Eisteddfod diary and memories of salad days

Iolo Morganwg's discovery-cum-invention of the Eisteddfod was Wales's crowning contribution to the Romantic Movement

IT IS NEARLY 20 years since I was selected as the Conservative candidate for Blaenau Gwent to contest what transpired to be the 1992 General Election. I lost by the biggest margin of any Conservative candidate in the UK. My supporters numbered 4,266 – a figure I remember exactly despite never meeting one of them while canvassing. Mind you, I finished second and secured my deposit.

This week I travelled up to Ebbw Vale by train, an option unavailable back then, when I had to make do with my beige Austin Maestro, a car about as popular as my cause. The deputy central office agent for Wales sent me on my way with the cheery message that someday – maybe soon – we would all celebrate the fall of a Valleys seat to the Tories. Like the return of Arthur, it has remained a distant prospect, although political pluralism has in fact dawned but not yet in a manner beneficial to Tories.

Aspects of life are quite circular. In 1992 the Plaid candidate was Alun Davies and he fought fiercely against a Labour establishment that he claimed had let the Valleys down. His transmogrification into the Labour candidate today has more consistency than is perhaps immediately apparent. He remains a lively socialist and is impatient for change. Anyway, having undergone my own political volte face on devolution, I will reserve judgement on Alun and his future role in Blaenau Gwent’s politics.

The big hope back in the early 1990s was for the rebranding of the Valleys as an area ready for innovation and economic growth. Peter Walker’s Valleys initiative – more substantial than some credit – was part of this hoped for renaissance, as was the Garden Festival of 1992 which brought some two million visitors to Ebbw Vale. Now the Eisteddfod has returned for the first time since 1958 and is a reminder that the Valleys are still a huge influence on Welsh life. The steelworks dominated Ebbw Vale in the 1950s but today the disused site is the location of the Maes. In 1958, the biggest controversy surrounded Nye Bevan’s use of English in the Pavilion. He called for the end of the silly anachronism ‘Wales and Monmouthshire’, a calumny that still lingers today.

Returning Ebbw Vale to full economic vitality might appear as difficult as restoring the Welsh language in the Valleys. The task is vast and has remained little diminished since profound industrial decline set in during the 1970s. There are a few signs of hope. A passenger railway service allows people to commute to Cardiff but not, bizarrely, Newport. More encouragingly, the Valleys University initiative could spark greater entrepreneurship by improving the skills of the local workforce. In its economic heyday, the workforce here was highly skilled, albeit in a narrow range of traditional industries. Education and skills, as all economists know, are vital for sustained economic growth. They are the most effective economic levers available to government, but never offer a quick fix.

No high Tory can visit the Eisteddfod and not shiver with unalloyed delight. Here still is the Romantic Movement in full exuberant flood! Scotland has Walter Scott and the Waverley novels; England Pugin and Parliament. Wales trumped both with Iolo Morganwg and the rediscovery-cum-invention of the Eisteddfod. Of course the Eisteddfod is no more medieval than Parliament. Both are 19th century institutions, however ancient their antecedents. The stuff of a nation lies around the blacksmith’s shed for generations before it is forged (in more ways than one) into a coherent artefact. Iolo picked up the bits and pieces that were the rather broken Wales and crafted something quite exquisite.

Where else in Europe, or the world for that matter, would a nation’s principal cultural event travel around the country in some peripatetic jamboree that would put even a Tudor royal progress to shame? One can only hope, in these bleak days of financial austerity, that the accountants don’t enervate this tradition with demands for a fixed site. However, if that is going to be the Eisteddfod’s fate, my vote for its permanent location is Primrose Hill, London. How better to market Wales to the world?

In 1992, my campaign attracted no hostility but quite a lot of laughter. Sometimes people would come out onto the streets just to see the curiosity of a Tory loose on the campaign trail. This bemusement even became apparent to me when visiting the Tredegar Cons Club. Upon my arrival a welcoming committee of the club president and his senior officers whisked me into the tiny snug bar. The beer flowed. After a while – and when still just capable of clear speech – I said to the president that perhaps it was time for me to meet members in the packed bar next door. He looked at me gravely and said “Mr Melding, I cannot allow you to go into the club bar where you will be subjected to abuse and ridicule”. Undaunted, in I went, where I was cheerfully received although without, I suspect, securing a single vote.

Surprisingly, one of the Tory government’s grant maintained schools was in Brynmawr. Indeed Brynmawr also boasted that rare bird, a Tory councillor (a former receptionist at the GP’s surgery – I suspect a significant fact). One day the phone rang in my campaign HQ and an irritated voice said: “Central office here. Thing is Lord Hailsham is campaigning tomorrow in Monmouth and he now wants to spend an hour or so in a hopeless seat. We thought of you. Can you arrange something?” I duly obliged and set up a meeting with the sixth formers at Brynmawr School.

Lord Hailsham arrived in a battered Mercedes. It was March. Brynmawr is the highest point in the Valleys. It was cold. Lord Hailsham emerged with difficulty from the back of his car clothed in a massive overcoat, hat, several scarves, and holding two walking sticks more as a test of his dexterity than an aid to walking. The headmaster ventured forward:“Welcome Lord Hailsham. May I say how well you look …” The reply was instant. “Thank you, but at 84 it won’t last long”.

Travelling back on the train after a long day at the Eisteddfod, my mind kept wandering back to 1992. As the train coursed through the tight sinewy valleys – much more wooded and mysterious than the Glamorgan valleys – I thought of one particular encounter with a voter in Abertillery. An elderly gentleman, he challenged me in High Street and said that no one here could think of voting Tory after “that decade of shame”. Before I could defend Mrs Thatcher’s record, he continued: “We will never forget the 1930s!” I doubt even Lord Hailsham could have found an answer to that. Let’s hope that our own great recession does not leave similar scars today and instead we will look back on this year’s Eisteddfod as part of Ebbw Vale’s regeneration. Perhaps then a few more locals will vote Tory.