The rubble from which devolution was built
Bubble — By Adam Higgitt on November 9, 2009 6:00 am
The event that began the process
“TEARS AS Flynn Quits Racecourse” screamed the front page of the Daily Post. At the bottom, in tiny letters, was added “World Prepares For War – Pages 2 & 3″. It was the 13th of September 2001, and the Daily Post had succinctly countered the claims of that day’s more august titles that the world had changed forever. Terrorist outrage or not, Wrexham FC were on the lookout for a new boss.
More than eight years on, and the consequences of 9/11 are clearer, but not clear. Two limited wars have been followed by two lengthy entanglements. The region has been disrupted, but the global balance of powers appears as it was. The effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago today are of a different magnitude of importance. The civilisation-threatening nuclear stand-off is over. Much of the former Soviet empire now sits within NATO and the EU. Russian strength is measured by her plentiful natural resources, but China is the more likely candidate for superpower status. In eastern Europe democracies have replaced dictatorships. In China, an authoritarian state has been stretched over a fantastically consumptive market economy. Everywhere, the precepts of Marxism-Leninism are abandoned.
South east Asia and the Middle East were the epicentres of superpower rivalry, and tremors in Britain’s celtic nations went unnoticed. Wales was never considered a potential domino, where post-colonial national sentiment could be manipulated or suppressed according to strategic imperatives. Perhaps this was for good reason. Welsh nationalism had all but vanished and Britishness was at its apogee at the outset of the cold war (this was so enveloping that the proud Welshman Aneurin Bevan styled the new UK healthcare system the “National Heath Service” and nobody questioned his terminology). When the – Welsh – national question eventually re-emerged in Carmarthen in 1966 it was so unexpected that historians have struggled to account for it fully ever since. Yet, if Gwynfor Evans’ victory was startling in Welsh terms, it fitted a pattern of protest at a stalemated cold war that stretched from Washington to Beijing via Paris, Prague and West Berlin. By the time the whole of Wales got to vote on the matter, Afghanistan stood on the brink of its Soviet invasion, and the world anticipated the second cold war. The moment had passed.
It is doubtful that those voting “no” in March 1979 did so out of a conscious sense of solidarity with the West. Nonetheless, the result was less a repudiation of self-government than it was an endorsement of Wales’s place within a state that formed part of a global bloc, and which in turn stood for values worth defending. Just as some national movements in Britain’s empire put their aspirations on hold in the face of Nazi aggression, so the question of Welsh self-determination was deferred while democracy and liberty were threatened. Nationalists complained that Wales was unfree, but almost everyone else measured freedom by an absence of barbed wire fences and machine gun turrets aimed inwards.
The fall of the wall changed all that. Without either imperial purpose or an existential enemy, the case for a unitary British state appeared threadbare. The 1990s devolution debate that followed bore many similarities to that of the 1970s. Proponents accused opponents of wanting to hold Wales back. Opponents issued warnings of cost, bureaucracy and seeking to install a self-serving elite. In one crucial respect, however, it differed. The charge of being anti-Welsh carried more weight, while that of being anti-British carried less. The central charge against devolution – that it would lead to separation – appeared to make home rule a risky enterprise in 1979. 18 years later, the same outcome no longer held the same potency. A separate Wales in a scary bipolar world seemed far fetched at best, suicidal at worst. In a unipolar world many of these anxieties melted away. As Europe as a whole responded to the new world by integrating, the spectre of true separatism itself became far-fetched. The notion that Wales would be cut adrift by choosing more devolution, or even independence took on an implausible feel. The idea that she would be bullied by larger powers was replaced by a seductive (but sketchy) notion that small countries could punch above their weight. The arguments about whether Wales should enjoy a greater degree of self-determination turned decisively from “why?” to “why not?”.
Success has many fathers, and most people in Wales believe that devolution has been a success. Jim Griffiths, Ron Davies and Rhodri Morgan all have credible claims to paternity. Tony Blair and John Smith would surely be granted access rights, and Gwynfor Evans is at least in need of a DNA test. But when we look at what gave birth to the attitudes and calculations of this cohort we don’t need to look too hard. The trail goes straight back to Berlin and the events of November 1989. The Wall helped to demolish devolution in 1979. 18 years later, its rubble rebuilt it.
Tags: cold war, devolution, EU, Wall week
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6 Comments
Interesting take on devolution but would you really put Gwynfor Evans ahead of Jim Griffiths?
Oh heck – what an oversight.
I feel rather silly now.
I’m going to amend the post.
Adam – nice piece – timely in its discussion.
The antecedents that provide the foundation – and necessarily underpin our current devolutionary position – are very important and deserve closer investigation. We seem at the moment, for obvious reasons, to be fixated with what comes next and not to keen to look back at why we are at this point.
I’m afraid however, that I have to disagree with you that the origins of our current settlement can be found in the notion that Wales as a nation can be defined in terms of a supposed position on a continental stage and one which has such great significance in geopolitical terms.
Please forgive me if this sounds as if I am doing dear old Gwalia a disservice in denying her a place in such highly esteemed surroundings. But my point is this. I can find no other rational justification for our current form of devolution that challenges the commonly held view that her separation from a manufactured Albion hegemony was due to a desire on behalf of New Labour to split the socialist voting Wales and Scotland.
As you rightly point out there is a greater meta-narrative that allows us to link Welsh self-determination (I notice how you shy away from the words Nationalism and separatism) to the period of protest of the 1960s but we would need to find much more substance before we can prove your claim of a link directly to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
So may I offer a starting point for such a link?
The fall of the wall and the commencement of as you put it a Unipolar world did see the reemergence of nationalism as a viable post cold war doctrine. The question is why is this so? Why as you put it did it become “why not” instead of “why”? Is it because successive electorates across Europe have turned to the perceived assurances of the local and national as opposed to the uncertainty of a new world?
Is it because in Wales, as in other jurisdictions, political and media elites have skilfully avoided the worst manifestations of nationalism and have presented their publics with a sanitised form which belies its true nature. In particular, Welsh Nationalism as you point out has been crafted into a form of pan Europeanism. If so it would explain why Wales is not alone on the global stage in thinking that defining its politics within a closely circumscribed notion of the self and the other is a better place to be than contending with the real challenges of globalisation and an ever shrinking world where the problems we face are no respecter of national identity or international borders.
Einsterin’s word of the 1930s to me remain true …. Nationalism has and will continue to spread and become a dominant political ideology the question is at what cost and will Gwalia succumb to its charms and deadly virus?
I’m sure the piece is not meant to suggest otherwise, but the shift from 1979 to 1997 is far too complex to be put down to one event, even one as huge as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, just as some people were partly influenced to vote no in 1979 because of fears about nuclear war and the Communist threat, others were partly influenced to vote yes for exactly the same reason. After all, a self-governing Wales (the ultimate goal of devolution for some, then and now) was unlikely to be a target for a Soviet missile. But, far more importantly, the safety net that being part of the British state offered people in 1979 was economic rather than military. That safety net had vanished in enough eyes in 1997 to produce a narrow yes vote. While both 1979 and 1997 were influenced by a huge variety of issues, ultimately economics took precedence, as it does in any election.
If I can chip in with a little contribution to this debate – enjoyed Adam’s piece.
On a more local level I think in 1979 there was a strong ‘British’ working class consciousness in south Wales aided by a still powerful union movement, a sentiment exploited by Kinnock & Abse to vote against devolution in the name of solidarity with their comrades in the rest of Britain.
The defeat of the Miner’s Strike 84/85 effectively killed off any coherent idea of a ‘British’ working class and the unions were emasculated & the Labour party began the long road back to power by ditching some of the old left principles associated with ‘class’. The idea of a ‘British’ working class, which once had formidable structure & form, was now rapidly fading away.
People who’d always seen themselves as Welsh but also as members of a ‘British’ working class saw one part of their identity effectively wither away, the part closely associated with defending their interests.
Devolution offered a way ahead, a re-affirming of identity & means to defend their interests should another Tory government be returned in Westminster. The pro-devolution vote in 1997 had a strong anti-Tory element.
Based on this perception, I feel perhaps there’s something to be said for enduring a couple of terms of Tory rule before going for a referendum on further powers for the Assembly.
However, hopefully we’ve moved on from seeing devolution as something to react against what happens in London, so that we can use it as an active means to take more control to shape our future