YES CYMRU MEANS NO HOPE
IN ORDER to make sense of the latest Welsh Labour/Plaid Cymru pact or alliance in Cardiff Bay we have to examine exactly what Welsh nationalism means.
Welsh Labour appears more nationalist than unionist with ever deeper infiltration into its ranks from Welsh, and Scottish, pro-devolution nationalists seeking independence from Westminster by employing and empowering themselves and their dependent cronies as endlessly growing forces, like over-nourished evil conjoined twins.
There are, always have been and always will be bitterly opposed, warring factions on either side of a polarised issue about what being Welsh should mean to Welsh people like you and I.
The freedom to decide what it means individually and independently is now in greater threat than ever because this pact or alliance will manically mould and shape my nation into a radical feminist, socially liberal, sanctuary of Cuban-style eco, trans, BLM socialism without fear of meaningful or coherent opposition or meaningful or coherent representation and reporting so too easily able to protect, prevent and punish its own citizens, effectively further disadvantaging them.
If Welsh Labour and Plaid’s shared ambitions to control and fund its own entirely different Welsh media and justice system are achieved, it will toll the death knell for ambition, freedom, liberty and true self determination and hark a dark and deeply sinister new age of Sturgeon-style Stalinism, corruption and cover-up with a small self-dependent elite oppressing and punishing dissenters just as Craig Murray has been over the Alex Salmond affair by Scottish Nationalist Party commanders.
It will favour western Welsh Wales over eastern English border Wales – looking towards Aberystwyth while turning its back on Monmouthshire and our most important natural transport links with England, always our greatest hope for the future – with further enforcement of Welsh first communication on signs and letters, opposition to the union and unionists, increased numbers of politicians and platforms to give the impression of a thriving nation when one does not exist, with feverish expansion and exploitation of all Welsh people by the elite few Cowbridge-living, Chapter-attending, National-reading Crachach Welsh people hellbent on creating a discrete and different media, culture and intellectual landscape to that in England just to prove a point and just because they can with stashes of our cash.
If that is not the direction you personally want to travel in, then you will have to travel out of Wales pretty damn soon.
Growing up in militantly bilingual Gwynedd in 1960s/1970s in the heartland of Cymru first nationalism which always emphasised vocally its zealous followers’ love of the Welsh language, history and culture and hatred of the English ruling monarchy, exploitation and expansion, meant I had a ringside seat when the Free Wales Army and MAC planted bombs designed to blow up Prince Charles at the time of his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969 at Caernarfon Castle.
I realised very young that I was trapped – because Welshness is a deep and abiding relationship with inferiority to neighbours as a source of pride – in a new battle of Britain.
Such blood-soaked extremist outrages in protest at undoubtedly obvious English expansionism and exploitation to curb and control undoubtedly obvious Cymru first nationalism protesters were inevitable from the moment father of Welsh nationalism Saunders Lewis and his crew of language, culture and history zealots formed Plaid Cymru in 1921 at the Pwllheli Eisteddfod.
The link between militant, blood red far right-wing uniformed nationalism and Plaid Cymru was always very difficult to pinpoint and prove but it existed from early on (with Lewis’s antisemitism and sidling up to Hitler in defiance of Churchill) and still does, though it now is more likely to be aired and transmitted through the offices of far-left Yes Cymru ideologues promiscuously threatening, abusing, offending and outraging as they serially do on social media.
Nationalism is right wing in its very bones. It has to be. It has to prioritise the native ethnic group over other ethnic groups or it is nothing and does nothing at all.
It has never appealed to me because I have never wanted to fully identify as Welsh (possibly because I knew that my birth name originated from Warwickshire via a circuitous route) speak and use the language for practical purposes, protest at perceived slights and abuses by other mightier nations and endlessly fight for land and identity which some of my ancestors might have defended against warring enemies. That was their fight, not mine.
I viewed it negatively as a child because it seemed to block progress by endlessly emphasising the historical lack of progress of native-born lowly and disadvantaged kith and kin in a system always depicted as permanently wielded against rather than with or for them.
Nationalism in Wales is and never has been a good seller (devolution was smashed in 1979 and even Labour loyalists like Jack Straw questioned the vote when it finally scraped through in 1997 in a deliriously eccentric heavily pro-subsidised referendum overseen by hungry bureaucrats with too many vested interests) to an essentially socially conservative population.
In order to make it sell better, Plaid Cymru has re-emerged as a bizarre radical feminist rainbow-coloured leftist combination of virtuous and supercilious intellectuals, activists who cynically hoover up the ethnic minority and Gen Z and millenial vote by recruiting in Muslim heartlands and on university campuses to ensure a brighter tomorrow for them than today.
The far-right dreamers and schemers of 1960s/1970s Cymru first nationalism envisaged a brave new overwhelmingly white gwlad/land free of English monarchy and might having forced them back over the border.
Plaid Cymru’s far-left dreamers and schemers of 2021 – vampires sinking their fangs further and further into Welsh Labour’s neck to satiate their lust for power on any terms – want to keep the borders when it suits them but abandon them to refugees and asylum seekers from outside.
They want to promote the language and force it down throats without adding sugar, bind us to climate change totalitarianism, enforce trans reforms which will see natural sexual/gender identity within the family outlawed by statute, mandate multiculturalism and diversity by adopting equality of outcome not equality of opportunity strategies and further erode progress and positive planning and prosperity by stubbornly refusing to look outward and eastward with warm and welcoming policies to foster better relations with Westminster to service our best interests but instead pursue petty and vindictive historical battles with London.
Will the last person to leave Wales please turn the rainbow-coloured lights off.
GARRY W GIBBS 