then it may as well merge with a British left party. Unless Plaid Cymru is first and foremost a nationalist party that promotes Welsh Independence, there is no point in its existence.